The Magnate's Takeover: The Magnate's Takeover

“Thanks. Just a few more weeks until the grand opening. Would you like an invitation?” He chuckled rather demonically. “I’m sure the liquor will be freely flowing, if that’s any incentive.”

Libby rolled her eyes. “I’ve sworn off. Trust me. But I’d love an invitation. Thank you.”

“You’ve got it.” He plucked a cell phone from his pocket and mere seconds later he was directing someone to put her on the guest list. “No, that’s all right. Don’t worry about the spelling right now. No address necessary,” he said. “I’ll deliver it personally.”

For some odd reason his use of the word personally and the way he locked his gaze on her when he said it suddenly caused a tiny shower of sparks to cascade down Libby’s spine. She took a quick gulp of coffee, hoping to extinguish them.

This guy was good, she thought. He was good not only with buildings, but with women, too. At least his technique seemed to be working fairly well with her at the moment. She swallowed the rest of the coffee.

She was so conscious of her sparkling, sizzling innards that she didn’t even realize the painting contractor had walked up behind her until he cleared his throat rather loudly and said, “Here’s your estimate, Ms. Jost. I guess you know it’s a pretty big job, considering the age of the place and all. My numbers are there at the top,.” He pointed with a paint-crusted fingernail. “You just give me a call whenever you decide.”

“All right. Thank you so very much for coming. I’ll definitely be in touch.” She was thrilled—amazed actually—that he was willing to take on the work.

The man had turned and walked away as Libby flipped a few pages to glance at the all important bottom line. Reading it, she could almost feel her eyes bulge out like a cartoon character’s. She didn’t know whether to scream or to faint dead away or to throw up—again—right there in the driveway. She might just do all three, she thought bleakly. This was terrible.

He wanted thirty-seven thousand dollars for all the painting and patching that needed to be done, which would leave her the not-quite-staggering sum of thirteen thousand dollars for additional, equally necessary repairs and renovations like plumbing fixtures, tile, carpeting, new beds and bedding and lighting, not to mention a bit of advertising and a new damn sign over the office door. She’d had no idea, none whatsoever, that her dreams were so damned expensive and so dreadfully, impossibly out of reach.

Libby was so stunned, so completely stupefied that she was only vaguely aware that David had taken the paper from her, and then the next thing she heard was a gruff and bear-like curse followed by the sound of tearing. Her painter’s estimate, she observed, was now falling to the ground in little pieces, like an early, quite unexpected snow. It was a good thing she didn’t want to hang on to it, she supposed.

“This is absolute bull,” David said. “It’s worse than highway robbery. I’m betting the guy doesn’t even want the job, Libby, and that’s why he jacked the price up so high. He probably just wanted to scare you off.”

“Well, it sure worked,” she said, trying to accompany her words with a little laugh. A very little laugh. “Gee, now I can hardly wait to see if the plumbing guy and the electrician try to scare me, too. I can imagine it already. It’ll be just like Halloween here every day of the week. Trick or treat!” There was a small but distinct tremor in her voice that her sarcasm couldn’t even begin to disguise. At the moment, quite frankly, Libby didn’t care.

“Look,” David said. “I can get my guys over here for two or three days or however long it takes. They can do the painting for you for a tenth of that amount. Even less than that, I’d be willing to bet.”

“Your guys?” Libby’s headache took the opportunity to make a curtain call just then. She closed her eyes a moment, hoping to banish the unwelcomed pain. “I don’t understand this at all.”

David was already opening his phone as he responded to her. “Painters. From the Marquis.”

“But you’re the architect.” She blinked. “How can you…”

“Architect or not, I just happen to be the guy in charge over there right now,” he said, sounding most definitely like a guy in charge.

“But…”

He snapped the phone closed and gave her a look that seemed to question not only her ability to make a decision, but her basic intelligence as well. “Look,” he said. “It’s really pretty simple. Do you want the painting job done, done well at a reasonable price, or not? Yes or no.”

This was obviously a man who made lightning-quick decisions, Libby thought, while she tended to procrastinate and then a bit more just to be absolutely sure or, as in most cases, semi-sure. Procrastinating had its benefits, but maybe lightning quick was the right way to go at the moment.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do want the job done at a reasonable price. Actually, what I want is an utterly fantastic job at a bargain basement price.”

“You’ll have it,” he said. He stabbed in a number, barked some commands that were punctuated here and there with curses, flipped his cell phone closed and then told her, “A crew will be here in twenty minutes. Write a list of everything you want them to do. And be specific.”

Libby nodded. She could come up with a list for them in less than five seconds, she thought. Number One was paint everything. There was no Number Two.

While Libby worked on her list in the office, David walked around the shabby motel grounds once again, scowling, muttering under his breath, telling himself he must really be losing his grip. He’d just done one of the most stupid things in his life when he’d offered to help fix up the damnable place he had every intention of tearing down.

What was the old expression? Putting lipstick on a pig? He shook his head. There wasn’t enough lipstick in the world for this dilapidated pigsty.

On the other hand, his crew of painters were on the clock anyway in case of last-minute problems before the Marquis’ opening so this little detour across the highway wasn’t going to cost him all that much. It wasn’t about the money, though. It was more and more about the woman, the luscious little strawberry blond.

She’d already gotten under his skin just enough for him to fashion a lie about who he actually was. He’d introduced himself to her as the architect of the Marquis—an architect, for God’s sake—a mere hired hand instead of the Big Deal Boss. That alone was enough to make him question his sanity.

He hadn’t actually planned to do that or rehearsed any sort of deception, it had simply sprung forth somehow when she’d offered her soft, warm hand and then inquired, And you are? For a split second, while he held her hand in his, he hadn’t been quite sure who he was, where he was or what he was doing.

He wasn’t a liar, although he’d probably stretched or bent the truth a few times during business negotiations. But in his personal life, what little there was of it, particularly with women, he never lied and he never promised anything he didn’t follow through with from the moment he said hello to a woman to the moment he said goodbye. And he’d said a lot of goodbyes in his time.

He’d spent year after year watching female faces and their accompanying body language abruptly change when they heard the name David Halstrom. It was like going from Zorba the Greek to Aristotle Onassis in the blink of an eye, again and again, year after year, woman after woman. Women looked at Zorba with curiosity and pleasure and genuine affection. They looked at Onassis as if they were seeing their own reflections in the window of a bank.

He was thirty-six-years-old now, and he’d been a millionaire since he was twenty-one and a gazillionaire for most of the last decade. But until he’d laid eyes on Libby Jost, with her strawberry-blond hair and her light blue eyes and the nearly perfect curves of her body, David hadn’t realized just how much he’d truly yearned to be treated like a normal, everyday guy instead of a damn cash register.

So, what the hell. He’d be an architect for the next few weeks, and then he’d confess, and the fact that he had more money than God would go a long, long way in soothing Libby Jost’s hurt feelings at his deception.

In the meantime, he decided he’d better be going before the painters arrived and greeted him by his actual name. He stopped by the shabby little office to tell Libby goodbye and to give her his private number just in case she needed him, and it was only then, when he actually said the words to her, that David realized just how much he wanted her to need him.

The painting crew turned out to be four young men in their twenties or early thirties, all of them in paint-splattered coveralls, and all of them with long hair tied back in ponytails and piercings in one place or another. They looked more like a rock band than a team of professional painters. She hoped David knew what he was doing as she gave them her list, walked them around the place, then waited for the bad news she had begun to expect.

“So,” she asked when they’d completed their inspection of the place. “Can you do it? And for how much?”

She held her breath in anticipation of the bad news.

The tallest of the young men shrugged his shoulders and gave a little snort. “Well, it’s a challenge, ma’am, no doubt about that. But, sure we can do it. Hell, yes. As for how much, as far as I know right now, you’ll just have to pay for the paint. We’re all on the clock over at the Marquis, so we get paid one way or another. Over here. Over there. It doesn’t matter.”

Libby was still holding her breath, waiting for the bottom line.

“I’m guessing seven hundred dollars ought to cover the supplies,” he said. “Give or take a few bucks.”

Then he pulled a fold-out palette of paint colors from his back pocket. “If you want to choose the main color and the trim right now, ma’am, we can pick it up and get started after lunch.”

Libby was still a few beats behind him, still celebrating the seven hundred dollars, give or take, as if she’d just won the lottery. Things were suddenly, terrifically back on track, she thought, after this morning’s horrible derailment.

“Ma’am?” He fanned open the color chart in front of her.

“Oh. Sorry.” She looked at the chart. “Well, this won’t be too hard. I’ve had these colors in my head for weeks. I want a rich, creamy ivory for the walls. This one. Right here.” She pointed to a swatch. “And I want a deep, deep, wonderful green for the doors and the trim. There. That’s it exactly. It’s perfect.”

“Cool,” the painter said, then turned to his crew. “We’re all set. Mount up, boys. Let’s hit the road.”

Libby hit the road, too, right after her ever reliable front-desk replacement, Douglas Porter, arrived. She’d known him since she was two years old, and if her aunt Elizabeth was the mother figure in Libby’s life, then Doug was most definitely her stand-in father after all these years. His nearly religious attendance at dozens of school plays and concerts and teacher’s meetings, and his presence at every major event in her life more than qualified him for a special kind of parenthood. Plus, it was Doug who’d given her her very first camera on her tenth birthday, then spent hours showing her how to use it properly, not to mention forking over a small fortune for film, filters, lenses and often staggering developing costs.

But he wasn’t really her uncle. He’d been the best man at Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Joe’s wedding and after Uncle Joe went missing in Korea over half a century ago, Doug simply stayed around. It was clear to anyone with eyes that he loved her aunt, and it never failed to sadden Libby that the two of them hadn’t married.

“Elizabeth’s pretty chipper today, Lib,” he had announced when he entered the office. “You’ll be glad to see that, I know. So what’s going on around here? How many guests do we have?”

It had become a running joke between the two of them, about the guests, and she had offered the standard reply. “No more than you can handle, Doug.”

She’d paused on her way out the door. “Oh, I’m expecting some painters this afternoon. They know their way around so you won’t have to do anything.”

“Painters?” His white eyebrows climbed practically up to his scalp. “Why on earth…?”

“No big deal,” she said nonchalantly. “I’m just having them do a few touch-ups.”

As she closed the office door she could hear him muttering something about throwing good money after bad, silk purses and sows’ ears.

Libby was still smiling about that when she parked her car at the nursing home’s rehab facility and walked down the long glossy hallway to her aunt’s room. She knocked softly, then opened the door, happy to see that the crabby roommate wasn’t there at the moment, but not so happy to see the sour expression on Aunt Elizabeth’s face.

“Painters, Libby? You’ve hired painters? What on earth are you thinking, child?”

Libby sighed. “I guess Doug called.” She should have figured on that, she thought, as she pulled a chair close to the bed. “I wish he hadn’t done that. I wanted to surprise you, Aunt Elizabeth.”

“I am surprised,” she said, rearranging the sheet that covered her. “And not all that pleasantly, my girl. You shouldn’t be throwing your money away…”

“Wait. Just wait a minute.” Libby held up her hand like a traffic cop. Sometimes it was the only way to stop this woman from going on and on. “I got a very special deal on the labor, so the job really isn’t costing much at all. Trust me.”

Her aunt narrowed her eyes. “How much?”

“Seven, eight hundred tops.”

“I don’t believe you,” she snapped.

“It’s true, Aunt Elizabeth. Cross my heart. I’ll even show you the canceled check when I get it.”

The elderly woman clucked her tongue. “And I suppose it’s already too late to stop this painting nonsense?”

“Yes,” Libby said stubbornly.

Her aunt, equally stubborn, glared out the window for a moment before she snapped, “Well, then tell me what colors you picked out. You know very well that I don’t like change, Libby, and when your Uncle Joe gets home he’ll expect the place to look just as it did when he left for Korea.”

After half a century he’s not coming home, Libby wanted to scream at the top of her lungs, but she didn’t. Aunt Elizabeth was an absolutely sane and reasonable woman, and likely a lot sharper than most folks her age, except for her complete and utter denial of her husband’s death.

If you started to argue with her, if you tried to convince her the man was dead, she’d snap, “Well, then. Show me his death certificate.” And of course there wasn’t one since he’d gone missing in action, so her aunt always won the argument. And that was that.

When Libby was a little girl, she honestly believed her Uncle Joe would be coming home any day. She couldn’t recall how old she was when Doug told her that the man had been missing in action since the 1950s. And he wasn’t coming home. Ever. Now, this is just between you and me, sweetie, he had said.

Over the years, Aunt Elizabeth’s friends and acquaintances tolerated this little lapse of sanity, this unreasonableness, or whatever it was. Doug, bless his heart, seemed to accept it completely. Libby did, too, she supposed, after all this time. When the subject arose, they’d all give her aunt the usual sympathetic nod or a brief tsk-tsk before quickly moving on to another topic of conversation.

Was she crazy? Perhaps. But the craziness was quite specific and limited to Uncle Joe and his imminent return. Aside from that particular bat in her belfry, Aunt Elizabeth was completely normal.

“Tell me the colors, Libby,” her aunt demanded now.

“You’re going to love them,” she said. “I tried really hard to duplicate the original cream and green of the Haven View. I knew that’s what you’d want.”

“I must say that if I’d been in the mood to paint, honey, that’s precisely what I would’ve chosen. And now I can’t wait to come home and see it.”

Libby nodded, feeling both deeply touched and hugely relieved in the same moment. At least her first surprise had ended well. Now there were approximately forty-nine thousand dollars worth of surprises still to come. Heaven help her.

Happily, there were no more surprises and no more ruffled feathers during the remainder of her visit. They had a good time together, and when Aunt Elizabeth’s crabby roommate made her return appearance, Libby hugged and kissed her aunt goodbye and returned to her car. She was just fastening her seat belt when her cell phone rang.

David the Bear didn’t waste much time, she thought. Hello was hardly out of her mouth when he asked, “Got any plans for this evening? What are you doing for dinner?”

“Hmm. Dinner.” She tried with all her might to suppress a grin even though he obviously couldn’t see it. And the answer she gave him wasn’t all that far from the truth. “I was just now considering picking up a crisp domestic salad with a light Italian dressing and croutons, of course, while on my way home, then pairing it with delicately microwaved macaroni and cheese. Care to join me?”

“I’ve got a much better idea,” he said.

Yes, he did indeed have a better idea, Libby thought when she finally closed her phone. Being chauffeured to a penthouse dinner at the magnificent Marquis most definitely trumped a take-out salad and lowly mac and cheese.

Three

The penthouse elevator door chimed as it swooshed open, and David, who’d been waiting in the marbled vestibule, turned to greet not the strawberry blonde he was expecting, but rather a luscious peach parfait. His heart shifted perceptibly in his chest and his entire body quickened at the sight of her. The woman looked utterly magnificent. If he’d felt merely smitten with Libby Jost before now, right this second he considered himself completely in lust.

She stepped forward into the vestibule, disclosing a delicate and adorable gold-sandaled foot along with a sleek and shapely length of calf. The pale peach fabric clung to her hips and her breasts, to her whole body like a second, shimmering skin. David swallowed hard. Just as he’d suspected, though, it didn’t help all that much.

“Welcome to the Marquis,” he said, striding forward and claiming her hand the way he wanted to claim every lovely inch of her from her tumbled hair to her golden toes. He couldn’t help but think that her work put her on the wrong side of a camera.

“Thank you.” She laughed then, a sound that was slightly husky and infinitely sexy. “I know I’m ridiculously overdressed,” she said, “but I decided, since this will probably be my only visit here, at least to the penthouse, I might as well go all the way.”

David clenched his teeth. He wasn’t going to touch that remark with a ten-foot pole. Not even a twenty-foot one.

She blinked, and the color on her smooth cheeks deepened several shades, turning from delicate pink to a deep warm rose. “Fashion-wise, I mean.”

Stupid, Libby chided herself. Even without the benefit of wine, she’d managed to put her foot in her mouth immediately upon her arrival. The man—quite gorgeous now and elegant in a black turtleneck and black pleated slacks—must think she’s an absolute and unredeemable twit. She wrenched her gaze away from his face, let it stray around the suite and then immediately focused on the southern wall of floor-to-ceiling windows.

“What an incredible view,” she exclaimed. “Oh, it’s just amazing.”

David reached for her hand. “Come have a closer look,” he said, leading her into the suite, across a gorgeous oriental carpet that must’ve been the size of a football field and around burnished leather chairs and glass tables that gleamed richly in the ambient light. It was as if she’d landed smack in the middle of an issue of Architectural Digest.

As exquisite as the penthouse’s décor was, the view from its enormous window was even better. Or so it seemed to Libby until her roving gaze practically skidded to a halt upon the scruffy landscape of the Haven View just across the highway. She’d never seen the place from so high, and it was not, she had to admit, a very pleasant sight. It was horrible, in fact. It was worse than horrible. The place was pure suburban blight.

The little guest cabins she’d been so thrilled about painting looked more like outhouses from this vantage point, and the glass globes of the lights along the driveway were so dusty and bug-splattered they barely seemed to shine at all. Squinting, she even decided that she could detect some rather significant damage to the shingles of a few cabin roofs, which was something she hadn’t even thought to consider in her careful renovation budget.

It all struck her as utterly depressing, every feature, every shingle, every single square inch of the entire bedraggled place. Once again, she feared that her fifty thousand dollars wasn’t nearly enough to bring the poor old motel up to speed. Not even a turtle’s speed. She must’ve sighed just then or muttered something under her breath, because David, who was standing close behind her, touched her shoulder ever so gently and asked her what was wrong.

Everything, she thought, before she managed to put her game face back on as best she could, then turned to her host. “Well, the good news, I guess, is that the poor old Haven View will be hidden by leaves for eight or nine months every year from the guests of the Marquis. The bad news is worse than I imagined.”

She waved a hand in front of her hoping to rid herself of these brand-new, unbidden feelings of despair. “I really don’t even want to talk about it.”

There was a small flicker of something close to sympathy or sadness in his expression for just an instant before he said, “Come on. Let’s forget about the southern view for now.” He clasped her hand in his once again. “Let me show you the really incredible views to the east and the west.”

The east view was from a wide, slate-floored terrace with gorgeous wrought-iron furniture where Libby could easily imagine wearing an ivory satin robe with matching slippers while lingering over a late breakfast of croissants, sweet butter and strong Jamaican coffee. Right at that moment she could almost taste it.

“On a fine, clear day,” he told her, “you can see the Arch.” He pointed. “Right there. You’ll have to come back sometime with your camera.”

“I’d love to,” she said. Oh, boy, would she love to. “I could get some really interesting shots.”

A minute or so later, having gone from one gorgeous room to another even more gorgeous room, the promised view to the west was revealed when David pushed a button on a bedside console and a whole wall of drapery silently slithered back. Outside the exposed window, on the highway below, eastbound headlights shone like diamonds while westbound taillights sparkled like a river of rubies, and she could actually see a bevy of stars twinkling in the dark sky above them all. It momentarily took her breath away.

Oh, how Libby wished she had her camera and a few specific lenses and filters just then to record it all. She wished she had a tripod in order to take a terrific time-lapse exposure of the traffic. Despite David’s polite invitation a few minutes earlier, she doubted she’d ever be up here in the penthouse again.

“Does Mr. Halstrom have a place like this in all of his hotels?” she asked.

“More or less,” he answered in a tone that struck her as rather brusque. “But when he’s not in residence, his suites are all available to guests for the right price.”

“Don’t even tell me the price,” Libby said. “I couldn’t stand to hear it considering we try so hard to rent our dinky cabins for sixty-five dollars a day.” Sadly, she thought, that economical price was probably far more than the accommodations were worth. Jeez. How long would it be before they might actually be forced to pay people to stay there, just for appearances sake?

“Maybe the new paint job will help,” David offered, sounding vaguely unconvinced if not downright disbelieving.

“Yeah. Maybe.” She sighed. And maybe, she thought, maybe there were far more worthy recipients of her unexpected little fortune than the over-the-hill Haven View. Maybe she should reconsider the whole ridiculous endeavor. Like Scarlett O’Hara, she decided to think about that tomorrow.