Bound by Design

Two

Kyle’s POV

I fired the designer at 8:47 A.M on Tuesday.

He'd given me a timeline. He hadn't met it.

He didn’t even have the flooring samples, and the gala was in three weeks. And he was standing in the middle of my living room and trying to define the word "delay" for me as though I were someone whose life would be improved by definitions.

I didn't yell, that was pointless. Raised voices told the other person you were at their mercy, and letting people know they were at your mercy was an error I'd abandoned by the age of twenty-four.

I told him the engagement was terminated. I told him to be out of the apartment with his equipment by noon. I turned back to the window.

He left.

I looked around the penthouse. Three weeks until the gala. The Whitmore acquisition had some board members spooked. And spooked board members looked for something to latch onto, for any sign of disorder or instability. Any evidence that the man in charge of the company wasn't as tightly controlled as he liked to project. The gala was an exercise in precisely the opposite. It demonstrated, silently, that everything was under control.

The space currently looked as though it had been gutted and abandoned in mid-renovation.

My phone rang. Marcus.

"You fired him." Not a question. Marcus always knew before he called.

"The flooring samples weren't here."

"That's the third one this month, Kyle."

"They were all incompetent."

He let out the sigh that I'd been hearing for eleven years every time he didn't agree with me, but decided the fight wasn't worth having.

Marcus Webb was my CFO and had been my only friend for eleven years. He was one of the few people I allowed to talk to me that way. Directly, without softening. Inevitably, everyone else in my life learned, eventually, to navigate conversations with me with careful attention to phrasing and to reading my mood before saying anything. Marcus had never bothered. Whether that was a reflection of him or me, I’d stopped asking.

"I found someone," he said, moving on the way he did when he'd decided I wasn't budging. "Freelancer. She did the Hartwell renovation."

"The Hartwell place?"

"Yup."

I thought about the Hartwell place. I had dinner there about three months ago. The design had been correct in the way that good design was. Not demanding attention, just undeniable. The space couldn't have been any other way. I'd admired it and moved on.

"Send her portfolio."

He already had. I opened it.

Nadia Monroe. Freelance, based in Queens.

The portfolio was surprisingly thorough.

Not a collection of self-aggrandizing images, but properly presented, with detailed explanations of the projects. An accounting that looked reasonable, and photos that showed a command of lighting and texture. Her Hartwell renovation was the stand-out. Instinctive, elegant without being overdone.

"She'll do. Thursday."

"She says she can start Monday—"

"Thursday," I interrupted. "The gala is in three weeks. I don't have time to hire someone who needs to ease in."

A beat. "Thursday. I'll inform the agency."

I hung up and looked at the penthouse again.

The bones of the place were good. That was the one thing the prior effort hadn't marred. Ceiling height, scale, the exposure to the west.

Everything else was bad. Materials chosen more for their brand name than for their suitability. Decisions made by someone who understood the idea of luxury but not its practice. What I needed was someone who understood the practice and who could execute in three weeks without making it worse.

The portfolio suggested that she did. I didn't spend any more time thinking about it. She would do the job, or she wouldn't, and I would deal with the fallout in either case.

She arrived on Thursday morning. I was in the study when she did. I let her work without me for a bit. Partly because I was on a conference call, partly because I wanted to see what she did alone in the space.

She ignored everything that wasn't the west wall of the living room and immediately began measuring it with a tape and a notepad.

I watched through the doorway for several minutes as she made quick, precise measurements, jotting things down before moving on.

The kitchen, the hallway, the library. She treated the place as though she were reading an equation rather than inhabiting a room.

After fifteen minutes, I went into the living room.

"Ms. Monroe."

She turned and I took her in for a moment, a general first impression. And then she began to speak, and the impression became irrelevant.

The window treatments were wrong. The kitchen counters were wrong. There was moisture damage beneath the west wall flooring, which the previous designer had missed. The hall lighting did not adequately highlight the arch. The library required a complete overhaul.

Every point was delivered in the same measured, even tone, as though she were reading aloud from an established report. Her expression didn't shift. She wasn't watching my face for reactions, wasn't pausing to see if I understood each detail.

And then she got to the marble.

"The Calacatta you've specified for the master bath," she said, her voice unchanged. "I'd advise against it. At that size, the room will feel cold. I have three alternatives."

"The marble was my choice," I said.

"I know. I still feel it's inappropriate for the space."

No explanation offered. No deference. Just a statement of fact.

I didn't like it. I had given the choice of marble considerable thought, and this woman had been in the apartment for a total of fifteen minutes.

"Send me the alternatives tonight," I said, my tone conveying my displeasure at being told my decision was incorrect after only fifteen minutes of review. "I have a call in four minutes."

"Certainly. I'll also need access to the storage closet on this floor to examine what was left by the prior design--"

"My assistant will schedule that for you. Is there anything else?"

Most people would say no. She said yes.

"Just one thing," she said, still not moving. "I prefer to have full creative authority within the defined scope of the project. Late-stage specification changes or reversals without a strong reason will cause delays and negatively impact the result. If this is how it's going to be, you should know now."

I looked at her.

She looked back. Utterly still. Waiting.

I had a call to get to.

"We'll see," I said.

I left.

I didn't think about her again until I received her email that evening, at 7:18 P.M. And found that the alternatives she'd presented were in fact superior to my original selection, which I found deeply annoying.