Chapter 21

“What’s up?” I asked, yawning and rubbing my scalp.

His eyes widened. I stood there dressed only in a pair of sweat pants that dipped low on my hips, a tattoo of a dragon—a temporary tattoo—curling from my back to just the right of my navel. The client I’d seen the night before was a businessman from Taiwan, and I’d serviced him a number of times before. He liked to think he was taming the dragon.

“What?” Walter, the architect, blinked a couple of times and cleared his throat. “Oh, what I found! The original bedrooms each had a fireplace. This is fantastic. Can you imagine? They must have been bricked up when this was converted to a rooming house. What a waste! I’ll have them opened up for you, design new mantels—”

“Hold on a minute, Rockefeller. How much more will that cost us? No, don’t bother telling me. We don’t need the added expense.”

“It will be a great feature when you’re ready to sell this place.”

“We’ve barely moved into it.”