One Perfect Touch - Layla Hagen Page 0,3

liked to compliment my team. A few nodded, some shrugged. I tapped the laptop my assistant had set up earlier for me, projecting the content on the screen directly on the wall behind me.

“As you know, I’m taking over from my brother-in-law. I’ve been in LA for the past few years, where our restaurants are more profitable than on the East Coast. The goal is to raise profitability of this branch too. I’m going to go through the plan I devised, and I’m looking forward to your contributions. It’s July now. By Christmas I want the East Coast to match the West Coast profitability.”

I surveyed the room carefully, taking in their reactions. I could practically hear them thinking, Yeah, he’s just as difficult as we remember. Or for those who hadn’t worked with me before, He’s just as difficult as we heard.

I was hungry for success, to make my own mark on the Dumont empire. My standards were high, but I also gave 100 percent to everything I did, and I required perseverance from those who worked for me. I could be a hard-ass... but really, I was just hard to please.

Chapter Two

Skye

“Okay, everything looks ready,” I murmured, checking the time on my phone. Ten minutes until the clients would arrive and I looked a mess, but that couldn’t be helped.

The future owner would choose the house because they liked it, not me.

I’d barely made it on time from Lower Manhattan to give the place one last sweep. I lived next door, and when my neighbors had moved out, they asked me to handle the selling process. Their youngest daughter got very sick, so they quit their jobs here and moved to Houston, where they were from, so their families could help out. I missed my neighbors, and I hoped they’d be able to recover quickly, building a good life in Houston. The mother had already found a job there, but they were struggling financially. Wanting to help them, I’d said yes. In college, I’d worked part-time at a real estate agency, so I knew the nuts and bolts, and a friend of the family was a lawyer, so he was going to take care of the legalities. My job was to show people the house. It sounded easy, but between running the lingerie store and the commute, I’d been in over my head for the past week.

So I’d decided this time I’d schedule everyone at once with the hope that one of the buyers would work out. There were two families with kids, one guy, and an elderly couple.

I was keeping my fingers crossed for one of the couples with kids. I liked having young children next door.

Five minutes to go.

I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, combing through my hair with my fingers. My shoulder-length brown hair was in complete disarray. I had a blunt cut, with bangs that almost fell into my eyes. I loved them—they usually looked sophisticated, but now they were a complete mess and a bit curled. My black eyeliner was a little smudged under my blue eyes. I looked unprofessional, which wasn’t like me at all, but I had no time to run over to my place and reapply makeup. I did refresh myself at the sink, though—I drew the line at sweaty armpits.

At seven o’clock on the dot, the bell rang. Both families arrived at the same time, without their children. The elderly couple arrived a few minutes later.

“If you want, you can look around on your own, and then I can find you and answer your questions. I’m just waiting for one more. Or you can just wait with me and I’ll give you a tour.”

“We’ll wait,” one of them said. The rest nodded.

I was keeping my fingers crossed for the guy not to show up. I already had a good feeling about one of the couples, and fewer people at the viewing meant fewer questions.

“Okay. We can begin the tour,” I said five minutes later. “It looks like—”

The sound of the bell interrupted me.

“Ah, one second. The last client must have arrived.”

I opened the door and came face-to-face with the most gorgeous man I’d seen in a long time.

“Hello. I’m Robert Dumont. I have an appointment to see the house.”

“Yes, we were just about to start.” I was mesmerized by his eyes. They were so vibrant that I couldn’t look away.

Taking a step back, I made space for him to walk inside. His hair was wavy, somewhere between dark