“She’s the expert here and the designer Sturm’s hired,” Theo seethed.

“Well,” Chase spluttered, and I hoped his self-preservation instincts kicked in because Theo looked spitting mad. “Your family builds high-rises in Manhattan. This is small-scale for you. Kayla has worked with some of the biggest reality TV stars. Miss Duarte on the other hand has only—”

“Miss Duarte has built a thriving platform with hundreds of thousands of followers without anyone giving her a leg up. Have you seen what she can do?” The question was clearly rhetorical since the next thing Theo did was pull his phone out of his pocket. After a few taps he held it up. From where I stood I could see the after photo of the Outlander room I’d done a few months back. Everyone at the table was craning their necks to get a closer look. By then I figured I was either in a fever dream sequence or the coffee he’d given me had been chock-full of hallucinogens. “She’s pulled this off while working three jobs and does them with practically no budget.” He didn’t even have his phone anymore, since he’d handed it to the Smithson-Napa lady.

“This is great,” she murmured, although I couldn’t be sure if she meant my work or the drama.

“She’s a fucking magician,” Theo said, eyes still trained on Chase. He could’ve been evangelizing, he was so serious. Meanwhile I was still trying to wrap my head around the idea that a man who for the three years I’d known him told me on a weekly basis that social media was the root of all evils had intimate knowledge of my Instagram account.

“Don’t even think about walking out until she’s done,” Theo threatened Chase, who looked like he was about to bolt.

There were many things that I could’ve said or done in that moment. Continuing my presentation while Chase was still subdued being the logical one. It was my intention to do that, but my mouth had other ideas.

“Since when do you have Instagram?”

Theo, who just the night before had pretended he didn’t know a thing about my business, rubbed the back of his head while the two of us faced off with an entire roomful of people staring at us.

“Zo helped me get on it last night,” he admitted, and damn the man for being this fucking adorable. “I wanted to see your work after we talked.”

And what the hell was I supposed to do with that? Since I had absolutely no bandwidth at all to deal with the fact that this gorgeous, perplexing, not-nearly-as-surly-as-I-thought man apparently asked his fourteen-year-old sister to help him find my work online, I turned around and finished the presentation he’d threatened Chase to let me finish.

Chapter Eleven

Alba