Page 54 of Titus

I instantly noticed that across from me, Spencer’s gaze sharpened slightly. “Everything okay, man?” he questioned.

“Fine,” I answered.

“Well, at the rate you’ve been drinking that bourbon, I’m starting to wonder what fine really means in your vocabulary.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“You’re distracted,” Wyatt said with a knowing grin. “Let me guess. That event planner turned down your fancy yacht date?”

My eyes snapped to his, sharp. “Drop it.”

He didn’t. Because why would he?

Wyatt leaned forward slightly. “You were…” he glanced at the men’s humorous expressions at the table, “…rejected by said planner?”

Spencer exhaled and took a sip of his scotch. “We’ve all been there,” he said with a tight, dry humor. “The difference is, you can’t let it get into your head.”

A slow breath escaped me as I leaned back in my chair, dragging a hand across my mouth. “This honestly is not relevant to this discussion,” I said.

Wyatt grinned wider. “Oh, it’s relevant because while we’re going over your precious baby of a project, your mind is on her.”

“And the fact that you couldn’t secure one woman for a three-day event,” Colton finished.

“I said drop it.” The edge in my voice dropped a degree colder.

Colton and Wyatt both held my gaze for a second longer, then leaned back, satisfied. Then, of course, there was Spencer, a man I knew wasn’t going to let this go, most likely because the woman was friends with his wife.

“Let me guess. Hawk isn’t used to people walking away from his money,” he said in a quiet voice.

My jaw tightened. “Don’t talk about me as if I’m not sitting right across from you, hermano.”

“I’m just stating fucking facts, man,” he said, smiling against my rigid gaze.

“It’s not just about having someone turn down my money,” I said. “I’m not used to them meaning it when they do.”

The door to the lounge opened without announcement, and Alex Grayson walked in like he owned the building—or at the very least, had considered buying it and decided it wasn’t worth the effort. My building, of all places, and the ruthless bastard still had a way of walking into any place as if it weren’t good enough for him. Honestly, it’s what I most admired about the man.

He didn’t waste time on greetings. “My wife reviewed the upper-terrace structures,” he said, setting a folder on the table as he approached. “She flagged load-distribution issues on the cliffside structures.”

Colton straightened immediately, shifting the plans toward him. “In what sections has Breanne seen this?”

Alex flipped the folder open, sliding a marked-up rendering across the table. The markups were clean, precise annotations—exactly what I expected from Bree, which is why she was hired for this project through her and Alex’s architecture firm.

“Here, here, and here,” he said, tapping three villas along the Amalfi layout. “You’re overextending the cantilever. It’ll hold… until it doesn’t.”

“Fuck,” Wyatt said in a low breath. “That would be a hell of a headline.”

Spencer leaned forward, studying the marks. “What’s the solution?”

“We need to reinforce the support structure beneath or scale back the projection,” Alex replied. “Bree prefers reinforcement. It’ll keep the design intact.”

“Of course she does,” Colton muttered, already recalculating in his head.

I nodded once. “Reinforce it, Colt. I’m not compromising the design.”

It had to be the expression on my face and the tone of my voice, because now I had Alex’s attention. His gaze flicked to me. “Is everything okay with you? This is nothing major, but we don’t want any elites waking up at the bottom of the cliff.”

“It’s not the errors your talented wife found,” Wyatt smirked.