The Boss's Proposal (4 page)

A smart man would let her be, and Dylan considered himself a smart man. But he'd always been good at multitasking. No reason he couldn't build a winning proposal and still give Max McBain the time and attention she deserved.

Because she was definitely a woman who deserved attention.

“W
hen Hal said you could make rain, I don't think this was what he had in mind.” Max turned toward Dylan from the window, where an unexpected summer thunderstorm pounded the glass. They stood in his office, once Jeremy's. It appeared Max's hopes of getting a window of her own were on hold.

Along with so much else.

Patience, she reminded herself. Granted, she'd found herself right back in the same situation she'd been in so many times over the years. But she'd learned to manage it. Being the power behind the throne wasn't the same as being on the throne, but she'd discovered that, with a few well-practiced tricks, it was power nonetheless. It wouldn't take
much time to figure which tricks would work on Dylan Reynolds; in fact it seemed pretty obvious. She'd done it before. There was no reason to expect that it would be any different this time.

Oh yes there was.

Max ignored the mocking little voice in her head, the same way she'd ignored the little shiver that had run through her in the elevator. He'd just been trying to get a rise out of her. She wasn't about to let him succeed. The surprises were over with. From now on, she was the one in control.

She rolled a chair over from the glossy white worktable on the other side of the office to the desk with its computer. She sat, hand hovering over the mouse. “May I?” At his nod, she tapped a few keystrokes and opened up the file tree. “I put everything about the project on the company common drive—the request for proposals, the schedule, history, preliminary designs, notes. You can find it all here.”

His footsteps sounded on the floor as he walked up behind her to look at the computer monitor, resting one hand on the back of her chair. The hairs on the nape of her neck prickled in awareness. Whether or not it was her imagination, she swore she could feel the heat of his body. She knew she could hear the sound of his breath. When he reached down to take the mouse, she took care to move her hand away. Not cowardice, Max told herself, just prudence. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a faint twitch at the corner of his mouth.

She set her jaw. “I think you already know the basics,” she said crisply. “Portland General invited three firms, including BRS, to submit proposals for a sixty-thousand-square-foot addition to the main building. The request for proposal specifies patient rooms, treatment rooms, an infusion center, an outpatient surgical center, radiology, lab, offices, the whole deal. The new wing will connect to the structure at the location of the current main entrance, so we've got to build them a new one.”

“And we've got three weeks until the deadline?”

“Fourteen days, actually. The Friday after next.”

“Seventeen days.” He dropped into the chair next her. “Don't forget, weekends, too.”

“What if I have plans?”

“Break them.” He grinned. “Until that proposal's done, you and I are going steady.”

“Oh, goody. Do I get your letter jacket or your class ring? Or you could just give me back my painting.”

“Can't. It's enjoying staying with me. I'll let you visit it, though, if you're good.”

“I'll pass.” Max reached for the mouse again. “We've got some meetings set up over at Portland General that should help us get a bead on what to deliver for the final proposal. Our in-house design review is next week, then we present the proposal and you do your rain dance.”

He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled them up. His forearms were sinewy and powerful, and as tan as the rest of him. Max dragged her gaze away.

“What's been done so far?” Dylan asked.

“Some background work and preliminary design.

I've made a list of some recent health care trends we'll want to address and some code issues to keep in mind.” She opened up another folder. “We can run through some of our more recent layouts and what we sent in to make the short list. I can also show you Jeremy's notes, if you like.”

“Don't worry about it. I've seen his work.”

Max stopped and turned in her chair to look at him. “You know, I think I could actually grow to like you.”

“Admit it, you already do.”

She felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth. “Don't get ahead of yourself. So, let's see, we have a couple of preliminary floor plans in the works but they're pretty much all variations on a theme—lab and diagnostic imaging on the ground floor, and outpatient treatment, including examination rooms, infusion and day surgery on the second floor. The patient rooms will be on the third floor, which will connect with the existing surgical ward in the main building. The fourth floor features offices with a rooftop garden.”

He nodded, taking the mouse from her to roam around the various plans. He sat for a moment, drumming his fingers thoughtfully. “Do you have printouts of the drawings?”

“On the wall behind you.”

Dylan crossed the office to pull them down, then laid them on the worktable. Max rose to join him.

“Coming to help?” he asked.

“I'm the tour guide.” As she watched, he bent over the printout, one hand holding it in place, and began to draw red crosshatching over the rooms in the center of the floor plan.

Without having spent more than five minutes looking at it, Max thought, feeling the quick whip of shock and irritation. Those plans represented months of work from the entire BRS team. If nothing else, they at least deserved a careful review before he made wholesale changes.

“If we pull all of this out of here, we can have an atrium at the entrance with a vaulted concourse that continues along the length of the addition,” Dylan explained, not noticing her reaction. “It'll have seating groupings at a couple of points, maybe a water feature or two. Basically, it'll function as an elongated lobby.”

“Are you aware you just crossed out the recovery area for the day surgery center?” she asked, keeping her voice even.

“So we put it somewhere else.” He pulled the third floor plan over, then pushed it aside.

“Where, exactly, do you think that's going to be? We've spent weeks on these plans. All the space is spoken for.”

“So we make trade-offs. You're talking about the main entrance to a major medical center. It's got to
wow them.” He found the floor plan for the ground level and attacked the entry area with careless red swipes. A sheaf of dark hair fell over his forehead and he pushed it back impatiently. “We also need a reception area and an information desk here.”

“We already have an information desk. You'll see it if you look between all those red lines you just added.”

“Not big enough.” He didn't look up. “We need drama.”

“We need treatment space,” Max countered.

“We'll have it. Besides, if people want information before someone cuts them open, it needs to be clear where they go.” He started sketching new lines on the drawing with confident strokes.

Even infuriated as she was, Max found herself temporarily fascinated watching the swift, graceful movements of his hand, the speed with which the ideas flowed from his mind to the paper. “If we cut the balcony garden outside the infusion center and move the supply room downstairs, we can still keep the recovery area on two,” he continued. “What's this over here?” He pointed to an area at the back of the third floor.

“The family suites,” Max told him. It had taken her two months of working on Jeremy, but she'd finally managed to convince him that it was the very latest standard of care for medical facilities and he was a genius to add them.

“Family suites? For families that get sick together?”

“In a way, yes. The new wing includes a pediatric oncology unit. When there's a kid in for an eight-hour brain surgery or stuck in intensive care for a few days, the family needs a place to stay.”

“Yeah, it's called a motel.”

She straightened, and all her careful strategy went right out the window. “You want to tell a six-year-old kid who wakes up crying that Mommy and Daddy are going to have to drive over from the Bide-A-Wee down the street to see him?”

“No, I want to tell the patient who needs surgery that they can get it today instead of waiting two weeks for a bed to open up because we didn't put in enough rooms. The board wants this place to be a center of excellence and that means having a certain capacity.” He came up to face her. “The family suite thing is a nice idea but we can't afford it.”

“But we can afford to waste all that second-floor square footage to make a hospital wing look like a shopping mall?” Max retorted. “Health care is about more than just medicine, it's about emotional support. Treat the patient.”

“Listen to your client.”

She took two steps toward him. “The patient
is
our client.”

“No, the client is the group whose signature is on the check,” he shot back. “If you don't make them happy, we don't get the contract and your patients
won't get their family suites, anyway. We can't do it all—but we can do what it takes to win.”

“The family suites and the infusion center gardens were the main concepts in the proposal that got us short listed. You want to take a chance on taking that out?”

“I want to make a proposal that's going to give the client what they want.”

“And how do you know that, from overhearing a few speeches at the gala?” she demanded. “You haven't even been to the site. You haven't seen the medical center. You haven't talked to the staff.” Her voice rose. “You don't know the first—”

“How's it going in here?” Hal stuck his head in the door.

Max snapped her mouth closed. Dylan tossed the pen on the worktable and jammed his hands into his pockets. “Just brainstorming.”

“I kind of like to hear architects arguing about a design,” Hal said mildly, walking over to the table as if he intended to look at the drawings but mostly studying the two of them. “It tells me they're invested in what they're doing.”

“We're only talking over some changes to the floor plans everyone okayed at the last design review,” Max said, watching Hal scan the floor plans.

He nodded. “It's important to have a starting point. If nothing else, knowing what you don't want will help you figure out what you do want.” He pushed the drawings aside and turned toward the door. “She's
right, you know,” he added as he crossed the threshold. “You really should see the site. Go on over, kick the dirt, check out the exposures. Get some fresh air.”

Silence hung in the air for a moment after he left. Dylan raised a brow. “The rain's stopped. Want to take a ride?”

Max let out a breath and nodded. “You drive, I'll buy coffee.”

 

Set on a promontory southwest of downtown, Portland General Medical Center had long formed a major part of the city skyline. If form indeed followed function, the building stood as proof that the philosophy wasn't always a good thing. In the ninety-seven years since opening, the austere, four-story brick building had sprouted additions, wings and outbuildings that were successful to varying degrees, the average degree, Max thought, being not very.

“Christ, what a mess,” Dylan said as he rested his arms on the roof of his car, staring across at the complex from the front parking lot.

“Design by committee gone wrong,” she agreed. “That's what happens when you don't have a master plan.”

Of course, even master plans didn't always work out, Max thought as they closed their doors and walked toward the building. She'd proven that to herself not half an hour before. She'd had team leaders she'd worked with—and around—seamlessly
for years. With Dylan Reynolds, it hadn't taken five minutes for her to completely lose control of the situation.

His presumption needled her, his arrogance annoyed her. There was also the matter of that humming awareness that ran through her when he was nearby. It distracted her, put her off her game.

The site visit offered a fresh opportunity, she figured. They were outdoors with plenty of space between them, no more of those disconcerting tight interior spaces. It would set her free to focus on persuasion, one of her strongest suits.

The thunderstorm had exhausted itself, leaving a few ragged shreds of cloud through which the sun now streamed. They headed toward the main building, paralleling the horseshoe drive that allowed vehicles to drop patients at the front doors. The dormer windows on the roof of the main building caught the light.

Max stopped at the curb. “The addition will run from here to tee into the main building at the front doors. The footprint extends to about the third dormer window on either side wing. The entrance drive and the lot we parked in will need to come out to make room.”

Dylan nodded, studying the facade. His eyes weren't black, she saw in the daylight, but dark brown with little flecks of amber. “You know, it's not her fault. Look at those proportions. Look at the detail work around the windows. The lady's got good bones.
She's kept her dignity, even if they have stuck that god-awful temporary bungalow on her front lawn. We can make this work.”

“Of course we can.”

“What we can do is combine a modern look with the traditional elements. We'll have to watch how we use new materials, though.”

Or not use them at all, Max thought, happy to take the opening. “So you're saying we should just stay with brick?” she asked. “I like the idea. What are you thinking, jump off from the original design, maybe echo that contrast detailing around the windows?”

“Not necessarily.” He began walking parallel to the building, taking long, loose-limbed strides.

Max watched a moment before chasing after him in her heels. “Weren't you the one who was just telling me she has good bones?”

“I was.”

“So if I understand you right, you're thinking we should design an addition that puts the focus on that.”