 by Lexi Blake.jpg)
Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96454 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96454 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Three young women make a pact in high school—
to always be friends and to one day make it big in Manhattan.
She’s a high-tech boss who lost it all…
Ivy Jensen was the darling of the tech world, right up until her company fell apart completely after she trusted the wrong person. Her reputation in tatters, she finds herself back in the tiny apartment she grew up in, living with her mom. When a group of angel investors offer her a meeting, she knows she has to come up with the new big idea or her career is over.
He’s an up and coming coder…
Heath Marino has always been fascinated with writing code. He’s worked on a dozen games and apps and is considered one of the industry’s more eccentric talents. But now he’s back in New York to spend time with his grandmother. She was known as one of the city’s greatest matchmakers, and he wants to know why. Surely there’s some kind of code in his grandmother’s methods, and he’s going to find them.
When Ivy meets Heath it’s instant attraction, but she’s got a career to get back to and he just might be her on-ramp. It could be a perfect partnership or absolute heartbreak.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Prologue
Manhattan
13 years ago
“I’m pretty sure we’re not supposed to be here.”
“Well, I’m not going back out there. Britney is awful. If I have to hear her talk about my shoes one more time I’m going to punch her in the face, and then where will we be?”
Ivy Jensen looked up at Anika Fox and Harper Ross as she closed the door behind her, ignoring the sign on the outside that stated this room was off limits to the public.
They’d managed to ditch their group. It wasn’t what she’d been planning when she’d signed up for the field trip to Banover Place. She wasn’t particularly interested in a Golden Age mansion. Or was it Gilded? She wasn’t sure. Old houses weren’t her thing. She would bet this place got crappy Internet.
The room was smaller than the ones they’d been touring and seemed to be used as some sort of storage space. There was only one half circle of a window that showed the gray skies over the Upper East Side. The teacher had tried to set the scene earlier, had talked about how the city had looked in the eighteen hundreds, but all Ivy had been able to see was rain clouds that would likely open up and leave her cold and wet because she didn’t have an umbrella.
Then the class mean girls would make fun of her, too.
“There’s nothing wrong with your shoes.” Anika moved further into the room.
“They’re ugly but they’re comfortable.” Harper seemed to be studying the brick walls. She was wearing her familiar uniform of jeans and a sweater. Despite the fact that it was early May, there was still a chill in the air. On most days she wore sneakers, but today she’d shown up in the boots she normally wore when she worked at her father’s construction site. Which she likely had earlier today and forgotten about them. “I’m just tired of the rich kids screwing with us. Ivy, build us a robot we can set on Britney.”
Now there was something else Ivy could get into. Robots. Why couldn’t they go on a field trip to a robotics lab or something cool like that? “I’ll get right to work.”
She glanced around the space. They were on one of the upper floors. There were furnishings stacked up against one of the walls and some big boxes marked gift shop stock.
“What I really hate is that I was looking forward so much to today and now I feel like crap,” Harper said. “I’ve wanted to tour this place for a long time.”
“You can’t let them get to you.” Ivy understood how she felt. Not about old buildings. That was Harper’s thing, but she understood what it meant to be obsessed with a thing. She was the class nerd, the girl who spent all her time with the robotics team and in the computer lab. She’d discovered coding a few years back and it had been her obsession ever since. “What do you think this place was used for?”
They’d toured the ballroom and the magnificent study. The large suite that served as the owner’s bedroom could hold the entirety of Ivy’s apartment and have room to spare.
“Servants’ quarters,” Harper replied. “Didn’t you read the lesson?”
“She was busy working.” Anika sat down on the lone chair in the dusty room.
Ivy had a part-time job that sometimes felt full-time. She’d had to work from the moment she could if she wanted to buy the things she needed. Her mom had told her food and college were more important than computer equipment. She hadn’t listened when Ivy had tried to explain that college wasn’t happening without a damn laptop.
Her mom didn’t listen much these days, didn’t talk much. Just worked and came home and stared at the TV. When Ivy had told her she was on track to graduate with honors she’d merely nodded and said that was what she’d expected.
She had no idea how to get her mom to see her.
“The servants would be housed in rooms close to the roof because at the time that was where all the smoke and cold would cling,” Harper explained. “That’s why the stairs up here are different from the main house. None of the family would use this floor and they wouldn’t do any entertaining here, therefore the stairs are strictly utilitarian. I still can’t believe my dad knocked down one of these a couple of months ago to make room for a high-rise.”
“If he hadn’t, someone else would have,” Anika pointed out. “And then he wouldn’t have had a job.”
“Yeah.” A sad expression crossed Harper’s face. “He needs that job. All I know is one day I want to take a place like this and polish it up. Most of the work is in new construction, but it would be so cool to reno an old-school brownstone and live in it. We could all live here and then the Britney’s of the world couldn’t look down on us.”