by Jenny Jacobs
“We could watch something for grown-ups after Belinda goes to bed,” Tess coaxed.
“I appreciate it, but no thanks. I do have a lot to get done today. Then I think I’ll take a long bath and go to bed early. I’ll sort myself out, Tess.” She gave her sister a hug as they reached the parking lot. It wasn’t Tess’s fault that Greta looked at her life and coveted it, an act that Greta would have scoffed was entirely impossible just six months earlier. How could she be jealous of Tess? Tess deserved every good thing. Even if she didn’t, her daughter Belinda deserved a loving family and a daddy who doted on her, and that was exactly what she was getting.
“We’ll be around if you change your mind.”
“Thanks,” Greta said, knowing she wouldn’t change her mind. She never did, when she set her mind on a course of action. Except, of course, when Tess talked her into it.
Chapter Three
“What is this monstrosity?” Greta asked, tapping the photo Tess had printed from her digital camera. Greta reached for her glasses on the nightstand. Putting them on, she confirmed that she was really seeing what she thought she saw: a monstrosity. She shuddered and took the glasses off.
The mattress dipped as Tess plopped down next to her. Hadn’t Greta taught her how to sit in a lady-like manner? But Tess had ignored that lesson, as she had most lessons and indeed most things that mattered to Greta.
Tess leaned over her shoulder to look at the photo that was currently giving Greta frown wrinkles. The furrowed brow was a very bad habit and the moment she became aware she was doing it, Greta immediately stopped. In principle, she was not opposed to Botox, but she could just imagine trying to explain to Tess why she could no longer form facial expressions. Tess would never succumb to the lure of such medical intervention. She thought wrinkles were a sign of a life well-lived. Just wait until she starts sprouting crows’ feet, Greta thought. Then we’ll see.
“That,” Tess grinned, bumping Greta with her elbow, “is exactly what you think it is. It’s an enormous rough-hewn table from Thailand. Ian wants to use it in the dining room.”
“Over my dead body!” Greta exclaimed, dropping the photo as if it might contain a contagious monstrosity virus. She gave Tess a suspicious look. When had her “Colonel Blake” become “Ian”? He’d probably been invited over for dinner, too, and unlike Greta had shown up to enjoy the fun and now everyone was on a first-name basis.
What if they were all in collusion together? Greta didn’t know what they were colluding about, but as any paranoid person knew, motive was the last thing to be worried about when uncovering conspiracy theories.
“I’m just the messenger,” Tess said, though she seemed to find entirely too much enjoyment from the process of delivering the news.
“This needs to be chopped into kindling,” Greta said, flicking the photo away with a superior fingernail. Tess fielded it and tucked it away in the folder already inscribed with the client’s name. “He’ll be entertaining, hosting dinner parties for business executives, university leaders, well-heeled clients, maybe even diplomats. He can’t possibly believe that — that thing — is an acceptable surface upon which to serve a meal.”
“He seemed pretty sure about it,” Tess said, doing nothing to hide her smile or take this outrage seriously. “He wants it to be the centerpiece of the dining room.”
Greta peered over the top of her laptop. Oh, now Tess was just goading her. “I have seen many gorgeous pieces come out of southeast Asia,” Greta said with measured patience. “That is not one of them.”
“I think he identifies with it.”
“Rough-hewn and thick?”
“Just sayin’.”
He couldn’t be serious, could he? Greta pressed fingers to her throbbing temples. A headache already, and she hadn’t even spoken to the man today. He couldn’t really expect her to make that thing the centerpiece of his dining room. Even she would be hard-pressed to make such a design work. She nibbled on a fingernail, a habit she had broken herself of years ago. On the other hand, when was the last time a design had actually challenged her? She’d spent the last few years developing elegant, timeless rooms and she was very proud of them. But when all of the pieces started to fall into place too easily, a person (Greta, anyway) got bored. She certainly wouldn’t be bored trying to figure out how to make this work while not destroying her reputation as a designer.
“I can’t possibly — I need to see this thing in person.” On seeing Tess’s smug smile, she added, “Maybe I can accidentally set fire to it.”
“He’s got everything over at Public Storage,” Tess said. “You do remember that arson is not only illegal and unethical, it’s also a really bad business practice?”
“A woman can dream,” Greta said. “Is he using the one on 23rd Street? Have him meet me there at two this afternoon.” She reached for her planner to pencil it in, as if she might forget such a meeting.
Tess raised a brow. “Phone’s right by your elbow,” she said, as if it was sheer laziness that prevented Greta from calling him herself.
“I told you my terms for taking on this project,” Greta reminded her. “If I have to put up with him for half an hour this afternoon, you can call him to make the arrangements.”
“He’s not that bad. He appreciates me,” Tess said, picking up the phone.
Of course he did. “All those years traveling in foreign lands,” Greta speculated. “Women like you don’t scare him.”
• • •
The overhead door rolled open. Greta could not avoid immediately seeing the monstrosity, her attention unwillingly drawn to it, like a wreck by the side of the road. It was, in fact, worse than the picture of it had suggested.
“What made you think this was a good idea, Ian?” she asked. She couldn’t bring herself to continue calling him “Mr. Blake,” not when he kept referring to her as “Greta,” as if they were chums. She didn’t want him to take her calling him “Ian” as a sign of friendliness, but there was a greater risk that continuing to call him “Mr. Blake” would confuse him. He might think she admired him or something equally unlikely. Therefore she would call him “Ian” and firmly — very firmly, if she must — squelch any attempt on his part to move towards greater friendliness.
“What are you expecting to use as chairs?” she demanded. “Tree stumps?” The high-pitched tone of her voice did not convey her usual politeness or her typical cool calmness. Both seemed entirely beyond her skill at the moment.
Her headache, which had begun the moment she’d seen the photo of the monstrosity, hadn’t been improved by the knowledge that she would have to see it in the flesh. The reality of said experience wasn’t helping matters, either.
She stood, hands on hips, transfixed by the hideousness that was taking up a good portion of the floor space in the storage unit. Other items had been covered with drop cloths to keep them from getting scratched or dusty, but not the monstrosity. It crouched, naked and ugly, revealed in its full grotesqueness by the light of the fluorescent fixture buzzing overhead. She glared at it, then transferred the glare to Ian when he said, intrigued, “Tree stumps? That’d work.”
“Don’t push me.” That came out as a growl, which was at least an improvement over the shriek. “What,” she asked, measuring her words precisely like counting out coins, “do you expect me to do with this thing?”
Ian shrugged. The shrug outraged her because it dismissed her annoyance over the monstrosity and Greta did not care for her annoyance over any matter to be treated lightly.
“Look, if I wanted conventional, I would have gone with Alison Scott,” he said reasonably, making her clench her fists in frustration. “And we’d be ordering a nice Chippendale-style dining room suite.”
What would be wrong with that? A Chippendale-style dining room suite would go very well in his dining room, and she knew just the reproduc
tion house to order it from. “Do I look avant-garde?” she demanded, her hand sweeping the length of her body in a grand gesture meant to point out that carefully made-up ladies in expensively tailored pantsuits did not embark on cutting-edge creative projects, even if they wanted to. Which she didn’t. “Do I appear to be the kind of person who pushes the envelope?”
Unfortunately, her poorly chosen words called his attention to her person rather than her argument. He gave her a long admiring look. A blush started in her cheeks. Good heavens, when was the last time a man had made her blush? Did a more annoying reaction exist in the universe?
She took a deep, sustaining breath and ignored the pleasant tingle that spread through her body. “Interior design is an extremely conservative field,” she informed him. “Most clients prefer to play it safe. They want to show good taste. I’m very good at pushing people to think beyond Ethan Allen living room suites. But I have never had to drag anyone back from the edge of unreason before.”
She was breathing raggedly by the time she was through, and a strand of hair had worked loose from her chignon. She shoved it behind her ear and gave him a look that would have made a lesser man quail.
Ian nodded as if her speech made perfect sense. Then he said, “I like this table. Do you know what it took to get this table shipped from Bangkok? I don’t even want to remember it.”
A red haze enveloped her. He was missing the point. Deliberately missing the point, as she could have guessed he would do. She took another deep, sustaining breath. She counted to ten. No, she would not — could not — allow him to push her buttons like this. She must get herself under control. She forced herself to relax, unclenching her fists one finger at a time. She closed her eyes, remembering her yoga teacher’s chirping instructions to breathe out all the bad vibes and breathe in only the good ones. This was hard to do with Ian standing so close to her, but she made a valiant effort.
She opened one eye. The red haze had cleared. Then she opened the other. There. She could deal with him now.
“You shouldn’t have bothered,” she grumbled, but it was only a little grumble. The monstrosity was just so monolithic. It was the only thing you’d be able to see when you walked into the dining room. How would she find other furnishings for the room that wouldn’t look totally ridiculous and out of place? The monstrosity would dwarf everything. She’d never get the proportions right.
But … there was something there. If she lowered her resistance to the thing, she could see that something. She eyed the table, then took a step to the side to look at it from another angle. It was so big and so solid. Natural. Honest. Okay. That was a start. Considering Tess wouldn’t let her set fire to it.
“I was thinking — ”
She held up a hand to stop him.
“Hush.”
“Well, I was just — ”
“Hush.” She didn’t really want to know what he’d been thinking when he bought the table. Still, she needed to know what he wanted so she could find a way to give it to him without entirely compromising her aesthetic sense and destroying her personal integrity, not to mention flushing her business down the drain once word got out that she was the mastermind behind it.
She was overreacting. This was not a career-destroying situation. Worst case, she could always blame it on Tess. She took another deep breath. “Why did you buy this piece?”
Ian tilted his head and seemed to consider the question for a moment. He didn’t seem bothered by her peremptory tone. Of course, all those years in the army, he was probably accustomed to people barking at him.
“I couldn’t not buy it,” he said.
Grr. If only she could snap at him for making such an unhelpful remark. Unfortunately, she knew exactly what he meant. She’d experienced that compulsion a time or two herself, although not over anything like this. There’d been a French provincial desk and she’d practically had to arm wrestle a dealer over it —
Her eyes met his and she smiled. A little frisson of electricity, of understanding, arced between them. With a reluctance that alarmed her, she tore her gaze away from his and turned her attention back to the monstrosity crouched in the center of the storage space. Natural, rough, masculine. Not her forte, but —
“Benches,” she said, fingers scrabbling in her bag for her notebook. “Rough-hewn benches, no help for it. Your guests will find it charming and friendly — the mead hall effect.” She dumped the bag on the floor and snatched the notebook from the pile. Crouching, she flipped it open to a clean page. “Stools for the ends. Cast iron wall fixtures … I’m going to need an ironmonger. Maybe in Kansas City but if we have to go to the East Coast, we will.” She’d assign that to Tess. Tess could hunt down anything. She found a pen and uncapped it with her teeth. “Candelabra at intervals the length of the table.” She spit the cap out. “Fire. We’ll supplement the lighting with huge pillar candles in cast iron freestanding holders.” She turned the page, her pen flying. “We’ll use natural fibers on the walls and natural linen drapes. Sideboard — we’ll take a slab of wood and brace it to the wall with more iron.” A quick sketch accompanied her words. Too bad Tess wasn’t here to take details. She was a much better artist. “No linens for the table. Rattan place mats if we must. Or maybe a bamboo runner on each side. We’ll see. Earthenware pottery for the dishes. Flooring … is this room over a basement?”
When Ian didn’t immediately answer, she looked up and snapped, “Well?”
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t follow all that.”
He did seem slightly dazed. She took pity on him.
“This room, the dining room,” she said, gesturing with the pen and speaking slowly so he could keep up. “Is it built over a basement?”
“Slab,” he said promptly.
“We’ll use granite, then,” she said, making more notes.
“Sounds impressive.”
She hadn’t meant her question to be an invitation to talk — nothing disrupted a good brainstorming session so much as other people talking — but the creative surge seemed to have passed, so she said, “That’s why you bought this monstrosity. It impressed you. I’m just designing a setting for it.” She got to her feet — she’d been crouched with her notebook balanced on her knee the entire time, which she now regretted because her knee was reminding her that they’d had surgery not very long ago. Wincing, she rubbed the joint, then glanced over her notes, adding a word here and there to clarify her thoughts.
“I still think — ”
“Stop. You hired me to design. Let me design.”
“Sure,” he said, with another shrug. This one did not enrage her because it meant he was agreeing with her. “I trust you, Greta.”
She tried not to let that matter more than it should. She said, “I have never been more sure of a design. Now you need to write a nice big check for a retainer and I’ll get to work.”
• • •
Ian unbuttoned his jacket and pulled his checkbook out of the inner pocket. He was an Army man and he always came prepared, but he was pretty sure Greta didn’t normally demand a huge retainer before she’d even provided preliminary design ideas. Unless she considered the stream of consciousness that she’d just delivered to qualify as a preliminary design. He’d expected something in a nice folder with sketches and fabric swatches, but what did he know?
She was looking around the storage room, taking in the other fabulous pieces he’d collected, not paying any attention to him. Her gaze kept going back to the table and he could tell she was developing a love-hate relationship with it.
He opened the checkbook and wrote out the amount she stated, thinking it sounded more like a ransom demand than a retainer. Fortunately he had an expense account. It was telling that even if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have minded forking over cold hard cash to the woman. He knew — could tell — that she’d gotten it, much a
s she disliked admitting it. She’d seen the appeal of the monstrosity and she was going to make the perfect setting for it. Though the whole hiring-an-ironmonger thing made him a little nervous.
He handed over the check. She put it away, barely glancing at it, though he suspected if he hadn’t added enough zeroes, she would have spotted that right off.
“Uh,” he said, clearing his throat. She slanted him a look over her shoulder that would have silenced a lesser man. Making sure her clients didn’t dare question her was probably an extremely effective business strategy on her part. But he wasn’t going to let her intimidate him. Besides, he knew she was intrigued now, hooked into solving his design problems, and that meant she wouldn’t drop the project even if he did rub her the wrong way. Which he was going to stop doing as soon as he figured out how.
“I can’t quite visualize what you’re going to do with all that cast iron,” he ventured.
“You don’t need to,” she said briefly. She had her tape measure out now, and was noting the dimensions of the table in her book. While he watched, she pulled out a small swatch of stain samples and started comparing them to the finish on the table, a big frown marring her usually calm features.
He had seen the interest flash in her eyes as she stared down at the table and the focus with which she planned and recorded the details she saw in her mind’s eye, the attentiveness with which she was now making measurements and devising design strategies.
What if she paid that kind of attention to him? The thought came out of nowhere. What if her attention could be made to stay on him for more than three seconds, and what if she didn’t look annoyed when he did get her attention?
“I just forked over the price of a small car,” he said. “Surely you can provide a few details.”
“The car would have to be a five-year-old Kia,” she said descriptively if not entirely accurately. She finished with her notes and popped the tape measure back in her bag.