“We loved every second of it. The bungalow was on the beach and each night they brought us these fruity drinks that looked like sunsets in a glass,” I say holding on to the memory of our lovely week in Mexico. “Serilda is still unpacking. They seem to have an outfit for every hour of the day.”
“They looked so lovely in the images you sent of the ceremony. Absolutely diaphanous in that gold chiffon on the beach,” Prescott says.
“And if I was seeing things correctly,” Danny adds, “you even went shoeless for the ceremony in the sand. Who would have believed it?”
“Love can make you do a lot of things you never thought you’d do. Like elope to Mexico,” I say raising an eyebrow as I look around the store.
“We did some reshuffling recently. It’s been getting a great response except...well, someone is having a problem letting go,” Danny says tilting his head toward Prescott.
“I am not,” Prescott says. “Well, maybe a little. I’m not going to sell those Smurfs to just anyone. Toothy needs a good home and the buyer didn’t look like she would take the responsibility seriously.”
“Babe, she was seven,” Danny says.
“Good stewardship can begin at any age,” Prescott says and walks over to Danny and grabs his hand. Their interlocked palms swing for a moment between them and then Prescott says, “Should we ask him?”
“Sure,” Danny says, a radiant smile appearing across his face.
“What are you doing Labor Day weekend?” Prescott asks me, his smile matching Danny’s radiance and perhaps surpassing it.
“Are you? You mean?” I’m too excited about the potential news to get the words out.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Prescott blurts out with an enthusiasm that might have been uncharacteristic a few months ago. Danny pulls Prescott close to him and they share a tender kiss.
“He asked me just before you left and we thought Labor Day weekend would be perfect for a wedding. Just before the fall season starts,” Danny says giddy with excitement.
“But we have a question for you, Uncle Arthur...” Prescott starts.
Danny finishes with, “Which one of us are you going to give away at the wedding?”
The question makes me laugh and the thought of them spending a lifetime together fills me with joy. I grab my cane and begin to head out the door. The answer to their question is easy. I stop and turn before leaving the shop. “I’m not going to give away either of you.”
“What?” they ask in unison.
“I can’t. You don’t belong to me. You belong to each other.”
I walk out of The Beautiful Things Shoppe and once I’m on the sidewalk I look back through the window and see Danny and Prescott embracing tightly. Two beautiful things have become one.
* * *
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Some people search their whole lives to find love.
He just wants to avoid it.
Teddy Spenser spends his days selling design ideas to higher-ups, living or dying on each new pitch. Stodgy engineer types like Romeo Blue, his nemesis—if you can call someone who barely talks to you a nemesis—are a necessary evil. A cute necessary evil.
Read on for a sneak preview of what happens next in Teddy Spenser Isn’t Looking for Love...
Chapter One
Passersby grumbled as they detoured around Teddy Spenser and his scooter, but he remained on the sidewalk outside the cosmetics store window, silently critiquing the display.
This is all wrong. There were no winged cupids and, worse, not a single heart. Just a blue-haired mannequin in a silk bathrobe and above her, like a 3-D thought bubble, the word LOVE crafted with shiny silver ribbons arranged in an elaborate cursive font. The colors were wrong too: all winter whites and frosts. Even kindergartners knew that red and pink were the go-to hues for the holiday.
If the designer was trying to be avant-garde, they’d missed the mark and ended up with boring and pointless. Nothing about the display made Teddy want to buy cosmetics for himself or anyone else, and it certainly did nothing to put him in the holiday spirit. Not that he wanted to be in the mood. Valentine’s Day was stupid.
It wasn’t a real holiday. Nobody got the day off from work. The mail arrived just like always, full of bills and grocery-store circulars and reminders that eye appointments were overdue. And all that crap about True Love? Nothing but a marketing ploy. He knew Valentine’s Day was a big moneymaker in certain industries, so he couldn’t fault them for trying to make the most of it.
With a sniff of disdain, Teddy got back on his scooter and, narrowly missing a burly guy in a construction vest, continued on his way to the office. It wasn’t an especially cold day, as February in Chicago went, and bits of dirty snow were the only vestiges of the last storm. The sky was a washed-out gray that seemed to begrudge any thoughts of spring, and Teddy shivered despite his parka, ski cap, and gloves. His ancestors, who’d spent possibly thousands of years surviving winters in England and Scandinavia without Gore-Tex or central heating, would probably consider him a wimp.
Soup. He was definitely going to have soup for lunch today—something thick with butter and cream and potatoes and maybe even cheese. A meal that would act like a layer of insulation for his freezing inner self. He might even have chocolate for dessert. Not Valentine’s Day chocolate. He refused to eat any of that—at least until it went on clearance.
Reddyflora, where beauty and technology meet, occupied a suite in a nondescript building on LaSalle, just a couple of blocks from the Daley Center. Teddy dragged his scooter up the three flights of stairs since the ancient, creaking elevator always sounded as if it were ready to plummet into the pits of hell. The office was in the back of the building, where tiny windows looked down on an alley clogged with garbage bins, and dropped ceilings made everything feel claustrophobic. As far as Teddy was concerned, the building’s only advantages were on the ground floor: a Mexican fast-food joint and a sandwich place.
Shortly after he was hired, Teddy had asked the founder and CEO, Lauren Wu, why she hadn’t set up her HQ in the suburbs. For the same money, she could have leased a spacious suite in a modern office park, and employees would have benefited from cheaper nearby housing.
“The ’burbs?” Lauren had been incredulous, using the same tone she might use to describe something scraped off the sole of her designer shoes.
“Sure. Hinsdale, maybe, or Wilmette.”
“The Loop is cutting-edge, Teddy, and that’s where we want to be. Because Reddyflora is cutting-edge too, right?”
He squinted at the flickering lights in the hallway before stashing his scooter in a corner of the sizable warren of employee cubicles. Lauren had an office of her own, of course, which included a couch she sometimes slept on. The only other coworker with a private space was Romeo Blue, the company’s software engineer.
“Romeo Blue,” Teddy muttered as he hung his coat and scarf on a wall-mounted hook. No way that was his real name. It sounded like a porn star or indie musician, not a guy who got paid to tap away at a keyboard all day.
“Hey, Teddy!”
Teddy waved at Imani Wallace. The job title on the nameplate for her cubicle was Fiscal Analyst Extraordinaire. Right now she was frowning and motioning him over. “I’ve been waiting for you forever,” she said when he arrived.
“It’s not even eight yet.”
“I’ve been here since six.”
He tried not to make a face. He’d known when he accepted the job that Lauren expected her employees to put in long hours, but he wanted to see at least a glimpse of sunlight. Imani wasn’t lik
ely to, at least not today. She rarely headed home until almost seven.
“Is there an emergency, Imani?”
She peered at her screen. “No. But I’ve been pricing out the base model, and the figures are not looking good. Unless we can cut costs, we’re not going to turn a profit.”
“We could raise the price.”
“Uh-uh. We’re maxed out already—your own reports say so.”
Although he knew she was going to say that, he sighed anyway. “Send me the numbers. I’ll see if I can find a way to cut some corners or sub some cheaper materials.”
“Yeah, okay, fine.” Her attention was back on her computer screen.
Teddy navigated to his own cubicle—his nameplate announced Design & Marketing—sat down, and booted up. He’d done as much as he could to brighten the space: reproductions of tourism posters, patterned adhesive paper on the metal drawer fronts, and vintage desk accessories he’d unearthed at a thrift shop. His chair cushion matched the drawer fronts, and the soft glow of a real lamp somewhat successfully battled the overhead fluorescents. A small rug covered the ugly floor tiles, despite it being an annoying trip hazard. He might not have a view, and the air always smelled like floor cleaner, but plenty of people toiled under far worse conditions.
He made his way through the overnight accumulation of emails, most from vendors trying to sell things Reddyflora didn’t need or couldn’t afford. Imani’s spreadsheets had arrived, so he turned his attention to examining them. He didn’t like numbers, at least not when they were arrayed in soulless columns, but cozying up to them was part of his job.
Within an hour, the suite was bustling with activity. Conversations, people walking around, printers spewing paper, phones ringing. It was like the soundtrack of an office, and it made Teddy smile. He could almost imagine himself as an actor in a musical, as if at any second he and Imani and the others might burst into song. Something with clever lyrics about how they were toiling away as they chased their dreams.
“Hey.”
Teddy hadn’t noticed anyone come up behind him, and he startled so violently that he almost knocked over his coffee. He spun the chair around and discovered Romeo Blue looking down at him, stone-faced.
“What?” Teddy knew he was scowling and didn’t care.
“Can we speak in my office, please?” As usual, Romeo’s voice was low, his words clipped. As if he refused to spare much energy to speak to Teddy.
“I’m busy right now.”
“As soon as you can then.” Romeo spun and marched back to his office, leaving its door slightly ajar.
Teddy could have followed him; Imani’s numbers weren’t so urgent that they couldn’t wait awhile. But he remained stubbornly at his desk even though he could no longer focus on the computer screen. Romeo Blue. Teddy had googled him once, just for the hell of it—not at all to dispel lingering notions that his coworker was a spy working under a really stupid alias. It turned out that Lenny Kravitz used Romeo Blue as a stage name back in the eighties, and that was more than a little weird since this Romeo resembled a young Lenny Kravitz, albeit with a darker complexion and a different clothing aesthetic. Kravitz probably didn’t wear suits from Zara. And to be honest, although Kravitz was gorgeous, Romeo was even more so, with perfect eyebrows, velvety eyes, and a mouth that—
“Nope!” Teddy stood abruptly and grabbed his coffee mug. He needed a refill.
He finished off that cup, visited the depressing bathroom he’d been fruitlessly begging Lauren to redecorate, and chatted briefly with the cute copy-machine repairman before finally knocking on Romeo’s open door and stepping inside. And then, as always when he entered this room, Teddy glowered.
It was a fraction of the size of Lauren’s office, with barely enough room for a desk, two chairs, and a computer stand. Despite that, it was a real office instead of a cubicle. But what truly annoyed Teddy was that Romeo hadn’t even bothered to decorate the space. There wasn’t a single knickknack or picture, and the mismatched office supplies—a black stapler and taupe tape dispenser—appeared to be from the discount bin at Staples. The only touches of personality were the three computer monitors—three of them, for God’s sake—and, of course, Romeo himself.
Maybe Romeo thought himself so decorative that his mere presence sufficed. Or he didn’t want any other objects to detract from his glory.
Also, he smelled like sandalwood, bergamot, and vanilla. Dammit.
“You could put a nice landscape print there.” Teddy pointed at an expanse of bare white wall. “A palm-tree beach or snowy mountains. If you framed it right, it would even look a little like a window, and your office wouldn’t be so claustrophobic.”
Romeo squinted at him. “I have screen savers.”
Teddy didn’t point out that the only visible monitor displayed a massive block of tiny text that was probably programming code. He stared pointedly at Romeo instead, eyebrows raised. “You commanded my presence?”
“I asked you to come talk to me, yes.”
“Here I am.”
“Right.” A flicker of emotion, which Teddy couldn’t identify, crossed Romeo’s face. It didn’t seem like a particularly positive emotion, but then he’d rarely seen Romeo crack a smile. He was probably too full of himself to be caught feeling happy with the peons, ordinary-looking people who worked in cubicles and attempted to put together interesting outfits from resale stores and vintage clothing shops.
Romeo grabbed a tablet—apparently three monitors weren’t enough—and came around the desk to stand beside Teddy. He didn’t quite loom, but compared to Teddy’s five-eight in his Bruno Magli boots with the thick heels, Romeo was closer to six feet. In loafers.
“I put something together for the midrange model.” Romeo tapped at the tablet a few times before handing it over.
The mock-up was rough, but it was clear enough to make out details. There was the vase Teddy had spent so many hours designing: a simple powder-coated steel frame around a cylinder of clear glass, and, in front, a gently curved video screen. He’d worked really hard with other Reddyflora employees to make sure the screen would be durable, affordable, water-resistant, and—most important—attractive. The results were excellent, production costs weren’t as challenging as with the base model, and consumers would be able to program the screen to match their mood and décor. Even when the screen was blank, the vase looked nice. Teddy had made sure of that.
But now he furrowed his brow and enlarged the image. “What the hell is that?” Something dark and bulky was just visible at the back of the vase, butted up against the metal frame. He swiped a few times until the tablet showed the back of the vase. “Is that your unit?” He was too upset to blush over his unintended double entendre.
“Yes.”
“But it’s really big!”
“It has to be. It needs to house a processor and battery and USB port, and it needs to be waterproof. Plus there’s the sensor.” He pointed at a plastic prong that extended from the unit into the bottom of the glass vessel.
“You didn’t tell me it would be this big.”
Romeo blew a puff of air. “I did my best. I can’t bend the laws of physics.”
“Scale it down, then. Get rid of some of the bells and whistles.”
“Which bells and whistles would those be? The ones that give it power? The ones that make it think? The ones that provide input from the flowers, which is the entire raison d’être for the unit in the first place?” For once, Romeo’s voice was raised.
Well, Teddy was pissed off too. “Your unit is fugly! Who’s going to want to buy a vase that looks like ass? And not good ass either.”
“Find a way to camouflage it.”
Teddy growled. “Find a way to camouflage it. Do you think I have a magic wand? Good design takes time, Romeo, and you can’t just throw stuff together on the fly. God, and we almost have the specs worked out on pro
duction costs. But if I start adding more pieces, Imani will eviscerate me. Slowly.”
“I can’t help any of that.” Romeo took the tablet and moved back toward his chair. “This is what we’re going to need to make the software operate.” His jaw was set and his eyes flinty.
Teddy opened his mouth to argue but couldn’t think of anything convincing. He didn’t know squat about programming or about the hardware needed to make gizmos run properly. He designed and marketed, making things look pretty and convincing people they couldn’t live without them, all without blowing the company’s budget. He had no idea how to work that now.
Through gritted teeth he managed “Send me those files,” before marching out of Romeo’s office and into the cubicle area. His imaginary upbeat show tune had been replaced by a wailing lament. Crap.
Time to find some lunch.
Chapter Two
“Jennifer Murray had another baby. I saw it on the Facebook. Very cute little girl.”
Teddy slumped a little deeper into his couch and considered switching to speakerphone. If he did, would his grandmother hear the crinkle of waxed paper as he snacked? “That’s great, Gram. I’m happy for her.”
“Do you remember Jennifer Murray? You used to play with her when you came to visit. She had strawberry-blond pigtails, but now I see in the photos that she dyes it auburn.”
What Teddy mostly remembered about Jennifer Murray was an altercation at the playground, during which she’d demanded that he relinquish the swing. When he’d refused, she’d punched him so hard in the stomach that he’d fallen, skinned his knees, and ended up with bark splinters embedded in the palms of his hands. For the remainder of his two-week stay at his grandmother’s, she’d called him Dead Ted.
Instead of reminding his grandmother about that unpleasant summer, he used his free hand to pull another Ritz cracker out of its sleeve. He’d munched through the better part of a package during this call, and when he was done, he was going to need to vacuum away the crumbs.
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