I couldn't claim to be surprised.
When the cab pulled up to the curb, all I could really do was nod and think Yeah, this seems to fit.
Big, expensive, in a nice area. The people who milled in and out were dressed much like Sloane always would, so lost in their phones that they didn't notice a damn thing around them. Not even the doorman who held the doors open for them.
Even the hallways and elevators screamed money. Everything updated, modern, but comfortable.
"One second!" Sloane's voice called as I waited outside her door, hearing some slamming going on inside, likely from the kitchen since she promised me lasagne. With chopped meat and sausage. "Ow," she hissed before there was another slam and a shuffle as she moved across her apartment. "Sorry. I was burning myself," she told me, holding up a finger that was red, but not blistered. "You better appreciate that lasagne. My hands are precious," she informed me, taking a step back, inviting me in.
Somehow, the space was mostly neutral-colored, but also screamed feminine. The walls were an off-white. The furniture was white. The couch was a tufted beige color. The accent carpet even had various shades of whites, creams, and a small hint of gold in it.
Upscale. Feminine. Expensive.
It suited her.
I wondered if she would feel the same way about my house.
I had never given the place much thought before. It was a place I slept, kept my shit, took care of. But like... shit that needed fixing, tasks that needed doing. Like mowing the lawn, raking the leaves, fixing the front path.
I never painted a wall inside except the bathroom since I had to rip some of the old tile off of it because it was molded when I moved in.
I had some furniture, but not any personal touches, any knickknacks, anything that said I really lived there.
"Nice place, duchess," I said, pulling her in for a quick kiss before following my nose to her kitchen. "That looks great."
"Don't touch it," she warned, slapping my hand as I tried to peel the tin foil away. "That is for dinner. In your place."
"We could hang here tonight instead."
"No. We are coming back here after the weekend," she reminded me.
I knew this.
We had an entire month planned out.
Planning out time wasn't exactly my style, but it was - as it would turn out - necessary.
And it was her style.
I learned something else about Sloane.
Apparently, she slept with her day planner.
Literally.
She had told me that over the phone after I had dirty-talked her the night before and we started talking about our schedules, and she said she had to find her planner under the mess of her blankets.
So then she sat there and debated weekdays and weekends with me until we had it all figured out a month in advance.
There wasn't - it would seem - room for playing it fast and loose.
"You knew very well that the lasagne wasn't going to get eaten here," she added, grabbing two long sleeves of tin foil, something I imagined was garlic bread.
"You could have cooked it at my place."
"Then we'd be eating even later," she reminded me.
"Got a point there," I agreed. "So where are all the bags?" I asked, looking around.
"I have one bag. And one small toiletry bag."
"Plus your purse, that makes three. I think that qualifies as all the bags. You're not bringing any art shit?" I asked, locating the bags that clearly were meant for clothes and shampoo, no room for easels or sketchpads.
"I was looking into it. Navesink Bank just put in a huge craft store. In the A&P plaza," she informed me, impressing me with her obvious research because there was no way she could have known about the A&P since it went out two years before, sat vacant, then finally got turned into the craft store she was talking about.
"Yeah, they did," I agreed, watching as she fiddled with the ends of the foil on the lasagne even though they were all already crimped down perfectly. Nervous energy. "Were you thinking of stocking up there, and storing them in my spare room, so you don't have to keep lugging a ton of shit back and forth?"
"I mean, I was thinking that... until I can get a place... it would really..."
"Duchess, relax," I cut her off, smiling at her obvious discomfort. "I think that's a good idea. We won't have time to drop by tonight, but we can hit it after breakfast tomorrow if you want. I'll show you around the town some more."
"That'd be great. It would be nice to know my way around in case you ever got called away."
We'd had that talk on the drive back across the country. About my job. About what it entailed, how unpredictable it could be, how it could take me away for weeks at a time sometimes.
She'd taken it better than most would.
I've been on my own since I was barely more than a teenager, Gunner. I will be fine for a few weeks here and there.
She would too.
She wasn't just saying that.
She would occupy her time with work or with her drawing.
And she wouldn't be resentful for it.
It was a freeing thing to realize that.
It made life easier.
It made building a relationship easier.
Since that was what we were clearly doing.
"Alright. I think I'm ready," she said, lifting the cookie sheet with the garlic bread sitting on top of the lasagne.
So I grabbed her shit, and we hit the road.
Sloane - 2 hours later
I had no idea what to expect of Gunner's place.
I knew ahead of time that he owned a house, not an apartment, because he thought it was ridiculous to pay another man's mortgage. And he liked having a yard.
Why?
I wasn't sure.
He didn't have a dog or kids to use it.
But when I had pressed, he had just shrugged and said he was used to the work, having grown up on a farm.
From the outside, there wasn't much to differentiate it from many of the other houses in the neighborhoods - all what one might call a 'starter house,' or maybe even an 'empty nest house' since they were all low ranches with two or three bedrooms, two baths, and smallish living and dining areas. They all had large picture windows out front, one-car garages, and about a quarter of an acre each.
His was an off-white color with brick halfway up, a gray roof, and black shutters.
And, well, the inside was very similar.
Meaning bland.
Impersonal.
The front door led straight into the living and dining combo. To the left, the living. There was a black TV cabinet with a flatscreen on top, a scuffed coffee table, and a well-loved brown leather couch.
The dining space had a table that I would bet my brand on came straight out of a box store, too perfect to have been made on anything other than an assembly line.
The kitchen joined off the side of the dining room, butting up to the living space, but completely cut off.
In there, the tile on the floor was broken off in pieces, the countertops looked straight out of the nineties, and there wasn't a single thing out of place. Not even a rogue coffee pod from his Keurig on the counter.
I guess maybe that was a military thing - the cleaning. It was likely drilled into him early on. And then was a habit he never thought about breaking. Had he any personal touches lying around, it might not even have jumped out at me.
"And down here is the bedroom," he told me, going on through the dining room again to the hall at the right of the house, leading me past a hall bathroom, a small, empty bedroom, then the master.
Much like the rest of the house, it was bare. A dresser. Another TV. Two nightstands. A king-sized bed with plain blue sheets and comforter.
To the side, a door was open to a typical bathroom from the fifties when this house was likely built, a shower/tub combo, cabinet sink, and toilet. The towels were white. The shower curtain was white.
"How long have you lived here?" I as
ked, looking around as he placed my luggage on the floor near the closet.
"Couple years."
"So... you're just a fan of aged-white walls then?" I asked, smiling when he looked at his walls like he had never seen them before.
"Never thought about it really. Kinda what I'm used to."
"Well, you could maybe get used to, and I know this is an extreme idea... but colors."
"Alright, smartass. We can paint."
We.
That certainly didn't escape me.
It wasn't the first time he had used it either.
There was no fear there for him.
Meanwhile, I had this tendency to do verbal gymnastics to avoid using the w-word. Just because things were so new. Because I was quite aware of the fact that I wasn't great with knowing what to say and when. Because neither Gunner nor I were on familiar ground.
"Any preferences?" I asked, looking around, liking the idea of giving his home some personality. He certainly had enough of it himself; his house should have reflected that.
"Not that clean-line, minimalist, modern crap. I like things comfortable."
"I can do comfortable," I agreed with a nod.
"Oh, yeah?" he asked, looking down at my feet. Which were in heels. High ones. Ones he would likely charmingly call Tiffany or something equally as ridiculous, having not a bit of an idea about designers. Which, honestly, was refreshing to me. I was around that at work. It was nice to get away from it outside of that.
"Hey! You were the one who insisted on showing up at my apartment at five. I didn't have time to change into anything else."
I had gotten into that habit.
After Carson City.
After realizing that jeans and a tee were a lot more comfortable than blouses and slacks.
It wouldn't fly at work, and it wasn't the image I wanted to project there, but at home, around Gunner? I found I liked letting my hair down a bit.
"And go ahead and go HAAM on that guest room, duchess. If that's gonna be your studio, it should have you all over it."
My studio.
It was odd to feel wonder at those words.
I did, after all, have a large apartment in Manhattan and a business that had a giant office. I had plenty of spaces that were my own.
But the word studio did something to me, it unsurfaced something I had tried to bury as a teen when my mother had done her best - and somewhat succeeded - in dashing my dreams of being an artist.
"That's a good look," Gunner said, head ducked to the side as he watched me.
"What?"
"Hope," he said easily.
Hope.
I guess it was that.
Hope.
It was new for me.
But I had a feeling I was going to get used to it.
Gunner - 2 months
Mateo was pretty much Sloane 2.0.
I couldn't really tell if that was a good thing or not.
I guess it was good in that it allowed Sloane to take a step back, that she had more time to live her life, to spend with me, to work on her art, to just be a person.
But if I thought Sloane worked too hard before, Mateo put her to fucking shame. Maybe it was because she had just given him a lot of power, and he was trying to prove himself.
I had a feeling it was more than that, though.
Because the word that came to mind when you met him was hungry. It was the exact same thing that allowed Sloane to rise as she had in her life.
It was admirable.
But it also meant that when Sloane didn't pick up her phone - because we had been fucking in the shower - he showed up at the door, let himself in, and launched into some work issue as though we weren't both mostly-naked, clad only in towels, Sloane's hair dripping down her shoulders as he paced her living room, ranting about some swatches from France that were delayed or some shit.
And then Sloane said something that, in her past life, I doubt would have ever even occurred to her to say.
"Mateo, relax. It will all shake out."
Shake out.
That wasn't her talk.
That was me talk.
"Shake out!" Mateo exploded, literally throwing up his hands, pacing all over again. "'Shake out,' she says!" he hissed to the universe at large.
"Okay," Sloane said, turning to me, holding back a smile. "Please tell me I wasn't that bad," she said, eyes dancing.
"I could. But then I'd be lying," I told her, chuckling when she swatted me in the chest. "You gotta do something about him before he has a fucking conniption."
So then I got to watch one high-strung workaholic try to calm down another.
I was half-pissed there wasn't popcorn and Twizzlers being sold for this shit.
But, I realized as I watched them, that some shit, it happened for a reason.
I had never been someone who subscribed to beliefs like that, who put stock in the idea of fate and shit.
But even a skeptic would have to start putting two and two together.
If Sloane had never seen a man lose his life, had never done the right thing, had never been punished for it, had never hired security that failed her, but pointed her in my direction, this never would have been possible.
She would have stayed in the same place for her whole life.
And, well, so would have I.
So maybe, just this once, I could believe in it.
Sloane - 5 months
"What?" I hissed into the phone, sure I misheard her. It was loud there in Gunner's office, with all his people gathered, talking loudly about someone named Fenway. Who everyone had very strong opinions on. And not a single one of them was positive.
"You heard me," Auddie insisted.
"No. I don't think I did. It sounded like you said that your book is getting published."
"Our book is getting published!" she half-screamed into my ear.
I don't know how to describe the feeling inside at those words. It was a mix of wonder, shock, elation, and a healthy dose of disbelief.
Because in what universe was some book two women who had met while one was in 'witness protection on steroids' worked on casually for her daughters be getting published.
"You mean like with a publishing house?" I asked to clarify. Anyone could publish nowadays with a computer and an account online. Whether that was good or bad was up to interpretation. It would also somewhat sway the feelings inside if that was the case.
"Yes, dummy. With a publishing house. And an agent. And an editor. And book signings and, ah! I can't even believe it myself."
"Wait... how did this happen?" I asked, shaking my head.
"Well, I handed out the copies to the people in Margo's group. And, apparently, Michelle - she's the one with two sons with autism," she explained even though I had never heard the woman's name before. That was a funny quirk of Auddie's - she thought everyone knew everyone. Maybe because she did. "Anyway, she loved it. And she has a cousin who is an agent. So she asked if she could send her a copy. I just thought it was sweet, y'know. I didn't think anything would come from it. Or I would have asked you first. But any who, lo and behold, a few months later, I get a call from Michelle's cousin Tamara who said she absolutely loved it, that there was a huge market for this kind of book, that she would be interested in working with us to bring it to market. I'm pretty sure I half-deafened her with my scream," she added, sounding not the least bit remorseful about it.
"That is so awesome," I said, smiling even amongst the loud argument going on around me. Something about the wife of a Cuban drug lord.
Life could be funny that way, I found.
Success often came when you were least expecting it, when you had all but given up on it.
It liked to blindside you like that.
For a fuller effect, it seemed.
I'd had that moment when I had gotten a call from an actual, real-life A-list celebrity about my handbags, asking me when my line was going to come out.
Everything changed for me then.
So I understood Auddie deafening her new agent.
This was that moment for her.
"I can't wait to tell the girls when they get home. Oh, hell. I might just go pull them out of school, and take them for ice cream," she rushed to say, sounding like she was bouncing with excitement. "Oh, and she was wondering if we could do another."
"Another?" I asked, brows drawn together. That didn't usually happen, I didn't think, a publisher wanting the next book before the first one even came out. That involved a lot of risk when they weren't sure of the reward.
"Yeah! She was thinking maybe one with a male protagonist this time."
"But the first one isn't even out yet," I objected, not sure why I was so unwilling to believe this. But, then again, I had been sure the call from my movie star had been a cruel prank until we started talking about meeting to show her my line.
"I know! She said it was unprecedented, but they had a really good feeling about this, about how the market needs to address these more pressing current issues that parents and their children face. And she wanted me to explicitly tell you that your drawings were some of the freshest ones she has seen in the past few years. She was raving about them."
There it was again, that rush of feelings.
I don't think I had ever actually felt them about my design business. I had felt other things - comfort, namely. But I guess because it wasn't a huge passion of mine, because I didn't find myself smiling until my cheeks hurt when I sketched up a purse, it wasn't the same.
I had loved working with Auddie's story, bringing her characters to life for young kids to look at while their parents read the story.
I had loved it.
And now she was telling me that it was good? Good enough to have a publisher raving about it?
The excitement inside was indescribable.
"I can't believe this."
"I know! I've pinched myself like twenty times already. I got the call when I was downstairs... and asked the postman to pinch me. Which led to a very uncomfortable stare, I might add, but oh my god. This is... I don't have words for this. And I have words for everything. You and me, we make a great team!"
The Ghost (Professionals Book 2) Page 21