Brick, tile, glass, pendant lights, greenery, raw wood grain, a bar that runs from one side of the room to the other. It’s going to be gorgeous!
I blink and the bartender in my mind morphs into the man of my dreams. Liam’s curiosity is evident in every line of his face.
“How long was I out of it?”
I fight the urge to pop my knuckles while he considers me. I can only imagine what I just looked like.
“Ten minutes, maybe more. It’s cool, though. I took a phone call and answered a couple of emails.”
My fingers itch with awkwardness, and I wiggle them for lack of anything better to do. I really need to figure out a sexier nervous tic. Heroines in books are always biting their lip; maybe I should try that too.
“Sorry, zoning out like that tends to happen on a new project. I think it’s sort of a family trait.”
His brow furrows.
“Why are you chewing on your lip like that?”
My top lip springs free from my teeth with an audible pop.
“Um, I’m looking for a new nervous tic? I’m considering lip biting.”
The smallest smile plays across his face.
“Out of curiosity, what was the old nervous tic?”
My sigh is resigned. I hold up my hands like a magician and proceed to pop each knuckle in the same pattern I’ve done it in all my life. Index, middle, ring, and pinky knuckles and then a double thumbs-up, before bending my thumbs for one last pop. I started doing that last one after a year of clarinet in the seventh grade.
He winces.
“I know. That’s why I was trying to find an alternative.” I bite my lip again. “How does this look?”
His pained expression is almost comical.
“How does it feel?”
I try it again a few times.
“It feels like an English bulldog trying to gnaw off the top half of its face.”
His bark of laughter is loud in the empty space.
“Yep, that’s exactly how it looks. For the record, I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to bite your bottom lip—and just on one side,” he adds almost as an afterthought.
“Noted.”
When I realize how ridiculous this conversation is, I grin. I love that I’ve encouraged him to participate in the ridiculous with me.
He clears his throat.
“So, what do you imagine for the space?”
I spin away from him to look at it again.
“You’re still dead set on the vegan Latin fusion thing?” I wrinkle my brow. Even the words taste gross. I can’t imagine what the food will be like.
“Upscale organic vegan Latin cuisine, yes.”
I nod, my eyes stopping at the skylights again.
“OK. I’m thinking Spain. But, like, Spain as described by Gabriel García Márquez, and it has a baby with an Ian Schrager hotel.”
I spin back around to face him.
“Do you see what I mean?”
His phone rings again. He doesn’t even glance to see who it is before silencing it. For once he doesn’t make a smart-aleck comment or tease me. He actually looks like he’s genuinely trying to see what I see in the room. Finally he shakes his head.
“I know the definition of each of those words; I just don’t have any idea what you mean when you use them together to describe a restaurant.”
I push a mass of blue-tipped hair out of my face and walk over to stand next to him. My hair is basically a physical manifestation of my mood at any given time. When I’m designing, it tends to get just as excited as I am.
“OK, let’s start from the bottom and work our way up.” I point out the busted concrete below our feet. “For the floor I’d suggest—wait, what’s the budget?”
“Extensive.”
I grin.
“My favorite kind.” I tap the floor with the tip of my toe. “I’d start with a reclaimed wood then. We’d stain with something really light, but the natural color of the individual planks would look like a rich tapestry, juxtaposed with the white ceiling. I’d set the bar to run along the entire wall there. Gods know people are going to need a cocktail when they realize they’ve wandered into a place that only serves vegan food. The bar façade could almost be a statement piece unto itself—Mexican tile or possibly Moroccan.” I considered it for a moment. “But a bold pattern for sure. Black and white, maybe? I know Márquez was Colombian, by the way. When I mention him on Spanish vacation, I just mean the style and flair of Barcelona but brushed by the vintage elegance in one of his books. You with me?”
A quick glance up at him makes my heart stop. There’s something that looks almost like pride on his face. It’s incredibly sweet but also terrifyingly like the way you might look at your little sister—or your little sister’s friend. The last way I want Liam to be feeling about me is fraternal. Ugh!
I hurry on to describe the rest of it in detail. The large metal pendant lights, the long communal dining tables, even the servers’ uniforms: white button-downs rolled up at the sleeve, a different shade of the hipster aprons we sourced for Max’s bakery. Throughout my description Liam nods politely and asks intelligent questions, but I get the impression that he still can’t visualize most of what I’m describing.
“Would you like me to draw you a picture?”
He nods.
“That would be great. You can send over the information about your retainer, and then maybe you could get me a CAD to show the rest—”
I’m already digging a Sharpie out of my giant shoulder bag.
“Do you have any paper?” I ask him.
He blinks dramatically and holds his arms out to the sides to show that he isn’t actually concealing a drawing pad on his person.
“Smart-ass,” I grumble before dropping my bag onto the dusty floor and pulling a hair tie off my wrist. Once again the mass of blue and black goes into a topknot on my head. As I’m halfway to the ground, Liam realizes what I mean to do.
“You don’t have to get down on the—” Just as my knees hit the ground, he finishes, “Floor. This really isn’t necessary. You could just send me something later, and then you wouldn’t be covered in plaster dust.”
I’m already drawing out the perimeter of the room on the cement floor. I work quickly, and with each passing minute the design I see in my head comes to life on the ground below me. As I’m shading in the tile work, I get dust on my white blouse. My sleeve drags across the edge of the marker while I sketch the floral centerpiece by reception. When I push it up my forearm to keep it from further ruin, I notice that Liam’s gaze isn’t anywhere near my drawing. It’s planted firmly on my butt.
With a gasp, I realize it’s not even his fault either, because I’m on all fours, on the ground, in tight leather pants. I quickly sit back on my calves and cover my face, utterly mortified by how that must have looked. Gods, I’ve been moving around too!
“I wasn’t trying to be provocative,” I whisper through dusty fingers.
I really wasn’t either. I was going for professional and inspired, like Jo in Little Women. Not hoochie and obvious, like the cougar with a side pony in Dirty Dancing who keeps trying to steal Johnny from Baby.
It takes him a second to respond, and when he does his voice is gruff.
“With you it doesn’t seem to matter.”
I let my hands fall into my lap. His outstretched fingers are already there to help me up.
“Miko.” His voice is strained. “Please get off the floor.”
I let him pull me to my feet, and then go about dusting myself off to try to gain some composure.
“It’s incredible,” he says.
I look up, startled. Is he still talking about my—oh, nope. He’s talking about my drawing on the ground below us. I stare at it along with him. It’s the size of a poster, and since I’ve drawn rooms like this th
ousands of times, the detail is crystal clear. It looks almost exactly like what I see in my head. Dirty floor or not, if I’d had colored markers, it would have been perfect.
His phone rings again, dissipating most of the emotions in the air around us. He glances at the screen, then back up at me.
“I have a four o’clock.”
I don’t know what I thought he was going to say, but dismissing me for a meeting wasn’t it. How did we go from him checking me out to right back to business? It’s always like this too. One second it’s intense and I can feel the attraction between us like a third person in the room; the next second I worry that I’ve imagined everything. Maybe I have. Maybe I’m just like Peeta in The Hunger Games, and I’m going to have to start asking people if things are real or not real. Which sucks, honestly. Who wants to be Josh Hutcherson? At the very least, shouldn’t you get to be the Liam Hemsworth of your own life?
Ugh! I’m sort of ashamed that I’m not better at this. Because surely if I were a practiced flirt, he wouldn’t be able to switch gears so quickly regardless of whether or not he wants to, right? I glance up to find blue-gray eyes burning into mine. Before I even realize what he means to do, he touches my lower lip with his thumb and tugs it out from my teeth.
“That is exactly how you’re supposed to bite your lip.” He drops his hand to his side as if just realizing what he’s done. He takes a step back from me, straightening the cuffs on his shirt like the simple act will help reorder his thoughts.
It happened so fast!
I didn’t even have the time to take it in or pay attention to the nuance of having his hands on my face! Gods, if I had known, I would have closed my eyes to memorize the feeling. Or wait, no—I’d keep them open and take in everything. Is his sweater more navy than indigo? Are his hands well manicured? Does his skin smell like anything specific? I’d vote for lemongrass or pine if I got to choose, but I’d be totally fine with any scent if I only knew what it was and could commit it to memory. But now that’s not going to happen, because I wasn’t prepared and I didn’t pay enough attention. This is the worst! Worse than that time I finished all the books that had been published so far in a series a full year before the final book came out. Worse than that time someone suggested that The Bronze Horseman was the next Outlander. This is even worse than the time I met one of my favorite authors at a signing and she was super rude and I went into an emotional shank spiral for weeks!
Liam breaks into my swirling thoughts with a question. I don’t hear what he says, but I know I should answer him in some way. I want to ask him to put his hands on my face again, but that doesn’t seem appropriate. Quick, Miko, say something!
“Have you ever had a Crunchwrap Supreme?” I don’t know why it comes out as some kind of angry demand.
He takes a step back after my nonsensical reaction.
“Uh—no, I can’t say I have.”
“Well”—I point at nothing in particular—“you should. You’re really missing out.”
On that genius pronouncement, I give up and head towards the front door of the building. Because really, bringing up the Taco Bell menu is a new low in my repertoire, and even I know when to run for cover and regroup.
“So I’ll look for your email this week?” he calls after me.
“Yep!”
I make it all the way to my car before I admit it to myself: OK, not my best work.
Seriously, how many times am I going to trip out and say something insane in front of him? I really need to come up with some kind of plan so I don’t keep finding myself in these situations!
I shake my head in annoyance and turn the key in the ignition. Honestly, not one of my favorite book heroines would ever bring up a flattened fried burrito as the follow-up to the hero touching her lips. I mean, jeez, even Cinder acted more natural than that, and she was half cyborg!
Chapter THREE
“Hey, Casidee,” I call to the open doorway.
“Yes ma’am,” she answers before she’s even all the way inside my office. Taylor’s little sister is almost as tall as he is and certainly way too close to my age to be calling me ma’am. But she’s also southern and apparently can’t lose the manners no matter how many times I’ve asked her to. Landon, unsurprisingly, thinks she’s the greatest thing ever.
When Tosh offered to let Landon and me have some office space in Mos Eisley’s massive HQ, I jumped at the chance. Max might feel weird about getting help from her family, but my brother’s company offices are state of the art and utterly gorgeous. There is a full-sized basketball court surrounded by vintage sports memorabilia and a kitchen that Fast Company described as “tech geek meets luxury chic” in an article last year. That same kitchen also always has at least ten kinds of cereal in the huge glass jars that line one wall. And each one of the six executive offices has a totally different feel, completely designed around the person who sits within it, but all of them feature the same color scheme—no easy feat. Plus, since I refused to let him pay me when I designed every single detail of the space, getting to use a couple of small offices now for a significant friends-and-family discount feels like a fair trade.
I gesture to the chair in front of my desk.
“Can you close the door? I need your help with a project.” Outside the glass wall of my office, a programmer rides by on a skateboard long enough to hold a family of three. After two months of working here, neither of us pay him or his hipster transportation any attention. We’ve learned to live with the super nerd testosterone that constantly permeates the air and the forty or so computer guys who are ever starstruck by any sort of uterus among them. Casidee, with her kind of alien beauty, her adorkable glasses, and the fact that she understands a lot of their esoteric geek humor, has become a sort of deity here. It was because of that understanding of geek and nerd culture that she’s sitting in front of me now.
I’m ready to move forward with the plan I’ve concocted for Liam, and since it’s extensive, I need a partner in crime. After all, a proper heroine needs a sidekick, and neither Max nor Landon would approve of my idea. Max would have a heart attack for obvious reasons; Landon would worry that I was going about it the wrong way. Neither of them would appreciate the pageantry of the whole thing.
Cas sets a notepad in her lap and pulls a pen out of the knot in her hair. The whole mass of dark-brown locks falls down past her shoulders like a shampoo commercial.
Gods, why can’t I ever pull off anything so graceful?
She looks across the desk at me expectantly as I hand over the Word doc I created. Her expression remains bland while she reads through it. At this point she’s used to oddball event themes or weird directives from me, so there’s no shock—yet.
I wait a minute longer, wondering if my hair looks as excited as I feel, because I’m seriously fighting the urge to fidget. My outfit today says energized, focused, determined, which translates to a neon-pink, way-too-big sweater, black cigarette pants, and some kicky boots. I slide on my oversize tortoiseshell reading glasses mostly for dramatic affect.
“Can you tell me what all of those have in common?” I ask.
She looks at the list again.
“They’re all famous literary romances.” Her Oklahoma twang makes the entire sentence more charming than it has a right to be. “The scenes you highlighted are”—she checks the list again—“something iconic the heroine did to garner the hero’s affection.”
I smile happily. I knew she’d be the perfect accomplice.
“Exactly.”
“Are we recreating these for an upcoming event? The scene from Gone with the Wind might be difficult, but if we—” She waves the paper at me. “Can I write on this?”
When I nod, she starts making notes in the margin. I heart her enthusiasm.
“It might be hard to recreate the antebellum South but not impossible—”
I pop my knuckles. It’s
my office, after all, and nobody is allowed to stop me.
“It’s not for an event.”
She frowns in confusion.
“Is it just some inspiration for a mood then? That seems easy enough—”
“Not per se. It’s for me.”
Seeing that she is still confused, I lay it all out: from the first interaction with Liam to the list in her hands and how I plan to use it to get what I want.
“I’ve put a lot of time into this, Cas. The books are listed out in order of—I think—the most effective moments. Well, some of them got bumped to the top of the list, because I loved them regardless of how well they worked for the character in the book, but still. It’ll be a sort of punch list for things to try. What do you think?”
She’s slowly shaking her head in denial.
“I think this is a really, really bad idea, Miko.”
I deny her denial by stuffing a piece of gum into my mouth.
“This is an excellent idea,” I say around a bubble. “The best I’ve ever had.”
“I don’t think I can—”
“What did you say to me, Casidee Taylor? When you applied to be our part-time, sadly underpaid assistant and I told you I was concerned that you didn’t have enough experience, what did you say?”
“But this is—”
“‘I’ll do anything,’ you said. ‘I’m a hard worker and I want to learn everything you have to teach me and I’ll do anything.’ Those were your exact words, I believe.”
Her shoulders slump in resignation.
“I meant, like, cleaning icing out of a ballroom carpet or helping a bride hold her dress up while she uses the bathroom. I didn’t think it would include something like this. It doesn’t seem right.”
I cross my arms. “Why not? It’s not like it’s underhanded or scheming—”
“It’s a little scheming,” she interrupts.
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