No, the problem wasn’t her stance on relationships. The problem was the fact that she was irresistibly drawn to a man who, for her, was literally breath-taking. So her task was to figure out why this particular man had the power to both inflame her and sicken her. Why had his going from nice coworker to hunk of sensual delights caused her to subconsciously freak out?
And maybe once she understood that, she could explain it to Dillon in a way that didn’t make him stare through her and turn away.
Chapter Eighteen
Serena had been saving, in addition to money, her vacation days. After another few excruciating days at Lanigan, wrapping up MediCost with far more terse back-and-forth messages between her and Dillon than she’d have liked, she was as happy to be getting away from him and the office as she was to be signing the lease for Hakeem and moving out of the scummy-butt apartment.
No. Not as happy. Dillon was just a fly—no, a gnat—in the ointment of her life, and Hakeem the Dream House was momentous. The culmination of a decade of adult life. The fulfillment of all her childhood wishes.
Dillon was nothing compared to all that.
So Serena didn’t consider him at all on her first vacation day, when she was finishing packing up her apartment.
Or on her second vacation day, when she met the seller’s brokers to go over the final paperwork and hand over a giant portion of her savings account.
Or on her third vacation day, when Serena covered patches of her new walls with the hues that were the finalists in her great room color debate.
Or on her fourth vacation day, when returning to Hakeem after a long day spent cleaning out the scummy-butt apartment, she walked through each of her new, mostly empty rooms and noticed that one of the blues she’d picked for her possible bedroom color exactly matched Dillon’s eyes.
And certainly not on her fifth vacation day, when she was done refinishing the hardwoods and took a little time to just sit and stare at their gleam and congratulate herself.
It was the weekend by then, actually, with another week ahead of vacation and not one single thought of Dillon ever crossing her mind. She focused instead on her empty stomach and her empty fridge, and talked herself into heading out for a few grocery-store essentials. She was too tired to go out, too reluctant to leave her butter-gold living room, her sage dining room, her superbly orange office. But she was too hungry to subsist on tea and the last of her oatmeal. And vacation day or not, sore from cleaning or not, her internal alarm would have her up at 7:22 exactly, like always. She needed the fuel to keep checking things off her to-do list, so she forced herself to shop.
It was full dark by the time Serena pulled back onto her street, which maybe accounted for how she got halfway up her neighbor’s drive before realizing she’d made a wrong turn. When her headlights finally caught the paint rollers drying on her carport walls and the pile of colorfully spattered thrift-store sheets she’d used as tarps, it was ridiculously relieving.
She was home.
As she fumbled the lock open and patted the wall for the switch, Serena tried to downgrade her hurricane of emotions to a mere tropical storm of clashing unease and pleasure. The lights played across her freshly refinished floors and vibrant walls. The new furniture would arrive in the morning, but already the spaces were beginning to feel a little less vast and empty. She was wiped out from her hours of painting, and a tad bleary as she located a glass from a box on the kitchen counter. But something about pouring herself a glass of water from the pitcher in her fridge gave her goofy goosebumps. Her very own fridge. Clean and white against the warm cinnamon walls, energy efficient, and like her stomach, no longer empty.
Humming a little, she set to unpacking and rinsing the dishes from the box on her counter. For years she’d dreamed of a kitchen overflowing with spice hues, and as soon as Natalie’d led her into the room she’d visualized the perfect cinnamon color to bring out the sandy tones in the granite and the warmth of the walnut cabinets. It was one more Hakeem the Dream point: the kitchen was perfect for the nutmeg, paprika, and sometimes espresso hued crockery she’d been collecting from yard sales and discount shelves for a couple of years. Finally she had the room to unpack and rediscover them all. She stacked her tangerine Fiesta-ware in the dish drainer alongside a handful of melamine plates with a swirl of burnt orange and asparagus and her big ceramic mustard-seed platter, and stuffed all the packing material back into the box.
She made a circuit of the doors. Her back door, with its growing pile of cardboard to be broken down for recycling. Her patio door, the snug enclosure of her garden already inspiring her next big project. Her front door. All locked up, lights off in the rooms she’d spent so much time picking colors for and painting. Since taking possession, Serena had become an expert spackler and sander, as proficient with using paint tape as if she’d studied it instead of graphic design. So even as she made her way through the dark, empty rooms to the air mattress in her perfectly Maya azul bedroom, she could feel the colors surrounding her, buoying her up, celebrating everything she’d so far put into the house that had become, at last, her very own home.
And if falling asleep felt the tiniest bit lonely, the mental images of the floor plans she’d sketched, the herb pots she would balance for aesthetics and optimal growth, and the gold Marrakech rug she would soon spread across her hardwoods reassured her that this house would end up as her haven from any and all troubles the world chose to throw her way.
Dribble twice. Crouch then spring, releasing the ball. Swish. Catch the free throw, move in for a layup. Shoot. Slide across the chalked half-court. Shoot for three points.
Miss.
Dillon caught up the ball and paced the length of his driveway, breathing fast. He’d been out in the increasingly warm March day for an hour, at first just idly shooting from inside the paint, but pushing himself harder and harder as he got into the zone.
Muscle memory returned to him, and he settled into familiar patterns. The drills his father had set him, back when the backboard was only six feet off the ground and Dillon considerably shorter. For years, practically day in and day out, Dad would send him out to the driveway before dinner to drill and Shannon would grumble because she had to set the table. Never mind that Dillon had to clear the dishes while Shannon escaped back to her books.
Shannon. What a know-it-all.
He missed another three-pointer.
Shannon had called. Justin, the rat, had of course told her everything about the aborted date with Serena, and Shannon had called to commiserate. Treating him like a little boy who needed soothing, playing the grown-up and wise big sister to the hilt, and then starting in with the dramatic sighing. “I just keep hoping you two will find a way to talk, Dill. The things you said about her, I really thought she might be The One, you know? That my baby bro might finally settle down and get his Happily Ever After. I just want you to have that so much.”
The One. As if that was a thing, to start with. Sure, she and Justin had bonded early and fast, and more power to them. But not everyone was destined for Happily Ever After with their sweetheart and their baby and their cat and all. Relationships took work, and couples were flawed—well, excepting Justin and Shannon—and it wasn’t like there was just one person out there who could mind-meld with him and make his life complete. Make him not be alone. Enable him to stop searching for happiness everywhere and just live with it, secure beside him, day in and day out.
Dillon yanked off his t-shirt and used it to wipe his brow, stalking to water bottle he’d left beside his garage door. His life was perfectly fine. Happiness was overrated.
And Shannon wasn’t as much a know-it-all as she liked to think.
Serena’s parents had divorced when she was seven. Okay, fine, it happened. She wasn’t going to let herself be scarred for life by an event twenty-three years earlier. But the thing was, she’d really really liked her bedroom in her mom and dad’s house. It had a window seat with secret storage for her treasures de jour, and wallpa
per with fluffy rabbits on a field of bright green that exactly matched the green on her pink and green plaid comforter. It was a happy room, and some of her earliest memories took place in it.
After the divorce, they sold the house. She’d lived in a lot of places since then—her dad’s four remarriages and her mom’s three ensured that—but it wasn’t until her junior year at UT that she’d found herself in another truly happy room. The apartment she and her three roommates shared was a bit of a dive, but they’d made it their own and it was a cozy, relaxed place for them to share, rarely tainted by conflict or uncertainty.
After living in that dive for a couple of years, they’d graduated and taken various paths, but had all ended up in Houston. And Serena loved seeing them regularly, but for years had never felt adequately able to welcome them into a space of her own. Ten days in her house—days spent considering the furniture and accessories from every angle, optimizing the layout of her kitchen and office, and using her favorite set of markers to cross completed items off the to-do lists she’d spread across the dining table—and Serena was feeling decidedly welcoming. It was with a certain amount of trepidation but a heck of a lot of pride that she opened Hakeem’s door to Rachel, Natalie, and Gillian.
Natalie, of course, was her realtor, so she’d seen the house several times, but not since closing. “Oh, Serena! The colors. Look at your floors, they turned out great. You did such a beautiful job with it all.” She gave Serena a giant hug and a bouquet of wildflowers. “Aren’t you glad I made you get it? Aren’t I the best friend ever?”
Serena laughed and agreed, at least until Rachel pointed out that Natalie had gotten a commission out of the deal, “And I actually paid for a babysitter for tonight. Which makes me the best friend.” Which she was, although Natalie and Gillian weren’t far behind. She took them all on the grand tour, the spring in her step getting springier as the oohs and ahhs piled up. As she stood on the back patio with them, surrounded by her pots of herbs and in sight of the hibiscus bushes she’d settled against each post of the pergola, Serena’s heart hitched just a tad. No more bunny wallpaper, no more student digs where the ants never fully cleared out of the kitchen, but just as much a place where she was surrounded by happy. And she owned it. Well, she almost owned it, but the new feeling of permanence and security was a treasure she didn’t need a window seat storage area to keep handy.
“To home,” Gillian toasted, after they’d seated themselves around the farmhouse table Serena had found, on clearance even, in the furniture warehouse Natalie had pointed her towards. Having one of her best friends as her realtor had been a boon on so many levels.
Except for when that realtor friend got just a little too pushy about her romantic agendas. “And to filling that home with a man,” Natalie said, grinning.
“Hey, now. Unless you’re willing to share your Chris, you have to admit the good ones are all taken,” Serena said, leaning forward to re-center her table runner, which Gill had knocked askew.
“We don’t all want to share Chris,” added Rachel, then at Natalie's questioning look: “Not that Chris isn’t awesome. You know I love Chris. Platonically. Even Hannah loves Chris, and she doesn’t love men very much.” A more suspicious toddler than Rachel's Hannah would be hard to find.
“She loves Sergei the Idiot,” Serena pointed out, before she could remember to bite her tongue.
“Well, Serena, I can hardly stop her from loving her father. Yia Yia Depy bribes her into it.”
“Poor Rachel,” Serena said, and poured her more pinot. She encouraged the latest annoying-ex-mother-in-law tale, both to atone for bringing up Sergei and to divert Natalie's one-track mind.
But it wasn’t long before Natalie was pointing out again that, now that Serena had a place to call her own, she should search for a guy to bring back to it. “Someone who doesn’t turn you into a walking histamine, though, so you can get laid without having to go to the ER after.”
“Funny. Besides, I’ve given up on anything happening with Dillon. I haven’t been thinking about him at all.” Not at all. No remembering his jokes or his stunning blue eyes. Never reliving his hands on her body, his tongue setting trails of fire across her skin. His strong hard thigh wedged against her bucking crotch and his strong hard shaft straining his jeans.
After the briefest of silences, Rachel started laughing, and it wasn’t long before they were all three cracking up. Serena opened her eyes and cleared her throat. “Shut up.”
But a smile settled deep inside her. She looked at her three best friends since college, gathered at her table, celebrating this milestone with her. She had them, and she had Hakeem the Dream Bungalow, and she had her good job. She was perfectly happy, settled, grand. There just wasn’t any reason to complicate all that by adding in a relationship, Natalie's domesticating tendencies be damned.
Chapter Nineteen
Serena took some time to walk each room of her little house before heading out for her first day back at work. The muted morning light gave a subtle glow to her paint colors, and she especially enjoyed the east-facing windows in the living room. Her buttery walls became a little more golden, the grain of the wood floors that much more defined. She itched to grab a sketchpad and play with a new configuration of the sofa and chairs, to give herself a place to sit over her morning cup of tea while admiring the view of her patio and the highlighted walls, but work awaited. Her commute was far from the worst-case scenario she’d hedged against, which meant a truly decent parking space and plenty of time to chair-dance to the radio before she headed in.
It all bolstered her, giving her a cloak of imperturbability as she prepared to face Dillon for the first time in weeks.
“So tomorrow Jorge will get a few more location shots for Houston Green.” Anica wrapped up the team meeting. “Anything else?”
“Is Dillon really turning twenty-one this week? We should take him for lunchtime tequila shots to celebrate,” Eddie said, grinning to beat the band. Of course. Dillon had been foolish to hope that the day could pass unremarked, especially by Eddie. Dillon had never been much for birthdays, but those first few ‘celebrations’ Shannon and Justin had tried to throw for him after his parents had died had been excruciating. He’d entered college frankly relieved to be in the company of people who would only know his birth date if he chose to tell them. He’d just never counted on the perfidy of office birthday parties.
When he didn’t speak up, Anica answered. “Yes, Wednesday is Dillon's birthday. Come by Conference A at three for cake. It’s on the calendar.” She paused and smiled at him. “Not his twenty-first. No shots. Which I know none of you would do during the work day anyway, right, Eddie?”
“Never,” smirked Eddie with a wink that drew probably a third of the laughter he’d hoped for.
Dillon caught himself glancing in Serena’s direction again, and looked away before she could give him one of those looks of hers. They’d not managed to talk since she came back from her house-moving vacation, but she certainly had her eyes on him every time he put his eyes on her. Which was well and good, but Dillon was no longer in the business of non-verbal communication with her. If she had something to say, she would have to flat-out say it, because body language between them had failed. Epically. Cosmically. Supernovas. Black holes. Beyond the final frontier of failure. From now on he would remember to take her actual words as her message to him.
Unfortunately there was nothing to take him out of the office for the rest of the week. That meant four and a half more days of unavoidable meetings, hallway encounters, email exchanges, and, of course, the celebration of his twenty-seven happy years on earth. Silver lining? Young Toby’s sleep schedule meant the sombrero-wearing extravaganza at the Lupe’s Tortillas near Shannon and Justin’s house was postponed indefinitely. Or at least until a more sedate Saturday brunch, but it was better than nothing.
Janice paused on her way out of the conference room. “Hey, Toots, why do you keep tousling those pretty locks of yours? Are you see
ing how far the scruffy look can take the young copywriter of today?”
Dillon assessed her sidelong, but she didn’t seem to be hiding a deeper meaning. So maybe Serena hadn’t told everyone about their farmers market encounter. At least, not Janice. There was still her mysterious Rachel reference to figure out. Not that he was in the business of figuring anything out. He’d asked for an explanation, and been denied one, and he wasn’t Dirk Gently. If Serena wanted him to understand why she did or said anything, she was going to have to do better than dropping clues via coded messages from their friends.
God, he really needed to stop thinking about her.
“Janice, I’ve wondered something. Why do you call everyone ‘Toots’? Male and female, right?”
“Do I look sexist? Why would I give a different honey-pie nickname to people of a different gender? That’s appalling.”
He was surprised by the light laugh she got out of him. “Okay. I’ll give you that. But why a honey-pie nickname at all?” And what on earth was a honey-pie nickname to start with? Something Texan, he supposed.
“Oh, Honey Pie! A gal has got to have a nickname for people. At least, a gal who works half the time with the ever-changing warehouse gang and the other half the time with a whole rolodex worth of vendors and customers. If we still used rolodexes. So I call everyone ‘Toots’ and they know it’s me on the phone. If I’m consistent, they don’t wonder if I just forgot their name or what.”
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