He stopped when he noticed I was smirking at him.
“Tell me, Graham Forrester,” I said. “What exactly were you expecting my house to look like? Yours?”
His face turned red. “Maybe. My apologies.”
“You should be.” I grinned. “Though I did bring in a decorator once and she wanted to do exactly what Nadia did to your house. I didn’t call her back.”
“It’s really lovely and warm.”
“Well,” I said, kneeling to give Brontë some ear scratches. “I have to admit that for the most part it came to me like this. My dad had fantastic style. It was our haven in the city when I was a kid. He left it to me when he died.”
“But you were so young.”
“Yeah. It sat empty for years. When I was scouted and realized it wasn’t a fluke and I was actually going to do this thing, I moved to New York and opened the house back up. As soon as I had some real money coming in, I did a little remodeling and bought some furniture. It was a labor of love at a time when I felt pretty lonely.”
“I’ll bet it was cathartic too. Breathing life back into a place you had lived with someone you loved.”
“It was.” I stood and headed for the kitchen, patting my leg for Brontë to follow. “Come on girl, I have a yard for you to christen.”
We stood on the patio and watched the old girl wander and sniff half-heartedly at the new surroundings, and then we went back inside, leaving the door open in case she wanted to rejoin us.
Graham went directly to the bookshelves and pointed.
“May I?” he asked.
“Have at it,” I said. “Can I get you a glass of water or something? Juice?”
“I recall you mentioning something about homemade cookies last night… Tell me the truth. Are they really store-bought?”
My jaw dropped in faux outrage.
“I feel like you think I only know how to pose and smile.”
“I know you can also do a sexy sort of death glare thing too.”
I gave him the glare.
“I don’t know if I should be turned on or scared.”
“Shit, I must be doing it wrong again.”
He laughed, asked for a glass of water and a cookie, and then laughed harder when I flipped my hair over my shoulder and did my famous runway walk in my baggy sweats all the way to the living room.
He was perusing my selection of books, pulling out classics, current titles, books in Italian and French, atlases, and a vintage guide for being a proper hostess. He ran a finger over a hand-sized globe, a small vase with a dried bouquet, a framed picture of me and Addie, and a miniature metal Space Needle statue, before moving on to the shelf dedicated to books on writing, and above it… his books, beside which sat the framed poem he’d written for me after he’d cleaned my shoe.
He pulled one of the copies of his books from the shelf and flipped it open. It was signed to “Elle”.
“Uh oh,” I said. “You’ve found out my secret.”
“That you know how to be a proper hostess?” He pointed to the vintage book he’d noticed a minute ago.
I raised the plate of cookies in my hand. “I mean, that’s a no-brainer. But no. I meant my secret about being a fangirl.”
“You’re a fangirl? Of me?”
“I am. Well, I was. Until?—”
“The Meet-Poop,” we both said and then laughed.
