“How come you didn’t suspect your ex was gay?”
“Good question.” She frowns, her gaze moving over the in-need-of-TLC timber floors beneath our feet. “I guess I didn’t want to see it. He was a means to an end for me. Get married, Grandfather hands over control of the company to me and Edward.”
“Why doesn’t he hand it over now? You work there, right?”
“Yes.”
“Always?”
“Yes, right out of uni with my newly printed degree in finance.” Her frown deepens. “Is it bad that the CFO hates math?”
A burst of laughter flies out my mouth before I can choke it down. “You don’t like math?”
Now she’s scowling at the floor. “No. I’m good at it. Not that being good with numbers makes me like them.”
She seems more upset by that revelation than she was when she told me about her groom getting his dick sucked by the best man. Time to let some of that emotion out.
“Let me show you the formal dining and living spaces I want to open up by knocking down the wall between them.”
“Is that what you meant when you said I could break something?”
“Yes.” Putting a hand on her lower back, I urge her deeper into the house. I’ve got everything ready to go to remove the wall. “How’re your arm muscles?”
If she’s up for it, I’ll let her swing a sledgehammer all night or until the last piece of drywall and stud are down. Whichever comes first.
5
ELIZABETH
“Do it.” Devon’s words are encouraging.
They’re also intimidating.
Who am I to swing a hammer at a wall?
I sit at a desk. I’ve done it my whole life. In school, then at the office. The most strenuous activity I do is yoga.
“C’mon, you can do it.”
Beneath his protective goggles his smile is big, and the old shirt and jeans he changed into while finding me some clothes to wear have me seeing him in a different way.
Why have I never noticed how good looking he is?
Obviously, the blinders I’ve worn most of my life have limited my observation skills. I stare at him so long he walks over to me and puts a hand over mine on the sledgehammer, the other on my lower back.
“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I thought it might feel good to smash something, but you really don’t have to.”
“No. I want to.” My gaze moves to the wall in front of us. “I just don’t know if I’m capable.”
“You are. You can do anything you want. All you have to do is try.”
“Just lift and swing?” I ask, my gaze still on the wall.
“You play tennis, right?”
The reminder of the sport played at the club Grandfather insisted I be a member of has my insides tightening. I hate everything about that place. More so when I think about how often Peter wanted to go there when we started seeing each other. “I have. But it falls in the same category as math.”
“You’re good at it but don’t like it.”
