“I’m in the office,” he called back.
Tessa came in at a brisk clip he’d learned to fear.She didn’t meddle in his life often, but when she did, it was usually a doozy.
Today, she had a garment bag slung over one shoulder and a magazine in her other hand.She stopped in the doorway, eyeing the tall pocket doors peeking out of their wall recesses with more interest than any single door warranted.Her gaze turned to his desk.She took in the neat piles of folders, labeled trays, and wide expanse of desktop she could now see the actual wood of.
“Well, would you look at that!”she exclaimed.“There’s been a desk under there this whole time.”
Sunny looked up at her, smiling, and set down a manila folder.
“Sunny Carter, you are a miracle worker, and I’m stealing you the second you’ve got Hank sorted out.”
Tessa dropped into one of the patients’ chairs in front of the desk, crossed her legs, and went straight to the part he could already tell he wasn’t going to care for.“Hank.I need your house.”
“You have a house.”
“I needyourhouse.The rooms, the bones, that staircase.Sunny, have you seen that staircase?”
“I have.It’s magnificent.Best feature of the house.”She added quickly, “At least of the part of it I’ve seen.”A pause.
“What do you need my house for?”he asked.
Here’s the situation.”Tessa slapped the magazine onto the cleared desktop area.
Frowning, Hank read upside down.The wordsMountain Bridewere printed across the top of a glossy wedding dress photo.
Tessa explained, “Charlotte’s patchwork gown, the one she’s sewing for Jenna.I sent a few photographs of it to an editor I went to college with in New York.Mostly I did it to show off.But she called me back in less than an hour.She’d already run the pictures and the story of the dress past her senior editor and the publisher, and her magazine wants to do a feature story on the dress with a photo shoot of Charlotte’s latest designs that aren’t released yet.The feature has been promised placement right up front in the autumn issue and consideration for the cover picture.”
“That’s great news,” Hank said warmly.“Congratulations!“Does Charlotte know?”
“Charlotte cried, then obsessively remeasured a gown she’d already measured.”
Hank stared at Tessa, confused.While he was truly pleased for her, he did wonder why she’d barged into his office during working hours to announce it to him.
Tessa tapped the magazine with her index finger.“There’s a catch.We can’t photograph a gown like this against some a sheetrock wall.The magazine wants a local house in Cobbler Cove for the backdrop.A grand old house.Full of light and history and—to use their word—patina.”
Across the desk, Sunny looked up abruptly.
Tessa finished, “And there is exactly one grand old house in Cobbler Cove that can pull off this shoot.”She looked at Hank triumphantly, like a poker player laying down a winning hand.
He stared at her in dismay as comprehension of what she was saying dawned.“No,” he said pleasantly.
“Hank,” she said, in the tone of a woman who had not yet begun to fight.
“It’s a half-wrecked house, Tessa.The porch floor is going to start swallowing children any minute.The dining room hasn’t had anyone set foot in it for I don’t know how long.You’d be shooting a thousand-dollar gown in front of a water stain shaped like Idaho.”
“Sweet Hank.Charlotte’s couture gowns start at around ten thousand dollars.As for the gown made from all the WoWS widows’ dresses?It’s priceless.”
Hank said warningly, “I’m not kidding about the water stain looking like Idaho.It’s about the same size as Idaho, too.”
Tessa shrugged.“So we fix the water stain.”
“We?”Hank raised a skeptical eyebrow at Tessa.He caught Sunny sitting back with interest, waiting to see how her friend dealt with his over-my-dead-body brow.
Tessa declared, “You do know that your bookkeeper also has a college degree in historic interior design from a very prestigious program, I might add.”
“What?”he responded blankly, looking back and forth between Sunny and Tessa.
“That might not have come up in my job interview,” Sunny confessed, adding with a wince, “It’s actually a degree in the history of interior design.That allowed me to restore, renovate, and furnish historically landmarked properties.”
