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His eyes narrowed like he suspected foul play.
She smiled, doing her best to project innocence.
“I’ll get to work on finding a webmaster, securing a home page, and”—words…website-related words…think, think—“um, figuring out the best metadata for your charity.”
“No need to oversell it.” He snatched the folder.
“And, Eli?”
He let out a sigh like he knew what was coming, stopping short of his office and rocking on his heels while he studied the ceiling.
“Next weekend. Are you in?”
“Sure.” He didn’t know it, but he was doing her a huge solid. “I’d hate to subject you to Zach.”
She beamed. Eli raised one eyebrow.
“Do you have a tux,” she asked, “or do I need to arrange a fitting?”
He turned, rolling the file in both hands like it was a tube. She tried not to fixate on the way he was curling the edges of the perfectly flat papers within.
“Both,” he answered. “I have a tux, and I need a fitting.” He watched her when he said, “Clothes don’t fit now that I’m a different man.”
She turned over the phrase a different man for longer than she should, wondering what, other than the obvious, had changed him. And whether he was trying to become who he used to be or create someone new altogether.
***
“It better not be a wedding,” Eli told the white-haired man currently measuring his inseam.
Isa had arranged for the tailor to come to him, which Eli appreciated, since that meant he didn’t have to go downtown and deal with people and traffic.
She wasn’t there to oversee the process either, which he also appreciated.
“Or a charity event,” he added. He didn’t need recognition for helping others. It was enough just to do it.
The tailor continued working quietly and Eli gave up on voicing his litany of wishes. Whatever “fancy function” Isa had invited him to didn’t matter. He’d be trussed and pressed and present much like he’d been at a number of formal events his father had dragged him and his brothers to over the years.
“I’ll have it to you by Thursday afternoon,” the tailor told him. “Be careful not to remove the pins when you take it off.”
Eli went to his bedroom and carefully removed the suit, changed into his jeans and T-shirt, and returned the chalked and pinned tuxedo to the older man.
“It’s a lost art, tailoring,” Eli said.
Suit in his grasp, the tailor’s brow pinched and once again, he didn’t reply.
This was why Eli didn’t start conversations. Small talk had never been his forte. That gene had skipped over Reese and Eli and been given in triple measures to Tag.
“Good day, Mr. Crane.”
Eli opened the elevator and ushered out his guest, then walked to the window and examined the street below. This was his favorite part of Chicago. An area where tall new-build skyscrapers shined like mirrors next to rustic, hundred-year-old churches. The warehouse had been an abandoned machine shop when he found it and he’d had it completely overhauled to live in. He’d left the downstairs empty, figuring he’d install huge garage doors and park his fleet of expensive automobiles in it. Thing was, he never did buy a “fleet” of anything.
He’d reported for duty in the Marines repeatedly over the last ten or so years, and material possessions took a backseat to the real world. In between being gone, he used his time home to chill, check in with his family, and hook up with girlfriends, old or new. It had only taken a few days to slip back into his prestationed self.
This bout of recouping was taking a lot more doing.
When he’d returned home last year, he’d planned on holing up at home and not going anywhere. At least, that’d been the case until recently.
He didn’t know why things had changed. Autumn was edging closer, which meant colder nights and crisp days. Soon it’d be icy and snowy, the wind blowing off the lake and frosting the entire town.
