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“I think I’m following,” I said. “So you want to really just go by tiers in every sense of the word, right?”
“Sure,” she said. “But I don’t want to bring in this same kind of luxury. I want there to be a different feel to the entire lobby. I can’t really get into all the little details of the place since this is a business transaction I’m dealing with, but I don’t want to mimic what we have here, nor do I want to ignore it, either. It’s kind of hard to explain, so I really hope you get what I’m trying to say.”
“I think so,” I said. “I’m doing my best to follow what you have here, and for the most part, I think I’ve got what you’re saying. I just don’t know that I would be able to pull it off with the same kind of enthusiasm you have. When you talk about how you want to bring in a lifestyle, you lose me.”
“That’s fine,” she said with a laugh. “If you have nothing else to do, you can come with me and get a taste for what I’m talking about. I don’t know how much I’m explaining as well as I want. When I get it in my head how I want to do things, I really just kind of run with that. It’s a lot easier for me to envision it in my head than it is for me to explain it to the team. Or, in this case, you.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said with a sarcastic tone. “Way to make me feel like a real idiot.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said, her tone concerned. “I just meant I get a little bit too excited sometimes with how I explain things, and I’m not always spot on with how I see them in my head.”
“I’m just teasing you,” I told her. “I would love to come along.”
We ordered an Uber to get us around, and I quickly learned from the look on her face along with the amused shaking of her head that I had very little taste when it came to the kind of style she was trying to convey. Every furniture store we entered, she would shake her head over the couch I would choose, and there were times when she outright laughed at me for what I was trying to convince her was the right piece for the new location.
“I’m pretty sure you’ve turned down every piece of furniture in this store,” I said after we went through the third furniture store in the area. “You have to come to the conclusion at some point that you’re either going to have to pick one of these things, or you’re going to have to be the person who creates all the furniture yourself.”
“If I had the time and the space, I would probably do that. But this isn’t to that point yet,” she said with a grin. “There are at least fifteen other places you and I haven’t looked at yet, and I think you’ll be surprised where I find the best piece. It always happens in the places I’m not expecting.”
“I can see that,” I told her. “I would expect you to have found at least one thing you like in all this. I mean, we’ve gone through almost all of the pieces that are on the floor.”
“That’s fine,” she said with a brush of her hand. “But I’m telling you. I’ll know the piece when I see it. I’m not going to settle on something unless I know that it’s the very right piece.”
“Fair enough.” I shrugged. I still didn’t understand just what she was looking for, but I knew better than to argue with her. If she had something in mind, then I was happy to tag along with her and find out what it was.
But, I was intrigued.
Then, she surprised me again.
“You coming?” she asked. “I told you this is going to take up most of the day, but if you want to come along, that’s fine with me.”
I grinned. I hadn’t expected her to ask me to come along with her when we had already looked through the locations that were close to the hotel. But she was right. I had nothing better to do, and this could very well take all day. If she was happy to have me, then I was happy to come along.
“Let’s go,” I said with a grin. “Show me your magic.”
“It’s only just begun.” She smiled.
And we were off once again.
TEN
Laurel
In all honesty,I hadn’t planned on taking Greyson with me to shop for the furniture. I was pretty sure it was the kind of thing I would be able to do on my own and having someone else along was just going to make it harder for me to think clearly about what I wanted to bring to life.
That was the entire reason why I hadn’t taken him up on his offer the night before when he asked me if I wanted to have someone come along to help with the shopping.
But, seeing him in the furniture store and hearing his perspective made me see him in a whole different light, and that really made me want to spend more time with him.
It wasn’t the way he had an eye for furniture. I had to shake my head and laugh at him more than once with the things he picked out on that front. But, the comments he made to me and the way he could get me to laugh really kept me in a good space when it came to dealing with the stressful side of the job.
I didn’t want to continue on alone. I knew I had a lot more to look at before I made any final decisions, but it wasn’t going to be nearly as fun to go do that when he went back to the hotel. If he had nothing better to do, I wanted him to come along with me and give me his opinion on what we were looking at and what he thought about the pieces I saw.
He seemed rather surprised with me when I asked him to join me, but I was happy that he agreed to come along with me despite his surprise.
We went through the same ordeal in the next four stores. But, lunch was a fun break from the chaos that came with the shopping experience.
“You know,” he said as he bit into his burger at the sports bar we’d gone to for lunch, “I really didn’t know that there was this much work that went into interior design. It was always the kind of job that I romanticized in my mind, but I guess I didn’t realize just how much pain and suffering went on behind the scenes.”
