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“You don’t have a choice. Come here.”
“I’m napping.”
“Sure you are.”
I settled deeper into the couch, punching my fist into the throw pillow under my head and closing my eyes resolutely. The sound of her chair scraping back along the wood floor was my warning, but I ignored it. Charlotte tugged the blanket off me and pulled at the pillow.
Because I had a tightfisted grip on it, she wasn’t able to get it fully clear of me. But she yanked hard enough that I almost rolled off the couch onto the floor.
I sat up, glaring at her retreating back. Her hair was down today, and I knew it was driving her crazy, because she kept tugging it over her shoulder while she worked at her laptop.
“I want my hair ties back,” she called over her shoulder.
“I’ll return them if you stop hijacking the TV every night.” I stood up, folding the blanket she’d tossed onto the floor and settling it over theback of the couch. “If I watch one more second ofAntiques Roadshow, I’m tossing that TV into the water.”
She snorted. “You were just as into it as I was last night.”
My neck felt hot. “No, I wasn’t.”
Charlotte tapped her chin. “Someone in this room dropped a very impassioned ‘What the fuck?’ when the appraisers said how much that Alexander Calder mobile was worth, and it wasn’t me.”
“It looked like a broken hanger. You can’t tell me you thought it was worth millions.”
She laughed. “You won’t hear an argument from me. Modern art is not my thing.”
On the table were the updated plans from the architect. We’d spent days working on the new layout, on virtual meetings with her while she marked up her screen and we talked through the options, trying to finalize the construction plans before William arrived. We’d looked at them until my eyes started crossing. We’d measured and measured and measured again.
Spent hours marking out the space with chalk to make sure we had the functionality right.
Talked through where things would go and why until I was ready to scream into my pillow every night if she asked me one more thing.
“One last pass.” She patted the seat next to her.
“I can’t do it, Charlotte.” I opened the fridge and grabbed one of my beers. I held it up, and she nodded. “If you make me talk through cabinet layouts one more time, we’re keeping the kitchen in the small room. I’ll take it all back.”
She smiled. “No, you won’t.”
I sat down at the table and handed over one of the bottles I’d just retrieved from the fridge. Our fingers brushed when I gave it to her. “I know,” I conceded with a sigh. When she took a long, appreciative pull from the beer, I dug into my front pocket and tossed her a hair tie.
Her eyes were warm and happy when she plucked it off the table and fashioned a complicated knot with nothing more than a twist of her hand. When all that hair was off her neck and shoulders, she sighed. “Better, thank you.”
I kept my eyes on the far wall as I nursed my beer.
She clicked through a couple of tabs on her laptop and then angled the screen so I could see it. “Just verify this is final, and we can go downtown.”
I cut her a look. “We?”
Charlotte batted her eyelashes. “Remember what I said about schmoozing with local politicians?”
“No way.”
“Oh, come on! The city supervisor is a Michigan alum. I’m not saying you’re, like, bribing her or anything. Just ... smile and be friendly. Talk to her.”
My eyebrows rose slowly. “Be friendly?”
“I understand how difficult this will be for you,” she said patiently. “But I think she’ll be more amenable if you’re there with me. We only have a couple of days until William gets here; he’s already been very flexible, considering our last-minute change.”
I grunted.
