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She gestures around her balcony. “You can work here at my place.”
Now I get it. “If I fill out your forms.”
She shrugs a slim shoulder. “It’s a few forms and maybe an interview or two. Nothing more. It wouldn’t be inconvenient. You would be here, after all. All I would need is a few moments of your day.”
It would be so much more because I didn’t buy the whole “I’m just doing this for fun” thing. “I don’t…”
“I, of course, would provide lunch, and if you happen to work late, well, I have to eat dinner, too.”
She is the devil tempting me with food I don’t have to eat from a paper wrapper. And having a beautiful place to work where we won’t be cramped and Darnell won’t get so mad he eventually writes me into one of his books as the bad guy.
It solves so many problems. Any place I can actually afford will likely have crappy Wi-Fi I will have to pay through the nose for, and then there’s the problem of the commute because I was serious about Jersey. Lydia’s place is so much closer.
She leans forward. “I’ve got several rooms no one uses. You can take the furniture out and turn them into offices. Or you can use my office. It’s already got a desk. I don’t need it these days. You can use the formal dining room as a conference room when you need it. All the bathrooms are clean, and you don’t have to worry about rent. You can come and go as you please.”
It is far too good to be true. “All for me filling out a couple of forms?”
“All because I want to see my grandson more often, and this is a way to do it. Ivy, dear, I don’t know how much time I have left. That is the lesson I learned from cancer. None of us knows, and I don’t want to waste the time I have. I want to spend it looking after my grandson and his…friends. I’m lonely. You would be doing me a big favor,” she says quietly.
“We accept.”
I close my eyes in utter relief because it was Heath who said the words. I turn and he’s standing there in the doorway.
Lydia uses her cane to stand and holds her arms out. “I’m so glad.”
She hugs him and I now know where he learned to hug with his whole being. It’s lovely to see people who care about each other so much.
And nice to know I’m off the hook.
Heath steps back, an arm around his grandmother. “But Ivy still has to fill out the forms.”
He’s got a shit-eating grin on his face.
Yep, back on the hook.
Chapter Twelve
“I’m sorry. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you now own forty percent of Heath’s company.” Harper stares at me over the table.
We’re sitting in a restaurant in Grand Central known for its oysters, but it looks like I’m the one who’s about to get shucked.
It’s been a full week since we decided to move our business into Lydia Marino’s upscale apartment. Heath and I have spent pretty much every waking hour together looking through résumés and doing interviews. Come Monday morning we will have two brand spanking new contractors to work with, and I happen to know Lydia was planning fabulous lunches most days of the week.
For the first time in a long time I’m excited to go to work. I realize now how much I’d dreaded the last year at Jensen Med. It had been a slog, and this feels fresh and new, and god I hope it’s not because I’m falling for Heath Marino.
I take a sip of the Chardonnay the menu assured me paired well with the salty richness of the oysters we’re sharing. I wasn’t sure why everyone was so surprised that as a partner I would own part of the project. “Well, right now that forty percent is worth negative fifty thousand dollars.”
This particular conversation had been initiated by Harper. She’d asked how the work with Heath was going. She apparently hadn’t realized how entwined we’ve become businesswise, though I talk about him a lot. It’s been a busy week, and we’d skipped our normal Tuesday brunch plans. This dinner is our first real catch-up session.
“What?” Harper looks horrified.
Anika sits back as though resigned that this dinner is not going the way she hoped it would. “Harper, you know how this works. You often put your own money into a project.”
“But she’s not putting her money in the project. She’s putting CeCe’s money in the project.” Harper is wearing a chic black dress that shows off how toned her arms are. We’re supposed to go to a party thrown by one of her clients after we finish dinner, so we’re all dressed to impress. I was sure it would be a fabulous affair since it was being held in an Upper West Side penthouse Harper had been renovating for the last six months.
