AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“She is?”
I chime in, “I am?”
Buck isn’t answering questions at the moment. “You guys get back to work. We’ve got new landscaping materials coming in, and there’s a water problem in the basement that you still haven’t called the guy about.”
“The paint’s not cured, dude. What’s she even gonna work on?” Harley asks.
“She can work around that. Some of the rooms are ready, aren’t they?”
Harley and Wade give us worried looks, then march off looking more than mildly disgruntled.
Recovering from the whiplash of this announcement, I take his hand and let him lead me behind the main staircase to the only room I haven’t measured yet. He pushes open a door and inside I find a massive office with walls of empty bookshelves. In the middle is a gorgeous, early 20th-century oak desk with acres of space to work on. On it sits a laptop that I happen to know was just released.
“Nice office,” I say.
“It’s yours.”
“What?” I spin around to face Buck, expecting him to be joking. But his face tells me he’s not messing around. “I shouldn’t have sprung that on you. But if you don’t mind, I’d love for this to be an exclusive contract. I don’t want you working with anyone else.”
There’s a possession in his voice that pushes way beyond the boundaries of professionalism. But we left professional in the dust about ten miles back.
“Of course I can be exclusive. I’m not seeing anyone else. Professionally or personally.”
“Good. That’s settled then.”
I watch him walk to the other side of the desk and pull out the most expensive office chair on the market. “Try it out.”
The space is so beautiful that I clutch my coffee and don’t dare take a sip for fear of spilling it on something. I sit down, and the chair feels like a hug. Yes, a butt hug.
“Where did you get this desk from? It’s gorgeous,” I ask, and Buck tells me it came from one of the antique stores in town.
The desk fits perfectly with the era of the house, which gives me a jumping off point. If I can source furniture here locally as much as possible, that would be ideal. The woman who owns the antique mall is the mom of an old high school friend. A well-known junker has a massive warehouse on the outskirts of town. I bet he can help me out.
I run my hand over the mousepad on the laptop, and the screen flickers to life. “Now I just need a password to log in to your computer.”
“Just type in your name in the login, and we’ll set up the password later.”
I do as he says, and when the login screen disappears, it boots up like a new computer. “I don’t understand.”
“I told you, it’s yours,” Buck says.
I swivel toward him. “Buck, tell me you did not buy me a computer.”
“I didn’t buy you a new computer.”
My shoulders sag in relief. “But I totally did,” he amends.
The whiplash with this man, I swear!
“Buck! It’s too much.”
“Wait until you see your new car.”
“Buck! That’s not funny!”
“Too much?”
Oh no, he’s dead serious. I know dry humor and he’s not messing with me. “You can’t buy me a car.”
