Chapter Fifty Rae
CHAPTER FIFTY
Rae
SO. HERE WE ARE, just me and my two very drunk sisters, toting our still-damp masterpieces as we climb into Grant’s gigantic truck. I feel like a teen who stayed out past curfew.
“Look!” Otty shoves her painting into Grant’s face.
“Nice. Very… classic.” He throws me a look that I feel right where that vibrator sat for half the night.
“Not as good as Rae.”
“Rae’s is amazing!”
“The teacher gave it a name!” Hannah says. “Juxta—”
“Juxtaposition!” Otty yells. She clearly drank a lot more wine than I did.
“May I?” Grant tries to get a look at the painting, which, in my mind, shall forever be known as Orgasm #2.
Since he’ll see it eventually, I turn it around.
“Nice.”
“You should see her book nooks!”
“Otty, please,” I beg.
“Book nooks?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
“All right. Let’s get you all home.”
We climb in.
“Why is it you have a truck like this if you’re a corporate consultant?” asks Hannah with the narrow-eyed intensity of a prosecutor at a murder trial. Even drunk, Hannah’s as sharp as a tack.
“I do construction. On the side.”
“You build things?”
“Renovate.”
“You should stop by my place sometime. All the half-fixed crap could use an intervention.” His only reply is a smile, and she goes on. “So, that’s your hobby?”
He shrugs, slides me a secretive look, and says, “One of them.”
Otty snuffles and lolls against the back window, fast asleep.
“Huh.” Hannah leans forward. “Like what do you renovate?”
“The building we work in,” I tell her.
“Really? What else?”
“I’ve also got a property in the Fan.”
“You’re flipping it?”
“I live there.” He sucks in a slow breath. “For now.”
Shock pricks me in little waves as I realize how little I know about this man. “Are you moving?”
He doesn’t turn, doesn’t look my way. “That’s the plan.”
I nod. Right. There’s a deadline for what we’re doing.
“I have another building downtown. I’ll start renovating it as soon as…” He casts me a quick glance. “As soon as I’m done with my current contract.” Another deadline. So many deadlines.
“Cool.”
“Yep.”
“What’ll that one be?”
“Mixed use. Condos. Shops.”
“But you still own the Carytown building. Where you work.” And do other things. If only she knew what he and I get up to in the basement.
“I do.”
“Not flipping it, then?”
He sniffs. “Not for the moment.”
Hannah sits back. I know her well enough to realize there’s at least one what are your intentions with my sister? question hovering on the horizon, and I cannot take that right now.
Maybe I don’t want to know. I mean, what are my intentions, even?
A few days ago, I’d have wanted him gone and said good riddance.
But now? I like Grant. Only like isn’t the right word.
I turn and look at his profile, and all the things that come up are way stronger than like.
I like Dorothy. I like Harlow. What I’m feeling for this man is nowhere near that.
“Stop the questions, Hannah.”
She snorts.
“Hey!” Otty mumbles. “We passed my place!”
“You can stay at mine.”
“Ew. In a kid’s bed? No, thanks, Hannah.” Otty’s up and fully awake. “Take me home, please, Angry Hot Man.”
“I’m not angry.”
“His name’s Grant.”
“Grangry,” Hannah whispers.
Otty leans forward to stare at his profile. “He’s so serious.”
There’s a pause while we all appear to consider that.
“He mostly is,” I concede.
Grant glances over at me and then back to the road, the subtlest smile in his eyes.
He puts a hand out and covers mine, which feels, oddly, more intimate than anything else we’ve done.
Uh-oh.
I don’t look down at it or acknowledge the overture, other than turning my hand and clasping his back.
The rough, comforting hand, the warm truck, my sisters safe in the back seat.
This, probably, is when I really start to fall for him.