Chapter 3
Vanessa led Alyssa out into the driveway. Alyssa was thrilled that Vanessa was trying to get her a new client. She needed it—and word of mouth was the way to get business. But the brown-haired guy with the jawline—Jesus, you could slice apples with that thing—wasn’t just not interested; he was standoffish. Maybe that’s what happened when a guy with a cane tripped on your box. Still, she’d handed him a card with a smile and a plucky attitude. You had to keep up appearances, no matter how you felt.
She’d worn pretty black sandals and hadn’t realized until she was in the Nilssons’ house that one of them had started squeaking. It didn’t used to squeak. How could that happen? She didn’t have a replacement pair and couldn’t afford one. For now, she’d discovered that if she curled her toes under, the squeaking stopped, and so she’d stomped around this gorgeous house with her left toes curled, and good grief, could she feel more awkward?
Well, yes. Because then there was that big guy with all the muscles who had no interest in a consultation. He wasn’t as handsome as he thought he was.
Okay, he might be. And my god, his torso. “I’m a minimalist.” He certainly wasn’t when it came to muscles. His apartment probably had one free-form vase holding a stem of freesia on top of his expensive Scandinavian dresser. Where he kept all the T-shirts that would hug those abs. Which she wasn’t thinking about. Why would she think about him? He hadn’t even known about the chicken.
He’d have a white sofa. Maybe that’s why he was so smug—he was a hockey player in his twenties living with a white sofa and hadn’t stained it yet. There’d be an abstract print over it that someone else had chosen and told him it looked sophisticated. They’d have bought it to go with the sofa, and he wouldn’t know the artist’s name—or even realized a person had made that art. The closest he ever came to paint was landing in a box of it.
“I love it,” Vanessa said, giving herself a hug for a moment. Alyssa turned her attention back to her friend. “You carried over the turquoise accents from the kitchen, but it’s such a different space, and I just love it! You’re a genius.”
Alyssa flushed. “It was so much fun to do! Thank you for letting me play—with your credit card!”
“When we need to do a nursery, I’ll be giving you a call.” Alyssa’s eyes widened. “No, no!” Vanessa laughed. “But soon, maybe.” She looked back over her shoulder at the house. “It’s just so big. I don’t think we needed that much house, but it’s really, really fun.” They laughed. “Thank you for making it a calm place instead of an ‘oh my gosh what is this room for?’ place.”
“Oh, it was my pleasure.” Alyssa beamed. “I’m going to miss doing rooms for you. You and Devin get to work so I can design that nursery.”
Vanessa laughed. “I wonder what he’d say if I kicked the guys out and dragged him upstairs.”
“I don’t imagine he’d complain.”
“We’ll work on Nick and see if we can’t persuade him to get a designer—and help keep Cruella off your back.”
“Yeah, but he did not seem interested. Maybe because he tripped on some of my stuff.” She patted the trunk of her car to indicate it was all loaded. “Or he was embarrassed about not knowing about the baked potatoes.”
“That definitely wasn’t it,” Vanessa said. She hesitated. “He’s got a lot going on. You know which one he is, right?”
“The brown-haired guy with blue eyes and bulging muscles? Didn’t notice. Hey, is he single?”
Vanessa’s eyebrows shot up. “Very. Want me to—”
Alyssa flushed. “No! I meant if he’s married I could talk to his wife. She’d probably be the one making decisions anyway.”
“When I asked if you knew who he is, I meant the accident.” Alyssa looked at her blankly. “The airplane carrying the Boston hockey players that went down in January, and there was only one survivor? He’s the survivor.”
Alyssa’s eyes grew huge. “He’s that guy? Oh my god. I thought he was all crunched up.”
Vanessa shrugged. “He was. He’s in Detroit now and ready to hit the ice again.”
“Wow. Wow.” Alyssa thought for a moment. “It wasn’t the whole team, right?”
“No, it was six guys going to a location where one of them wanted to propose. He had some elaborate thing planned. But they never got there.”
“Was Nick the guy proposing?”
Vanessa blinked at her. “Um, no. It was Dragan Novak. His girlfriend went back to Croatia. God, it’s so sad.”
“Nick’s the guy who survived that crash,” Alyssa said to herself, turning this information in her mind. It didn’t match her impression of the man. Well, of his apartment with its white sofa and expensive Scandinavian dresser and the faux-sophisticated painting in the living room. Maybe she should give him a break about his minimalism.
“Hey, I wanted to ask you something,” Vanessa said. “And no pressure. But my church has a homeless shelter for women and kids.”
“That’s great.”
“Yeah. It’s in some old Sunday School rooms that we don’t need anymore because there are so few young people. We thought we’d get some good out of them, you know?”
Alyssa nodded.
“It’s going well enough that we’re making it permanent, and we want to spruce up the area. More than just fresh paint, but we don’t know what exactly.” She squinched her mouth to the side, an apology for what was about to come.
Alyssa decided to make it easier for her. “And you want a pro bono consultation?”
“No! I would pay you for the consultation. But the volunteers want to do as much of the work as they can themselves, so we probably wouldn’t have you do much of the implementation. So jack up that consult fee!”
Alyssa laughed.
“Could you give us some direction, though? We want to create a bright, welcoming space, and right now it has a bad case of the dingies.”
“I’d be happy to. Which church is it?”
“Trinity. It’s next to that small park off of—”
“Does it have a food pantry?” Alyssa asked, gripping her bad sandal with her toes. “An outside thing?”
“Yes!” Vanessa said. “A cute white cupboard with glass doors, like a little free library, only bigger and with nonperishable food. You know it, then?”
“No,” Alyssa said, flushing, and then realized how stupid that sounded. “I mean, I’ve driven by, but I’m not familiar … I don’t know the area really. It’s a big city.”
“Sure,” Vanessa said, looking puzzled. “Um, can we schedule some time for you to swing by and take a look?”
She could not. It would be matter touching antimatter. The world would explode. She could not explain this either—not to the wife of the Red Wheels’ captain outside their mansion. “Oh shoot, you know what? I can’t. Stacey doesn’t let us do jobs like that. I’m so sorry! I would have loved to, but you know how she is.”
“Sure,” Vanessa said, squinting slightly. “What kind of jobs exactly?”
“I’m so sorry! It’s a stupid rule. I can’t afford to alienate the agency head, though.”
“No, of course not. But I mean, I would pay.”
“I know! Such a dumb rule.” Alyssa threw her hands out in a “what can you do?” gesture, trying not to think about the disappointment in Vanessa’s voice. She quickly thanked her again for her business and then walked around to her car door. With Vanessa standing right there, she couldn’t curl her toes under. Vanessa would have noticed a thing like that. So she just had to let her sandal squeak.