Chapter 4
The next Tuesday Alyssa was in her small office, flipping through some upholstery samples, when the door to the agency chimed. Stacey’s Interiors was a small modern building with a parking lot in front and a sign, with an intertwined “S” and “I,” that was impossible to read. There was no receptionist—whoever was in took phone calls, and when a client was expected, their designer met them at the door. But when it was a drop-by, Alyssa was supposed to leave her back-corner office and make it to the lobby in a timely fashion. She’d always wanted a corner office—she’d just never thought it would have one narrow window that overlooked the trash receptacle.
She walked to the lobby, passing a consultation room, where one of the senior designers was talking with a couple of men in their fifties, and then going past Stacey Herself’s office. Stacey was positioned so she could overhear anything in the lobby or consultation rooms if she wanted to. She had asked Alyssa her plan for the very first interior she had done here, and then had poked her head into the consultation room when Alyssa was there with her clients. She’d smiled, glanced at the design Alyssa was showing them, and suggested that she add an interior balcony. Which the clients loved—and was a thing Alyssa had told Stacey she was going to suggest. Stacey was not exactly liked in the design world, but she was respected, and this job was Alyssa’s chance to make connections and build a client base so that someday she could open her own place.
When Alyssa had been in middle school, she would shut her eyes at night and imagine her someday house. She had five of them in different styles, from Victorian gingerbread to ultramodern concrete. She would choose one house to think about each night and would mentally walk through the rooms, adding furniture or changing what she’d done the last time. In her white clapboard farmhouse, she’d set pewter salt and pepper shakers on the shelf of a Hoosier cabinet in the kitchen. She’d open the glass-fronted bookcases in the columns of a craftsman bungalow and imagine the click of the hardware. She could walk through every room of her five secret houses, trail a finger over soft handmade quilts and clink a nail on the crystal in her pantry.
But then, when she’d open her eyes, she could still see stars out the car window.
Thiswas how she was getting her own home: by designing them for other people. Someday she would have a key to her own house, despite Stacey. Until then, she’d be gritting her teeth a lot.
Alyssa hurried to the lobby, her skirt swishing as she walked. When she came around the corner, she was surprised to find Nick Sorensen, of all people, standing just inside the front door and looking deeply unhappy. He smiled when he saw her.
“Hi,” they said at the same time.
“Um, I don’t know if you remember me,” he said. “I was at Devin and Vanessa’s last week.”
“Of course I do! Nick Sorensen, right?”
“Yeah. Um, I guess I need to have my apartment fixed up.” Need to? That was a strange way to put it. “Is that something you can do?” He flushed. “I mean, I know it’s something you can do. Um, do you have time?”
He was nervous. Why did that seem charming?
“Sure! Why don’t you come with me to a consultation room and tell me about your space, and then …”
Stacey came around the corner. She was wearing a navy suit and heavy makeup. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Alyssa had always assumed that was because of the Botox, but a designer who’d worked there longer said it wouldn’t have anyway. “What have we here?” Stacey said, looking Nick up and down. He was wearing casual pants and a cream waffle-weave Henley shirt, with the sleeves shoved up. It was getting a little cooler, day by day. Alyssa was pushing the season with her drapey skirt and cream blouse, but her fall wardrobe needed sprucing up, and she hadn’t gotten to it yet.
Nick didn’t shift under her gaze. “Just hiring Alyssa here,” he said, nodding.
“Ah,” Stacey said. “What do you do, Mr.…?”
“I play for the Red Wheels.”
Stacey’s eyes stayed the same, but her mouth made a tiny “O.” Nick had money. This could be a good contract. Was Stacey going to poach him? She’d done that to one of the other designers a couple of weeks ago. An endocrinologist had come in and announced that she had a new house and wanted to work without a budget, and Stacey had swooped out of her office …
“Delightful. Let me take you into one of the consultation rooms, and you can explain your project to me. Shall we?” Stacey moved over and took his arm, wrapping her acrylic nails around his bicep. Alyssa’s heart fell. Stacey hadn’t been able to poach Vanessa because she had briefly been hospitalized when Vanessa came in—office scuttlebutt was that Stacey needed another transfusion of the souls of virgins to keep her young. Alyssa was good for a few months off of the income from Vanessa’s projects, but Nick was a client who’d come in because of her contacts, not someone random off the street.
“No, I’m here for Alyssa,” Nick said. “Thanks, though.”
“Here for Alyssa.”Alyssa felt a flush rise across her chest and throat. Her name sounded good in his deep, husky voice.
“Mr.…? What is your name?”
Nick carefully disengaged his arm. “I’m a client of Alyssa’s.”
“That’s not how we’re structured,” Stacey said, a bit of steel in her voice. “I assign projects to the different designers.”
Bullshit. You poach other people’s clients.
“Alyssa already has her hands full with some … starter projects. You need someone more experienced.”
Alyssa pulled her mouth sideways and gave Nick an apologetic smile, then dropped her eyes and played with her bracelet.
“No, I’m not doing that,” Nick said. “I’m not hiring an agency. I want to work with her.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Stacey said.
“Okay.” He shrugged. “You have your phone?” he asked Alyssa. She looked up, startled, then hurried to her office and came back with it, holding it out to him. Her gold glitter case looked silly in his big hand. He typed in his contact information and passed it back, brushing her fingers in the process. His hands were dry and hard and strong, and … he was talking.
“I’m sorry?” she said, blushing.
“I said you have my number. If you want to do a job off the books, give me a call.”
“We don’t do jobs off the books!” Stacey said, clearly outraged. “Then the agency doesn’t get a cut!”
Nick shrugged. “I’m okay with that.”
“Sir!” He’d never told her his name. “You can’t come in here and steal one of my designers!”
“Looks like that’s what you were doing with one of her clients,” he said. He smiled at Alyssa, then mouthed, “Good luck.” He turned and walked out, his shoulders almost filling the doorframe. Alyssa watched him walk out to a small red sports car and open the door.
“Well, go!” Stacey hissed. “Don’t you dare lose a client.”
Alyssa stared at her, then ran into the parking lot. Her sandal squeaked, and he looked over. “Um, I can work with you if you want. There is a consultation fee.” She named the price, adding fifty dollars on a whim because she really did need new shoes.
He was in the driver’s seat but stood back up and leaned against the car, ankles crossed, the door open. “Great. I don’t want to go back in there, though. Can we go someplace else?”
“Yeah! Sure. Um, can you wait just a minute? I need my laptop.”
He nodded and she ran back in for her go bag of things she’d need. She stopped for a second to put on lipstick in front of the mirror in her office. That was totally appropriate before going out with a client. It had nothing to do with the shape of his thighs when he got out of the car, or the little commas around his mouth when he smiled.
Stacey handed her a contract as she rushed past. “Make sure he signs this.” Alyssa nodded absently and stuffed it in her bag, then rushed back out to his car. They got in and he drove away, paying attention to traffic first and then saying, “Have you had lunch? We could talk at a restaurant, if that works.”
She glanced at the clock in his bird’s-eye maple dashboard. Already eleven thirty. “Um, sure. I’ll need to get in and see the space though. And I need to measure everything.”
He bit the inside of his cheek. “I could send you measurements.”
“I need to see the space.”
He nodded and drove them for several minutes, then slowed on a tree-lined street in a nice neighborhood. “Food preferences? You vegan or anything?” She shook her head. He found a spot and pulled in directly in front of a small café. “This look okay to you? It’s healthy stuff—no milkshakes or anything.”
“Looks great.”
The restaurant had a small arbor over the entryway, with deep purple potted clematis climbing overhead. A sandwich board advertised specials in colored chalk, and when Nick held the door open for her and she stepped inside, she saw that the entire menu was written on a gigantic chalkboard hung over the ordering counter. The place was small and crowded and had a definite hippie vibe. “Favorite spot?” she said.
“I like any place that cooks for me,” he said. “But yeah. It’s in the neighborhood, and it’s good.”
They went up to the counter and ordered. Nick got a grilled chicken, bean, and mango salad with couscous, and Alyssa went with the salad maison with a basil vinaigrette. Nick paid and guided them to a table by the wall.
“This is a fun place,” Alyssa said. “A lot of energy.” He nodded. The server came and poured water for them, and when he left, she tapped her glass with her fingernails. “So tell me about your project.”
He looked at her for a long moment without talking, then took a drink. Stalling? Seriously? “I have a two-bedroom apartment and none of it is … decorated.” He shrugged.
“Okay.” He didn’t say anything more. “What do you want done with the space?”
“I really don’t care. Just”—he rolled his hand outward—“whatever makes it look normal and gets my coach off my back.”
“Your coach doesn’t like your apartment?”
“Devin didn’t like my apartment and told the coach, and he gave me a choice. One option was having it fixed up, and that’s what I chose. But I don’t want to do it myself.”
She looked at him for a long beat, and then the server was there with their order. Nick grabbed a fork and dug into his food. “You don’t sound very excited about it. People usually have fun having their place redone.”
“Yeah, um, sorry about that. I appreciate what you do.”
“Just you don’t really want it done?”
“Yeah.”
They stopped talking for a moment while the waiter delivered their food. “I got chicken,” Nick said. “Now we won’t know which direction to go on offense at the start of a game.” He smiled to take any sting out of it.
“Anyway,” Alyssa said, “explain this to me. Why don’t you want your place done? It’s incredibly fun.” He grabbed his water glass again. No wonder he was such a bad poker player—he absolutely had a tell. “You just want to get away with a minimal job?”
“Yep.”
“Am I doing the whole apartment or just one room?”
Hope flashed in his eyes for a moment; then he bit the inside of his cheek again. “I think it has to be the whole place.”
“What kind of style are you thinking?”
“Normal?”
She laughed. “Okay, I can pull some photos up after I’ve seen the place, and get an idea of what you like. Color, furniture, accessories—things like that.”
“Can I just have you do it? Is that a thing?”
“Like on a TV show, where you don’t even know what it’s going to be, and then there’s a big reveal?”
He squinted at her. “I don’t watch those shows, but I’m going to say yes.”
“No. You’ll need to approve the design.” He sighed and stabbed the last piece of his chicken. “If you don’t enjoy talking about throw pillows, you don’t have to. I mean, Vanessa and I had a ton of fun playing with swatches and swapping in different lamps, but you absolutely don’t have to be that involved as a client. But the point is to make it a space that you like, and I can’t do that without you.”
He nodded and sat hunched a little in his seat while she continued eating. She hadn’t eaten nearly as fast as he had. When she was done, she smiled and said, “Well, let’s go to your apartment and get at it, shall we?” And then she realized how that sounded and flushed.
His mouth gave a little quirk, and he opened the restaurant door for her and said, “Absolutely.”