Chapter 9 #2
After a moment of listening to whoever was on the other end of the call, Madeline added, “Yes, I’m so glad I heard it ring. I would’ve hated to miss you—but no, thank you anyway. I won’t need you, after all.”
Another pause. “That’s right. Great. I’ll see you then!”
Grant hadn’t been trying to listen in—oh, who was he kidding? Of course, he had been—but also, there wasn’t a lot of space to move around in. He couldn’t avoid hearing her side of the conversation, even if he’d wanted to. Still, what Madeline did next shocked him.
She jammed her phone back into her pocket, glanced around the room once, then clapped her hands briskly. “Right, then,” she announced. “I’ll do it.”
Grant just looked at her, slow on the uptake. “Do what?”
“Help you sort through this place.”
“I didn’t ask you to. I only asked if you could sell some pieces for me on consignment.”
“I can do that too, but I wasn’t lying when I said my floor’s too full right now. I’ll let you know as soon as I have space—and by then, I’ll also have a better feel for what you have here.”
Grant stared. “Let me get this straight. You’re offering to help me clean up this freakshow? For free? Plus, you’ll sell pieces on consignment, as in I’ll still get money too?”
“Exactly, well . . . unless you turn my offer down, of course.”
“Is there something wrong with your head?”
Madeline arched an eyebrow. “More than likely—but your comment brings me to my only stipulation.”
“I figured there was a catch. Go on then. I’m all ears.”
“You’re all something all right, but it’s not ears.
I’m only going to say it once. If you want my help—selling your stuff, organizing your stuff, or whatever—watch your tone from here on out.
I’m not your verbal punching bag just because you’ve got a chip the size of a small country on your shoulder. ’
Offended, Grant opened his mouth to defend himself, but he didn’t get a chance.
Madeline cut him off with a curt shake of her head.
“I sympathize with whatever you’re going through, or went through, but I also don’t care what it was, and it doesn’t let you off the hook.
I’ve cut you some slack, let you be a jerk without saying much about it—but the grace period is over.
Everyone has had bad stuff happen to them. It’s no excuse.”
Grant blinked. “Have you always been this way?”
“Been what way?”
“Take no shit, say what you think, make no apologies.”
Madeline reddened, and she put one hand lightly to her throat—but not before he saw a nerve jump there.
“No, I haven’t always been ‘this way,’ as you say.
I used to waste a lot of time and energy trying to be ceaselessly polite and to disarm people with charm.
I tried to fix other people’s bad behavior as if it was somehow my responsibility, not theirs.
I still apologize if I’m the one in the wrong, though. ” Her eyes glinted. “So yeah, rarely.”
“Hah. Good one,” Grant acknowledged, then added, “So what happened to cause the big change?”
For a second, Grant didn’t think she would answer, but then she let out a heavy sigh.
“It doesn’t matter. Suffice it to say, I’m too old to take crap just because I feel sorry for someone.
I don’t expect you to be a precious little sunflower all the time.
In fact, you can be as miserable as you want, so long as you don’t make me your punching bag. ”
Grant knew she was lying. Whatever she’d said “didn’t matter” obviously mattered deeply.
But he also knew it wasn’t his place to say such a thing when being—justifiably—called out.
“I don’t know,” he finally said, shaking his head.
“Aren’t you a little young to be this wise and firm about your boundaries and such? ”
Madeline stared at him, and he had to work hard to keep his face blank. Then she got it—realized his “aren’t you a little young” comment was a throwback to their first conversation—and laughed. It made him feel . . . oddly happy.
“You’ve got yourself a deal, by the way.” He stuck out his hand. “A bad deal, and one that shows you’re clearly nuts, but a deal, nonetheless.”
They shook on it, and Madeline smiled. “Takes a nut to know a nut.”
Until her hand slid into his, Grant hadn’t realized how long it had been since he’d had physical human contact of any kind.
Their eyes met, and he wondered if she felt the same dizzying sense of .
. . connection. Her skin was smooth and soft, but her grip was firm, and he could feel the strength of her hand muscles.
He sensed he’d maintained the shake a little longer than the social norm, but she didn’t seem to mind—just extricated herself, still smiling.
Something awful occurred to him. Of course, her offer was too good to be true!
She was opening a store, for crying out loud.
This wreck that was his current occupation was a full-time job and then some.
“Will you really have time to help? You’re going to be busy, and I don’t want to inconvenience you or take you away from your”—he stumbled a little over the last words—“family or partner or whatever.”
“After I open, I’ll only be available evenings when the store is closed, but that should work fine.
Even if the shop’s hopping, it won’t be the kind of busy that will keep me from managing most of the details during the workday.
It’s not that kind of business. And,” she added, addressing the second part of his statement, “there’s no one to take me away from—just Boots. ”
“The cat?”
“Yep, the very one.” Madeline grinned. “But now, I should run. I’m not dressed for clean-up duty.”
She was wearing another comic-inspired shirt. This time Spider-Man clung to her chest.
Lucky guy, Grant thought—then cringed. He really wasn’t the lecherous, leering type, yet this was the second time he’d caught himself checking Madeline out.
He thought Holly had ruined him for anything remotely like romance for life.
It was nice to know that wasn’t the case—even if it was inappropriate.
“No, no. Wouldn’t want to get your best T-shirt dirty.”
“Second-best.” Her eyes twinkled. “But yeah, exactly. Should we create a firm schedule, or—”
“No schedule necessary. Just come by any evenings that work for you. I’m—”
“Always here. Rarely leave. I remember.”
He ducked his head. He’d really said that—impatiently, in fact. What a tool. Madeline was smiling, however, and made no move to leave immediately.
Just before it got awkward, she lightly clapped her hands again—must be her thing, he thought with an inner smile. “Okay, then, right! I’ll leave you to it.”
“Yes, off you go.” He clapped once too.
This time she caught the tease immediately and laughed.
“But before you do, seriously, why are you doing this?”
She studied him. “Well, it’s definitely not because of your winsome personality.”
“Touché.”
“And it’s not your good looks . . . ”
“You think I’m good-looking?”
“Or I don’t, hence my saying it’s not your good looks.”
“Fair enough.”
“And it’s really not because I have a burning desire to explore”—she glanced down at a mountain of musty magazines—“a decade’s worth of someone’s thirty-year-old monthly subscription to Personal Computer World.”
How astute of her to realize it wasn’t even his dad’s subscription.
He’d no doubt scrounged them off someone who was throwing them away, smart enough to see them for the waste of space they now were.
“The problem with people nowadays is they think everything’s disposable.
Knowledge is never obsolete,” he said, quoting his dad.
“He wasn’t entirely wrong.” Laugh lines deepened by her eyes, and she turned to go.
“Wait. Those were all not the reason you’re helping me, so why are you?”
“Embrace the mystery, Grant,” she called over her shoulder, disappearing into the maze of boxes as if she already knew the way through by heart.