Chapter Seventeen
When Jack arrived at the soon to be opened Grumpy Old Goat tasting room, he found Sy frowning over an iPad. “Do I want to know?”
Sy shook her head. “I realized I should figure out how to use this before I attempt to train the staff.”
“Always preferable to know what you’re talking about.”
Sy laughed. “Exactly.”
“So, we’re going over there?” Jack pointed to the butcher block peninsula Maddie had built to serve as the register for both the tasting room and shop.
“Yep. Maddie said the pull would be minimal and you should be able to run off the line for the wine fridge.”
“Did she now?” She was right, of course, but he didn’t need her telling him.
Sy lifted both hands. “I think she only told me that so I wouldn’t freak about tearing holes in the wall after the fact.”
Jack laughed then. “I guess that justifies her being a know-it-all. But just this once.”
Sy snickered. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“Deal.” He headed over and started calculating. “Do you want me to put in two outlets just in case?”
Sy abandoned the tablet and came over. “The more, the merrier?”
He shrugged. “That sounds nicer than adding one for a rainy day.”
“I’m hoping rainy days bring in people looking to get out of the house, so that works for me, too.”
Jack grinned. “That’s the spirit.”
Sy lifted her chin. “You’re awfully chipper this morning. You get laid or something?”
“Depends. Is my answer going to stay just between us?”
“Ooh. You drive a hard bargain.” Sy drummed her fingers on the counter. “How long am I keeping this secret?”
He laughed. Sy wasn’t legally part of the family yet, but she might as well be for how well she fit in. “You aren’t actually. I was yanking your chain.”
“Wait.” Sy shot her a side-eye. “Is that a confirm or deny?”
Sy wasn’t in the business of harassing him to the degree his sisters did, but even she poked fun at his stalwart ways. He lifted his chin back. “You tell me.”
“Nice. Ellie, right? The artist from your current project?”
While he appreciated some degree of privacy, Jack knew better than to think he’d get away spending two nights trapped with a woman he’d admitted to having chemistry with and keeping the details to himself.
Big picture details, at least. And since he’d invited Ellie to the opening of the tasting room, it would be pretty obvious pretty quickly that they were dating. “Yep.”
“I’m glad, dude. Everybody deserves some action.”
He frowned at the phrase. Not because Sy meant anything derogatory or dismissive by it, but because it implied a lack of something more.
And as much as he wasn’t looking for a relationship, the thought that Ellie might consider him not much more than a hookup left a bad taste in his mouth.
Since he had no desire to dig deeper into that—in the moment or with his soon-to-be sister-in-law—he offered a vague nod.
“You’ll holler if you need me, right?” Sy asked.
“Go learn your POS. I got this.”
It was Sy’s turn to offer a vague nod. She returned to tapping at the screen, and Jack got to work.
After flipping the breaker to that part of the room, he made a couple of choice cuts into the drywall and spliced the wire into a new junction box.
Adding the outlets themselves took all of twenty minutes and, fortunately for him, Maddie would swoop in to do the patching and painting.
He tucked his tools back into his bag, thinking he might have set a record for time to finish a job. It was a minuscule job, but still. He stood and dusted off his hands. “I think you should be good to go.”
Sy blew out a breath. “I can’t thank you enough. I can’t believe we didn’t factor in the POS system when we did the wiring.”
“To be fair, I didn’t think about it, either.” He shrugged. “The price you pay for hiring an outfit that does mostly residential work.”
“I like the price I paid very much, thank you.” Sy smiled. “And I’m pretty fond of the outfit.”
He couldn’t help but walk through the door Sy left open. “The outfit, or one particular woman in it, whose outfit usually contains a pair of tight jeans?”
Sy straightened her shoulders. “Both. Though, damn, she looks amazing in those jeans.”
Jack laughed. He obviously gave little thought to the fit of Maddie’s jeans, but he wasn’t so much of a prude as to balk at Sy’s appreciation.
Maddie strode in, cordless drill in hand. “Who looks amazing in those jeans?”
Sy grabbed her around the waist and pulled her close. “You do.”
“Oh.” Maddie smirked. “I thought there might be a hot delivery person or something. I didn’t want to miss it.”
Sy rolled her eyes but planted a noisy kiss on Maddie’s neck. “You’re supposed to like my ass in jeans.”
“I do.” Maddie nodded eagerly. “That doesn’t prevent be from appreciating another fine specimen in passing. They’re not mutually exclusive.”
“True story,” Sy said. “Just promise me we’ll talk if you ever want to do more than appreciate in passing.”
Jack didn’t think Sy and Maddie were seriously considering poly, but they all spent enough time with Clover to know better than to dismiss it out of hand. “As much as I enjoy all this conversation about nice asses in jeans, I need to get to my other job.”
Sy stuck out a hand for Jack to shake, which he did. “Go, go. I owe you one.”
He grinned. “I will happily take payment in cheese.”
Sy swept both arms wide. “By this time Saturday, every case in here will be filled. You can help yourself.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” Jack said.
Maddie pointed her drill his way. “Speaking of Saturday and nice asses, are we finally going to get to meet this mystery woman of yours?”
“That was the worst segue ever.” He shook his head. “I’m refusing to answer on principle.”
Maddie stuck out her tongue. “Whatever. I know you RSVP’d two, so unless you’re counting the mouse in your pocket, I’m assuming she’ll be here.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Fine. She will be. Try not to give her the third degree, will you?”
“Moi?” Maddie pressed a hand to her chest.
Sy let out a snort, and Jack merely shook his head. “I like her, okay? But it’s been barely a couple of weeks. I know how you can be.”
Maddie’s hand swept from her chest to a Scout’s honor salute. “I’ll be completely chill.” She smirked. “To her at least. No promises when it comes to grilling you after the fact.”
Sy jerked her head to the side. “Ooh.”
“I expected nothing less.” He finished packing his tools away. “Hey, Sy, can I grab a plain chèvre now? Ellie’s coming for dinner later this week, and I want to make that chicken thing with the sun-dried tomatoes.”
“I got you.” Sy disappeared to the main storage area and returned with two logs. “I hope she likes it, and you get lucky.”
At the rate things with Ellie were going, he had every expectation of getting lucky regardless of what he served for dinner. Not that he intended to say that to his sister and soon to be sister-in-law. But it filled him with a certain satisfaction as he finished cleaning up and went on his way.
* * *
“I think this might be the one.” Ellie turned a slow circle and looked to Rhett. “What do you think?”
“I think it has character without feeling like it’s going to fall apart in a stiff breeze.” Rhett tipped her head one way, then the other. “So, if that’s our criteria, yeah, maybe.”
She scowled on principle, but Rhett was telling the truth.
They’d seen two white-walled, beige-carpeted boxes, three apartments that had been hacked out of once gorgeous Victorians, and a carriage house conversion that she didn’t entirely believe had a valid certificate of occupancy.
She’d known her options would be sparse in the mostly rural stretch between Bedlington and Springfield, but the actual listings were even worse than her lowered expectations, especially after crossing off those that didn’t allow cats.
It had gotten so bad the day before that she genuinely considered buying something even if she had to turn around and sell it in a couple of years.
Today, though. Today brought this charming two-bedroom unit in Grovener, a tiny town half an hour from Bedlington and just over the border from Massachusetts.
It was the first floor of a house that had been divided, but thoughtfully.
The original kitchen and sitting room remained charmingly intact, along with an enclosed sun porch off the back.
The two bedrooms shared a bathroom, but considering how often she anticipated guests, it was an arrangement she could live with.
And it was in the budget she’d set for herself—one that would allow her to keep her savings intact for when she did want to buy.
“Be honest.” She planted her fists on her hips. “Do you like it?”
“It’s charming. Cozy but not cramped. So you. And best of all, reasonably close to me.”
“It is charming. That’s the perfect word.” She clasped her hands and pressed them to her chest. “I wanted charming.”
“You deserve charming.” Rhett grinned.
Deserve was such a funny word. She didn’t use it much, and when she did, it was usually in reference to things in the little treats category.
An iced mocha in the middle of the afternoon.
A manicure after a project that left her nails and cuticles wrecked.
The twenty-dollar bottle of wine instead of the twelve.
The idea of deserving bigger things, things that mattered, left her uneasy.
Not because she didn’t, but because it opened a can of worms from her religious childhood that she’d just as soon not wrestle with. Like whether it was wrong to want big things in the first place. Or whether she’d made the right decision about not continuing to live with her mother.
“Not the right thing to say?” Rhett asked, as though she understood her comment carried more weight than it might seem on the surface.
She smiled. No point ruining a perfectly good moment. “A lovely thing to say.”
Rhett’s eyes narrowed, and Ellie could tell she was deciding whether or not to push.
Rather than wait her out, Ellie gave Rhett’s forearm a squeeze. “I’m going to go talk to the owner.”
Since the owner—a weathered-looking white guy who appeared to be in his seventies—was waiting for them outside, and since the weather had started to hint at spring but not much more, it was a move she could get away with.
She went to the postage stamp of a front porch and found him staring into the distance.
It struck her, which in turn made her wonder about her generation and how much of a lost art that had become.
“What did you think?” he asked.
“I’ll take it.”
He seemed surprised by her answer. “Yeah?”
She certainly didn’t owe him an explanation, but her default was to put people at ease. “I’ve looked at a half dozen places already. This is definitely the one.”
“Alrighty then. I’ll go get the lease forms from my car.” He started to go but paused. “It’s first and last month’s rent, along with one month rent for the security deposit.”
She patted her purse. “I’ve got my checkbook.”
He didn’t question her further, though it looked like he wanted to.
Rhett joined her on the porch and Mr. Franklin returned with the paperwork.
She read through the legalese, signed on the dotted line, and gave him a check for more than what she’d earn on the entire Hampstead House project.
Questions about deserving things popped back into her mind, but she pushed them aside.
She didn’t have anything to do with the financial cushion her father had provided her with, so the best she could do was be grateful and use it responsibly.
“I hope you’re going to let Jack help you move,” Rhett said when they were back in her car.
“I hadn’t really thought about it.” Not entirely true, since she’d given more than a passing thought to hiring the same movers who’d handled getting her mother’s things to her new place and loading up a storage unit with hers.
“I think he’s probably the sort of guy who’d be offended if you didn’t.”
That hadn’t occurred to her. She’d dated her share of butches and mascs and trans guys, and they all definitely seemed to have a code of some sort.
But most of them had been artists or academics.
Okay, and one ill-advised investment banker.
None of them had a lot to offer in the manual labor department.
She didn’t want to assume Jack would want to help on that front, but she also realized she shouldn’t assume he wouldn’t. “I’ll ask him.”
“When are you gonna move?”
She had a few weeks left on her arrangement to live at Hampstead House.
But it was getting weirder and weirder to live in the servant’s quarters as the house neared completion.
Plus, there was some work to be done in that space, and it was on hold until she cleared out.
“Next weekend if I can swing it. The Grumpy Old Goat party is Saturday night, but maybe Sunday?”
“Might as well, right?”
Her new digs were technically closer to both Jack and her mother.
So, while she’d be picking up a work commute, there were some benefits.
More importantly, they were hers. Well, as much hers as she was going to get for the time being.
She’d actually never had more than a room to herself, and now she was about to have four.
Five if she counted the sun porch. She absolutely wanted to move in sooner rather than later and had no doubt Emily Dickinson would share that feeling. “Might as well.”