Chapter Four
Paint
Rosalie
“This place is so cute,” Mom
practically squealed.
I stood in the living room of the house Snap and Chaos moved
me into.
She was not wrong.
It was cute.
Clean, cozy, cute.
And gorgeous.
It also smelled faintly of paint.
Which meant they’d painted it between Snapper’s renters
moving out and them moving me in so that they could move me into a pad that was
fresh and felt new.
I touched my couch, which had its back to the door and was
facing a freestanding fireplace, allowing my head to move slowly around to take
in the space.
Beck and I had lived in a nice apartment complex in Aurora.
It had some personality but it was a modern complex, built within the last ten
years. Not exactly an architectural masterpiece or having had the time to be
quaint or historically appealing or having so much of its style demolished
around it that it was now unusual.
This place of Snapper’s was obviously an old carriage house
that sometime along the way had the mansion it had been attached to disappear.
It also had been added on to.
Giving it a sense of privacy and serenity, it was set far
back from the curb, much farther back than the other houses on the block,
seeing as it once sat behind the house it had served.
It now, amusingly, since it used to be the same thing, had a
large two-car garage with the doors of the garage facing the side of the
property so the garage looked like an extension of the little house, not a
monstrosity of what was essentially storage space almost as big as the living
space it had been tacked onto.
The garage was accessed through the kitchen.
We’d walked in the front door.
And the front door led to a living room that was relatively
spacious, but definitely well lit with an abundance
of beautiful, old-fashioned, multi-paned windows at the front and side of the
house.
The walls were creamy white and had my Toulouse-Lautrec
prints and other wall stuff already up on them. My flat screen had been mounted
on the creamy-painted brick above the freestanding fireplace. And that
fireplace was set in a wall of that brick that sat in the middle of the living
room with a spiral staircase off to the side.
My furniture, that was in yellows (couch) and denims
(armchair and some of the toss pillows on the couch), which I’d always thought
was awesome, but had never looked like much in the pad I shared with Beck,
looked amazing against the buttery-white walls and the hardwood floors (though
I now needed a rug).
To the left, there was a dining area that led off from a
kitchen (which meant I also needed a dining room table).
The hardwood floors stretched everywhere, including the
kitchen that was open to the space entirely, didn’t even have an island or bar.
But the big window at the back, the pearly-tiled backsplash, the
window-fronted, milky-painted cupboards and the uninterrupted space made it
seem bright, crisp and airy, but also warm and welcoming. All this juxtaposed
with some sharply angled parts of the ceiling just made it interesting.
I wandered the kitchen then came out and moved between the
fireplace and the spiral staircase. I saw a little alcove at the back that was
somewhat roomy but mostly snug that could be a reading nook. But Chaos (or
their old ladies) had set it up with my desk and laptop, making it my office.
And again, my white, sectional corner desk with its long arm
and the kickass wicker rolling chair I’d found hadn’t seemed like much in Beck
and my extra bedroom in our apartment, but there it looked crazy-cool.
Also, with the desk fit into the corner and down the wall, I
could still fit an armchair and ottoman in there, making it a dual-purpose
space, adding the little reading nook.
Some of this space was an addition, definitely the powder
room I saw through an open doorway at the back.
I knew this because it jutted out past the kitchen and had
French doors at the side aimed toward the corner of the jut made from mini-den
and kitchen that created a little courtyard.
This was covered in a vine-festooned pergola. It had a wood
deck and some big glossy pots, but since it was February, there was nothing
much there. However, in the summer it could be a riot of flowers interspersed
with the garden furniture I right then decided to buy, a little piece of
outside tranquility in the heart of the city.
“Rosalie?” Mom called.
I drifted down the kind of hall formed by the wall of the
kitchen and the fireplace, back through the living room, and up the spiral
stairs.
I stopped right at the top.
The ceilings were low, beamed, some of them angled, all
painted that creamy white.
And in a dormer sat a beautiful scroll-backed, king-size bed
covered with white and yellow bedclothes.
None of that mine.
Beck and I had a queen-size bed, and from what I could tell,
Chaos had cleaned out our apartment so if he ever got out of jail, he’d come
back to it empty.
Except our bed.
Even as I wandered the bedroom area that covered the entire
house (outside the sharp eaves that cut into the space, but even so, they made
it all the more awesome), I stared at that bed until I hit the master bath that
was not enormous but it did have a crazy-cool soaking tub and a double-bowled
vanity.
Through that was a walk-in closet that had one wall slanted
but ran the length of the house. The other wall was filled with shelves, rods
and drawers. It wasn’t every woman’s fantasy closet but it was better than I’d
had and would more than do the trick.
“Rosie,” Mom said softly.
She’d entered the closet with me.
My clothes were hanging there.
I opened a drawer to find my panties, closed it and stared
at a shelf where my collection of enameled jewelry boxes had been arranged.
“Honeypot.”
It was a one-bedroom house, essentially.
But it had been entirely renovated and it had been that
beautifully. It had a two-car garage and a huge front yard. It was in a good
part of Denver. So the rent was probably, but deservedly, crazy.
What could Snap possibly have to give the renters to lure
them out of here?
Mom’s hand fell on my arm and I finally looked at her.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“That’s not my bed,” I told her.
“I know,” she said carefully.
“He didn’t want the bed I slept in with Beck here,” I
shared. “So he bought me a new one.”
She said nothing, just studied me.
“A really nice new one,” I went on.
“I’m not sure what you want me to say,” she replied.
“Did he do that for me or for him?” I asked.
“I don’t know, honeypot. I’ve never met him.”
Knowing Snap, it was for me, and him getting something out
of it was ancillary.
“They repainted,” I declared.
“I could tell,” she said.
“He has other properties,” I informed her.
“Okay.” She got closer. “Rosalie, why are you freaked?”
“Because he keeps getting better and better and I can’t have
him.”
She got even closer and coaxed gently, “Explain again why
you can’t have him.”
“Chaos is in a mess right now.”
“Messes get cleaned up.”
“This one is messier than most.”
“Rosalie—”
She stopped talking when we both heard the front door open.
I got tense.
Mom got tense along with me.
That could be anyone. Snapper. A random Bounty who’d
miraculously made bail and followed us there. A serial killer who happened onto
a perfect opportunity.
“Yo!” a man’s voice yelled.
I didn’t think a serial killer or a random Bounty with
revenge on his mind would shout “Yo.”
Though I didn’t know who that “Yo”
belonged to, except it didn’t belong to Snapper.
I relaxed.
Mom grabbed my hand, led me out to the bedroom, and preceded
me down the winding stairs.
As we went around the curves, standing inside the front door
we saw a pretty woman with a mass of goldish-brown curly hair holding a huge
vase arranged with roses and berries and branches with leaves on them dripping
with some kind of small citrus fruit.
With her was a Chaos man in his cut with a toddler attached
to his hip, and dangling from his free hand were about five plastic grocery
bags.
“Hi!” the woman cried. “You must be Rosalie and Renae.”
“Gah, goo, gee!” the toddler shrieked right before he
punched his biker in his bearded jaw and carried on, “Joe-joe-kah!”
With obvious practice
withstanding the blows, the Chaos brother didn’t even flinch after he got
struck by the baby. He just watched us alight from the foot of the stairs.
“Yes, this is Rosalie and I’m her mom, Renae,” Mom
introduced, moving toward them.
“I’m Carissa, and this is Joker and Travis, Joker being the
big boy, Travis the little one,” the woman replied.
Joe-joe-kah.
Adorable.
My heart hurt.
“Hi, Carissa,” Mom said.
“Yes, hi, Carissa,” I chimed in. I looked to the brother.
“Joker.”
“Yo,” he grunted.
“Snapper told us you were moving in today so we ran to LeLane’s to get you some stuff so you’d feel welcome and
are all good to settle in without having to run any errands or anything,”
Carissa explained, lifting up the arrangement. “We have more in the car. We’ll
just get it in, put it away, and get out of your hair.”
“No,” I said swiftly, touched in a totally blown-away sense
that they’d do this.
I mean, I liked shopping but not the grocery kind, and I’d
never seen anything like that arrangement. It was phenomenal.
Not to mention, they’d gone to LeLane’s,
which was insanely expensive.
“You should stay for a drink or something.” I shot her a
smile. “I mean, you can hang with Mom while I pop out to grab some beverages
and then you can stay for a drink.”
“You’re Snap’s so bought beer,” Joker declared.
I felt my eyes get big at his short declaration that was
still uttered like he was reciting what was carved into stone as I heard Mom
emit a strangled giggle.
“And I’m a girl and I know not all girls drink beer, so I
got you some diet pop and wine,” Carissa put in.
“That’s perfect!” Mom exclaimed excitedly, a biker babe of
the highest order, in other words, always up for company, and taking that