How to Look Happy (27 page)

When I speak to Brewster again, it will be to explain that if I’m going to continue as his designer, I will only enter his house when he’s not in it. I’ll be damned if I’m going to quit, but if I lose this job a second time, I’ll throw a party.

Once I’m out of the room I quicken my step to the point that I’m almost running. As I turn to shut the heavy door behind me, I notice Aubrey standing at the center of the stairway, watching me leave with a heavy look of distress.

Can’t Get It Back

I drive back to the office, unsure how I’m going to spend my suddenly free afternoon. I’m not uncomfortable with the fact that I’ve left the contractor at the house—he’s got my cell, and besides, I was far more uncomfortable being there with Brewster breathing down my neck. I’ll go back when I know he isn’t there to make sure everything looks like it should.

A new shiver shimmies down my spine when I think about Brewster’s fingers tracing down my arm.

I park, grab my bag, and get out of the car, my heels clicking on the black asphalt of the parking lot as I round the building. A trolley clatters by, and as its noise recedes, I hear the slow thud of hooves hitting pavement as a horse-drawn carriage covered in white fairy lights moves up Main Street. It’s carrying an Asian family with two school-age kids and an infant who’s wailing on his mother’s lap. I watch them clop by, melting in the heat of the afternoon sun and probably regretting their choice of transportation.

As I reach the doors of the firm and slip inside, my mental list is turning cartwheels in my head. I’m thinking about how I can now spend the afternoon working on the Santiago project, which I’ve been neglecting, and starting to hunt for big-ticket furniture pieces for the condo unit. I say hi to Carson as I round the partition from the lobby, and I’m floored to find Todd Birnham standing in the center of the studio.

“Oh!” I say, and to my chagrin, I feel pink warmth spread across my cheeks.

“Oh!” he says back—in surprise, not mocking me.

And then we both laugh.

“What are you doi—”

“I thought you were out all afternoon,” he interrupts. And then he chuckles again. Meanwhile, Quinn is watching our exchange with an expression of great interest.

“Change of plans,” I say, wrinkling my nose. Quinn raises an eyebrow.

“Well…” Todd’s head swivels toward Quinn.

“I have a presentation at the Wallaces’ this afternoon,” she says quickly. Too quickly. She looks at me. “I was just about to tell Todd that I need to cancel our lunch plans.”

She’s lying—it’s written all over her face. I’m not sure whether to strangle her or hug her.

“But since you’re here,” she continues, looking over at Todd, “why don’t you and Jen go to lunch together?” She swings her head in my direction. “You haven’t eaten yet, right?”

Her expression is as innocent as Ellie Kate’s newborn baby.
Strangle her, definitely.

“No,” I say in defeat. “I haven’t eaten.” I’m not sure why I feel so reluctant to spend time alone with a cute—very, very cute—subcontractor, but my nerves are tingling to the point that I’m having trouble breathing, and I can’t feel my toes.

“Well, that’s great, then,” Todd says, sounding as unsure as I feel. “I mean, not great that you can’t come, Q, but great that I didn’t waste the trip down here.”

Awesome. He clearly doesn’t want to go with me. And here I am practically hyperventilating in his presence.
I must seem to him like the saddest, most pathetic cougar on the planet.

I continue to my desk and drop my heavy canvas bag in my chair. I busy myself with pulling items out of the bag and arranging my files on my desk. “Give me just a few minutes,” I say to Todd.

A few minutes to pull myself together and stop trembling. A few minutes to figure out why the hell this guy makes me feel as if the world is caving in and his is the only hand that can save me. A few minutes to think of a way out of this…

“No problem,” he says, but he walks toward my desk and pulls over one of the rolling chairs from our big, central worktable. So much for gathering my wits before spending time alone with him. He pushes the chair to within a couple of feet from my desk and drops into it. “I’m beat,” he says, watching me spread out papers from the Santiago file on the desk in front of me. I have no idea what the papers say, but I’m desperate to keep my hands moving so he doesn’t see them shaking.

“What’ve you been up to?” I ask, not looking up.

“Eh, a little of this, a little of that.” When I glance up, he’s smiling with one corner of his mouth, which is sexy on even an average guy, but on him, well…

I can’t think of a coherent sentence, so when I open my mouth I say the first thing that comes to my mind. “What exactly
do
you do?” I ask and then instantly regret how rude it sounds.

But he takes it in stride.

“You mean, for work?” he asks, rhetorically. “Well, let’s see. You know I install art and move things. You know I wait tables at night. I also build custom furniture. And sometimes, when my buddy needs help with his landscaping business, I do that.”

“Wow,” I say. I can’t think of another response, but at least I stop myself from saying what I’m thinking again, which is,
But you’re so smart.
He has a master’s degree. He seems like he could work in any profession he wanted. Why is he eking a living out of odd jobs?

My hands have stopped moving around the papers on my desk, and our silence stretches for a moment too long. Finally, he says, “Ready to go?”

I jump up so quickly that I almost knock my binder for the Santiago project to the floor. Todd reaches over and catches it before it falls.

“Thanks.” I smile at him and slide my purse over my arm. As we walk toward the door, I glance over at Quinn, who has her laptop open and is staring intently at the screen. I can’t help but suspect that she’s reading
Design*Sponge
or
Elle Decor
online rather than working on her “presentation.”

“You sure you don’t want to come?” I toss out the sentence like a life raft.

She smiles mysteriously. “No, too busy,” she says, again with a perfectly innocent expression. “You two have fun.”

As we leave the studio floor and walk around the partition to the lobby, I think I feel Todd’s hand touch the small of my back for a brief moment, but the touch is so light I can’t be sure. Regardless, a shockwave starts at that point and radiates out to my entire body.

Who knew lunch could be so dangerous?

*  *  *

Twenty minutes later, we’re sitting at a two-top table beside the window at Cafe Pontotoc, a small bistro with big atmosphere and a great view out onto Main Street. Todd is tucking into his shrimp and grits, but I’ve barely touched my portabella mushroom sandwich—partly because being here with him makes me so nervous but also because he’s asking me a million questions, so many that I can’t get a bite in edgewise.

“So, your whole family is still here, then?” he’s just asked.

“Not my whole family,” I say after quickly chewing and swallowing a dainty bite. I wash it down with a swig of sweet iced tea. “I have a brother and sister-in-law in Baltimore, and one of the twins lives in London with his wife and my nephew Braxton.”

“London! I love the UK. Have you been over to visit them?”

“Not yet,” I say with a guilty expression. “They keep asking, but I’ve been too busy with work.”

Todd raises an eyebrow, and I take another quick bite of my sandwich.

“You’ll never get that time back, you know.” The sentence is condescending, but his tone isn’t.

“I’ll go one day,” I say, defensive. But as I’m saying it I wonder when, or if, that day will ever come. As busy as I am for the foreseeable future, I doubt I’ll have time for a vacation of any sort. In fact, in seven years at Greenlee Designs, I’ve only taken one real vacation—a trip to Orange Beach with my family. And now that I’m not going to France or even to High Point, I don’t even have work trips as a travel option.

I’m hit with a pinch of regret that I never did what I keep telling Adam and Jane I’m going to do, which is take a few extra days of vacation during one of my buying trips to cross the Channel and visit them. I’ve never been to any foreign country except France, and on those trips all I really saw were the stalls of flea markets and the insides of antiques shops. I’ve never even been up the Eiffel Tower.

And now, with Rachael taking my place as Candace’s right-hand woman, it looks like I might not get the chance again.

I’m staring at my plate, and Todd isn’t saying anything, so I attempt to flip the conversation to him. So far I’ve learned little about him apart from the fact that he grew up in Memphis—in a Midtown bungalow where his parents still live—and that he seems to have about forty-eight cousins, including Quinn.

“So clearly you
have
been to England, then. Tell me about your trip.”

“Which one?” He gives me the lopsided smile again, sending my heart soaring in a tiny flight inside my chest. And then he picks up his glass, takes a drink, and says, “My parents are both professors—well, my mother’s retired now, but my dad can’t give it up—and I traveled a lot as a kid. My mother’s specialty was north Egyptian archaeology, so we went to Africa more than anyplace else. We lived there for about two years when I was in middle school and my brother was in high school.”

“You have a brother?” He hasn’t mentioned any siblings, so even though I have about a hundred questions for him, this one seems the most pressing.

“Yeah,” he says, and an odd expression crosses his face. “I don’t see him much though. He works on Wall Street.”

Todd’s total opposite.
I can’t even imagine it. For a split second I wonder if his brother is single, then feel ashamed of myself for the thought.

“I see him on Facebook more than anywhere else,” he adds.

“Were you close growing up?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Well,
I
thought so anyway. He’s three years older, and I annoyed the hell out of him and his friends by following them around all the time.” He chuckles, and I try to imagine him as a kid, freckled and towheaded. He must have been adorable.

“Anyway, Matt went to Duke and moved to New York City after undergrad. I went to UC Berkeley and then traveled around for a few years. I got my master’s from Queen’s College in Cambridge, so that answers your England question.” He smiles again and then says, “I’ve only been back in Memphis for about a year.”

I’m doing the mental math, and finally I blurt it out: “How old are you?” Based on what he’s been telling me, he can’t be as young as I’d imagined.

“Twenty-nine,” he says, and I almost choke on the sweet tea I’ve just sipped. “I’ll be thirty in October.”

“Really?” I pull the white cloth napkin from my lap and wipe my lips, trying to downplay my shock.

“Really.” He stares at me curiously. “Why? How old did you think I was?”

I shrug, abashed. “I mean, I don’t know. Like, twenty-four or so? Twenty-five, tops.”

He bursts out laughing at this. “People have always told me I have a baby face. Or, mainly just my aunts. But whatever.”

I’m thinking about what he told me a few weeks ago, that he owns a house in Evergreen. That makes a lot more sense now but something else doesn’t.

“So, I guess you’re planning to stick around for a while, since you bought a house?”

Why do I feel like the weight of gravity rests on his answer to this question? I attempt to press this feeling down, stifle it—
why should it matter?
—but still, I’m holding my breath.

He shrugs. “If there’s something to stick around for,” he says. His voice is casual, but I feel as if his eyes are piercing into my skin. Or am I just imagining it?

After an awkward moment, he continues. “I’ll be here at least until I get the renovation done, I guess. I bought it as a flip.” He chuckles. “I guess you could say it’s another one of my jobs.”

When I let out the breath it feels like a balloon is deflating in my chest. Even if I like this guy, even if a date with him would not technically be robbing the cradle (though I
am
still older than him), me going out with Todd could never work—we’re like magnetic repulsion.

He’s the opposite of Jeremy, the opposite of Brandon. Todd is fly-by-night, spontaneous, possibly unreliable, definitely unpredictable, unmotivated. He doesn’t seem to give a damn what anybody thinks. Me, I’m steady, organized, hard-working, ambitious. I care too much what
everybody
thinks. And besides, I’m still not sure his interest in me goes beyond friendliness. He seems to regard me with amusement more than anything.

So why do I feel like pushing this table out of our way and jumping onto his lap right now?

I shake my head and start looking around the restaurant for our server. “I’d better get back to the office,” I say once I’ve signaled for her attention.

He seems surprised.

When the server arrives, I tell her we need our checks, and when she asks if we’re together or separate, I immediately say, “separate.”

As soon as she’s rushed away, Todd says, “About Thursday?”

“Yes?” My voice is guarded, though my heart is fluttering again at the thought of the Sweeties project. I’d almost forgotten about it, and now I can’t imagine spending hours in close quarters with this man in only two days.

“Do you want me to be there at 9:30, or did you say nine o’clock?”