By Design (10 page)

“Emmaline,” Wilma said slowly, as if speaking to a child, “Wilman Designs has a
reputation
to uphold.”

Emmie licked her lips and thought for a moment, staring hard at Wilma. Then she spun on her heel and motioned sharply for Wilma to follow her. When she got back to the table, she put her hands on the back of a chair and leaned toward her new friends. “Annette, John says he’d be thrilled to have you as our client, and we can get started as soon as we take a look at your son’s room, get some measurements. Can you give me your address again?”

“Oh, sure, honey. It’s 3719 Overlook. You know—in the Lamplight District?”

“Yes, of course.” Emmie knew perfectly well what Annette’s address was; she just wanted Wilma to hear it for himself. She looked over at him. “John? You know the old
Lamplight District
, don’t you?” He had blanched, and his sneer was nowhere to be found. Of course he knew the community of the most venerable—and expensive—houses in town. True mansions, they put the tract homes he often worked on to shame. “Annette’s husband is CFO of Tech/Tonic,” she added for good measure, dropping the name of one of the new IT firms in the area, “and Annette runs a very successful wholesale import business. I’m surprised you haven’t run into them at one of the networking events in town.”

“P-Perhaps I have,” Wilma stuttered, trying to regain his footing. “You do look familiar, Mrs. . . . Polschuk, you say?”

As Annette eyed Wilma somewhat suspiciously, the bell over the front door jangled. Emmie looked up and started. “Graham!” she exclaimed, and she automatically moved toward him a few steps. She excused herself from the conference table almost as an afterthought and glimpsed mischievous grins on Annette’s and Martie’s faces. Yeah, the way she’d said his name sounded a little overeager to her, too. More formally, she asked him, “What can I do for you?”

“I’m going over to the house in a few minutes. I was wondering if you’d want to take a look at the place. If you aren’t too busy. We’re still deep in the demo phase, but I wanted you to see it for yourself as soon as you could.”

He had said on Saturday night that he wanted to get to work, and now here he was, first thing on Monday morning, ready to go. And she wasn’t going to refuse—for a lot of reasons.

“That’s a good idea.”

“Great. When can you get away?”

“Fifteen, twenty minutes?”

“Fine. I’ll see you then.” To the others, he called, “Sorry to interrupt.”

Annette shouted, “Oh, that’s all right! If I were Emmie, I’d let you interrupt anytime you wanted!” And she and her sister-in-law whooped with delight. Annette pointed from her to Graham and back again. “Are you two . . . uh . . . ?”

Emmie felt a blush burn her cheeks, but Graham merely chuckled and replied, “Well, ladies, to tell you the truth, I keep getting the distinct feeling she won’t have me.”

“Well, then, she’s out of her mind!” Martie exclaimed. “But don’t worry—we’ll talk some sense into her and send her back to you with her head screwed on straight.”

“Much obliged, ladies.”

“Let me walk you out,” Emmie hissed, taking him by the elbow. She opened the door for him and whispered through a fake smile, “Look. I will work for you, but I will not be your beard.”

“Beards are for gay men,” he replied quietly, with a smile that was far more genuine than hers. “I thought you, of all people, would know that.”

“You leave Avery out of this. I will not be your hetero-beard. Or whatever it’s called.” Gritted-teeth smile.

“You’re not making sense, Emmie.” Amused smile.

“Get out. I’ll be over to the house later.” No smile of any sort.

Graham was enjoying himself way too much. “I’m counting the minutes already.”

He sauntered out, still grinning, and Emmie firmly shut the door behind him. She shook herself.
What the hell was that?
When she returned to the conference table, she found that Wilma had pulled up a chair and sat down, saying, “—so
very
sorry I was late, ladies. Emmaline didn’t update my calendar with your early appointment. Now, Emmaline, why don’t you show me where you’ve left off with Mrs. Pol—er,
Annette
.” And he reached for the paperwork Emmie had started.

It figured. Of course he would take over, the minute someone pointed out the vein of gold in the mine. Annette and Martie, however, looked puzzled. They glanced from Wilma to Emmie, apparently taken aback at the change in command.

“Wait a minute,” Annette started to say, “I thought—”

“Emmaline, why don’t you make a fresh pot of coffee before you run along and help Mr. Cooper. I’ll finish up here.”

Emmie produced a tight smile that made her face hurt. “Of course. Annette, Martie, good to see you.”

She grabbed the coffeepot and stalked away, leaving a smug Wilma and two stunned clients at the table. She refilled the coffeemaker as quickly as she could, ignoring Wilma’s smarmy tones coming from behind her. Then she crossed to the front of the office, yanked her coat off the coatrack, grabbed her bag, and headed out to her car before she could allow herself to get too angry. After all, she knew this was the inevitable outcome of working for Wilma. She could never please him, and she could never convince him that she was worthy of even decorating an eleven-year-old’s bedroom. She might as well stop trying.

The buzz of a table saw and crash of sledgehammers reverberated in the icy air. Emmie stood on the front walk of the house on West Street and gazed up at the once white, now gray and peeling, structure. The large home sat well back from the street, up a slight hillside, under oaks and elms that would create a deep green canopy in the summer. Now, however, a thick layer of brown leaves, sodden from the recent snow that had fallen, then melted, covered the lawn beneath the bare trees. Emmie knew this place well. It had been a stately home years ago, and she couldn’t wait to start on the restoration. Someday, she thought, she wanted to walk down this street and look up at this house, brightly painted and sparkling clean, its lawn lush and its gardens blooming, and take pride in the fact that she had helped rescue it.

Right now, however, it was anything but lovely. Notched two-by-fours, pitched at a steep angle and wedged into the lawn, propped up the sagging porch roof. Four banks of windows, two on each floor in the matching two-story wings on either side of the porch, stared blankly at the bare yard above overgrown, scraggly juniper bushes. Blistered and peeling paint revealed weathered clapboards, and the lower half of one of the corner boards was missing.

As Emmie climbed the porch steps, the rotted wooden treads gave a little under her weight. The steel front door—number one on the mental list she’d started of things that needed to be replaced—was open despite the cold, and orange extension cords snaked from the house to the work vans in the pitted driveway.

She stepped over them into a foyer as wide as the front porch. The hardwood floor had been worn down to a dull gray. The wall plaster was dinged, the paint smudged and stained. Sheets of plywood and more two-by-fours leaned against the wall, nearly blocking the hallway that went straight to the back of the house, likely to the kitchen. The foyer was empty.

When the noise of a power saw ceased momentarily, she tentatively called, “Hello?” No answer. She tried again. “Hello!”

“Yeah!” came a familiar voice. “Emmie?”

“Yes!”

“Up here. Watch your step.”

She grasped the ornate banister, which wobbled precariously, and took the stairs cautiously. On the upstairs landing, which seemed large enough to be a room all on its own, several workmen in steel-toed boots, sawdust-covered jeans, T-shirts, and tool belts were merrily destroying their surroundings. Emmie always wondered if some construction workers got into the business because they enjoyed making really big messes.

“Graham?”

“Over here!” His voice came from one of the bedrooms at a distance; she excused herself and made her way past the men, who had to stop what they were doing so she didn’t get walloped by a flying sledgehammer.

Emmie stuck her head into the doorway and was startled to see Graham, among more workers, a reciprocating saw in hand.

“Hi,” he said over his shoulder as he knelt in front of a wall that was little more than bare studs with a few scraps of lath clinging to them. “Be with you in just a second.” And he neatly sliced through a few beams in less than a minute. Emmie’s eyebrows crept toward her hairline—not because of the handsome forearms in view, as Graham had rolled up the sleeves of his chocolate-brown fine-wale corduroy shirt for the task, but because she didn’t expect to find him immersed in the actual carpentry end of things. She expected him to be the idea-guy type of architect, visiting sites under construction but not staying very long and, if he did set up camp, hunkered down behind his laptop in a quiet corner.

Graham handed the power tool to a nearby worker and brushed off his clothes as he approached Emmie. “Making this room a bit bigger,” he explained. And the workers continued to slice through the timbers, making two small bedrooms into one. “We modern home dwellers do like a lot of space, don’t we?”

Suddenly Emmie found herself a little shy around him. “I guess so,” she said hoarsely. She cleared her throat.

“Let me show you around.” He led the way back through the construction zone and down the stairs. “Let’s start at the beginning.”

Graham eagerly led her through the first floor. The two front rooms, one on either side of the foyer, were large and airy, despite the fact that they were both painted dark green. Both had fireplaces; one appeared to have been used as a parlor, the other a library, as it was lined with bookcases. A dining room lay beyond the parlor, between it and the kitchen, but behind the library were two unusual, smaller rooms side by side, off a perpendicular hallway, that Graham called “mystery rooms.”

Graham explained, “Honestly, I don’t know what these back rooms were—maybe a ladies’ parlor? An office? No idea. This house isn’t very . . . traditional. It might have started off as Greek Revival, but after a century of alterations . . .” Emmie nodded. “And I like it for that very reason.”

As he quickly led Emmie back into the central hallway, she smiled to herself—he was like a little kid showing off his toys, so excited. Well, she could see what he loved about it. “Good bones” was the standard real estate catchphrase. No matter how ugly or run down a house was, if it had “good bones”—large rooms that “flowed” well, a solid foundation—you could make something of it. And she already wanted to make something of this place, too.

And then he pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen. Emmie winced as she stepped over the threshold and straight into the 1970s. Dark brown fake-walnut pressboard cabinets surrounded her, making the space feel smaller than it really was. The appliances were all that special shade of avocado specific to the era. The single-sheet linoleum flooring was curling under itself where it met the chipboard baseboards, also fake walnut. The wallpaper was late twentieth-century ick—giant yellow daisies over avocado and orange stripes. “Er . . .”

“I know.”

Emmie nodded appreciatively. “Orange countertops. I hear they’re coming back in style. Really.”

“Yeah, I read that in last month’s
Architectural Digest.
” He grinned at her, and her stomach did a backflip.

She followed him through the Kitchen of Horrors to view the butler’s pantry (blessedly untouched by “modern improvements”), back porch (more beat up than the front porch), and, unfortunately, a powder room located way too close to the cooking area. Graham informed her that the powder room was going to be relocated. She firmly approved.

Back upstairs, she and Graham poked their heads into the various bedrooms, most of them small, except for the one that had just been expanded, and the bathroom with fifty-year-old fixtures—a shallow ceramic bathtub in a strange shade of turquoise, and a freestanding sink, precariously supported by corroded metal legs, with a bowl that was supposed to be the same color as the tub but didn’t quite match. The bathroom still reeked of a strong soap, even though the house hadn’t been lived in for years.

Graham said, “We’re pretty sure there’s a bar of Irish Spring behind the wall. First contractor to find it and relocate it to the next state wins a prize.”

They ducked out of the bathroom as quickly as possible, and Graham led her to the last bedroom. The door, opposite the top of the stairs, was shut. He put his hand on the ornate, tarnished brass knob and said, “Get a load of this.”

He pushed open the door and ushered her inside. Emmie, braced for an unpleasant shock along the lines of the kitchen and the bathrooms, gasped. Spread across almost the entire back expanse of the house, the massive bedroom was stunning, even in its present dilapidated state. The first thing that caught her eye was a fireplace, the bricks over the opening blackened, the mantel worn, but . . .
a fireplace. In the bedroom.
Emmie was ready to move in right then and there. Two walls were made up entirely of windows. The only place available for a bed was to the right of the door, opposite the south-facing windows, so the spot was graced with year-round sunlight. Built-in cupboards wrapped all the way around the spot for the bed, from the closet door on the far side to the bedroom door and all the way to the ceiling. They were worn and in need of refinishing, but their effect, of real wood paneling, was rich and dramatic.

Emmie took a few steps farther into the room and turned her face up to the thin winter sun, imagining how warm and bright it would be only a few months from now, with the strengthening sunlight making it feel like spring in the room, even as winter hung on for dear life outside.

“You like it?” Graham asked.

Emmie closed her eyes and nodded, smiling blissfully, thinking about what it would be like to wake up to the view of the backyard every morning, the sun shining down on the fruit trees that peppered the gentle swell of the acre behind the house . . . being served breakfast in bed by a lady’s maid . . . the master of the house (just for the sake of argument, that role could be played by Graham) beside her . . .

Emmie let herself get lost in her daydream for so long that, when she noticed the silence in the room, she jumped. She shook herself, opened her eyes, and looked over at Graham. He was staring at her. She blushed furiously. No wonder Wilma hardly ever let her out by herself. Graham must think she was a complete loony.

But he just smiled. “The room suits you.”

And then came a little . . . hitch. He was silent, Emmie was silent. His mouth clamped shut in a straight line as he looked at her, then glanced away uncomfortably. Emmie had no idea how it had happened, but something . . . extra . . . was there in the room with them. And it wasn’t the ghost of a lady’s maid.

“So—”

“Right.”

“—that’s pretty much it, unless you want to see the attic,” he said, swinging his arms a bit too jauntily, startling Emmie. Graham was usually so serenely contained that his sudden random, jerky movements were jarring.

“I can skip the attic for now,” she said. The house was completely quiet. Apparently the workers were taking a break. She wondered how long it had been since their sawing and sledgehammering had fallen silent—had they just stopped, or had she been so caught up in spending time with Graham that she hadn’t noticed the house had gone quiet ages ago?

As they descended to the first floor again, Graham said from behind her, “So . . . what’s the Emmie story?”

“The what?”

“The Emmie story. You know—”

At the bottom of the stairs, she turned to him and made a face. “You mean my Very Special Relationship with John?”

Graham laughed, which made her toes tingle. She loved his open, genuine smile. “Not necessarily. But I do wonder how you got there, sure.”

“Uh”—she breathed uneasily—“well, er, I was born here, grew up here.” She skipped over high school so she didn’t have to mention Juliet, and went on, “I got my degree at Westfall College, just up the road—”

“Oh, yeah,” Graham cut in, “I know the place. I’m from Ostey, originally. That’s near there.”

“Right! We used to do some serious drinking in—” Emmie winced. “I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”

He shrugged. “We’ve all got our vices.”
Ain’t that the truth,
Emmie thought. As he directed her back into the library, he asked, “What about family? Brothers? Sisters?”

“Nope, I’m an only,” she replied. “My dad lives here in town. My mom . . . passed last year.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“That’s about it. Pretty average, really.”

“Oh, I think that’s the last word I’d use to describe—” Then something started pinging across the room. Graham said, “Excuse me a second,” and crossed to the window seat to pick up his phone.

Hey now. What was that?
As he read his text message, Emmie, thoroughly discombobulated by his last comment, retreated to the opposite end of the room, pretending to study the cobwebbed crown molding and the empty, dusty shelves. She leaned on the wall; after that kind of comment, she needed some support to remain standing. A bulge of dried-out plaster gave under her weight.

“Sorry,” Graham said, putting his phone in his pocket and joining her on the other side of the room. “So. What do you think of the place?”

Hang on—care to finish that last thought?
she wondered. But he’d apparently moved on, so she just said, “I think it’s great.”

“Now, Emmie Brewster, interior designer, there’s one thing I want to make clear,” he said, crossing his arms in front of him and rocking on his heels. “This is a very important project.”

“Of course,” Emmie said in her best career-mode voice, feeling a little defensive at his lecturing tone.

“What I mean is, it’s very important to
me.
”

“Okay . . .”
So he wants to impress the new owners. Who doesn’t?
“Er, who are the clients, by the way?”

He cocked an eyebrow and replied with the ghost of a smile, “Me.”

“What?”

“This is my house. I bought it.”

“Wow.” After a pause, she added, “Good thing I didn’t make any rude comments about the crazy guy who bought this tumble-down rattrap.”

“Good thing. And you know what this means, don’t you? Now you have to be nice to me.”

She smirked at him, realizing that they were both recalling Saturday night’s conversation in the shadowed back room of Juliet’s new shop. Then, in all seriousness, she said, “It’s a great place, Graham. Really.”

“It is, isn’t it? And . . . I want it to be done right. I want it to be perfect. Not that you won’t do your best—I know you will. But I just want to make sure you understand that I’m doing this for someone who’s very important to me.”

Emmie stiffened. She could fill in the blanks there. Juliet? When the house was ready, was she going to leave her husband and move in here with Graham? That would explain why her McMansion didn’t look lived in, wasn’t decorated: She wasn’t planning on staying all that long. So this was going to be Juliet’s perfect house, with Juliet’s breathtaking sunny bedroom, and even a lady’s maid if Juliet wished it.