Enlisted by Love (5 page)

“What are you expecting to use as chairs?” she demanded. “Tree stumps?” The high-pitched tone of her voice did not convey her usual politeness or her typical cool calmness. Both seemed entirely beyond her skill at the moment.

Her headache, which had begun the moment she'd seen the photo of the monstrosity, hadn't been improved by the knowledge that she would have to see it in the flesh. The reality of said experience wasn't helping matters, either.

She stood, hands on hips, transfixed by the hideousness that was taking up a good portion of the floor space in the storage unit. Other items had been covered with drop cloths to keep them from getting scratched or dusty, but not the monstrosity. It crouched, naked and ugly, revealed in its full grotesqueness by the light of the fluorescent fixture buzzing overhead. She glared at it, then transferred the glare to Ian when he said, intrigued, “Tree stumps? That'd work.”

“Don't push me.” That came out as a growl, which was at least an improvement over the shriek. “What,” she asked, measuring her words precisely like counting out coins, “do you expect me to do with this thing?”

Ian shrugged. The shrug outraged her because it dismissed her annoyance over the monstrosity and Greta did not care for her annoyance over any matter to be treated lightly.

“Look, if I wanted conventional, I would have gone with Alison Scott,” he said reasonably, making her clench her fists in frustration. “And we'd be ordering a nice Chippendale-style dining room suite.”

What would be wrong with that? A Chippendale-style dining room suite would go very well in his dining room, and she knew just the reproduction house to order it from. “Do I look avant-garde?” she demanded, her hand sweeping the length of her body in a grand gesture meant to point out that carefully made-up ladies in expensively tailored pantsuits did not embark on cutting-edge creative projects, even if they wanted to. Which she didn't. “Do I appear to be the kind of person who pushes the envelope?”

Unfortunately, her poorly chosen words called his attention to her person rather than her argument. He gave her a long admiring look. A blush started in her cheeks. Good heavens, when was the last time a man had made her blush? Did a more annoying reaction exist in the universe?

She took a deep, sustaining breath and ignored the pleasant tingle that spread through her body. “Interior design is an extremely conservative field,” she informed him. “Most clients prefer to play it safe. They want to show good taste. I'm very good at pushing people to think beyond Ethan Allen living room suites. But I have never had to drag anyone back from the edge of unreason before.”

She was breathing raggedly by the time she was through, and a strand of hair had worked loose from her chignon. She shoved it behind her ear and gave him a look that would have made a lesser man quail.

Ian nodded as if her speech made perfect sense. Then he said, “I like this table. Do you know what it took to get this table shipped from Bangkok? I don't even want to remember it.”

A red haze enveloped her. He was missing the point. Deliberately missing the point, as she could have guessed he would do. She took another deep, sustaining breath. She counted to ten. No, she would not — could not — allow him to push her buttons like this. She must get herself under control. She forced herself to relax, unclenching her fists one finger at a time. She closed her eyes, remembering her yoga teacher's chirping instructions to breathe out all the bad vibes and breathe in only the good ones. This was hard to do with Ian standing so close to her, but she made a valiant effort.

She opened one eye. The red haze had cleared. Then she opened the other. There. She could deal with him now.

“You shouldn't have bothered,” she grumbled, but it was only a little grumble. The monstrosity was just so monolithic. It was the only thing you'd be able to see when you walked into the dining room. How would she find other furnishings for the room that wouldn't look totally ridiculous and out of place? The monstrosity would dwarf everything. She'd never get the proportions right.

But … there was something there. If she lowered her resistance to the thing, she could see that something. She eyed the table, then took a step to the side to look at it from another angle. It was so big and so solid. Natural. Honest. Okay. That was a start. Considering Tess wouldn't let her set fire to it.

“I was thinking — ”

She held up a hand to stop him.

“Hush.”

“Well, I was just — ”

“Hush.” She didn't really want to know what he'd been thinking when he bought the table. Still, she needed to know what he wanted so she could find a way to give it to him without entirely compromising her aesthetic sense and destroying her personal integrity, not to mention flushing her business down the drain once word got out that she was the mastermind behind it.

She was overreacting. This was not a career-destroying situation. Worst case, she could always blame it on Tess. She took another deep breath. “Why did you buy this piece?”

Ian tilted his head and seemed to consider the question for a moment. He didn't seem bothered by her peremptory tone. Of course, all those years in the army, he was probably accustomed to people barking at him.

“I couldn't not buy it,” he said.

Grr
. If only she could snap at him for making such an unhelpful remark. Unfortunately, she knew exactly what he meant. She'd experienced that compulsion a time or two herself, although not over anything like this. There'd been a French provincial desk and she'd practically had to arm wrestle a dealer over it —

Her eyes met his and she smiled. A little frisson of electricity, of understanding, arced between them. With a reluctance that alarmed her, she tore her gaze away from his and turned her attention back to the monstrosity crouched in the center of the storage space. Natural, rough, masculine. Not her forte, but —

“Benches,” she said, fingers scrabbling in her bag for her notebook. “Rough-hewn benches, no help for it. Your guests will find it charming and friendly — the mead hall effect.” She dumped the bag on the floor and snatched the notebook from the pile. Crouching, she flipped it open to a clean page. “Stools for the ends. Cast iron wall fixtures … I'm going to need an ironmonger. Maybe in Kansas City but if we have to go to the East Coast, we will.” She'd assign that to Tess. Tess could hunt down anything. She found a pen and uncapped it with her teeth. “Candelabra at intervals the length of the table.” She spit the cap out. “Fire. We'll supplement the lighting with huge pillar candles in cast iron freestanding holders.” She turned the page, her pen flying. “We'll use natural fibers on the walls and natural linen drapes. Sideboard — we'll take a slab of wood and brace it to the wall with more iron.” A quick sketch accompanied her words. Too bad Tess wasn't here to take details. She was a much better artist. “No linens for the table. Rattan place mats if we must. Or maybe a bamboo runner on each side. We'll see. Earthenware pottery for the dishes. Flooring … is this room over a basement?”

When Ian didn't immediately answer, she looked up and snapped, “Well?”

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn't follow all that.”

He did seem slightly dazed. She took pity on him.

“This room, the dining room,” she said, gesturing with the pen and speaking slowly so he could keep up. “Is it built over a basement?”

“Slab,” he said promptly.

“We'll use granite, then,” she said, making more notes.

“Sounds impressive.”

She hadn't meant her question to be an invitation to talk — nothing disrupted a good brainstorming session so much as other people talking — but the creative surge seemed to have passed, so she said, “That's why you bought this monstrosity. It impressed you. I'm just designing a setting for it.” She got to her feet — she'd been crouched with her notebook balanced on her knee the entire time, which she now regretted because her knee was reminding her that they'd had surgery not very long ago. Wincing, she rubbed the joint, then glanced over her notes, adding a word here and there to clarify her thoughts.

“I still think — ”

“Stop. You hired me to design. Let me design.”

“Sure,” he said, with another shrug. This one did not enrage her because it meant he was agreeing with her. “I trust you, Greta.”

She tried not to let that matter more than it should. She said, “I have never been more sure of a design. Now you need to write a nice big check for a retainer and I'll get to work.”

• • •

Ian unbuttoned his jacket and pulled his checkbook out of the inner pocket. He was an Army man and he always came prepared, but he was pretty sure Greta didn't normally demand a huge retainer before she'd even provided preliminary design ideas. Unless she considered the stream of consciousness that she'd just delivered to qualify as a preliminary design. He'd expected something in a nice folder with sketches and fabric swatches, but what did he know?

She was looking around the storage room, taking in the other fabulous pieces he'd collected, not paying any attention to him. Her gaze kept going back to the table and he could tell she was developing a love-hate relationship with it.

He opened the checkbook and wrote out the amount she stated, thinking it sounded more like a ransom demand than a retainer. Fortunately he had an expense account. It was telling that even if he hadn't, he wouldn't have minded forking over cold hard cash to the woman. He knew — could tell — that she'd gotten it, much as she disliked admitting it. She'd seen the appeal of the monstrosity and she was going to make the perfect setting for it. Though the whole hiring-an-ironmonger thing made him a little nervous.

He handed over the check. She put it away, barely glancing at it, though he suspected if he hadn't added enough zeroes, she would have spotted that right off.

“Uh,” he said, clearing his throat. She slanted him a look over her shoulder that would have silenced a lesser man. Making sure her clients didn't dare question her was probably an extremely effective business strategy on her part. But he wasn't going to let her intimidate him. Besides, he knew she was intrigued now, hooked into solving his design problems, and that meant she wouldn't drop the project even if he did rub her the wrong way. Which he was going to stop doing as soon as he figured out how.

“I can't quite visualize what you're going to do with all that cast iron,” he ventured.

“You don't need to,” she said briefly. She had her tape measure out now, and was noting the dimensions of the table in her book. While he watched, she pulled out a small swatch of stain samples and started comparing them to the finish on the table, a big frown marring her usually calm features.

He had seen the interest flash in her eyes as she stared down at the table and the focus with which she planned and recorded the details she saw in her mind's eye, the attentiveness with which she was now making measurements and devising design strategies.

What if she paid that kind of attention to
him
? The thought came out of nowhere. What if her attention could be made to stay on him for more than three seconds, and what if she didn't look annoyed when he did get her attention?

“I just forked over the price of a small car,” he said. “Surely you can provide a few details.”

“The car would have to be a five-year-old Kia,” she said descriptively if not entirely accurately. She finished with her notes and popped the tape measure back in her bag.

“I'm your client,” he tried. “You can tell me.”

“There's nothing to tell. I have to work the details out and get Tess to do a basic design. I draw like a six-year-old, and I can't deliver something like that to an iron monger and expect reasonable results.”

He drifted over to her side, hoping to catch a glimpse of those drawings she mentioned, but she clapped the notebook closed and put it away in the bag, too.

“I don't need pictures, Greta,” he said. “Words will do.”

She rolled her eyes. “Words.”

He was standing very near her and suddenly he knew they were not talking about interior decorating anymore.

“If you don't like words,” he said, bending to speak next to her ear, “then actions also work for me.”

“Then you don't mind if I get to work,” she said. Her voice wasn't all that steady and she seemed to leave the storage unit a lot faster than was strictly polite.

He smiled as he watched her go. Things were looking up.

• • •

“That is a monstrosity,” Michael agreed, setting the photo aside. Greta knew he only agreed with her because he found it expedient to do so whenever he had nothing at stake. For that reason, his words did not make her feel vindicated. She tucked the photo back into its folder. Michael was always very tactful when he humored her, so she didn't call him on it. Tess would have, but then Tess and Michael enjoyed engaging in minor skirmishes followed by kissing and making up. “You want me to make benches to match the monstrosity?” he asked.

They were in his office at his carpentry shop, and he had already photocopied her notes and stacked them in a folder, which he had placed squarely in the middle of his desk to show that he would devote full attention to the project. He had his computer booted up, ready for inputting information when he had any. Michael's efficiency was one of the things Greta admired most about him. She was pretty sure it wasn't Tess's favorite quality. Ian was also very efficient. He had written her a check on the spot. That was her favorite one of his qualities, that he was a paying client. Not that dimple in his cheek when he smiled. Not —

She shook herself. “Right,” she said. “And two stools for the ends — you know the kind, with the seat that curves up on the sides, to give them an Asian look. Only make the seats wide enough to accommodate American males.”