Twenty
Climbing the stairs, I racked my brains as to what the thing was that could possibly be worse than another pile of previously undiscovered boxes of stuff. Oh well, not much I could do about it until I found out more. Whatever it was, we would deal with it. In the meantime, I had work to do.
When Michael finally got off the call, I’d made up the beds in all the guest rooms and made a list of some items for him to either borrow or buy for them and the guest bathrooms. All of them were now looking decidedly more inviting and like somewhere he could be proud to have people to stay in.
‘I’m in here!’ I called as Michael shouted to find out where I was. I gave the throw I’d found in the linen cupboard, still in its packaging, a final adjustment as I lay it on the end of the bed. I was just smoothing it over with my hand when Michael entered the room. He didn’t say anything and for a horrible moment I thought that maybe I’d made a mistake, that something I’d used in here was a glaring reminder of his ex.
‘You can change whatever you want, obviously. I just thought I’d make them up whilst I waited for you, so that you can see how they’ll look.’
He looked down at me, then back around the room. Admittedly, it did look different. No longer was it like a disused room in a wing of an old hotel. Now, it was welcoming, chic and cosy.
‘It looks…amazing. I can’t believe you did all this.’ He glanced at the door and then his watch. ‘How long was I gone?’
‘Oh, I can work pretty quickly when I need to.’
‘My sister-in-law said she’d give me a hand making the rest of the rooms up when they – ’
‘They’re done.’
‘All of them?’
‘All of them. I assume the children will be sleeping in travel cots or on the floor or something. So they’ll need sorting but the beds themselves and rooms are all ready. Well, guest bedrooms anyway. Yours still needs a bit of TLC, I expect.’ I hadn’t dared go in there and face the rumpled sheets that probably still existed from his evening with the Parisian bombshell I’d seen leaving.
Michael was just staring at me.
‘Did I do something wrong?’
‘What? No! No, not at all.’
‘What then?’
‘I’m just a little worried about you?’
‘Me? Why?’
‘Because less than a week ago you could barely stand up and had a temperature similar to that of the surface of Venus. And now you’re running around like a whirling dervish doing things that are way beyond your remit anyway. I don’t want to turn round and find you in a heap on the floor.’
‘Because it’ll make your now super gorgeous house look untidy?’
He stepped closer and picked a pillow feather out of my hair. ‘Because despite the fact I’m a grumpy sod who reminds you of Mr Rochester, I’m not entirely devoid of the caring gene.’
I looked up at him and laid my hand on his forearm, feeling the corded muscles and the tickle of hair against the softness of my palm. ‘I know you’re not. And like I said, Mr Rochester improves once Jane’s there to show him what’s what.’
Michael’s eyes began to twinkle. I rolled my own.
‘Men,’ I said, walking away. ‘Come on. Tell me where you’ve hidden the Christmas decorations and we can start getting some up.’
‘Oh. Yes. Right. About that?’
I looked back over my shoulder. ‘Oh dear. This doesn’t sound good.’
‘I don’t exactly have a lot of decorations.’
I turned a little more. ‘When you say that you don’t have a lot, what exactly do you have?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
He pulled his mouth to the side. ‘Nothing. I got the stuff for the outside when we got all the things for the dog as there was a garden centre next door to the pet shop. I found one ratty bit of tinsel in the attic, which I binned, but that’s it.’
‘Not to worry. Although, admittedly, it does make starting immediately a little more difficult.’
Michael sat on the end of the bed, and Pilot, who had now wandered in came and flopped down on the floor beside him, his head resting on his master’s foot.
‘You’re really wishing you’d never taken this job, aren’t you?’ He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back.
I looked at him and my answer surprised me. ‘Not for a moment.’ Despite everything, even down to seeing a beautiful woman wrapping her arms around his neck first thing this morning, I knew this was the truth: I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
From the look on his face, it seemed I wasn’t the only one surprised.
‘I know. Shocker, huh?’ I walked back and sat next to him. ‘And if you’d asked me when I started if I’d ever be saying that, I’d have thought you’d been hitting the eggnog. But I have to say, despite you being the most annoying client I’ve ever had,’ he grinned at the tease, ‘this has actually turned into one of my most favourite jobs.’ I lifted my eyes and found Michael watching me.
‘Only one of them?’
I dropped my glance, ostensibly to lean down and play with Pilot’s velvety ears, but also because the impact of Michael’s viridescent gaze still had the ability to disorientate me and my thoughts.
‘Don’t push it,’ I replied.
His laugh surrounded me, the sound of it warming me from the inside. It made me happy to hear. Happy because I knew, just from our initial meeting, and from what Janey had told me over time, that laughing wasn’t something he’d done a lot of in the past few years. Seeing any client happier made me happy. But with Michael, it had a bigger impact. It went deeper than I was used to. Of course, this was just because I knew that his happiness had a knock-on effect of making my best friend happy, so it was bound to affect me more. Not to mention the fact that he had rescued Pilot and was giving him a wonderful life.
‘You can’t blame a guy for trying. So, what happens now? I guess I need to go shopping. Anywhere you recommend?’
‘John Lewis is always pretty good for decorations or Marks at Marble Arch. Liberty obviously always has gorgeous stuff but as you’ll be buying in bulk that might be pushing it a bit. Once you’ve got all the basics covered, you can always add to it if you see something special somewhere.’
‘Right,’ he said, pushing himself up off the bed. ‘I guess I’d better get on with it then.’
‘Would it be possible to put any less enthusiasm into that statement?’
Michael rubbed the back of his neck. ‘That obvious, huh?’
I
