A Man for All Seasons. Heather Macallister

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СКАЧАТЬ he looked up at her, he tried to remember if her expression had always been carefully blank and he was only noticing now because of the new vantage point, or if he should get her into therapy ASAP and find some place else to live.

      She was waiting for him to say something.

      “I appreciate you letting me stay here. I know it’s been a lot longer than we thought it was going to be.” He watched for a reaction, a clue to her thoughts.

      “It’s not a problem.”

      Nothing. “Yeah, but you can’t buy your own furniture when I’ve got mine taking up all the room.” He nodded toward the living area. His stuff looked great in there, but it was guy stuff—an overscale chocolate-brown sofa, a massive coffee table he liked to put his feet on, and the flat screen TV mounted on the wall. You could barely see Marlie’s glass dining table and she’d moved her loveseat downstairs to her office. “If you want me to put it in storage, say the word.”

      “It’s fine,” she said with a hint of emotion. “Furniture shopping isn’t in the budget, which is why if you weren’t paying rent, I’d have to find someone else.” She took a step and then added, “But don’t feel obligated to stay here if it’s not working for you.”

      She seemed sincere. “I want to stay here,” Ty assured her. “It’s a great location. Better than my house, assuming it ever gets finished.”

      “That’s why I picked this place.” She gazed into the distance. “How could I pass up a revitalized neighborhood in the heart of the city with a chance to build a brand-new home just the way I wanted?” Marlie looked around. “And now I have my dream house. I chose every fixture, the colors, the floors, the crown molding, the upgraded granite counter tops, the marble around the fireplace, the appliances, the vanities and tile and the rain head in the shower.” Marlie’s voice grew louder. “I looked at over a thousand door pulls to find just the right ones.”

      “And they’re perfect.” He’d never noticed them. Who paid attention to hardware?

      She gripped the banister. “You see this maple? I chose this.” She slowly caressed it.

      “Gorgeous.” Why hadn’t he let her walk upstairs?

      Marlie nodded dreamily. “The builder thought I wouldn’t notice when he substituted oak, but I did and I made him redo our railings.” She blinked and froze. “My railings,” she corrected in a quieter voice. “My. Railings.”

      Oh, no. The broken engagement. No, no, no. Not going there. They’d never discussed it and there was no need to bring it up. If he did, he was in for tears and sobbing and wailing and who knows what hysteria.

      Marlie’s face had gone even paler and she seemed to shrink.

      Say good-night he told himself. Escape now.

      She white-knuckled her precious maple banister.

      Ty groaned inwardly. What the heck, the night was already shot. He might as well man up and let her sob on his shoulder for a few minutes. “Marlie, my mom told me you’d been engaged, but she didn’t know what happened.”

      “That’s because my mother doesn’t know what happened, so she couldn’t tell yours.” Her lip trembled. “I don’t even know what happened.”

      And then, of course, she proceeded to tell him what happened.

      2

      “ONE MINUTE, I WAS WAITING for Eric in the reception area at the title company so we could close on the townhouse and the next, he got off the elevator and told me he can’t do this.”

      Eric would be the ex, Ty surmised.

      “I thought he meant he didn’t have time right then because something…”

      This was going to take more than a few minutes.

      “…could have called me on my cell…”

      Ty jiggled his beer bottle. Empty.

      “…and he said ‘any of this.’ The house. The job. The wedding. It was too much. He felt pressured. How could he feel pressured?” She poked at her chest. “I was the one who ran around taking care of all the details. I met with the builder, I planned the wedding, I arranged for the movers. I even packed. All he had to do was show up!”

      “Maybe that was the problem.” Ty made the mistake of saying.

      Marlie’s eyes went huge.

      He tried to explain, also a mistake. “Maybe he felt left out. Maybe he wanted to be more involved.” Even as he spoke, Ty knew he was saying the wrong thing. Besides, what guy wanted to be more involved in wedding plans?

      Marlie’s response was to run up the stairs.

      “Marlie!”

      Hell. But only the first level. It was going to get worse. If she hadn’t told her own mother the details of Eric bailing out on her, that meant she probably hadn’t told anybody. She’d kept everything bottled inside for what? A couple of years? Tonight would be her first venting. It was going to be epic. He was looking at the fourth or even fifth level of hell for sure.

      Ty set his empty bottle on the kitchen bar and followed Marlie upstairs all the way into her bedroom. He was going to drag the story out of her if it took all night. Then he’d have the fun of convincing her that It Was Over and time to move on with her life. If all went well, Marlie’d find another guy and hang around with him, and then Ty could finally, finally spend quality time with Axelle.

      “Marlie—” And he broke off.

      He’d never been in her bedroom. His room was down the hall to the left and there was no reason for him to go to her end. There was an unspoken understanding that they stayed out of each others’ bedrooms, and the most he’d seen of hers was a chair by the window if she’d left her door open.

      So that was why he was hit with the full force of the bed. At first, he didn’t even realize it was her bed. The mattress was entirely enclosed in a ceiling-high, open-sided white box with a charcoal-gray interior and rounded corners. He moved closer and saw task lights, speakers and a control panel in the padded headboard. It extended upward to form a solid canopy housing a projector, and continued in one piece all the way down past the foot of the bed to the floor. The interior of the footboard was a screen that stretched the width of the bed.

      He’d gone slack-jawed. “That’s…is that…?”

      “The European media bed that was in all the magazines? Not exactly.” Marlie came to stand beside him. “I couldn’t afford the real thing, so I had this one made.”

      Ty glanced at her. She sounded better. Calmer. His interest in the bed seemed a good distraction for the moment, so he checked out the upholstered interior and the headboard controls. “You designed this?”

      “Not by myself. I talked to the carpenters who built the house and showed them pictures. I ended up bartering a website for the bed frame. And then the electrician got involved and he knew a man who installed sound systems and so on. It was a collaborative effort.”

      “Wow.” СКАЧАТЬ