By Design (16 page)

Behind her, Graham was on his phone. “Yeah, hey, Steve, sorry to bother you on a Sunday, but I was wondering if you could do me a favor. Can you scare up some tarps—those really big ones—and find a couple of the guys, head out to 147 Hickory? . . . Right. Had a bit of a fire last night at Emmie’s . . . Yeah . . . House needs a little protecting from the elements—I hear it’s going to snow again tonight . . . No, no plywood—we can get to that tomorrow . . . Yeah . . . Nope, not too pretty right now. But it’s nothing that can’t get fixed soon enough.”

Emmie half smiled to herself; she was sure that last comment was for her benefit. Graham had spent the drive over trying to cheer her up with optimistic talk about how quickly they could get the repairs done. Now he was taking the initiative to protect the remnants of her home, because he could tell she was completely at a loss about what to do next. She liked leaning on him (emotionally in this instance, but of course physically, too—and she shivered a little as she thought of their kiss). It was such a nice feeling to have someone supporting her instead of dragging her down. Last night—well, heck, up till just half an hour ago—she couldn’t have imagined that anything good could come of this disaster. Funny how life worked.

Graham approached her tentatively, checked her expression. “Well? How are you holding up?”

Emmie nodded as she continued to stare at the innards of her house laid bare. “Okay.”

“Really?”

She nodded again, perhaps a little too enthusiastically, with eyes a little too wide. He said nothing, only put an arm around her shoulder. She fell against him, buried her face in his jacket, and let it all out while he stroked her hair and held her close. After a few minutes, when Emmie’s tears lessened, he murmured, “Let’s get some of your things out of the house. I’m sure it’s safe to go through the front door. Okay?”

Emmie found it pretty strange to be opening her front door and walking through it, then closing it behind her, while the back of the house was wide open, but it gave her a feeling of normalcy at the same time. The interior was dark and cold, littered with the remnants of her party. Emmie stood stock still in the middle of her living room for a few moments. Then she made a beeline for the bookshelves and picked up a framed picture of her and her mother, taken at her mom’s birthday dinner several years ago. She hugged it to her chest and looked around again, certain that she needed nothing else but this one treasured memento.

But then she saw Graham standing patiently near her dining room table, beside the dishes of withered appetizers from last night, and she remembered something important. She retrieved her laptop case and work bag from the front hall closet, where she had put them for safekeeping before the party. Now she was grateful she had taken a moment to tuck away her work items. The bag held all the notes, lists, sketches, fabric samples, and paint chips for Graham’s project; if she had put them in her bedroom, she’d have had to start all over. She also grabbed her warmest coat, a hat, and some gloves. Because they had been in the closet, they only smelled slightly of smoke, unlike the rest of the place, which absolutely reeked.

Graham accepted everything from her and took it out to his car. Alone in her house, Emmie tried not to cry again. Graham came back inside saying, “I’d bet anything you need more clothes.”

Emmie half laughed. “Well, yeah. Female. But I’m pretty sure they’re all torched.” Then she brightened. “Except . . . I dumped a ton of laundry in the basement before the party. What do you think it’s like down there?”

Graham pulled a small Maglite out of his pocket and twisted it on. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

“Aren’t you well prepared!”

“Would you be surprised to find out I was a Boy Scout?”

“I would be surprised to find out you weren’t.”

Graham’s flashlight revealed that the lower half of the staircase was covered in giant lumps of ice, and icicles dripped from one step to the next. “Must’ve come through the floorboards,” Graham said.

Emmie sighed. “Is there
any
part of this place that hasn’t been trashed?”

“It cleans up, I swear,” Graham reassured her. “But for now, better let me go down.” Emmie hesitated, concerned for his safety. Graham said, “I promise not to even sneak a glance at your unmentionables.”

Emmie had no problem with that—heck, at this point she was more inclined to give him a peek at the unmentionables she had on at the moment, never mind the ones in the basement. As she let her mind wander along some naughty avenues, Graham picked his way down, gingerly stepping around the inches-thick drips of ice, then returned with her laundry basket piled high with so many of her clothes she almost wept again, this time with relief. She appreciated Trish lending her clothes that might fit her, but a borrowed track suit was hardly going to make her feel as good as being reunited with at least some of her own things.

As Graham slid the basket into his car, he asked, “Anything else you want to get from inside?”

Emmie shivered in the cold breeze that had kicked up; it was deep twilight already, and there was really nothing worth going back into the dark, cold house for. They were just things—and mostly things she really could live without, she’d just come to realize. “No. But thank you, Graham. You’ve been a lifesaver.”

“It was nothing.” He closed the hatch, then opened the driver’s side door, leaned in, started the engine, and turned up the heat. “Get in and warm up,” he said. “I have one more thing to take care of.” Turning the flashlight back on, he explained, “I want to check that the water’s turned off; otherwise your pipes are going to freeze, and you don’t need that on top of everything else.”

Wow,
she thought, watching him jog back up her front walk.
Smart, resourceful, thoughtful. A girl could get used to this.

While she waited, she checked the cars on the street. No Land Rover. Emmie wondered if Juliet had even noticed the state of her house when she’d retrieved her car. She doubted it. But she didn’t care; right now, Emmie had Graham and, if there was any justice in the world, all Juliet had was a vicious hangover.

Even better, when Graham joined her in the car, rubbing his cold hands together, he said the words she longed to hear—well, not those, but ones that came a close second: “You must be starving. Let’s get you something to eat.”

Graham took her to a little pub the next town over—his favorite place, he said, with incredible food, including soup as thick as stew. Soon Emmie was warm inside and out—from the soup, the basket of warm bread, the glass of wine (okay, two), the table by the fireside, the soft, high-backed chairs, and, of course, from being able to gaze as much as she wanted at the man across the tiny table from her.

By the time they had finished dinner—and Graham nearly elicited a marriage proposal from her when he said, “After all you’ve been through, don’t you dare say no to dessert”—Emmie was feeling pretty open and expansive. She told him about the party, and the more details she shared, the more absurd it sounded, even to her own ears. And she discovered that she really loved making Graham laugh.

Eventually Emmie got around to all the more unpleasant events as well—including the fact that she had driven Juliet home (but not what Juliet said about him). Emmie definitely didn’t want him thinking about Juliet at a time like this, so she rushed on to what it was like to see her house in flames in the snowstorm. When she got to the part about the fire, Graham told her that Trish had shared a bit of information—“Something about a candle . . . ?”—but he waited for her to say more.

“Yeah,” she murmured, spearing a forkful of pie and touching it to the dollop of whipped cream on the warmed plate, where it was melting into a white puddle, “that was only . . . part of it.” Graham waited. “Kyle Yates. My ex-boyfriend. One of my biggest mistakes. He, uh, showed up uninvited, with his new girlfriend. His new
drunk
girlfriend.”

She managed a brief description of how their presence had led to her house burning down, then fell silent as he placed his hand over hers on the table, squeezed her fingers. She looked deep into his blue eyes, so much darker in the firelight, and she didn’t realize till that moment that a heart could, in fact, skip a beat.

“Emmie, I don’t know what to say. The fact that you’re not going to pieces over this . . .”

Lucky he didn’t see me hunkered down in my kiddie bed just before he showed up today,
she thought, but instead she gave a casual what’re-ya-gonna-do shrug and put on her courageous face. Yes, she was a brave little toaster, and she didn’t mind one bit that Graham was gazing upon her with admiration for surviving everything she’d gone through recently. At the very least she could enjoy that. And the pie.

 

The house was dark, the only light coming from a small lamp in the corner of the living room. Emmie’s father had gone to bed. Graham quietly set down the laundry basket as Emmie found a place for the rest of her salvaged items. Then, Emmie noticed, he adopted his familiar stance, hands jammed in his pockets, which she now knew meant he was feeling a bit awkward. Well, so was she . . . mainly because she couldn’t figure out how to coordinate another attack without freaking him out. Because she so wanted a little more of what happened that afternoon.

“Graham, I really can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done today. I’m so grateful. And dinner, too—wow.” He smiled at her, so she rushed on, “Do you want to sit down for a minute?”
Oh, God, it’s worse than coming home after a high school date,
she thought.

He hesitated. Then he said, “Sure,” and followed her to the couch. In the silence that followed, Emmie stared down at the giant brown and yellow flowers on the upholstery and wondered why her parents had never let her give their home a much-needed makeover. This was the same furniture, the same draperies, the same carpet that had adorned the living room in the old foursquare home for as long as she could remember.

She was trying to think of something to break the silence when Graham burst out, “Emmie, there’s something we need to talk about.”

“I just want to . . . clear the air, I guess,” Graham started, a little hoarsely, staring at the floor between his feet.

Time to drag out the brave little toaster face again, because, sure as shootin’, one of the next ten words out of Graham’s mouth was going to be “Juliet.” Emmie held her breath.
Wait for it . . . wait for it . . .

“I, er, like you, Emmie. I like you a lot. You’re so great. Beautiful, and smart, and talented. Funny. Brave, too, in all this.” He risked a sideways glance at her, and she forced herself to breathe.
In, out . . . wait for it . . .
“But . . .” Shazaam, there it was—the evil “but,” the scourge of hopeless romantics the world over. Emmie couldn’t say she was all that surprised; she had a feeling it was coming. “I think . . . what happened this afternoon . . . probably . . . shouldn’t have.”

He paused, and Emmie tried to pick her innards up off the floor. She always hated this part—and God knew she’d heard this speech plenty of times before in her life. Up next: “not ready for a relationship,” “let’s keep things casual,” and probably even the dreaded “I like you as a friend.” But this time it was different. She didn’t want to hear that sort of thing from Graham. The more she’d gotten to know him, the more she realized that he was someone worth fighting for. She had been half joking when she told Trish that she was going to steal Graham from Juliet; now she was 100 percent serious about it.

“. . . Emmie?”

She blinked. Graham had stopped talking and was waiting for her response. “Um . . . sorry . . . what?”

“I said, ‘Are you okay with that?’”

“With . . . ?”

He smiled sympathetically. “You’re exhausted. I’m sorry I had to bring this up now. You need to get some rest. And I have to get home to Sophie. Annamaria has probably been checking her watch every thirty seconds for the past hour.” He stood up, and Emmie followed. “I guess I’ll check in with you at work, tomorrow or Tuesday—”

As if she were watching herself in a movie—or, rather, watching someone completely unlike herself in a movie—Emmie found herself interrupting him with an entirely uncharacteristic, “So . . . you’re . . . telling me that you’re not interested?”

Now it was Graham’s turn to stammer, “Er . . . what?”

Even though she was already close to him, she stepped closer. “You’re not interested. In me.”

“I—I didn’t say
that
. . .”

Emmie was pleased to see that he looked a little flustered. She didn’t usually enjoy power trips, but knocking him back on his heels gave her a bit of a thrill. Suddenly she felt more confident than she had ever felt in her life. Maybe it was the fact that she felt so strongly about him, about the two of them together. Maybe she was still in shock from being rendered temporarily homeless. Maybe she was exhausted, like he said. Or maybe she had completely lost her mind. One thing she did know: Suddenly she didn’t care if she tried and failed; what she couldn’t cope with anymore was
not
trying in the first place. She’d been the meek nice girl all her life, and all it had gotten her was the middle name of “Doormat,” a lousy job with a tyrant of a boss, a self-absorbed father, a selfish boyfriend-turned-ex who wouldn’t go away, and a burned-down house. And that burned-down house was the last straw.