“That’s a really good idea.”
“Of course, it is. I am the high king of all good ideas, the source from which brilliance flows.”
Ty snorted.
Kyle looked him up and down again. “Are you going to sulk?”
“No, I’m going to swim laps.”
“Because a gentleman never sulks. Are you going to brood?”
Ty shook his head with impatience. “Of course not. I’m going to finish this month’s summaries, then swim laps while I think.”
“You are brooding then. Suit yourself.”
“You’re always talking nonsense,” Ty said, quoting Oscar Wilde in his best British accent.
Kyle laughed and replied in kind. “It’s better than listening to it.” Whistling under his breath, he headed out.
Ty kept tallying.
Yang for his yin. Hmm.
That might be interesting advice if he’d been ready for a serious relationship—but he wasn’t. He only had time for one fake date. The problem was that Ty wasn’t nearly sure enough that this one was going to happen. Shannyn might decline to keep her end of the deal completely. Katelyn’s wedding was almost four weeks away. Ty had to ensure that Shannyn didn’t vanish in that space of time.
He wanted to make another deal.
The incredible thing was that Shannyn didn’t want more sex. That stung Ty’s pride a bit, but he already knew he couldn’t expect her to say or do what he wanted.
What did she want?
Maybe he should ask.
It was still pouring when Shannyn left the subway station and she pulled up her hood again, hugging her bag close. She walked home briskly, splashing through the puddles. As usual, the sight of her house lifted her heart, even given the compromises she’d made to keep it.
Maybe because of them.
The house was a small Victorian, the oddball on the block, and she’d loved it at first sight. One look at that small turret and she’d been lost. Cole had been harder to convince. Even with the partitions needed for the duplexing, Shannyn thought it was the most beautiful house in the world. The duplexing allowed her to keep it, so she’d made her peace with that. She loved the high ceilings and the light that flooded into it in the daytime, the ornate plaster molding and the old hardwood floors. She loved the house’s quirks and its complications, its creaks and its character, though she hated that it needed a new roof so desperately.
Actually, what she hated was how much it had rained recently.
The living room at the front had a fireplace and a bay window that looked over the porch. It was pretty empty since Cole had taken the furniture, but Shannyn told herself that just allowed the architectural elements to shine. It also had given her more room to paint the walls. The beige that Cole loved had been banished from the house. The dining room immediately behind the living room had become Shannyn’s office and workspace. It was almost filled by a big table made of a wooden door on carpenter’s trestles. Her computer with the big screen was there, a stool and not much else.
There were two bedrooms on the main floor as well as the kitchen and a full bath. The kitchen had been last renovated in the seventies, but the cabinets were solid wood. Her brother Aidan had brought her a stash of Mexican tiles and they’d tiled the walls together as well as the backsplashes before he’d left again. The larger bedroom was beside the kitchen and had a fireplace, too, although the mantle was less ornate than the one in the living room. The second bedroom was at the back and chilly: it had originally been a storeroom. It was Shannyn’s sewing studio now, filled with her thrift shop scores and upcycled treasures: her sewing machine was on a desk against one wall and there was a rolling rack for the clothes. Sometimes she took a booth at street fairs to sell her wares, but lately, most sales had been word-of-mouth.
The second floor had originally had four bedrooms and a full bathroom, and now was rented to Lisa Petrovsky and her mother as an apartment. The bedroom immediately over Shannyn’s kitchen had been turned into another kitchen. Lisa and her mother used the largest room as a living room and ate in their kitchen. The remaining two rooms were their bedrooms—the turret was over the round sitting room in what had been the master bedroom and was now Lisa’s home office. Lisa was a public school teacher and her widowed mom mostly stayed home. They were good tenants and Shannyn knew she was lucky to have them.
She was also lucky to have a brother like Aidan who was really handy. He’d helped her with some of the renovations to make the duplexing possible, and those tiles, too.
Once upon a time, Shannyn had planned how she and Cole would fix up the house. They’d talked about integrating that back bedroom into the kitchen, since it hadn’t really been in use anyway, and making a huge eat-in family kitchen that opened to the backyard. That changed when Cole left, taking his income with him. It was still a good scheme, though, and Shannyn had hopes for One Day.
The back yard had never been given much attention as a living or entertaining space. Previous owners had grown vegetables because there were still square beds, although they were choked with weeds. If the kitchen opened to it, though, Shannyn could imagine a patio, maybe with grapes trained over a trellis and paths between the vegetable beds. Flower beds, too. It just took money—money she didn’t have.
There was a garage at the back of the lot, one that defied gravity by remaining upright and provided accommodations for wild creatures. It could be rebuilt, if it was done before it fell down, but without a car, Shannyn’s current priority was the roof.
She smiled at the echo of a feline yowl, one that began as soon as she put her key in the lock. The complaints became louder when she opened the door and bent to pet Fitzwilliam, her roommate.
Fitzwilliam was an opinionated Maine Coon of indeterminate age and considerable weight. His fur was long and striped in sooty grey, though he had a white bib and white socks. His thick tail was the most accurate measure of his mood. His tail had a black tip and there were long black hairs on his ears that made him look a bit like a lynx. His eyes were clear green—and as she bent down to rub his belly, Shannyn realized they were the same color as those of another handsome male of her acquaintance.
Fitzwilliam complained even as he twined around her legs, then followed her down the corridor on silent feet. He’d always been talkative. His tail was upright, like a banner, the tip flicking, as he delivered a lecture on the lateness of the hour and the emptiness of his dish. The rain was slashing against the kitchen windows and Shannyn could hear it dripping on the back porch.
She wondered if the buckets were full in the attic, but knew she had to feed Fitzwilliam before she checked. She could hear the murmur of the television in the apartment above and, in a way, it was a reassuring sound. Mrs. Petrovsky kept it on all the time, so it wasn’t a disruptive noise. Shannyn heard some conversation, just the echo of voices, not the actual words, and knew that Lisa was home. By the tone, there wasn’t a crisis, which was good. She could smell roast chicken, which might be part of the reason Fitzwilliam was so hungry.
Then a door opened overhead and a voice echoed down the stairs. “Shannyn? Is that you?” It was Lisa’s voice.
Shannyn returned to the shared foyer. She could see her tenant at the top of the stairs.
“Say it isn’t so,” she said, guessing that Lisa would.