Rusty Nailed (Cocktail #2)(59)
Author: Alice Clayton

Simon was ready to put anything on the table, especially me. Sexually, he was at critical mass. He needed it; hell, I needed it. But O? Fucking f**kity f**ker.

Can’t think about that now.

So, back to Jillian and planning. We usually tried to schedule three to five months at a time, allowing us to see spaces for smaller jobs. When we planned like this we usually bounced ideas back and forth, getting inspired and stretching budgets to accommodate the grander concepts we had. I always brought my sketchbook and a stack of colored pencils along; they came in handy.

“Sorry I’m late, got tied up at lunch with Benjamin,” she announced as she sailed into the room. I raised an eyebrow, and she realized what she just said. “Oh my, imagine that,” she mused, getting a faraway look in her eyes.

I wrote TMI on my sketchbook and held it up to her.

“Let’s try this again. I went to lunch with Benjamin, and it was longer than I thought— Oh, I give up!” She threw up her hands. “Anyway, thanks for meeting with me today, Caroline. We’ve got some things to talk about—exciting things.”

I sat up a little straighter. “Is it the Vandertootes? I heard they were thinking about making some updates to that freaking castle, but I never thought they’d actually go through with it. Please tell me it’s the Vandertootes! I’d kill for that job!”

I got my own faraway look in my eyes, thinking of the huge turn-of-the-last-century mansion. It was the Holy Grail of design jobs in San Francisco. Owned by an incredibly wealthy, eccentric couple, the house took up almost an entire city block and allegedly hadn’t been touched by a designer’s hands since 1977. And I thought I had it bad with my mauve wallpaper?

My brain began to buckle with all the possibilities, and I almost didn’t hear Jillian calling my name.

“Caroline. Come back, Caroline; come back from wherever you are.”

“Sorry, got lost in a shag carpet daydream. Anyway, are we pitching the Vandertootes?”

“No, we’re not talking about the Vandertootes. I’m making some changes around here. Big changes.” She sat back in her chair. “I’m semiretiring.”

“Semi . . . retiring?” It felt like the floor had just opened and was threatening to swallow me whole. I pulled out a colored pencil and began to chew.

“Yep.” She grinned. Why the hell was she smiling?

“Okay, I totally don’t get what’s going on here. Do I need to get my résumé together?”

“Why, you planning on leaving me?” she asked, still grinning.

“What the hell is going on, Jillian?” I half shouted, my voice sounding more than a little crazy.

She swung her laptop around to face me and started scrolling through pictures. Her and Benjamin under the Eiffel Tower. Her and Benjamin in an alpine meadow. In front of Prague Castle. On a gondola in Venice.

She stopped at a photo of a tall, thin, five-story house in what looked like Amsterdam. “See that house?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said slowly.

“We bought it.”

“You’re moving?”

“Semimoving. Hence, the semiretirement.”

“I’m fully confused.” I sat back in my chair. “I still have no idea what’s going on.”

“Though I love what I do, I want more than work. This trip was a totally different way of living, one that I want. We’re young, Benjamin’s been very lucky financially, and we don’t want to be tied down any longer.”

“This is being tied down?” I asked incredulously, looking around her fabulous office in her fabulous design firm.

“We’d rather spend our time living our life now than waiting to live it tomorrow.”

“You sound like a commercial for fiber bars,” I grumbled, getting up and starting to pace.

“This world is too big to not try and see it all.”

“And now it’s a bladder control commercial,” I muttered. “So what exactly does semiretired mean?” I asked, turning and heading for the other end of the office.

“We’ll be here half the year, and in Europe the other half. We’ll have this great base in Amsterdam to travel from wherever we want, have friends come to visit, whatever we want to do. Who knows? I might even start up a little design consulting business over there.”

“And what happens here?” Pace. Pivot. Pace.

“I talked to my lawyer and my accountant, and we’ve come up with a plan that will enable me to keep my hand in the business and oversee things, but let me start stepping back.”

“Oversee things? That’ll never work!” Pace. Pivot. Pace. “Before you went on this honeymoon you were here all the time, all hours of the day!” Pace. Pivot. Pace. “You’re the Jillian of Jillian Designs, for Christ’s sake—how in the world do you think this place is going to run without you half of the year?”

“I’m making you my partner, Caroline.”

“You’re making me your—whuh?” Pivot, trip, face plant.

Thank Christ I was no longer chewing on that colored pencil.

• • •

“You face planted? Right in her office?”

“Totally. I ate carpet.”

“I knew you weren’t just experimenting in college!” Mimi yelled. I was on the phone with her as I drove home that night, still stunned over what had transpired.

“Funny,” I muttered, making the final turn and heading down my street. “Then she helped me up, and then she proceeded to make me an offer I felt like I couldn’t refuse.” And I could kiss Rio good-bye.

“Why in the world would you refuse to be a partner? You’re not even thirty, for God’s sake; that’s incredible to get an offer like that! Although we’re getting close to the big three oh, can you imagine? Thank God I’m getting married before then, I can’t imagine being over thirty and not being married—”

“Hey! Focus up—we’re talking about my day. And what the hell, I didn’t say I was going to refuse. And what the hell, Mimi, who gets married before they’re thirty anymore? Besides, I’m three years away from being thirty! And what the hell is in my driveway?” I yelled, swinging wide before I plowed right into . . .“Let me call you back.”

I hung up the phone. Because in my driveway was a white Mercedes convertible. With a red bow on it. What the actual f**k?

I parked the van, hurried up the walkway, opened the door, hurdled over a sawhorse like an Olympian, and dashed into the kitchen. Where I found Simon, on a ladder. Faded jeans. No shirt. Tool belt.