Mr. Right, Next Door! Page 8

  “Did I tell you I started designing her kitchen? Dragged out the old CADD program and everything.” Because she wanted a new room. “Scary how easy it is to get lost in the work again. Remember the buzz you could get when a design idea clicked? I forgot how addictive that feeling could be.”

  His choice of words made him wince. “Sorry, pal. Didn’t mean to bring up a sore topic.” The feeling he described was from a long time ago. Before Nate started chasing a different kind of buzz, one that he, lost in a chase of his own, failed to notice.

  A petite woman with short brown hair appeared in the doorway. “It’s getting late, Mr. Templeton. Nate needs to get ready for bed.”

  “Sure thing. We were just wrapping up.” Grant rose to his feet. He stretched his arms high over his head and stretched. The soft crack of his vertebrae coming back into line echoed in the quiet. “Sorry to spend the whole visit gnawing your ear off about Sophie. Next time I’ll focus more on the game. Promise.”

  Guilt rising in his throat, the way it did every visit, Grant reached down and patted the dark-haired man’s shoulders. Nate didn’t respond. But then he never did. The Nate he knew departed this world two years ago, leaving only the shell behind. A bedridden reminder of what was and what could have been.

  And would never be again, thanks to Grant.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SINCE the day she left home twenty-two years earlier, Sophie dedicated Saturday mornings to doing three tasks: doing her laundry, cleaning her apartment and paying her bills. She was halfway through the third chore when the clanging started.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, tossing her ballpoint down. Grant’s tub had been delivered. What on earth was he doing now? Images of him bent over, smacking on pipes with a wrench came to mind. The hem of his shirt would be pulled up ever so slightly, the way it did whenever he bent down, showing that sliver of tanned back. Or, perhaps the heat made him skip the T-shirt altogether and his muscular arms glistened slick with perspiration.

  Nice, Sophie. Objectify the guy like one of the dirty old executives you read about in the tabloids. Though if her mind did insist on going down the objectifying road—again—Grant shared part of the blame. He was the one who talked about bathing on the sidewalk.

  Still, she might as well see how long the racket would last. After all, if Grant intended on disrupting another one of her Saturday afternoons, she wanted to know.

  That was the only reason she headed upstairs. It had nothing to do with curiosity regarding his attire. Absolutely nothing.

  Grant opened the door on the second round of knocking. He was, to her disappointment, wearing a regular old T-shirt. “Let me guess,” he greeted, folding his arms, “you’re here about the clanging, right? I’m disturbing you and your friend?”

  She took a moment to understand his implication. “David isn’t here.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Grant replied.

  “No need. We, that is, I…” She didn’t have to explain anything to the man. “I came upstairs to find out if you planned on making noise all day like last time.”

  “Interrupting work again am I?”

  The sarcasm wasn’t any more entertaining today than it was last weekend, despite their truce. “I’m trying to pay my bills at the moment, but yes, later I have to work.”

  “Stock market’s not in session.”

  A throwback to the other night when she told him she worked when the markets were open. “Maybe not, but I still am.”

  “No rest for the weary, eh?”

  Weary was what she felt. Thanks to him. “You haven’t answered my question. Are you going to be making noise all weekend?”

  “Actually, you’ll be happy to know I’m almost finished. In fact, I’m about to hook up the final piece. Want to come in and see the finished product?”

  “I…” Remembering all the sordid images having taken residence in her head, she should decline. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  Because I got cozy with you on a public sidewalk and spent way too much time focusing on what your skin tastes like. Lord knows what I’ll do inside your apartment. “I have to get back to my bills.”

  “The bills will wait. Come on in. You know you’re curious.”

  “No, I’m not,” she started to lie, only to have him take her hand and pull her through the threshold. “Okay, maybe just a moment.”

  Grant’s apartment was like the man himself: original, masculine and gorgeous. The narrow living room/dining area had many of the same features as her apartment. The fireplace had the same intricately carved woodwork for example. But despite the similarities, the room managed to have a personality all of its own. A granite island let light into the kitchen. She looked through with envy at the cabinets and stainless steel appliances.

  “Do all the other apartments look like this?” she asked, thinking Etta should have been a little less stubborn.

  “No, they’re far more modern. In fact, you go to the top floors and you won’t believe you’re in the same building.

  “The place was designed for selling,” he added in a jaded-sounding voice. The tone didn’t suit him.

  “I’ve been trying to bring back as much of the original as possible. Can’t completely turn back the hands of time, but I do what I can.”

  From the looks, he’d done a lot. The windows, the woodwork, all looked original, only in better condition. Decorating-wise, Grant apparently leaned toward bachelor sparseness. He was obviously more interested in structural details than curtains. There was a built-in bookcase actually filled with books, a plasma TV and a comfortable-looking leather sofa. A drafting table piled high with papers and reference books sat next to the doorway. There was also a large coffee table, which, from the looks of things, served double duty as a dining room table. Sophie noticed a coffee cup and two empty beer bottles holding down the newspaper. The entire room had been painted beige and brown adding to the masculine feel.

  Sophie eyed the front windows with their beige trim. “Painted woodwork?” She arched a brow. “Aren’t you breaking your own rule?”

  “It’s pine.”

  “Oh.”

  “Nice to know you paid attention, though.”

  Actually she hadn’t. If she recalled, she’d been busy watching his hands. However, the lesson appeared to have made its way through to her brain nonetheless.

  She strolled over to study the print hanging on his back wall. A black-and-white photo of Manhattan’s Flatiron Building. Man liked his buildings, didn’t he? “I imagine if your old neighbor saw all this work, she’d be impressed.”

  “Maybe. I’m not renovating to impress anyone, though.”

  “Why are you?”

  “Because the house shouldn’t have been torn up in the first place.” His answer was uncharacteristically clipped. So much so, Sophie actually stepped back.

  Seeing the reaction, his voice softened a little. Only a little, though. “Etta was pushed into the conversion,” he explained.

  “I thought you said she was afraid the place would get gutted after she died.”

  “Someone had to put the thought in her head, didn’t they?” And from the sound of his voice, he didn’t like that person very much, either. “Since I moved in twenty-eight months ago, I’ve been working to put the place back the way it was.”

  Twenty-eight months. According to the Realtor, the co-ops didn’t go on the market that much before, meaning he’d been renova
ting almost since the building was converted. A lot of effort for a man who worked on the original construction. Clearly he felt quite strongly about Etta being wronged.

  “Want some coffee?” Grant asked her. “I was about to pour myself a cup when you knocked.”

  “Sure.” After all, to say no would be rude, right?

  She followed him to his kitchen, only to stop in front of an interesting wood cabinet tucked in the corner. Narrow and chipped, it had a small, carved door halfway down and what looked like a drop-down cabinet on the bottom.

  “An antique phone cabinet,” Grant told her when she asked. “I found it at the flea market on Thirty-fifth Street this past winter and decided it was too cool to resist. Guess you can say I’m a sucker for older, beautiful things.”

  His gaze, while he spoke, pinned her straight to the spot. All of a sudden the narrow hall got very warm and cramped. “You wouldn’t have water instead, would you?” Sophie asked, rubbing down the prickles on the back of her neck.

  Grant arched a brow, but didn’t comment. “I’ll see if I can rustle something up.”

  While he went to the fridge, she hovered in the door frame, preferring the distance. When he bent over, she forced her eyes not to search for the sliver of skin.

  “Did you and your ‘friend’ have a good evening?” she heard him ask.

  “His name is David, and yes, we did.”

  “Where’d you go? Fundraiser, right?”

  “Yes.” She shifted from one foot to another. “Are you really interested?” Talking about David with him made her nervous.

  “No,” Grant replied, back in her space. “I’m trying to be polite. So you went to a fundraiser,” he prompted as he handed her a water bottle.

  “At the Natural History Museum. It was a networking event. One hundred and fifty lawyers and their spouses mingling under the T. rex bones.”

  “Sounds scintillating. The networking I mean.”

  “David found it useful.”

  “Did you?”

  “Not really. It was David’s event,” she murmured, only to bite her lip when she realized she’d admitted it aloud. “I mean our main purpose in going was to help David’s career.”

  “Aren’t you a good girlfriend.”

  Sophie’s head shot up. “I’m not—”

  “Not what?” he asked, brown eyes probing. “Good or his girlfriend?”

  The doorknob pressed into the small of her back. She’d pressed herself so tightly against the door she expected to see the facet pattern imprinted on her skin. The correct response would be to tell him David was her boyfriend. They were dating, after all, and by admitting it, she could put an end to Grant’s continual flirting.

  Instead, she propelled herself away from the door and back into the main room. “Where is this infamous bathroom? That’s what I came to see.”

  “Come with me.” He motioned for her to join him in a doorway a few feet way. Sophie found a bold graphic gray, black and white tile. The tub sat invitingly along the back wall, beneath a small built-in shelf. “It’s gorgeous,” Sophie said. “Though, aren’t you going to miss having a real shower?” The tub had a handheld attachment.

  “I still have a real shower, in the master bathroom,” he replied, his voice coming from over her shoulder. “You didn’t think I planned to bathe in this every night, did you?”

  “I did have my questions.” The image he suggested of him bathing naked on the sidewalk still hadn’t left her brain yet.

  “I suppose I can see how I might have given you the impression. But trust me, this baby is strictly for show.” He paused what he was doing to look up at her. “Or company.”

  Sophie looked to her shoes. Company was not a good replacement image. It conjured up too many pictures of wet skin and strong arms wrapped around her waist. Particularly with his breath tickling her ear.

  “So, do you like it?”

  She started, mainly because his breath tickled her earlobe just as she got to a particularly steamy image. “Like what?”

  “My apartment.”

  Right, his apartment. “Told you, the room is gorgeous. You definitely have…” At that moment, he leaned over and adjusted the towel that was hanging on a nearby towel ring. Peppermint and coffee teased her nostrils. “…skills,” she managed to squeak out.

  “Interesting choice of words.”

  Sophie shook her head. Damn if his arrogance wasn’t appealing. And damn if his big broad chest wasn’t brushing against her back. Took a second, but she managed to make her feet move and break their bodies’ connection. “You need to work on your self-confidence,” she told him.

  Having delivered her comment, Sophie waited for the man to move so she could pass. Their various configurations of entering and exiting rooms were almost like a dance, weren’t they? Draw close, separate. Professional and mature one moment, blushing and covered with goose bumps the next.

  Distracted as she was with her thoughts, Sophie didn’t see the drafting table until her thigh connected with its corner. The collision jostled the table, sending the mile-high pile of books and papers onto the floor.

  “Are you all right?” Grant asked.

  “Fine.” She was more embarrassed about making a mess. “Let me help you pick this up.”

  “That’s all right. You don’t have to…”

  Sophie’s eyes widened at the titles strewn about her feet. The Synthesis of Form. Traditional Details for Renovation and Rehabilitation. Form, Space and Order. She glanced up. “Little light reading?”

  “I was looking something up.”

  “You’ve got some hardcore resource materials.” No wonder he knew so much about historical buildings. He obviously studied them. “Are you taking a class?”

  “Did.” He yanked the book she was holding from her hand. “Long time ago.”

  Couldn’t have been that long ago. He wasn’t old enough. “In college?”

  “Why does it matter where I took the class?”

  “I was just curious. I apologize.” She of all people should respect a person’s desire for privacy about even the most benign of subjects.

  Unless said subjects involved her. A sketch that had fallen on the floor caught her eye. It was a computer drawing of a kitchen. A very familiar kitchen.

  “Is this my place?” she asked, reaching for the paper. Sure enough, there was her kitchen, complete with the changes Grant described the other day. “Did you draw these?”

  “Just something I was fooling around with.”

  “Your fooling around looks pretty impressive. Professional.”

  “Four years of Columbia architecture school will do that for you.” He snatched the drawing from her hand, causing it to tear in two.

  Sophie barely noticed. “You’re an architect?” An Ivy League educated one at that.

  “Was.” Grant’s face had grown so dark and grim you’d think she’d accused him of a crime. Same with the sour way he spoke. “Not anymore. I quit twenty-eight months ago.”

  Around the same time he moved in. After the building had been converted. But he said he’d met Etta during the time the conversion took place.

  Suddenly it dawned on her. “When you said you met the owner…”

  “I designed the building.”

  The man who turned the place modern even though it should never have been “cut up,” to use Grant’s words. The man that twenty minutes earlier she’d have sworn he held in contempt.


  “What happened?” she asked in a soft voice. “Were you the one who convinced her to break up the building?”

  Grant didn’t answer. Dropping the drawing on his desk, he walked to his windows. In the bright summer light, his figure became a black silhouette. Large and brooding. Seeing him was enough of an answer. He had been the man he described so angrily earlier.

  Sophie moved to join him. Yes, she should honor his privacy, but he looked so pained she couldn’t help wanting to reach out. Why was he converting the place back again?

  She was two steps from his shoulder when he spoke. “I have to see a vendor at the flea market about some lighting fixtures,” he said, face still focused outside.

  “Okay,” Sophie replied. He didn’t want to talk. She would take the hint. Respect it. “I’ll get back to my—”

  “Come with me.”

  He spun around so quickly she nearly stumbled. “What?”

  “It’s too beautiful a day to spend stuck inside. Come with me.”

  “I can’t. I have to work.”

  There was an energy behind his invitation that she couldn’t name. What did it matter if she accompanied him or not? Sophie was having trouble keeping her balance from the mood swings. She wished she could name the energy she sensed coming off him. Not for the first time she wondered if his enthusiasm was stronger than necessary. What are you trying to avoid, Grant Templeton?

  “The work will be there when you get back.”

  Sure, along with a whole lot more, knowing Allen. “I really can’t.”

  “Yes, you can,” he insisted, closing the last couple of steps between them and tucking a finger underneath her chin. “You know you want to.”

  “So, you’re a mind reader now?” The response might have worked better if her jaw wasn’t quivering from his touch.

  “Not a mind reader,” he returned. “Eye reader. And yours are saying an awful lot.”