His smile deepens, carving shallow dimples into each of his cheeks. “Couldn’t leave you hanging this early in the morning.” Briefly, so briefly I wonder if I imagine it, he applies pressure to my back before stepping away. “Coffee’s up for grabs, guys. Same with the donuts.”
Bill and Mark exchange a glance.
“He’s trying to butter us up before dropping bad news,” Bill grumbles with a middle finger rubbing along his hairline. Wicked subtle move, right there.
Nick only laughs. “The bad news is that one of you gets the wicked exclusive opportunity to come with me to check out the museum today.”
“What?”
“Holy shit, dude. We got it?”
“Hell fucking yeah!” Vince calls out, rounding off the group’s enthusiasm. “I knew we’d get the bid.”
“What bid?”
My question echoes in the salon, and all four men turn to me in unison. In the soft, morning light, Nick’s ears pinken. It’s Vince who actually answers. He sidles up to his boss, throwing an arm around Nick’s broad shoulders. “This guy right here”—he palms the side of Nick’s face like a brother would—“just booked Stamos Restoration and Co. into the tightest race Boston’s seen in light-years.”
Bill lifts his gaze to the ceiling and lets out an aggrieved sigh. “First Shakespeare, now Star Wars. You’re a goddamn pop-culture reference book, Miceli.”
Vince ignores him completely, his dark eyes fixed on me. “There’s a new history museum opening, a few blocks away, actually. It’s all about the Victorian era in Boston, and Nick here landed us the deal to restore the building in prep for the curators to come in and doll the place up.”
“Wow.” I flick my attention to Nick, who looks mighty uncomfortable under all the praise. “That’s amazing!”
He doesn’t shrug, but the forced nonchalance in his expression does the shrugging for him. “It’s a job like any other.”
Except that it doesn’t feel that way. I think of his miniature wooden structures in his office, all those hours spent perfecting the smallest, most intricate architectural details. Like me, Nick is a creator. An artist. Our chosen mediums may be different, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a complete badass. In the last few weeks, I’ve spent more nights wishing I could watch him work on finishing the church spire than I care to admit.
Sensing that he wants the subject to change pronto, I say, “And I bet you’ll rock it like any other job.”
The smile he gives me is one of relief. “Just like I need to rock this job.” Pivoting on his heel, he crosses the room and grabs a donut from the container. Frosted chocolate, from the looks of it. He pops the small, round ball of chewy delight into his mouth, then sucks the glaze from his thumb.
Excuse me while I forget how to breathe.
No man has any right to look so sexy eating a donut. Seriously, no right at all.
Like a woman obsessed, my breath gets lodged somewhere in my throat when Nick opts for another and lifts it to his lips. He surveys Agape with a critical eye while he chews. “Drywall by Wednesday, guys. Today, let’s put up the rest of the frames and start on the insulation.” He gestures toward the receptionist’s desk. “Hit up the coffee and then we’ll get going.”
Warm coffee cup in hand, I stare at the exposed wooden beams of the rearranged walls of the back rooms and hallway, unable to envision the end result—not the way I instinctively can when I’m cutting a client’s hair or applying color.
“You look worried.”
I twist at the waist toward the sound of Nick’s voice. “I’m not.”
“No?” He steps in close. Angles his body so that we’re elbow to elbow. “What then?”
“Honestly?” My right shoulder hikes up in a shrug. “I’m admiring your work. I know ‘amazing’ is such a bland word nowadays. It’s tossed around, used for every bit of praise, but I just . . .” I lift my free hand toward the restructured walls. “You see a room, a house, and you know exactly what to do to bring it to life. And that’s—that’s pretty amazing.”
Silence is my only answer, and then he’s clasping a hand around my elbow and encouraging me to follow him. Vince and Bill and Mark shoot the shit behind us, ribbing each other mercilessly about some fantasy football league they’re all in, while Nick steers me toward his work bench.
Although perhaps calling it a work bench is a bit of a stretch.
It’s more like a long board of plywood boosted up on stacked paint cans. I take a sip of the warm brew and watch as he sifts through large, illustrated mock-ups. I recognize most from the plans he emailed me last week, but my interest spikes when I spot a drawing that looks a lot like a mosaic. He flips past it, shuffling it in with the others, before stopping at a black-and-white sketch. Fingertip to the corner of the sheet, he spins it around for me to get a good look.
“After stalking your Pinterest board, I wanted your thoughts on this.”
Anticipation spurs my feet forward. Closing the gap, I feel my heart give an extra thud of excitement when I realize what exactly he’s showing me. At least, what I think he’s showing me. I set the coffee down on the plywood, away from his sketches. “Is this—”
“Yeah, it is.” Nick threads his fingers through his thick hair, then lets his hand fall to the plywood. Beneath the fabric of his nondescript gray T-shirt, his muscled arms bunch and tighten. “A hydrotherapy room? No way I could skip it after all those pictures you pinned. Here, let me show you.”
He cuts around the work bench. I expect him to stand beside me and point out all the details my untrained eye has missed. He doesn’t. Instead, he ambles up behind me, leaving no doubt in my mind that he’s got zero regrets about what went down last night. My breath hitches when he nudges me forward, until my pelvis collides with the plywood and he’s dropping his hands onto the bench on either side of me.
“You good with this?” he asks, leveling his profile alongside mine. And I swear I can feel the stubble of his jaw against my cheek. Holy-friggin-cannoli. Or, more appropriately, holy-friggin-baklava.
His thumbs skate over my pinkies, and my brain hollers, don’t forget to breathe if you want to live! Living seems overrated when I’ve got a six-foot-plus Adonis plastered to my back. Blocked in as I am, I can’t see Vince or the other guys behind us, and I can only imagine what they’re thinking right now.
But maybe . . . maybe this is good, right? His family might not believe we’re dating, but the same can’t be said for his employees.
“Yeah,” I whisper, “I’m all good.”
Against my back, I feel his chest deflate as though he was holding his breath, too. “Good,” he mutters, “that’s good.” His left hand lowers over mine, and then he’s moving my fingers to trace the skeleton of the sketch, skirting along the periphery. “I know this wasn’t in the initial plans I sent you, but I’m a firm believer in reaching for what you want.”
“Achieving your temporary longing.”
His fingers squeeze mine gently. “More like making it permanent.” He pauses, and maybe it’s my imagination but I hope he’s as entranced by the sight of us holding hands as I am. Like a time capsule, it feels like we’re teenagers again and experiencing lust for the first time. A handhold can be as exciting as a hot make-out session, if it’s with the right person. Nick’s thumb traces the outer line of my palm, dipping to the indentation of my wrist. “Anyway,” he says, “I want you to have this, if it’s what you want.”
It is what I want, but that doesn’t mean I have the extra funds to consider anything but the bare necessities. Floors, sinks, mirrors, hairdryers—those are the necessities. A hydrotherapy room, equipped with a massage table and a whirlpool, aren’t even in the same galaxy here.
Mistaking my silence as the go-ahead, Nick scoots a little to my left, all the better to point out the features marked on the blueprint. “I’ve been doing a shit ton of research over the last week, and with this . . . you’ll leave your competition in the dust, Mina.” He releases my hand to sift through his mock-ups for yet another. The second blueprint he lays over the first, and I realize the paper is nearly translucent. Between the two, his vision for the room crackles to life: Edison bulbs hanging from the ceiling, a Vichy shower set out in one corner of the room with a marble wall to keep it out of sight from the hydrotherapy tub. The floors are dark, and I eye his scribbles in the corner of the page: rosewood walls, slate floors, a periwinkle-painted ceiling.
It’s . . . stunning.
And so out of my price point that I want to sob at the loss of it, even though it’s nothing but a mere thought in his head. Except now it’s in mine too, and I wish I could bring it to life with nothing but the snap of my fingers.
I turn to face him. “Nick . . .”
His head jerks up and those pewter eyes home in on me. “Is it too much?”
“No. No, it’s perfect.” If anything, it’s almost too perfect. “But I can’t afford this. You know I can’t afford this.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“We?” I point to him, then stab my chest with the same finger. “Me, Nick. I need to figure this out, and I can’t increase my budget. Maybe by a grand—I could scrape it together.” Instead of dining out and hitting up the town like my peers, I’m scraping pennies together by feasting on Ramen noodles and taking cold-ass showers at the age of thirty. Forget the fact that I haven’t even furnished my apartment more than is needed. All my money, every last dime, is in this hair salon. Shaking my head, I flatten my palm over Nick’s beautifully etched draft, so I can’t be tempted by what I can’t afford. “Nowhere in the budget do I have room for the sort of money we’re talking about here.”
He blows out a frustrated breath. “Any news on the asswipe who stole your cash?”