by Cat Carmine
Sloane is standing in front of me, purse slung over her shoulder and sunglasses perched on her head.
“We’re going for coffee,” she announces. “That’s a command.”
I laugh. “I’m really busy right now,” I try to say, but she’s already grabbing my purse and my phone off my desk.
“Not too busy for coffee. Come on.”
I have no choice but to hop up and follow her. That’s Sloane for you.
When we’re out of the office, Sloane turns to me.
“Okay, I’m dying to know. Why did you get called into Charlene’s office yesterday?”
Ah, so she had noticed that.
For a moment I think about telling her the truth — all about Trent and about Charlene almost walking in on us. But then I think of Ally’s reaction and I start to second guess myself. Sloane actually knows Trent and I know I would have no choice but to take her seriously if she thought it was a bad idea — and to be honest, I just don’t want to hear it. I already know it’s a bad idea — I don’t need one more person to tell me.
Instead I tell her part of the truth.
“I wrote some copy for a chair for the catalog and it was a little … pornographic. Inadvertently,” I add hastily.
Sloane stops in the middle of the sidewalk and turns to me. “Wait. What?”
I laugh and tell her about the description I wrote and by the time we get to the coffee shop she’s doubled over laughing. She has to wipe tears out of her eyes.
“That is possibly the best thing I’ve heard since I’ve been working here,” she says. “You have to send me this copy. I need to read this masterpiece for myself.”
I promise her I will and then we grab our coffees. It actually feels like old times, before I started sleeping with Trent and didn’t have to worry about watching what I say around her.
“Hey Sloane?” I slip into the seat across from her at the coffee shop. “Can I ask you a favor?”
“Of course.”
“Do you think you could switch work weekends with me? I promised Ally we’d spend the day together on Saturday. She’s been kinda down lately.” I feel terrible about the lie, but I don’t want to cancel on Trent, especially now that I’ve gotten Ally to agree.
Sloane waves her hand. “Of course. It’s not like I have anything even resembling a social life right now. We’ll just have to make sure Charlene is okay with it.”
Right. Charlene. I dread having to ask her about the switch, even though there’s no real reason for her to say no. Sloane and I are both copywriters so it doesn’t really matter which of us is here.
At least it shouldn’t. You never know with Charlene though.
When we get back to the office, Sloane wants to go talk to her right away, so we stroll over to her office together.
“Hey Charlene,” Sloane says, knocking on her door. “Hannah and I were wondering if it was okay if we swapped weekends. She’s got plans this weekend.”
Charlene looks at us suspiciously — or more accurately, she looks at me suspiciously. I can tell she’s trying to think of a reason to say no, but finally she drops her shoulders. “Fine. But I don’t want a bunch of switching back and forth.”
“Sure thing,” Sloane says cheerfully. As soon as we’re out of earshot of Charlene’s office, she leans over and giggles. “Okay, you seriously have to send me this chair copy you were talking about, because whatever you wrote has clearly offended Charlene all the way down to her cold dead heart.”
I laugh and then when I get to my desk I find the chair copy from yesterday and email it to Sloane. I can tell the moment she reads it because I hear her guffaws of laughter coming from across the room. I glance back and she’s fanning her face, laughing so hard her skin is bright red.
She clicks something on the computer and then walks over to the printer. Then she comes back over to my desk, waving the piece of paper.
“I’m pinning this on my cubicle for all of eternity,” she announces. “You could seriously sell this online as erotica.”
“Chair erotica?”
“Hey, it’s the internet. I’m sure there’s a market for it.”
I shake my head and turn back to my screen, barely able to suppress my smile.
32
Trent
On Saturday I wake up humming like an idiot from a fucking Disney movie. Like if I held out my arms, little birds would land on them or something equally ridiculous. And why? Because I get to spend the day with one of my employees? And her sister?
Not just one of my employees, a little voice in my head whispers. Her.
Hannah.
I still don’t know what it is about her, why she’s gotten under my skin like this. She’s cute, yes. Beautiful, really. And the juxtaposition between the dirty emails she’d sent me and her real life persona are a turn-on, sure.
But it’s more than that. There’s something about the way she can put me in my place with one breath and then completely give herself over to me in the next. Something about the way she makes me laugh, the way she looks out for her sister and her friends, the way she makes sundresses look sexy as hell.
Fuck. I glance at myself in the mirror. “You need to seriously cool it, loser.” I shake my head. I can’t remember the last time I was this hung up on a woman — but Hannah is like a drug, and I only want more.
Hannah had given me the address of their apartment so I hop in the modified SUV I rented for the day and head over there. No driver today; I like the drive out to Luke’s place in the country, and it will be nice to spend the time with Hannah and get to know her sister.
When I get to their apartment I’m relieved to see that it’s a pretty nice building with a doorman and a secure front entrance. I’d hate to think about them living alone in a rough neighborhood or a bad building.
I ring the bell and Hannah and her sister come down. Hannah introduces me to Ally.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say, shaking her hand.
“You too,” she says, but there’s a coldness in her voice and she looks me up and down as if she’s assessing a bag of rotting cabbages. I just give her my most charming grin — I’m used to sisters and best friends not exactly being a fan of me. Though in Ally’s case, at least I can say that she has no real reason to worry.
I open the back door of the custom SUV and hit a button, which unfurls a low ramp onto the sidewalk in front of us.
“Will this be okay?” I ask Ally.
She glances at Hannah and nods reluctantly.
“Thank you,” she says, and I can see Hannah biting back a grin. I glance at her and wink and she gives me a smile that’s almost enough to make me start with the damn humming again.
Luke’s place is about an hour outside the city, and on a Saturday afternoon, it’s a nice drive. The conversation’s a little awkward at first but Ally seems to be a big fan of Loft & Barn so I find myself telling them all about how Luke and I grew the business.
“Luke’s always been good with his hands. Our father was in finance but he enjoyed woodworking as a hobby. He tried to teach all of us but Luke was the only one who picked it up. I, on the other hand, am terrible with my hands.”
I feel Hannah glance at me and when I look over she raises her eyebrows. I can’t hold back the smirk that flits across my lips.
“What about your other brother?” Hannah asks. “You never talk about him much.”
“Jace. He lives in New York.” Jace was a sore point in my history — the one part of running a business that I wasn’t proud of. “He used to work for Loft & Barn too for awhile but … it wasn’t a great fit. We don’t talk that much anymore. I think he works at a bar.”
“And Luke,” Ally asks. “Does he really still design all the pieces himself?”
I nod. “All the main pieces, yeah. Designs and builds the prototypes. When we expanded into soft furnishings we started outsourcing that stuff, but the heart of the collection is still all Luke.”
“I didn’t even realize that until
I started working for you,” Hannah says.
“Well, Luke’s not a fan of the spotlight. He likes to just do his thing.”
“Tortured artist type. I got it.”
I force a grin. “Pretty much, yeah.”
I don’t want to tell her that Luke’s insistence of still being so hands-on was holding us back. We couldn’t mass produce his complex designs nearly as efficiently as we could have with a simpler line, and it seemed like every year it took longer and longer — and cost more and more money — for us to get the collection together. Luke refused to see that, but he wasn’t the one staring down the numbers every day.
We reach the turn-off for Luke’s place and I take the SUV up the mile-long driveway. Luke likes his privacy but this place is so far off the beaten track that it feels like going back in time.
We finally pull up to the house — Luke lives in a fully restored farmhouse. Well, more of an estate, really, it’s that impressive. His workshop is what used to be a grain warehouse. It’s massive. He can fit an entire season’s collection in there with room to spare. I’ve been here hundreds of times and I still feel a moment of awe whenever I walk into that space. I can’t wait for Hannah and Ally to see it.
I’m just helping Ally out of the car when Luke comes out the front door. My brother and I look a lot alike except for our style. While I prefer custom suits, Luke is much more at home in jeans and flannels. Even the few times I’ve tried to get him dressed up for investor meetings or launch parties, he’s fought me tooth and nail. Once he even showed up to an industry dinner wearing a plaid flannel tie he’d cut out of one of his shirts — it was his form of protesting when I told him he absolutely had to wear a suit. That was the last time I ever tried to dress my brother.
Today is no exception. He strolls out of the house wearing a tight black t-shirt and a worn out jeans, lightened along the thighs by constantly wiping his sawdust-covered hands on them. Even though my outfit isn’t much different — black polo and jeans — we wear it completely differently.
I introduce Luke to Hannah — I’d already filled him on the fact that I was dating someone who worked for us, and he thankfully hadn’t seemed too concerned.
“Nice to meet you,” he says to Hannah, shaking her hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Hannah smiles and raises her eyebrows at me.
“Not that much,” I protest, but Luke just grins and claps me on the back. He turns to Hannah’s sister.
“You must be Ally,” he says. “Luke Whittaker.”
“Oh my God.” She shakes his hand. Her face pinks up the same way Hannah’s does when she’s flustered. “This is … wow, I can’t believe I’m meeting you.”
Hannah laughs and squeezes her sister’s shoulder playfully. “Ally. You have absolutely no chill.”
“I’m sorry,” she says to Hannah, laughing, and then says it again to Luke. “I’m just a huge fan.”
“Hey,” Luke says. “Don’t apologize. You’re making me feel like a rockstar.”
“You kind of are, at least to Ally,” Hannah laughs.
The vibe is so easy and good-natured that I can’t help the smile that takes over my face. I admit I’d been a bit nervous about bringing everyone together like this but so far so good.
“Anyone for some iced tea?” Luke asks, and the girls both nod. He goes into the house and reappears a few minutes later with a pitcher and a tray of glasses. He pours out some tea and we all hang around outside for a while, enjoying the view of the wide open fields that surround Luke’s place.
Finally, my brother turns to the girls. “Well, you didn’t come out here to drink my iced tea. Can I show you around the workshop?”
Ally actually claps her hands together and even Hannah looks excited. We all start towards the barn but I let Ally and Luke pull ahead of us and then pull Hannah into an embrace.
“Hey,” I say, leaning down to kiss her. I’ve been wanting to do that all morning but I wasn’t sure what she was comfortable doing in front of her sister.
Now though, she kisses me back, pressing her lips against mine, letting her tongue get tangled up with mine.
“Hey yourself,” she says breathlessly, when we finally break apart.
“This is going well, right?”
She nods, looking up at me with the softest chocolate eyes.
“Good.”
I squeeze her hand and we start off after the others.
33
Hannah
Luke’s barn or workshop or whatever you call it is incredible. The space is huge, cavernous, and the ceilings must be twenty feet high, with old wooden beams crisscrossing over our heads.
There’s furniture everywhere, some of it half completed, and power tools that look like they’d be more than capable of slicing off your arm if you weren’t careful.
I glance down at Ally. She’s wheeling forward quickly, trying to take everything in, hanging off Luke’s every word. I shake my head and smile. I haven’t seen her like this since … well, since before she had to get the chair.
I squeeze Trent’s hand.
“Thanks for bringing us here,” I say.
He smiles down at me. “My pleasure.”
We follow Luke as he shows off the different pieces he’s working on — the wishbone chairs, the live edge coffee tables, the three-drawer nightstands. Trent squeezes my hand and winks when Luke shows us the updated wingback chair he’s come up with, but otherwise he seems to get more agitated as we go through the space.
“This is amazing,” I tell him, trying to distract him from whatever is bothering him. “Why don’t you showcase this stuff more? You could have pictures of the workshop in the catalog, show Luke’s designs and all this in-progress stuff. People would love that.”
Trent smiles tightly but doesn’t answer.
We all stop walking as Luke pauses in front of a huge dining room table.
“This piece,” he says proudly. “This piece is going to be the center of the collection.”
It’s a farmhouse table, big enough to comfortably seat ten, and the top surface is a weathered grey wood. The spindled legs, however, are black iron.
“I had to find a local metalsmith to weld these for me,” he says proudly. “But I love the contrast between the metal and the wood. The play on the farmhouse esthetic.”
Trent runs a hand through his hair and lets out his breath in a huff.
“A metalsmith? Seriously, Luke? I thought we talked about this.”
Luke shrugs and I look back and forth between them.
“I think it’s beautiful,” I offer and Ally nods.
“That’s not the point,” Trent says. “The point is we can’t afford fucking metalsmiths. I told you we need to move towards keeping the collection more affordable — to produce and to sell. How much do you think we’d have to price this at to make any profit?”
“So we price it higher,” Luke says, with a shrug.
“Right. And then everyone goes to Ikea and buys the Jorgenblorg-whatever because it’s only eighty bucks.”
Ally and I glance at each other.
“Maybe we’ll just go wait outside,” I say. We hurry towards the front of the barn.
“You know the company is in trouble,” I hear Trent saying. “We just can’t afford your design whims anymore. I don’t want to have to start outsourcing this stuff but I will if I have to.”
Ally and I duck out of the barn and close the door behind us. I give her an awkward smile.
“Sorry. I had no idea things were that tense.”
“Don’t worry. It was still really cool getting to see the workshop.”
We wait outside for a while. We can still hear their raised voices but not exactly what they’re saying. Eventually we end up wandering around the property, just to have something to do.
Finally we see Trent coming up over the field towards us. He’s got a smile plastered on his face but I know him well enough now to know it’s not real.
“Sorry about t
hat,” he says, trying to sound casual. “Just a little business disagreement. Comes with the territory.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, squeezing his hand.
“Luke’s had some lunch brought in if you ladies are hungry?”
Ally and I glance at each other. “Sure.”
We head back towards the house. Luke is already lugging food out of the house and setting it on a picnic table around the side. Trent heads in to help him and by the time they’re done, they’ve put out a full feast — fried chicken, potato salad, tiny little ears of corn.
We all sit down at the picnic table and Ally pulls her chair up awkwardly to the side.
“There’s never a good way for me to sit at these,” she says, apologetically.
“I’m sorry,” Luke says, looking embarrassed. “I didn’t even think of that. Would you prefer to eat inside?”
“No, that’s okay.”
Trent glances at me, as if for confirmation, but I know Ally hates it when I baby her, so if she says it’s fine, it’s her decision. I give my head a small shake and Trent nods.
We set about eating, and the food is delicious, but the icy silence between Luke and Trent stretches out, and I can tell Ally isn’t really comfortable trying to eat at the picnic table. I’m glad when it’s finally time to leave.
We say our goodbyes and Trent drives Ally and I back to the city.
At the apartment he holds the door open while Ally wheels inside. I stay out on the sidewalk with him for a minute.
“Do you want to come up and have a coffee or something?” I ask. I feel a little weird asking him that, but he seems so out of sorts that I feel even worse letting him just go home like this.
But Trent shakes his head. “I’m kinda tired, actually.”
“Okay. Sure.” He doesn’t look tired at all but I already know him well enough to know there’s no point in arguing with him.
He leans in and kisses my cheek. “I’ll talk to you soon?”
“You know where to find me.” I watch him drive off in the SUV and then I push open the building’s glass door and join Ally inside.
