Cathy Thacker - Their Instant Baby

“I’m surprised she doesn’t want to start from scratch and buy everything she needs, rather than recycle what she already has,” Nick said as he ladled more of everything onto his plate. At Amy’s look, he shrugged affably. “People of her stature usually do.”

“Actually she did want to do that,” Amy said, surprised and pleased by Nick’s intuitive understanding of her business. “I’m the one who vetoed it.”

“Why? Wouldn’t there be more commission for you if she did buy all new?” he asked casually as he finished the rest of his frogmore stew and dirty rice. “Assuming she’s paying you for the work and it’s not gratis because she’s family.”

Amy ate a bite of the tangy coleslaw. “Aunt Winnifred is paying me—although I tried to get her to accept it as a gift. But she would have none of it.”

“Good for her.” Nick’s eyes met and held Amy’s. “People shouldn’t take advantage of family.”

Amy agreed about that. Family was important, which was why she wanted one of her own so badly.

“So back to what you plan to do for the carriage house,” Nick prodded. Finished with their meal, they rose and carried their plates to the sink.

“Basically, what I do for everyone else,” Amy said as she rinsed the dishes and loaded the dishwasher, while Nick put the leftover food in the refrigerator. “I go in, look at what they have, assess what they want and what they need to make that happen.”

Nick shut the refrigerator door and came back to stand beside her. “You make it sound easy.”

Amy wiped down the table, while he took the plastic bag out of the kitchen garbage container, tied it shut and replaced it with another. Amazed at how easily and effortlessly they were able to work together, Amy smiled at Nick as they walked onto the screened-in back porch and out into the yard. Almost wishing it had taken them longer to get their dinner mess cleaned up—she was enjoying Nick so much she didn’t want their time together to end, didn’t want to have to go back to work that evening at all—Amy said, “Redecorating is easy—for me, anyway.”

Nick tossed the day’s garbage into the pail and closed the lid, then followed her over to the clothesline. Wordlessly he began helping her collect the now dry linen from the clothesline. “What’s the most common problem you find when you begin a job?”

Amy tossed the clothespins into the wicker basket, one after another. “Usually people want to throw out too much. Sometimes literally everything.” She shook her head, marveling at the waste. “It’s almost never necessary.”

As Nick edged closer to her, the tantalizing sandalwood of his aftershave mingled with the clean fragrance of soap and the masculine scent of sweat. Amy’s pulse picked up at the unmistakable spark of interest in his eyes, the kind that said he wanted to take her into his arms and kiss her. He continued to hold her gaze. “So in other words, you convince them to appreciate what they have first and then build on that?”

“Right.” Amy raked her teeth across her lower lip. “That’s what redecorating is all about.” She pulled one end of the flat sheet off the line—Nick picked up the other. They folded it in half and then quarters, then walked toward each other, their hands brushing as Nick gave her his end of the sun-dried linen. Struggling against the renewed shimmer of awareness drifting through her, Amy folded the linen into a square and dropped it into the basket on top of the pins, before turning—with Nick—to retrieve the contoured bottom sheet.

Because he looked genuinely interested, she continued explaining how she decorated houses as they folded the trickier elastic-edged sheet. “Sometimes it means taking things from one room and putting them in another. Sometimes it’s just poor arrangement of existing pieces or lack of accessorizing what is already there that’s the problem. Whatever,” Amy shrugged as their hands brushed once again, and Nick took over the final folding of the sheet. “I go in, add a few things and give it a pulled-together look.”

Nick dropped the second sheet on top of the first. “I’m guessing business is brisk?”

“Very.” Flushing self-consciously, Amy wiggled her bare toes in the grass and admitted, “I actually have a waiting list these days.”

Nick looked impressed. “Thought about franchising?” he asked as they each plucked a pillowcase off the line.

Now he sounded like a businessman, like her executive-father or always-looking-for-a-way-to-expand brother, Mitch. Amy picked up the laundry basket and balanced it on her hip. “No.” And she wouldn’t, either.

Wordlessly Nick took the basket from her and gallantly carried it into the house. “Getting your own TV show, then?” he asked as he led the way to the bedroom, where the stripped double bed waited. He reached over to turn on the bedside lamp, bathing the dusky room with soft light. “Makeovers are tremendously popular with the surge in home-and-garden cable networks.”

Amy moved to one side of the bed, Nick the other. “My mother is the TV host in the family, not me,” Amy declared.

“A shame.” Nick helped her put the sheets on the bed. “You’re very photogenic and you have the kind of easygoing personality viewers love.”

“I’m still not interested.” Amy picked up the quilt, thinking how awfully intimate the bedroom suddenly seemed.

“Any particular reason why not?” Nick asked as they smoothed that, too.

Amy stiffened and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ve seen the way networks treat TV hosts they perceive to be over-the-hill.”

“You’re talking about your mother’s firing from Rise and Shine, America!’s” Nick guessed as he sat down on the edge of the bed.

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