Chapter 12

Twelve

Me

If the offer of coffee is still good, anything with lots of caffeine and sugar would be great.

Eisen

Bad day?

B ad evening, bad night, bad morning. The boys had arrived home two hours late. Harry's coat had disappeared, and Alfie's clothes were covered in felt pen. I'd barely slept because I kept reliving that kiss, and at five thirty a.m., Alfie had run into my room crying because his pet spider was missing.

Me

Could be better.

Alfie finally found a spider while I was scraping the remains of the jam-covered toast Harry had dropped off the floor—which may or may not have been the spider he lost—and the batteries in my foil cutter were dead. Annie Crump wanted highlights, which meant I'd need to either buy more batteries or cut the foil manually, and honestly, was anything else going to go wrong today?

Yes.

Yes, of course it was.

When I got back from the school run—why did they call it that when it was more of a sweaty march?—there was a truck parked in my driveway.

"Are you lost?" I asked the man standing beside it.

"Marigold Lodge?"

"Yes, but I didn't order any of…whatever that is."

"It's the scaffolding for your roof."

What?

"I don't understand. I spoke to Kevin last week, and he said I was tenth on the list. That it would be months."

The scaffolding guy shrugged. "Well, now you're first on the list."

"I'm not sure about this."

"You want me to take all the stuff back?"

"I…" Then it hit me. Eisen. "Could you give me one moment?"

I dialled his number. The raging chipmunk. The overstepping, uncommunicative chipmunk, more like.

"Do you happen to know why a scaffolding truck just arrived at my house?"

"I thought they were starting tomorrow."

"That's not an answer."

"You need a roof, so I called Kevin and got him to move you up the schedule. I figured that if you had to work tomorrow, I could come over and keep an eye on them."

"How did you get him to move me up the schedule? You didn't threaten to break his legs, did you?"

"Babe, most problems are solved by money, not violence. I offered him drinking vouchers."

"You mean you bribed him?"

"Think of it as a bonus."

"I can't afford a bonus."

"Good thing you're not paying it, then."

"You can't…you can't…"

"It was surprisingly easy. I just went to the ATM, told it how much money I wanted, and dropped the cash through his letter box. In all your googling, did you happen to check out my net worth?"

"No?"

"Well, go and look it up, then tell the man where to park his truck."

Eis hung up. That jerk actually hung up on me, and the scaffolding guy checked his watch.

"I haven't got all day, lady."

"Just one more minute."

I typed "Eisen Renner net worth" into the search bar on my phone. Holy crap. Twenty-five million in career winnings, another twenty million in sponsorship deals. Then there was the gym chain he owned, and…oh… Elizabeth Renner is believed to have bequeathed her entire estate to just two of her four grandchildren, siblings Eisen and Edith, leading to infighting in the family. The value of the estate is an estimated three hundred million pounds, with properties in London, Somerset, Paris, Barbados, and New York.

I nearly puked.

"Uh, just park the truck wherever. Can I offer you a cup of tea?"

"I'm all right, love."

I walked into the house on autopilot and called Eis again.

"Why didn't you tell me, you absolute twatwaffle?"

"Tell you what?"

"That you're wealthy."

"You didn't get that from the thirty-seven-room mansion?"

"Well, obviously I knew you had some money, but not that you were obscenely filthy stinking rich."

"Does it matter? If I thought you were only after my money, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"It's just… I guess it's weird."

"The money doesn't define me. It just sits there in the background. If it makes you feel better, I could throw all the cash out of my helicopter."

"You have a helicopter?"

"Technically it's my dad's, but I borrow it sometimes."

Somebody pinch me.

"Throwing cash out of a helicopter seems awfully wasteful. With the way energy bills are going up, wouldn't it make more sense to burn it in the grate?"

Eis just laughed. "I'll see you in a bit."

I sat down hard on the stairs. How was I meant to explain this? Any of this? To my parents, to my sister, to the boys… Only Marissa knew about the original Hand and Flowers incident—not the sordid details of the nature reserve excursion, but that a boy I liked had dumped me by text, and she'd offered to hunt Eis down and kick him in the balls. So that might be awkward. Mum was liable to freak out about his criminal record, Dad would want to know what a man like Eis was doing with a woman like me—which was understandable since I kept asking myself the same question—and the boys had never seen me with anyone but Steven. Alfie would probably be okay with me dating, but I wasn't sure about Harry. When Mum tried to set me up with one of her friends' sons a few months ago, he'd overheard and angrily told her that he didn't want a new dad.

I was still sitting on the stairs when Eis arrived.

"I binned off the meeting. Edie and Bex can cover for me." He handed me a takeaway cup. "You should lock your front door."

"Who's Bex?" I asked numbly.

"My PA. She's been on maternity leave, but we decided it would work for both of us if she came back part-time. You all right?"

"Just…overwhelmed?"

"It's okay to feel that way."

"Really?"

"The past week was life-changing for both of us."

"Life-changing?" I considered that for a moment. "Yes, I suppose it was."

I'd gone from being single and stressed to still being stressed, but in a different way. Now I needed to work out how to coexist with a man I thought I'd lost forever.

"I need to find that little shit who was filming Harry and send him a thank-you card." Eis always knew how to make me smile. He knelt in front of me and leaned his forehead against mine. "Please don't be mad about the roof. I just want you to have a dry house."

"I'm not mad about the roof."

"Please don't be mad about the gate either."

"Why would I be mad about the gate? You didn't make it fall off."

"I ordered you a new one." Oh. "Plus a guy's coming to install security lights. And a new fence."

"You're such a pain in the arse."

"But you love me really."

Love? Did I love him? Teenage me hadn't believed in love at first sight, but that was before I met Eis. Then he disappeared on me, and I thought it was still a load of bollocks. But now I realised there might be some truth in the idea.

"Maybe a little bit. But we're still taking things slowly."

He flashed a grin. "I'll be out of here before the boys get home."

"Thank you." His absence would make things easier. Keep kicking that can, Janie… "No, actually you should stay. If you want to, I mean. I'll tell them you're helping out with the plumbing, and if they get used to seeing you around, perhaps it won't be such a big shock when they find out there's more between us?"

Eis pulled me forward onto his knees. "When they realise you're hooking up with the household help, you mean?"

"Something like that." I relaxed into his arms. "I really want this to work."

"It's going to work. Trust me on that."