Chapter 12

TWELVE

My fingers itched enough that I'd had to shove them into my jeans pockets to quiet them. The lines of The Heights were stark—both the breadth of the windows and the grandeur of the jet-colored building. Art Deco and modernism had melded into a spectacular building.

However, it was missing curves.

Something out front to soften the severity of the dark, boxy building. The Sycamore trees did a pretty good job of it, but space outside the building was prime for a?—

"You didn't leave."

Dahlia's voice snatched me out of the creative vortex I'd fallen into, something I hadn't lost myself in a damn long time. The jarring reaction was enough to make me want hop back into my truck and leave her in the dust because I didn't want to deal with that shit again. The flash of an idea wouldn't stick around, anyway.

Because I didn't deserve it.

My throat went dry. "You said you had something to show me."

"Right." She gathered her hair around her neck to lay over her other shoulder. She did that when she wasn't sure what to do with her hands.

Annoyed that I knew that, I stepped off the sidewalk into the crosswalk. She followed behind me until we hit the median, then she stood at my side. The warm breeze lifted her hair and her peach and honey scent swirled around me like a caress.

My hands fisted at my sides.

The traffic was light enough not to wait for the walk sign to flip white. She shot ahead, leaving me in the dust this time. The streetlights were as bright as a stadium and made my eyes pulse, but damn that ass of hers made a man think things.

Things I had no business thinking.

The no-nonsense sway of her hips was bad enough, but the heart shape of it was a menace. Mostly because it made my palms itch again. The memory of the adrenaline jolt when I'd dove at her, of the way she fit against me. The flecks in her eyes that reminded me of burnished gold. And fuck me, when I'd rolled her on top of me to make sure she was safe, her firm ass filled my hand like it was made for me.

No. That wasn't happening.

I had to remind myself she had complicated stamped all over her in red ink. Hell, she'd scraped LITTLE DICK into my truck. Then came at me at my own house screaming about how to remodel my own damn house.

I should be heading back across the street.

She wasn't stable. Possibly certifiable.

And you are stable?

There was a point.

She stopped in front of the double doors of her building and glanced over her shoulder. "Coming?"

Indecision had my foot teetering in space. If I stepped off the median and crossed the road to meet her, that was it. I had a feeling I'd never get her out of my life.

It was late and there were no cars to speak of. I should just turn the hell around and go home.

If—and it was a big if —I did entertain her proposal, I should do it at her office.

Not in her space. Alone with her again.

It didn't seem like a good idea.

An older gentleman swung the door open.He wore a gray uniform complete with a starched collar and tie. All he needed was a monogramed doorman hat to look like he belonged at the front of a Manhattan high rise.

"Hello, Miss Dahlia. How are you on this warm evening?"

"I'm good, Murray. Callahan filled me with good food and cider."

"Aww, that's good. That's good. You have a good night."

I didn't even realize I'd stepped off and followed her. The magnetic pull of her left me off-balance and annoyed. When I got to them, the older man tucked Dahlia behind him. "Can I help you?"

"He's with me." She patted the guy's arm. "Don't mind him. He always looks like he's about to start a fight with someone."

The older man narrowed his gaze at me. "He'll need to sign in."

I arched a brow. "Is that right, old man?"

"Don't be a dick, Nolan. Sign the register. We are a gated apartment building, that's all."

Murray tipped his chin back to meet my gaze. "You sure this is a friend of yours, Miss McKenna?"

Dahlia gave him a wide smile. "Strangely, I do believe we are becoming friends. He just takes some time to warm up."

"Don't make excuses for me, Hellcat."

"Murray doesn't know you're all growl, no bite."

"Who says?" I glowered.

She rolled her eyes and took the book and wrote something in it then handed it to Murray. "I'm signing him in for an hour. I'll call down if we extend it."

"If you're sure." But the doorman looked anything but certain.

She grabbed me by the hand and zipped me through the eight-foot doors. She didn't let me go as we blazed through the lobby. The first thing I noticed was the vast amount of space.

Something I'd been looking for since the accident.

All too often, I felt hemmed in. As much as I needed the darkness against the headaches, it was also overwhelming and cloying at times when the dreams came.

Like when I was trapped on the twelve-seater plane for the red-eye flight back the night before. Involuntarily, I tightened my hold on her hand.

She waved to a few people in the community space. Game of Thrones or one of its spinoffs was thundering through the speakers near the fireplace. Instead of a crackling fire, there were candles set behind the grate for ambiance.

She hustled me over to the right side of the lobby, where a hallway led to what I was assuming were apartments along with an elevator. She tapped the up button. "I'm just on the second floor, but I'm too tired for another flight of stairs."

"Probably because you ate your weight in fries."

She rubbed her middle. "Worth it. I've been living on ramen and PBnJ for the last few days."

The brass doors opened to an ornate elevator with echoing brass and additional mirrors inside. More mirrors than I'd been around in a damn long time. I was aware of my scars, but I certainly didn't search out reasons to stare at myself or study the way they had altered so much of me.

She moved to stand in front of the mirror and looked up at me. "Tell me why you bought the house."

I frowned down at her. "Because it was me."

I didn't mean to actually say that out loud. When I'd been looking for a place to start over, the most important part had been a Victorian with character. The more Gothic, the better had been my only stipulation. When I'd seen the Barrows house, I'd known it was mine. Every part of it from the peeling green paint and broken windows to the dark and dilapidated roof had called out to me.

When I'd seen the location, I knew I'd have paid anything for it.

It was meant to be my home.

It was time to face my past and make up for my cowardice.

If I had any hope of family, it would be here.

The elevator doors opened, and I was saved from that trip down memory lane. Dahlia kept staring at me until the doors started to close again. She shot forward and caught the door and the sensor kicked in to open them once more. She paused at the threshold and waited for me. "Then let's find a way to make it yours."

My fists relaxed for the first time. "And here I thought you said it was yours."

"I can't really explain it. The hope of what it could be for someone called out to me. That's what I love most about my job. Creating a space that is perfect for my client, but also connects them individually to the space, or in this case, the house."She licked her lips. "Probably sounds stupid to you."

"No." It really didn't. For the first time, it sounded like exactly what I wanted.

I wanted to belong somewhere. To someplace as much as to someone. I'd been running for so long to the next bump in fame, lost to the attention and to the money. And in the end, the money had destroyed me.

I needed something more than a mansion.

And I wasn't sure what to do with that. Or the woman who seemed to get that way before I did.

"Okay, then let's give it a look-see, huh?"

I followed her out into the hallway. Tastefully neutral carpeting was offset with wallpapered walls that showcased an Art Deco pattern embossed into it. The graphic arches that spoke of the past kept it from looking like every other slick apartment building. She stopped at the second door on the right.

Dahlia opened the door. "Watch the— shit ."

A black and white cat shot out into the hallway and when it noticed the vast space, it got spooked and turned around only to bump into me. Its back went up and his fur puffed out as his gaze whirled around in abject fear.

"Gizmo!" Her voice was a sharp whisper.

The cat recoiled and then freaked out. Without thinking, I scooped him up. The cat howled and went all Wolverine on my arms and chest. His nails got caught in my old cotton T-shirt, which only made it freak out more as he flipped up my shirt.

She tried to reach for him, and her hand slipped across my exposed belly. Her brown gaze shot up to mine, but her hand didn't move. She seemed to finally notice and snatched her hand back. "Sorry, he's just scared."

"I got him." I didn't, really. In fact, he was arching back and yowling, but I shuffled both of us inside so that the cat couldn't escape, and I didn't lose a pint of blood.

Once inside, the cat did a damn triple axel to get out of my arms and shot across the room.

She collapsed back against the door. "He's out of sorts. Too many men have been in the apartment lately."

As I checked my skin for blood, I caught her gaze roving over me.

She inched closer. "How bad did he get you?"

I pulled down my shirt. "I'm fine." Just how many men? And why the hell did that matter to me?

She left me to call to the cat. "Gizmo, c'mon, buddy. You okay?" She stopped at the kitchen island and pulled a treat bag out of a canister and shook it. "Treat?"

The cat came bounding back into the room, took one look at me, and zipped right back out to hide in the hallway.

She sighed. "Sorry about that. We just had a situation and had to have maintenance guys in to redo the flooring and trim."

I didn't care, but I was admittedly relieved it wasn't a bunch of men she was dating. Again, that shouldn't freaking matter to me.

Her space was very much her. Classy with pops of color everywhere. A muted gray couch looked surprisingly comfortable instead of streamlined, but then she had a pillow in cherry red decorated with stark graphic flowers.

Wait, were those also bats in the design? Unexpected.

A few more dark touches explained why she may have been attracted to the Gothic attributes of my new house. The stained glass rose in an ebony frame on her dining room wall, the trio of candle holders on the sideboard in wrought iron with red tapers. A vase of flowers in black and red with a deep violet tulip that shouldn't belong.

Not a typical decorator's house.

A lived-in house.

So many of the artistic people I'd known in Los Angeles lived in showcase houses. All about the outward appearances, with very little individual substance.

Dahlia's place had cat toys on the floor, a scratched-up ottoman with a stack of magazines on a tray, and a discarded iPad on the arm of the couch, with a forest green throw blanket dripping off the edge of the cushion like she'd tossed it aside.

"Are you coming?"

My gaze tracked to her in the hallway, the cat behind her swishing his tail.

"I have my office in my bedroom." She and the cat left me in the living room as she disappeared.

Did she bring just anyone into her bedroom? Didn't she realize how unsafe that was? I paused at the end of her hall. That damn peach and honey scent drew me forward.

An unreasonable anger brewed with each step.

I could be anyone and she just invited me in? Did she have no self-preservation? She didn't seem stupid, but now I was beginning to wonder. My chest tightened as I stepped inside her space.

If it was possible, this was even more her than the living room.

I expected a made bed, but the sheets were twisted as if she'd had a rough night's sleep like me. The simple gray of the sheets looked soft and probably smelled like her. If I stuck my face into her pillowcase, would it be all peaches or more of the honey?

Fuck .

My face would never be in that pillow.

There was an army of decorative pillows stacked beside her bed as if she did, in fact, make her bed up daily. Was she restless for a reason?

My restless night was partly due to this capricious woman, but I'd also taken a trip into the city to speak to Donovan Lewis and had left without my sculpture again. He would not be swayed from me buying it back, even when I offered him five million for it.

I wouldn't tell Maeve that—she'd lose her damn mind.

But I wanted it. Wanted a piece of that man I used to be.

"Nolan?"

I turned to Dahlia, and my breath backed up in my lungs at the wall of drawings and photos. Every angle of my house was on display. Some sketches, some photos, some old schematics from what seemed to match photos from the damn 1800s. Swatches of fabric, paint samples, and glossy pictures of furniture were pinned beside more sketches.

All of it embraced the darker tones and the emerald green of the original paint of the building.

But the windows had been replaced with a mix of stained glass and leaded glass. All of it to lean into the Gothic.

She even had notes for 3D printed pieces to replace the old stone. I stepped over and snatched those off the board.

She gasped. "Hey!"

"No 3D printed shit on my house."

"It was only to recreate the stone."

"A stone mason will."

"I planned on using a man?—"

"No, I have an artist friend who will be doing it." Where I was all metal and the occasional melted glass, one of my few friends in this world could create any damn thing in stone. I'd been a blowtorch to his chisel.

At least that had been us once upon a time.

"I'm fine with that." She took the drawing away from me and set it on the desk under the vision board wall she'd created.

I pushed aside the sketchpads and library books she had on the desk and found a coiled notebook. I picked up a pen and made a quick drawing of the balcony and porch that had crumbled. I wanted it close to what had been but better.

More stone and wrought iron mixed with the ornate Victorian gables to give it that ornate flavor I'd fallen in love with.

She peered over my shoulder, and I growled.

"So testy." She laid a hand on my shoulder as if I hadn't just given her a warning. "I just want to see."

I ripped the page off the notebook and shoved it at her, stepping away from her.

She tilted her head as she looked at it, then she tacked it up with the rest of her drawings.

Where her lines were finely detailed and architecturally perfect, mine were jagged and dark.

"I see where you're going." She grabbed the sketchpad and went to her bed to sit cross legged as she started sketching.

I shoved my hands into my pockets and turned back to the wall. Seeing her in the middle of a wrecked bed was not good for me at the moment. Too little sleep and annoyance at her lack of personal safety left me raw.

The cat leaped onto the desk and stared at me unblinkingly. He lifted a paw toward me with a chirping sound.

I frowned at him. "What does he want?"

"That's his happy chirp."

"He's not a fucking bird."

She laughed. "No, but he's quite talkative. Just pet him."

"Sure he's not going to scratch me again?"

"Always possible."

I grunted, but I put my hand out to let him butt against it. Then he pushed his head into my hand, and I coasted my palm over his head and down his back. His tail swished and I froze. That wasn't usually a great sign. Instead, he put his paw out again and went onto his back legs.

"What do you want?"

He pawed at the air with another chirp.

I stepped closer and he climbed up my shirt. " Ow . Little fucker."

I tucked him into the crook of my arm, then he started purring. With a sigh of resignation, I left him there and absently scratched his head as I took a better look at her drawings. The color choices were close to what I would have chosen. Maybe a deeper green. Was there paint that wouldn't fade in the unrelenting weather of the Northeast?

She glanced up at me. "Like this?" She waved me over, her face softening when she saw me holding her devil cat. "You made a friend."

"Probably wants food."

"He always wants food." She reached up to scratch under his chin. The little motorboat in his chest increased. Her eyes met mine as the soft skin of her arm skimmed mine before she pulled her hand back. "What do you think?"

I glanced down at her sketchpad. She'd smoothed out the rough edges of my idea, using some of the existing intricacies of the finials and balustrades. She obviously knew what she was doing. Way more than I did, that was for sure.

"Can you make the balcony a little bigger? I wouldn't mind a seating area off the living room to look at the lake. It's a killer view."

She nodded and altered the sketch. "I'll do a better job in my design program, but that's a good rough look at what we could do. We'll have to check with TJ, our carpenter, and of course, the mason you mentioned. Whatever TJ can't do, I'm sure Gideon can."

"Gideon?"

She pressed her lips together. "Oh, right. I keep forgetting about your…situation. Not that I should. You have the same disposition as your sister, that's for sure."

I crouched in front of her. The cat didn't like that and jumped down to wind around between the two of us. "How well do you know Gideon?"

"I've worked with them a lot. Gideon is one of the major players in the rehab game around here. He's expanded quite a bit from the handyman startup he once was. He's a fair guy. Excellent crew, as well as reputation."

I didn't know much about my sister's husband. I'd checked him out when I saw their wedding announcement. I had an internet alert set up on her to keep track of her, at the very least. I'd received the baby announcement and one from the local paper with the stingy photo of one of their biggest business owners getting hitched to a hometown guy.

My sister had made a good life without me.

I just hoped there would be a little room for me if I didn't totally fuck up.

She reached out to touch my arm. "Have you spoken to Macy?"

The softness of her skin burned into me. I hadn't allowed a lot of touching since my accident. After being at the mercy of doctors and nurses for nearly two months during the grafts and reconstruction, I'd loathed anyone to be in my space.

Then it just got easier to keep that up.

I wasn't sure what to say about Macy. It hadn't been a roaring success, that was for sure. I opened my mouth to shut down the line of questioning when a muffled moan came from the doorway.

Dahlia's eyes widened, and she pressed her lips together.

"Fuck! Right there, right there, right there!"