I glanced at Derek while she chattered and had to swallow down a laugh at the frustration on his face. It wasn’t easy being boss. All bucks stopped with him—and better him than me. When the decorator wound down, Derek said, “If moving the ovens didn’t cause problems elsewhere”—he thumbed at a wall that hid a safe room, and suddenly I understood the problem—“I’d let you have your way on the ovens. But it’s no deal.” He looked at me when she started to speak again, and said, “Jane? What do you say?”
Great. So much for bucks stopping with Derek. To the decorator, I said, “As I understand it, you have two requests—color scheme and light in the kitchen. Right?”
She nodded and I went on. “But you also have a job to do. Your job is to make Leo happy. Derek’s job is to keep Leo safe. And that’s my job too. You can’t move the ovens, because that makes it harder for us to do our job. Putting the ovens there”—I pointed where Derek had thumbed—“isn’t going to happen.”
“But—”
I held up a hand to stop her. “Let me finish. Request number one is color. Leo likes whites and beiges and he’s outlived au courant several centuries ago.” I studied the space and realized that I had the attention of the entire crew. Lucky me. “You can’t change Leo’s white-toned color scheme but you could make the faucets and knobs bronze and put in some aged copper panels in the ceiling if you want. Drop some bronzy lights over the island.” I’d seen that at Katie’s and it looked really good. “Hang some big copper pots over the island or along the wall next to the cook top.” I pointed. “And . . .” I turned in a circle, trying to see the room as it would be soon. “Maybe put in a copper or bronze exhaust hood. Instead of the white quartz or granite cabinet tops like on the rest of the counters, put copper sheeting on the island. You could even get the oven and refrigerator doors done in copper or bronze, all without changing the color scheme.” When the decorator’s mouth fell open, I said, “What?”
“That’s . . . perfect, actually,” she said. Then jumped in quickly with, “But this room needs more light.”
“Yeah. Vamps don’t care about light. They care about security. Why don’t you knock out that wall there”—I pointed to the back of the house—“and put in some French doors and tall windows if you need light in the daytime. Just be sure to get the engineer to work with you on the sizes and necessary measurements of the bullet-resistant glass and the support I beams for the stories above.”
Her red-lipsticked mouth made a moue of surprise. “You’d let me do that?”
I looked at Derek and the construction boss and the architect, who had wandered over to listen. They all nodded. “Sure. So we’re good on not moving the ovens?”
“We’re fine.” She looked down at her notebook and wrote Copper Cladding in big letters.
Derek walked away, shaking his head. I followed, not understanding his reaction. I didn’t usually bother with multisyllabic words like consternation, but that was how Derek looked—consternated. Derek and I had had some issues over the months when I’d been under contract to Leo, and while some matters had worked themselves out, some hadn’t. I wasn’t sure they ever would. As soon as we were out of earshot I said, “What’s with the head shaking?”
“You solved everything. That woman was driving me nuts. She had been driving everyone nuts for over an hour.”
Crap. I really was turning into a girl. When the heck had that happened? I kicked a chunk of two-by-ten out of the way. Maybe a little too hard, in my frustration with my life, as it hit a freshly hung piece of wallboard and bounced back at me. I jumped out of the way, but the wall now had a huge dent in it. Dang it.
But I owed Derek an answer. I said, “You were trying to answer her questions without trying to solve her problems. I solved her problems. It’ll cost Leo another small fortune, but with what he’s spending on this house, what’s a few thou more?”
He looked confused and mimicked me by kicking a cut piece of two-by-four out of his way. His didn’t cause any damage. “So . . . I need to solve problems, not answer questions?” He stopped at a cooler and passed me a can of Coke. He took a Mountain Dew for himself. We popped the tops and sipped as he considered my answer.
Derek led the way out the front door and partway down the steps, which had been salvaged and re-mortared from the burned original house “because they are part of history,” according to the expensive architect. We sat on a step, looking out over the property and the massed vehicles. I listened to the myriad conversations on the work space, watched a helicopter on the horizon, and saw a black SUV drive slowly past the entrance to Leo’s place. Seeing it cleared my head. “Make sure security is here all night,” I said to Derek. “Someone’s been tailing me, and might have been tailing others.”