“Oh, you know, the weather was great this weekend, it’s probably that.” Beau turned when she walked in. “Good morning, Izzy.”
She tried to smile at him like normal, in the same way she’d done before. How exactly had she smiled at him before? She couldn’t remember now. At first it had been her fake cheerful smile, she knew that. But at some point, it had changed. And then it had changed again. She knew she couldn’t smile at him the way she wanted to, the way that said “I had a great time kissing you all weekend, and if Michaela wasn’t just a few feet away, I’d be kissing you right now,” especially since Michaela was looking right at her. She hoped she just looked sleepy and walked straight to the coffee maker.
“Morning,” she said, trying to direct her greeting to both of them.
“How was your weekend?” Michaela asked.
Izzy could feel Beau’s eyes on her as she moved to the fridge for milk.
“Oh, good,” she said, without looking at him. She poured the milk into her coffee and replaced it inside the fridge. “Apparently, there was a snowstorm in New York this weekend, so I feel very smug about being here, obviously.”
Beau and Michaela both laughed.
She looked over at the baked goods corner. There were lemon poppy-seed muffins, and Izzy put one on a plate. “Okay, well, I’d better go back upstairs. I um, have a call in a few minutes.” She started to leave the kitchen.
“Izzy.”
She turned back around at the sound of Beau’s voice. His eyes looked so warm. “Yeah?”
“Two thirty? In the library?” His smile was tiny, but she could feel it all the way across the room.
“Yeah,” she said. “Two thirty in the library. See you then.”
When she walked into the library that afternoon, Beau was already there, sitting at the table, his laptop open.
“Finally,” he said when she walked in. “I’ve been waiting forever.”
She pursed her lips. “First of all, I’m only five minutes late, I had a call that ran over. Second, we usually meet at three, so I’m actually twenty-five minutes early.”
Beau grinned at her. “I know. But I couldn’t wait that long today.” He took the notebook that she pushed across the table to him. “Also. Before we start work, I’d like to request a slight amendment to the rules.”
She tilted her head as she flipped her laptop open. She was pretty sure she knew what was coming.
“Mmm, that might depend on which rules we’re talking about,” she said.
She liked that look in his eyes. But then, she was realizing that she liked almost every look in his eyes.
“The rules about the library. And what we can—and can’t—do here.”
She tried to keep a straight face. “I see. What kind of amendment are we talking about?”
He tented his fingers together and looked at her over them. “Well. I think that when we—or rather, when you—made this rule, we—you—didn’t consider that on weekdays, Michaela would be around, and so this time in the library would be our only time alone during the day. So I think we should at least get to bookend work time with…other time. Say, five minutes at the beginning and at the end, to do…whatever we want while we’re in here.”
She grinned at him. “Nice try. But this is our work time. Work only in here.”
He let out a sigh. “I knew you would say that. But I had to try.”
She laughed at him and set the timer.
When they walked out of the library Beau looked from side to side. Then he grabbed her hand, tugged her across the hall into the TV room, and closed the door behind them.
“You had better not try to tell me,” he said, as he leaned down, “that there’s no kissing in this room.”
She put her arms around his neck and pulled him closer. “I believe this room is actually the shut-up-and-kiss-me room, as a matter of fact.”
He smiled. “Well, I’d guess I’d better do what the room says.”
On Wednesday morning, a few hours after she’d gone downstairs to get coffee and one of Beau’s latest baked goods, she heard a knock at her open bedroom door. She looked up with a smile, expecting it to be Beau. Instead, Michaela was standing in the doorway.
“Oh, hi, Michaela,” Izzy said. Why had she thought it would be Beau? He never came up here. Maybe she’d just been hoping it was him.
“Hi, Izzy. I hope I’m not interrupting anything?” Michaela smiled at her. “I have a favor to ask.”
Izzy waved her in the room. “Sure, come on in. Just trying to reply to an annoying email, no big deal.”
Michaela grinned at her. “Well, then, I’m glad I rescued you.” She sat down and looked around the room and then out the window. “This really is a great room. No wonder Beau put you in here.”
Izzy looked around the room, too. “Yeah. I love it.”
Michaela turned away from the window with a smile. “I was wondering if you had time to come shopping with me later.”
It made sense that Michaela would need an extra set of hands sometimes for all the food stocked in this house.
“Sure, I’d be happy to,” Izzy said. “I can’t wait to see how the snack cabinet magic happens.”
Michaela laughed. “Oh no—not food shopping.” She made a face. “Clothes shopping. I’m going to a wedding this weekend, and I need a dress. Your clothes are always so cute, so I thought maybe you could help me find one.”
Izzy was flattered. Her collection of sundresses had grown considerably since she’d been here. She was saving so much money living here, what with no commute, and no spending money on food or going out or basically anything else, that she’d let herself indulge a bit. Plus, she’d just gotten a save-the-date for a friend’s wedding this summer; she probably needed to find a few dresses for upcoming weddings too.
“Oh, I’d love to, that sounds fun! Beau and I are usually done in the library somewhere around four thirty or five. Do you want to go then?”
Michaela stood up. “Perfect. Thank you, I really appreciate it.”
“Thanks for coming along with me,” Michaela said as they drove down the hill.
“Oh, it’s no problem,” Izzy said. “There’s so much great shopping around here—though most of it is too expensive for my budget. I have found a few bargains, though.”
Michaela stopped to let someone walking their dog cross the street.
“Tell me about it. I’m willing to splurge a little, if I find something great, but who knows. This is the first real dressy kind of thing I’ve had to go to since I had Mikey, and the idea of shopping is kind of overwhelming. Especially since I’ve been working for Beau for the past year, which means that wearing anything other than an elastic waist makes me overdressed.”
They both laughed.
“How did that end up happening?” Izzy asked. “You working for Beau, I mean.” She’d wondered this since the beginning and somehow had never asked Beau.
“Oh, that’s a long story,” Michaela said. Izzy wondered if that was her way of blowing her off and not telling the story, but then she started talking again. “I knew his grandparents—my dad worked for his grandfather a long time ago, and they stayed close, so I’ve known Beau forever. I always liked him, even though he had a reputation as kind of a jerk. He was never like that here. His grandma and I always used to drink tea together, and she gave me a teakettle for a present one year for my birthday, and I was so excited. He teased me about it, called me Kettle, and it kind of…stuck.” She laughed. “Anyway, after his grandfather died, the lawyers hired my dad to kind of keep an eye on the house, check on it every so often. And one day, one of the neighbors called my dad to say he’d seen someone coming in and out of the house, and just wanted to make sure it wasn’t him, before he called the police. My dad thought it might be Beau, so he and I—and baby Mikey—went up to the house to check. When I walked into the kitchen, it was”—her eyes widened—“total chaos, and Beau was standing there beating something in a bowl and getting it everywhere.”
Izzy smiled. Yeah, she could picture that.
“Was he furious that you were there?”
Michaela laughed. “I was going to say you can imagine, but you don’t have to imagine. When he realized who we were, he calmed down. We left him our numbers, and a few days later he texted me to ask if I knew anyone who could cook for him and stuff, since he was tired of getting takeout. I’d always worked in restaurants, but I’d just had the baby a few months before and was dreading going back to that world, so I said I’d do it. At first, it was just dropping food off for him a few times a week, and then I started sticking around to cook there and do the dishes and stuff, and then he had the idea for the foundation—he told you about that, right?”