To Have and to Hold (The Wedding Belles #1)(89)

It was somebody’s home, Brooke realized.

The space was as beautiful as Brooke remembered it—more so, now that it had a purpose—but it was no longer set up to be a versatile wedding reception site. Someone was intending to live here.

“Oh man,” she said, realizing there’d been a super awkward, horrible mistake. Brooke pulled out her phone to text Alexis about what seemed to be a major misunderstanding.

Thank God whatever richer-than-God person who had bought the property hadn’t moved in yet. Crazy awkward to walk into someone’s home uninvited.

Brooke heard a loud clang, as though someone had dropped a tool, and her head snapped up and looked in the direction of the wall that led to what must be the bedrooms of the house.

Crap. Definitely not alone. A construction worker, maybe?

Brook turned, slowly creeping toward the elevator, her gait made slow and clunky in an effort not to let her heels click on the floor as she made her escape.

Then she heard the sound of a door opening and closing and heavy footsteps as someone entered the main space where she was currently tiptoeing around like an overdressed cat burglar.

Keeping her fingers crossed that it really was a worker and not the owner of the house, Brooke turned on her heel, fully prepared to be at her most charming and apologetic for the confusion.

The apology froze on her lips. Heck, all rational thought froze in her brain.

Seth was here.

Seth was here.

Standing in the not-quite-finished kitchen, wearing . . .

Jeans.

And a T-shirt . . . and work boots?

Brooke blinked, half-terrified that her mind had gone and given up the ghost and quit on her. Seth Tyler might wear jeans, sometimes, but only when paired with a cashmere sweater or tailored dress shirt. Definitely not a basic white T-shirt that clung just a little bit snugly to the sculpted muscles of his upper body.

“Is that dirt on your face?” Brooke blurted out.

Yeah. Okay. Not exactly what she’d always imagined saying upon seeing him again, but really, he was wearing work boots. And there was a hammer in his hand.

Her ovaries would be fainting if they weren’t so confused by what was happening right now.

He lifted a self-conscious hand to his cheek before dropping it with a shrug. “The shelves I’m installing must have had some dust on them.”

“The—” Brooke cleared her throat. “The shelves you’re installing?”

Her voice was far too high, and he gave her a crooked smile and tilted his head in the direction of the other room. “Want to see?”

Brooke had about a billion questions for him, none of them about shelves, but since the important questions seemed far too complicated to possibly make it from her brain to her mouth, she went with the simpler option. “Okay.”

He stood still as she walked toward him, and for a brief moment, she thought his eyes might be appearing slightly hungry as they looked her over, but then all expression disappeared between the impassive mask. It was like they were going back to that first day at the Belles, when he’d been cool and unapproachable and impossible to read.

But no, that wasn’t quite right.

He wasn’t that man at all. He was different. Not just because of the jeans and the boots and that seriously sexy hammer. He was different. Seth the person had changed. She just wasn’t sure how.

Or why.

For a foolish moment, she thought he might extend a hand to her and lead her to these mysterious shelves, but instead he turned away and walked ahead of her, leaving her to follow him.

She swallowed her disappointment and trailed after him, finding a long hallway on the other side of the wall. It had wisely been kept from being too narrow; instead, the second half of the floor had been divided into a T-shaped hallway to allow in natural light, with a handful of doors leading into separate rooms.

Brooke curiously glanced into a couple of them as they walked by, but not much had been done. A card table had been set up in one with a laptop, as though it was serving as a temporary office.

Another held building supplies, another was empty, and one was a bathroom.

Finally, they made it to the last door, and Seth turned back, gesturing for her to enter first.

She gave him a wary look before she stepped into the room.

“Oh,” she breathed.

It was a bedroom.

A gorgeous, enormous master bedroom.

At the center was a king platform bed with dark gray bedding and puffy white pillows. There were two chaise lounges along the windows with a view of the city. She pivoted, taking in the newly constructed walk-in closet that was bigger than her current bedroom twice over. Through an open door she could make out a marble bathroom with a walk-in shower and separate tub.

Wordlessly she turned toward Seth, waiting for an explanation.

He gestured with his chin toward a pile of wood in the far corner that she’d missed. “Most everything here was delivered and built for me, but I wanted to do something myself. I thought, ‘How hard can a bookshelf be?’ Hard, it turns out. Although I’m inclined to blame the directions.”

“Seth,” she said, halting his uncharacteristic babbling. “What’s going on?”

“I bought it,” he said, as though those three little words were a normal thing to say about property in downtown Manhattan.

“The building?” she asked.

He shrugged.