Love on Lexington Avenue(22)

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Well, don’t,” she mused, looking back at the wine. “I’m not entirely sure I like you.”

He smiled, enjoying her bluntness, especially because he expected it wasn’t typical of her. Claire Hayes struck him as the type of woman who had an endless supply of polite banalities at the tip of her tongue for every situation, and yet she didn’t bother using them with him.

A fact that strangely pleased him.

She continued to study the wine, a frown on her face.

“Everything all right?”

Claire met his eyes. “You’re undercharging me.”

Yes. “How do you figure?”

She held up the wine bottle. “This isn’t just expensive, it’s very expensive. Which makes me think you weren’t joking just now when you claimed to be loaded. And yet, based on the contract I signed yesterday, you underbid every single other contractor I talked to by a lot, and none of them have your expertise.”

“Was there a compliment in there somehow, or . . .”

She set the bottle on the counter, refusing to be deterred. “I don’t want you doing me favors.”

“Noted.”

Claire merely looked at him, her hazel gaze steady and patient. Waiting for an explanation.

Scott was no stranger to stubborn staring contests, though usually they were for the opposite reason—a client hoping to wear him down to a lower price.

Scott always won those staring contests, but not this one.

He sighed and relented. “Fine. I undercharged you.”

“Because I’m a poor little widow?”

“I’m not that nice,” he said bluntly. “But then, you seem to have figured that out already.”

Her lips twitched in a half smile. “Then why?”

Knowing she wanted the honest answer, Scott gave it to her. “Most of my clients are enormous corporations with nearly limitless budgets. If I charged you what I normally charge, you couldn’t afford it.”

“No, probably not,” she agreed. “So why not just politely decline my little house renovation and move on?”

“I intended to.”

She blinked, and he felt a surge of satisfaction that he’d been able to catch this unshakable woman off guard, even in a small way.

“What changed your mind?”

He crossed his arms and shifted his feet, feeling slightly uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. He didn’t know how to explain to people that his work was as much feeling as it was numbers and supplies and good, old-fashioned elbow grease.

“The front door knocker,” he evaded. “It was just so god-awful, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing one of those was still in existence.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Mr. Turner,” she said with a slight smile, turning back to the stove.

He didn’t deny it. He was a terrible liar—he didn’t have much use for lying, and thus didn’t have much practice. Still, he didn’t know whether he was surprised or disappointed that she was apparently going to let him off the hook. That she wasn’t going to press him to explain that he’d simply stepped into the home and felt it—the sense that he needed to put his mark on this place.

Or the fact that as much as he loved to travel, he’d jumped at the excuse to sleep in his own bed, in his own city. To eat something other than microwave dinners and room service. To see his freaking dog.

So, no. He didn’t need Claire’s money.

What he needed was a chance to catch his breath. To remember what it felt like to enjoy life instead of just going through the motions. He wasn’t exactly sure how or why an unremarkable brownstone off of Lexington Avenue was the answer, but somehow . . . it was.

Scott told Claire none of this.

Instead, he pointed at an ugly pink tile on her counter. “No. Hell no.”

She turned around, her gaze following the direction of his finger, and gave a slow, satisfied smile. “Oh, this?” She picked up the tile and held it up for inspection. “I picked this out just for you. I was thinking it could be the floor and the walls of the powder room.”

“Good God. You can’t—”

She laughed, delighted by his expression, before tossing the tile sample aside. “That was exactly what I was hoping for when I picked it up today.”

He sagged a little in relief. He knew this wasn’t his home, but he didn’t know if he could bring himself to place the ugly 1950s-style tile in anyone’s home. “So we’re not going with that?”

“No.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a white marble sample. “I haven’t figured out the walls yet, but I’m crushing pretty hard on this for the floors. I just have to figure out if I can afford it. You may be giving me a discount for mysterious reasons, but suppliers are not cheap.”

He was already reaching for the tile, relieved that the woman wasn’t entirely without taste.

“Is it too white?” she asked, sounding unexpectedly vulnerable.

“Too white?”

“I told myself I didn’t want to go blah, and I figure white is as blah as it gets. And yet, I keep coming back to that one.”

“What were the other options, pink sequins? Magenta-stained wood?”