Rusty Nailed (Cocktail, #2)(63)

I don’t have time for naked.

Because the next blow to fall was that our building was indeed going condo. After Jillian forwarded an e-mail from her landlord, I learned they’d be going on the market in thirty days. Thirty days—is that even legal? During which the building owner would be coming in to make repairs and updates to all the units.

Simon took it all in stride, saying that it was a sign reaffirming that we were supposed to move to Sausalito. Sign or no sign, I was now faced with a new home that we were going to renovate top to bottom, and we’d lost the apartments we were going to live in while it happened. And with Jillian due home, I was losing my house-sitting gig.

So now on top of everything else, we had to pack up both our apartments in the city and move everything into a storage container until we were ready to move into the new house. Seriously. I hired help, of course, but I still needed to sort through things, purge things, and pack a few things on my own. There are certain things in a woman’s apartment that she wants to pack herself. You know what I’m saying.

Nobody was getting their hands on my KitchenAid.

So, to recap. My already hectic work life was ramping up instead of slowing down. My boss was returning in a few days, and there were box fans all over the third floor of her office space in a historic Russian Hill mansion. And I was stealing a few hours I really didn’t have to pack up my glorious apartment, to move into a nonglorious home going through a gut rehab.

I was going to be living on-site during a gut rehab.

Laugh all you want, design gods. I could handle it.

Right?

Brain laughed. Backbone curled up like it had scoliosis. Heart was still drawing her own image all over the imaginary mirror in her new master bath.

And Simon? Simon was . . . a pickle. A pickle who was packing up his apartment next door as we speak, and making a helluva lot of noise while doing it. I was in my bedroom, purging my sock drawer, when I heard a very distinct thumping coming through the wall. A banging, if you will. I smiled, remembering the first few times I heard that banging.

Clive jumped up on the bed, looking curiously at the wall.

Pretty sure that sometimes he still listened to see if Purina was going to come meowing through that wall again. Fat chance.

I crossed to the shared wall, placing my hand on the spot I imagined was right above his bed, and sure enough, I felt another thumpity thump. What the hell was he doing over there?

I grabbed my phone and sent him a text:

What the hell are you doing over there?

Taking apart my headboard.

Ah! No wonder. I was having flashbacks.

His response was to bang on his wall again. I banged back.

Bang ba ba bang bang.

Bang bang.

I giggled, then listened. Would he . . . ? Sure enough, a moment later, Glen Miller came through the walls. Smooth.

I went back to packing, and he went back to taking apart his headboard. Clive attacked a roll of bubble wrap and made it his bitch. A few hours later, we met back in my apartment and looked around at the tiny dent I’d made in getting things ready to be moved.

“When is the storage container coming again?”

“Two days.” I looked in my calendar to verify the date. “So you need to make sure anything you don’t want in the container is already moved out before the crew gets here. They’re taking care of everything else.” It was still weird to think about the new house. I almost couldn’t, with everything going on. One step at a time.

“We still staying here tonight?” he asked, peering over my shoulder at the calendar.

“I’d like to, if that’s still cool with you. One more night, where it all began? Besides, I went to the trouble of bringing my *,” I joked.

As if on cue, Clive ran through the kitchen and back out again like the hounds of hell were on his tail, towing a large piece of bubble wrap that streamed out behind him like a crinkly-sounding cape.

“You know I can’t resist that,” he murmured in my ear, arms sneaking around my waist. “By the way, you can erase that trip.”

“What trip?” I asked, my voice all gooey. His arms did that to me.

“The one to Belize. I canceled it,” he said, pointing to a date I had circled on my calendar.

“You canceled Belize?” I asked. That was three trips in a row.

“Yep, I wanted to be here to help with the house.” He nuzzled my neck. “I’m pretty handy with a hammer, if you’ll recall.” He bumped his hips into mine.

I bumped them right back. A little harder than was necessary?

Maybe. A little.

“I’m gonna go make sure I got everything in my room,” I said, shrugging him off and heading back to my bedroom. I knew he didn’t like it much when I questioned his schedule. And if he noticed that my voice was no longer gooey, he didn’t say anything.

Pickle.

? ? ?

Every single one of my worlds collided on the same day. Friday dawned cold and clear. It was a good thing there was no fog, because the fog in my head by noon was enough for the entire Bay Area. Jillian and Benjamin were due in on a six o’clock plane. We wanted them to be able to enjoy their first night back without us hanging around, so when I left for work Friday morning I made sure everything was spick-and-span, with everything exactly how they’d left it.

Simon was closing on the new house at two thirty. He’d be signing the paperwork and picking up the keys, and I told him I’d meet him at our new address as soon as I could get away from work. Utilities were being turned on, we had a truckload of essential boxes being delivered, and Simon was in charge of buying and setting up our blow-up bed. Yep, a blow-up bed. Since we’d be living on the premises while our new home was renovated, we didn’t want any real furniture there. Didn’t want to have to keep moving it as we worked through the rooms, so we were living basic for a while.