How to Love Your Neighbour(33)

Everly grinned at him but Grace laughed, her surprise obvious. “Taken some design courses, have you?”

Chris’s cheeks went a soft pink. “I just like what I like.”

Noah laughed, nudged his brother’s shoulder. “I like this one, too. The other one feels too stark. Even with the darker colors.”

Grace smiled. She liked this. No, she loved this. She loved making people’s ideas come to life, and she’d pictured Noah choosing this one. Design, probably like in his business, involved reading people.

“You want high quality with function and a homey feel,” Grace said.

“I want that in every room of my house,” Everly said.

“There’re only three rooms total in your house, babe,” Chris said.

Everly nodded. “True. But one day . . .”

The way she let the words trail off, the way the couple looked at each other, as if they could feel the unsaid words between them, made the longing twist inside of Grace like a sharp stitch.

“Okay,” she said a little too brightly. “Last one, all function, low budget.”

Chris’s smile grew. “Grace, you’re skilled.”

She gave an awkward laugh. “You can’t know that based on a few sketches.”

Noah stood straight. “Judging people’s skills with little background information is one of my brother’s specialties.”

“It is. Just like Noah’s is knowing when to press and when to idle.”

She shared her smile with both of them. “What does that even mean?”

“For me, I’ve been in lots of positions where I’ve had to take someone’s measure, if you will, with not a lot to go on. You get good at it. For Noah, he’s able to gauge a client’s interest like a pressure point. He eases up at just the right time to make them want more. Makes them think what he wants is their idea.”

A little buzz hummed in her ears as she thought about those words.

Everly added to the conversation, but Grace didn’t hear what she said because she was too busy thinking about how odd it was that as soon as Noah stopped asking to buy her house, she’d seriously considered selling it to him.

“You were making a power move, not being kind,” she said, more to herself than to any of them.

“What’s that?” Chris asked.

All gazes landed on her.

“You okay, Grace?” Noah asked.

“You won the bet.” She pointed to the sketches. “You didn’t have to let me win, too.”

Noah’s smile was phony. It was too wide. Too happy. It didn’t touch his intense brown eyes. When it did, she felt like she could fall into his gaze. “You didn’t win. I did.”

“But you said you’d stop asking,” Grace said, her stomach tightening.

The silence said everything. He didn’t do it because he felt the connection growing between them or because there were more check marks in his “I like her” column than his “She drives me nuts” column. He’d made her think it was her idea, therefore almost getting exactly what he wanted.

“It’s manipulative,” she whispered. For some reason, she thought of Tammy and how she never wanted Grace around when she was. But the second she was gone . . . different story.

“Maybe we should go for a walk on the beach, Ev,” Chris said. The two of them stood, but Grace was already backing away.

“Grace, I wasn’t manipulating you.”

Even his tone was phony, or maybe she’d just gotten through his shell enough in the last couple of weeks that she could tell he wasn’t being truthful.

“You were playing me. It’s all a game to you.” She spread her arms out, looked around the kitchen he could make state-of-the-art without one care for cost. “It’s all a game to you. I read about you. Your family. You guys are business giants. You say you want to settle in this house but it’s just walls and wood to you. You have no idea what it means to have something mean something to you.”

Everly and Chris started for the door.

“No. Please. Don’t go. I need to go.” She stared at Noah. “Don’t ask about my house again. I won’t sell it. Because I don’t want to. Because it matters to me. I get that you don’t understand that but you will respect it. No more games either. You won the design from me but no more fence fixing or trading off. Stay away from me.”

She wasn’t even sure she meant that last part and maybe she was being irrational but her emotions were tangled like shoelaces and if she didn’t get out of there now she was going to trip on them.

She’d fallen flat on her face in front of this man enough for one lifetime.





15


Noah’s breath caught in his lungs painfully as he watched her go. He didn’t go after her. He had no right. She was right. He’d manipulated her. His brother had called him on it in the bakery. Because he’d seen her house as a target he wanted to hit. He’d been chasing after deals he could close, thinking it would make him feel something. He walked into the open area of his living room.

But what actually made him feel was the woman who just walked out the door. How was that for some fucking irony. Whether he was fighting or flirting with her, she made him feel alive. The way an amazing deal used to make him feel. He’d hurt her. Even at his worst, when he was just another corporate lackey for his dad, he’d never intentionally hurt anyone. Business was business. Grace was . . . pure and sweet and real. And he’d hurt her by being himself.