Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,127

summoned his best cranky boss tone, the one Kent was always telling him was scaring the interns, and said, “Tell me what you were going to say.”

She sucked in a breath. Apparently that tone worked on prospective interior designers, too, because she answered him. “I was going to say that you don’t seem like a beige sort of man to me.” She bit her lip. He watched her top teeth scrape against a perfect plump of pink-but-darker-than-millennial-pink lower lip. “You don’t seem like a beige sort of man to me at all.”

Well, shit.

Too young, too young, too young, his mind chanted, even as his renegade mouth opened and said, “You’re hired. And I want you to do my office, too.”

Chapter 2

Elise walked out of Cohen & Smith with grace and restraint. She was the picture of professionalism as she stepped onto the elevator, nodding at its other occupant. As she crossed the marble-floored lobby, her heels clacked, and she made sure to keep the spaces between the clacks even and long, like she was a bridesmaid walking down an aisle.

She even managed to walk like a normal person—a normal person in a little bit of a hurry, maybe—once she got outside to the sidewalk. But the farther away from Jay’s building she got, the more she sped up. By the time she burst through the doors of a coffee shop around the corner, she had abandoned all pretense and was literally skipping.

“You got it!” Her friend Wendy looked up from her computer. Wendy worked downtown and had insisted on lying in wait near the interview for moral support purposes.

“I got it!” Elise couldn’t resist a little twirl as she sank into the chair opposite Wendy. She pulled out her phone. “Hang on, I just have to text Gia.”

“No, you don’t.” Grinning, Wendy turned the computer around to reveal a group FaceTime session populated by Elise’s bestie among besties, Gia, a model who jet-setted around the world and was currently in Berlin, and Jane, the fourth member of their tightly knit crew, who was at home on the west side of town.

“Ahhh! Hi!” Elise’s squeals were echoed by the girls on the screen. “And!” She laughingly infused some drama into her voice. “Not only did I get the lobby job, he asked me to do his office, too!”

“Did you get a deposit?” Jane asked. Elise’s friends knew all about her financial troubles.

“Because if not,” Gia said, “you know I will gladly wire you some—”

“I’ve told you guys, I can’t take your money! That wouldn’t be any different from taking Daddy’s money.”

Wendy held up a palm. “Okay, that’s objectively not true. It would be completely different.”

“The whole point of starting my own business is that it’s mine. It’s not propped up by family money—not that there’s any of that being offered.”

Not remotely. Her father had been happy to give her an unlimited allowance as long as she spent it on frivolous things. He’d even been tolerant when, after graduation, she’d started working part-time helping an interior designer who did a lot of homes in their neighborhood. But that was because he’d considered it a hobby, one she would drop when she got married.

Once Elise decided she’d had enough of Persian rugs and monogrammed towels in Rosedale and announced her plan to start her own business, the shit hit the fan. It hadn’t helped that she’d recently turned thirty and had failed to settle down with any of the entirely suitable boyfriends she’d had.

“Right,” Gia said. “But unlike your father, we believe in you. It would be a loan. You can pay it back when your business takes off.”

Elise grinned even as she got a little choked up. She loved her girls so much. Without them she never would have had the guts to break out on her own. Her whole life, she’d had things handed to her: an expensive education, designer clothes, an address in a tony neighborhood. Watching her awesome friends work for what they had—work hard—had been an inspiration. Their unwavering support meant everything.

“Anyway, I don’t need it! I’m stopping by tomorrow to sign a contract and pick up the deposit.”

“So he went for your whole Toronto-themed thing?” Gia asked.

“He did! I even kind of insulted his current decor, but he didn’t seem to mind.”

“Who’s he?” Wendy asked.

Elise and Gia talked or texted almost every night, so Gia knew some of the nitty-gritty details about the job that Wendy and Jane didn’t. “One of the partners. This guy called Jay