My heart rate settles a little at her touch, but then I look up, meet her green eyes, and it races again.
Thudding loudly.
I have my answer. I’m irrationally annoyed because I’d been looking forward to spending this time alone with the designer.
My mom just cock-blocked me.
18
AN UNBEATABLE PLAN
SKYLAR
I hold my breath as Ford’s mother settles her sixty-three-year-old ass—her words—into the secondhand-but-looks-like-new chair.
She shifts around a little. Pats the arms. Leans her head back against the pillow. Takes an assessing breath.
Meanwhile, I am holding mine, praying Maggie Devon likes the chair. Sure, I’ll roll with it if she doesn’t, but I really want her to like it. If she doesn’t like this chair, I’m not sure her rear, back, elbow, or any other part of her will like the other pieces I’ve sourced.
After a long, silent moment—or fifty million of them, who knows—she pushes up and issues a command: “Show me around. I’ve got a five p.m. flight to catch.”
I blink. Okay, she keeps surprising me. “You’re not staying overnight?”
She chuckles and shakes her head. “I have a gala here in San Francisco to prepare for in a few more weeks.” That must be the one Ford mentioned—the last one she’s throwing before retiring. “And I have a brunch meeting with the board tomorrow morning back in Seattle.”
She doesn’t saychop-chop, but I hear it in her tone. She hasn’t issued a verdict on the chair. But now’s not the time to ask. Now’s the time to show her I read her right last week when I gave her the video tour at Twice Loved.
So, with Ford following quietly along, I usher his mom through the home. I show her the couch, the kitchen table, some nightstands for the bedroom, a fantastic vintage roll-top desk for the study, and a peach-orange sofa for that room too. We get to the chairs for the deck, which are made out of—yep—bamboo.
“Bamboo is the new black,” I say, bright and upbeat. Then a fresh worry hits. What if she listens to my podcast? I did ask to feature her home on it. Worse, what if she knows her son isSexy Reno Guy? Ugh. I should keep my ogling to myself, even though it’s not the worst thing to say about someone’s adult son.
For now, I keep my chin up and show her what I want to do with the lighting, flicking through the options on my tablet.
She whips a pair of reading glasses from her purse and sets them on the bridge of her nose to peer at my tablet. Meanwhile, I sweat.
Sometimes she feels like my best friend. Sometimes she’s like the next Judge Judy, ready to sustain all the objections to my design choices.
When she takes off her glasses, she sweeps out an arm toward the kitchen. “The kitchen is a make-or-break,” she says, mincing zero words.
“It is,” I say. It’s the one room I’ve had little to do with. “But I’ve been eager to hear what you’d like to do there, if anything.”
I’ve kept the kitchen a blank slate. It’s clean and minimalist already, which can offer a lovely simplicity. But thesecond she steps into it, she shudders at the sight of the white cabinets. “I despise them,” she says, shielding her eyes as if they’re giving off rays.
I start to worry that she despises everything and is just waiting to tell me so, one item at a time. “In that case,” I say, keeping my tone light, “I have paint options in muted earth tones.”
“No. I hateeverythingabout them.”
Okay, that’s fair. But she also wanted eco-friendly design, so ripping them out isn’t ideal. Somehow, I need to deal with her hatred of these cabinets without throwing them into a landfill.
And I need to do it in about two seconds or I will lose this gig.
The day Ford showed me around the house, he said his mother hated the painter. That she wants everything done yesterday. That she’s a woman who’s not afraid to pull the plug on a project. I need to impress her.
Think fast.
Ford, who’s been silent, clears his throat and says, “Tell us what your dream cabinets look like.”
She turns to her son, beaming. “Excellent question.”
