He frowns in the least flirty way possible. “No, I just don’t like to be kept waiting. My schedule stays busy.” His jaw is tight, and he won’t quite meet my eyes.
Something has definitely changed since last night.
“Then I won’t keep you. Come on in.” I stand back, holding the door open.
Hunter cocks his head but doesn’t enter. “Upstairs? I thought we were talking about the store today.”
“Yeah, I guess I was hoping to cut open the door in the apartment first so I wouldn’t have to go around the building constantly. Like you said, the alley doesn’t always feel safe.”
He nods and enters, nearly stepping on my grandmother as he makes a beeline to the smooth walls of the kitchen corner. He raps his knuckles along the wall,thunk-thunk-THUNK.The lastthunksounds obviously hollow.
“Empty space,” he says. “That’s the door. I can cut it now, butit’ll be rough and ugly. I can get supplies to finish it out tomorrow.”
“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to be able to move between the two spaces without passing by the Raccoon Disco Dumpster.”
Hunter considers me. “You and Maggie are very different women.”
I stare at the cockatoo watching nervously from her perch on the back of a kitchen chair. “Yeah, it’s looking that way. But I never met her, so I wouldn’t know.”
I want him to see that whatever grudge his family holds against Maggie—
It’s got nothing to do with me.
Especially if that’s why he’s suddenly being so frosty.
Hunter hurries out to his truck and returns with an electric saw that looks like something used to carve particularly thick-skinned Thanksgiving turkeys. After a few minutes of knocking and buzzing, there’s a hole in the wall and a rough rectangle of drywall on the floor.
“Pretty sure the actual door is in the storage room,” Hunter says, inspecting his work. “I can get that set up soon, too. The downstairs door locks from inside the stairwell, so if you’re worried about safety tonight, you’re covered.”
The newly reopened doorway yawns dark and cavernous in the cheery kitchen. There’s a light switch, so I flick it and find lots of dust on the stairs heading down into the store; I guess Maggie’s spell ends at the wall. Of course, I now know that when I reach the landing and the stairs change direction, I will find a pile of old blankets and pillows at the bottom, but cleaning that up won’t take long.
“Any work you need done up here?” Hunter asks, looking around. “I see you took down the blinds.”
“One good yank is all it took, but I can handle window treatments. Everything else is in order.”
Hunter heads for the newly cut door. Maggie bustles after him, but I snatch her up and swiftly slip her into the cage.
“Don’t you dare—”
“Good girl,” I tell her soothingly. “Wouldn’t want you to get hurt while we’re working.”
I’m sure I’ll pay for this later, if being yelled at by a telepathic parrot can be considered payment, but I want to talk to Hunter without a Regency-era chaperone squawking insults and anxieties in the background. As long as she’s a bird, this is the equivalent of keeping a toddler in a playpen so they won’t accidentally blow up the house.
Hunter leads the way downstairs, and even though it’s a perfectly normal, if narrow, stairwell with enough light to see, it still feels like we’re descending into some sort of mummy tomb. He turns on the landing first, and as I follow, I hear him moving the blankets aside to make room for me. Once the door to the store is open, the stairwell seems a much friendlier place.
I don’t feel at home down here yet the way I do in the apartment, but I know where the lights are now, so I turn everything on. Those long fluorescent tubes will have to go, and soon. Their buzzing gnaws at my brain like a mosquito. The space feels emptier without Abraham, but the scent of boiled peanuts lingers.
Hunter leans against the counter, which is just a wooden box with some shelves on the back. His general uniform seems to be some sort of plaid shirt over a white undershirt, well-fitting jeans, and work boots. His hair is dry today with waves, shiny enough to suggest he takes nice care of it.
“So do you know what you want?” he asks. “I have some ideas, but it’s your space and your money.”
I take a deep breath and look around. I feel like a little kid making a Christmas list, about to ask for a pony.
“For one thing, better lighting. Probably a funky chandelier or two in front, some basic cans farther back. Whatever will look classy but be cost-efficient and easy to change out.”
“There are actually a couple of old chandeliers in the antiques market,” he points out. “Lots of inventory just sitting around that you might like, if you’re into funky—and it all belonged to Maggie, once the store owner went to jail and stopped paying rent.” He looks down and chuckles. “But—full disclosure—I’m pretty sure the dumpster raccoons have a nest in there, so we might need riot gear.”
“Okay, so it comes with free pets. If you have time and a rabies vaccination, maybe we can check that out later?”
