For the second time in an hour, Sadie Howard blushed.
Sadie never blushed.
Roman seemed to bring that out in her. Frequently.
“That didn’t sound at all like what I meant.” Roman toed at the carpet. “The bacon part, but I definitely meant the part about spending some time together without the baby.”
She couldn’t. They’d had their chance. It had failed. Doing a repeat would only make everything hurt worse when it failed again.
“Where’s your office?” she asked, avoiding his request.
He gave a resigned sigh. “Other end of the building. Same floor.”
She could live with that.
“I want to make this office happen.” She pressed her hands against her waist and did a slow spin, taking it all in. Yes, this would work just fine.
He jerked his head toward the doorway. “Let’s go talk to Babushka.”
Chapter Twelve
Roman needed a new assistant. Preferably, someone unrelated to him.
He set Louise on the table near the door, dropping his gear to the side.
He’d thought shooting weddings would be a cakewalk compared to the battlefields he was used to. Turned out, when the world rubbed them wrong, brides could pull out their own forms of heavy artillery.
He’d take a grenade over a bridal explosion any day of the week. At least grenades were somewhat predictable—you pulled the pin, they went off. Brides…not so much. Sometimes a guy was just minding his own business, setting his f-stops, and a bride would go off about her desire for him to Photoshop new hair onto her maid of honor.
The maid of honor in question had received an unauthorized haircut the week of the wedding.
This was apparently a very large bridal no-no.
“You’re moping.” Babushka, his self-appointed personal assistant—the one he needed to replace—fussed with the tripod he’d just set beside the desk in his studio space down the hall from Sadie’s office.
When Babushka had announced she was going to help him out, he’d been all in. See, she’d done this with his brother and his now-wife Heather when she was working to coax those two together. It had worked. They’d gotten married and were now living the blissfully happy life of newlyweds who shagged all the time.
Roman wanted that. The blissful and the shagging.
He’d expected a little Babushka treatment would help along a relationship status with Sadie.
He’d been patiently waiting over the past week for Babushka to do her magic. So far, all she’d done was let the air out of his tires and steal his cell phone.
Babushka acted like she didn’t even care that he was single, which he knew was total bull. She was playing him with reverse psychology. He’d bet money on it.
The whole thing really started to grate on him. He’d left all sorts of openings for her to butt in.
“You know what?” Roman asked
“Vhat?” she replied, still innocently fighting the already-ready-to-be-put-away tripod like she didn’t know she was failing her grandson.
“I’m so disappointed in you.” He was. He really was.
She raised her weathered eyebrows. “Vhat did I do?”
Ah, she was all sincere elderly lady. He calledbulllllllshit.
“What’s your problem with Sadie?” he asked.
