“It’s exactly like that.” He scrubbed a hand over his face.
I tapped my lips, tamping down my irritation. I didn’t want him to see how much he’d riled me. “Tim, if you signed up for one of our dating weekends to find the lucky woman of your dreams, wouldn’t you want to be free to wander from group to group, so you’re not stuck next to someone who’s a no-go for anentirenight? How dreadful would that be, to waste your time?”
He fumed, hands slapped onto his hips, mouth tight. “I’m not staying with your parents on one of these dating weekends. I don’t need—” He screwed up his face, as though realizing what he’d just said. “I mean, if I signed up, which of course I’d like to do, I’d never behave like that. You’re deliberately making me out to be a calculating bastard.”
“Your words,” I said mildly, without any emotion, which was intended to rankle him.
He breathed deeply. Then a smile crept on to his face. “Let’s move on,” he said. “So, the drawing room will be part of the kitchen, but then you’re using that area for things like dance lessons—hip-hop, cotillions, line dancing. Why not just leave it as the drawing room, then?”
“Because people want to dancein the kitchen.No one wants to be led into a separate room to do activities.”
“Do people and their pets want to learn to dance on these weekends?”
“Don’t you love dancing, Tim?”
He opened his mouth, no doubt to retaliate.
“We’re doing it, Tim. End of story. Get your mallet out, or whatever you use to bash down walls, and put those ridiculous pecs to some use.”
He crossed his arms, visibly pumping out his muscles. His gaze flicked down.
Yeah, made you look, you vain creature.
“I haven’t quite finished yet,” he said. “And even though I’ve never seen your parents cook the whole three months I’ve been here, except maybe heat up baked beans, we’re going to have this—” he took a breath “—fuck-off enormous blue stove.”
He was right about one thing. Mum and Daddidn’tcook. If I weren’t at home and making their meals, at best, they’d assemble basic old-style nursery food—baked beans or poached eggs, followed by tinned custard on tinned fruit.
“A duck-egg-blue AGA stove,” I pointed out. “It’s like an altar, a focal point, a fire to gather around.”
He threw up his hands. “Duck-eggblue. I stand corrected. Please forgive me. The adorable color makes a mockery of my whole argument.” Tim rolled his head back and sighed like he was calming himself.
He was tiring, I could see it. He’d gotten up so early, and that had been for me. I felt guilty about that.Washe clearing the front entry for me? He took a breath and visibly gathered energy. “And you know these new kitchen cabinets don’t match.”
“Precisely.” I folded my arms. Now we were facing each other, both of our arms crossed.
“And you want me to move the—” he consulted his notes again “—baroque Italian chandelierfrom a hallway to the kitchen. What about the fumes, the smoke, the grease—and that thing is enormous.”
“It won’t be in the cooking area. It’s the most beautiful piece in the house, and it needs to be seen and enjoyed all day, every day.”
He shook his head, dumbfounded. “And speaking of cabinetry, you have no upper cabinetry in the kitchen.”
“I hate upper cabinetry. It makes the kitchen feel claustrophobic. The kitchen needs to feel like a room, not a kitchen.”
“Won’t it feel empty?”
“I’m going to put all Mum and Dad’s best paintings on the wall. Probably the nudes. But again, not in the cooking area.”
He hit his forehead with his plans. “But if you take away the upper cabinetry, where are your parents going to put all their cooking stuff?”
My parents were hoarders. They had toasters from the seventies. “That’s the point. There’s toomuchstuff. No one needs that much stuff, and this is a way to limit it. And there will still be enough space to store equipment for whoever cooks for the guests.” Obviously not Mum or Dad.
“You do know what kitchens are for, right? To cook, to clean, to store.” His voice was getting louder.
“Kitchens are forpeople. Forpeopleto live.” My voice was reaching fever pitch.
We both glanced up at the aforementioned kitchen.
Goatee had climbed onto the counter, where he was bleating at four outraged cats. The two-legged dog was barking at them all.
