Page 92 of Secrets on Ice

“What are friends for?” He smirks.

“Thank you,” I say as I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss his face.

23

EMBER

The next few days blur together in a strange mix of normal and electric. Sully goes to the gym with Emmett most mornings, leaving Cassidy and me alone in the apartment. We sit at the dining table with our laptops, coffee, and notebooks, finally starting to map out Sullivan Black Designs. It feels good, exciting even. We talk about branding, how to get potential clients in a new city, and how we can separate ourselves from the old business without too much mess. Cassidy is full of ideas, sketching logos while I’m the practical one, making lists, budgets, and timelines. It feels like us again.

"I still can't believe we're actually doing this," Cassidy says, looking up from her laptop.

"What? Starting over?"

She nods. "No husbands. Just us."

I smile. "It was always supposed to be us."

She points her pencil at me. "Exactly."

For a while, the only sounds are keyboards clicking and the occasionally muttered swear word when one of us can't think of the right wording for the website.

Then Cassidy suddenly gasps.

"What?"

She spins her laptop around. "What if we don't stop at interior design?"

I frown. "What do you mean?"

She starts talking faster, the way she always does when inspiration hits. "Every big interior designer eventually launches a product line."

I nod slowly.

"Furniture, homewares, lighting, rugs, cushions.”

My eyebrows lift.

“Like we have always talked about, but this time we don’t have husbands that shit on our idea, thinking it would never work.” She rolls her eyes. “Remember they would always say ‘stick to decorating houses’.”

Yeah, I remember, assholes.

“Well, screw them. We are going to prove them wrong. Imagine walking into someone's home, and every decoration worked because it was a Sullivan Black Design.”

My heart starts racing. "We’ve always wanted to do that."

"I know." She leans back in her chair, a smile spreading across her face. "Maybe they did us a favor by cheating on us."

I frown. "How?"

"Because we don’t have to listen to them shut down every great idea we have. We have no one controlling our destiny anymore.”

She isn't wrong. “You’re really in your girl power era,” I tease.

“Hell, yeah, we are. Great sex will do that.” Her eyes widen as if she wasn’t supposed to say that last bit.

“Who are you having great sex with?” I ask.

“Anyway, back to Sullivan Black Designs,” she says, changing the subject.