CHAPTER16
LARISA
After a long and busy day, my favorite thing in the world to do was take a hot bath, put on my pajamas, and climb into bed early. Since pretty much every day was a long and busy one for me, that was what I did almost every night.
With a cup of coffee on my nightstand and an interior design show on the TV mounted against my wall, I lounged in bed and answered whatever emails I hadn’t gotten to yet before calling it a day. The new design show I was watching was a British one, and I loved their architecture and getting inspiration from across the proverbial pond.
Not really paying much attention to my inbox, I smiled at the designers battling it out on the show. Maybe I should enter a competition like that.
I dismissed the thought as soon as I had it, chuckling and reaching for my coffee to take a sip. A soft chime rang out from my computer. Glancing at the screen while still keeping an eye on the TV, I saw an email from a prospective new client had just come in.
Below the opening lines, there were a few words with the description of the property that snagged my attention away from the show. The main ones that caught my eye were brick Tudor revival house—or mansion. With the square footage the client listed, I was pretty sure it qualified as a mansion instead of just a house.
As I scanned through the rest of the email, I nearly spit out my coffee when I realized who the prospective new client was. Tanner Harris.
His name was right there, and when my gaze snapped up to the icon in the corner, there was a tiny picture of him. It wasn’t just a Tanner Harris, which would’ve been super coincidental but not impossible, it was the Tanner Harris. The guy I’d spent the last month and a bit trying to forget about.
According to the information I’d just seen above, he wanted me to completely redo the interior of the place. There were some pictures included with the email, and as I clicked on the little paperclip to open them up, I fell in love with the house right away.
It was gorgeous. Quite old and definitely dated in terms of design, but the bare bones of it were incredible. I’d always adored older houses, and this one was no exception. While I was a bit surprised that he’d have gone for a place like this, I had to admit that I respected him for it. Not only because a lot of people didn’t have the stomach for renovation, but because he’d said he wanted to retain the character of it but that otherwise I would have a lot of creative freedom.
Those three things were buying him a lot of points with me. Having the guts to take on a project like this, respecting the original character, and trusting the designer with the freedom to do what needed to be done. It hit the trifecta for someone like me.
If he had been anybody else, I wouldn’t have hesitated to take the job. A rich client, a beautiful house, and the freedom to do what I wanted with it? It was a dream come true. The fact that it was Tanner was what made it weird.
I never even mentioned my job to him.How the hell had he found me? Is he stalking me?
I laughed out loud, choking on the coffee I still hadn’t swallowed. I ended up sputtering and banging myself on the chest. No, he’s definitely not stalking me. Why would he be?
Tanner was ridiculously wealthy, unbelievably good looking, and he could have any woman he wanted. It would be fooling myself to think that he’d even thought about me since our weekend together. He’d probably had a dozen girls since then, and he hadn’t even had me, so I had to stop being silly.
If that’s true, though, and he hasn’t thought about me, how did he find my business and why did he offer me the interior design job?The project really was the stuff dreams were made of and he could certainly afford to get anybody he wanted. A big-name designer with a stellar reputation and a network of contacts to recommend them.
At best, I was a little name with an okay reputation and a circle of people who regularly recommended me. Sure, I did more than okay for myself, but I was hardly one of the big boys. Tanner could afford anyone, which made it a touch suspicious that he’d approached me.
Whatever the reason, though, I didn’t know if I could turn him down. The money would be good and the promise of freedom to bring out the best in a gorgeous house was too much for me to resist.
Besides, while things had been awkward between us that Sunday, the rest of the weekend had been good. I had no reason to go out of my way to avoid him. Besides, an unlimited budget and a brick Tudor revival would’ve tempted me even if he had been my worst enemy.
Fuck it, I’m doing it.A herd of wild horses wouldn’t have been able to keep me from accepting this project, not with everything it had going for it. If things were a little awkward when I had to meet with Tanner, I’d simply suck it up and spend some of his money on his house to make myself feel better.
It’s a win-win.I sent him my standard response, thanking him for considering my company and saying that we’d love to work with him on the project—and by we, I meant me, but it always sounded better to make it seem like there was more than one person working in the business.
Already getting excited about it, I flipped through the pictures three more times before I finally closed my laptop. If I didn’t get it out of my room, I wasn’t going to be able to stop looking at those pictures and imagining what I was going to do in each room.
It had been less than an hour since I’d gotten his email, but in my mind’s eye, things were already starting to take shape. Once I got back from plugging my computer into the charger in the kitchen, I climbed back into bed and turned off the light on my nightstand.
The TV was still on, but I’d missed so much of the episode that I was going to have to start it again tomorrow night. Even so, I left the show running as I lay down, fluffing my pillow behind my head to be able to see the screen comfortably.
The designers in the competition were racing through some market, picking out vintage items for the next leg of the contest. It looked like fun, even though they only had a budget of a couple hundred pounds to decorate an entire cottage.
It made for an interesting challenge, but I was having trouble staying focused on someone else’s challenge when I had an exciting one of my own to think about. The more I thought about the house, though, the more I thought about its new owner.
Tanner still popped up in my head from time to time, but it happened less often now than it had in the first few weeks since we’d been back. Whenever I thought about him, I inevitably started thinking about that kiss, and that wasn’t good for me.
It had been too good and too hot for me to think about it too often, since I still got wildly turned on every time I did. Even now, while I absently watched the contestants choose timeless pieces for their houses, I could feel myself getting wet as I remembered what it had felt like to be on his lap.
He’d been so damn hard underneath me, and all I’d wanted in that moment had been for the layers of material between us to miraculously disappear. I’d wanted to be able to position myself above that hot, hard length and slowly sink down until neither of us could take it anymore.