Lily unpacked her clothes. She hung dresses, skirts and blouses in the closet and put everything else away into the bureau. Noah’s apartment was straight out of Bachelor Pad Monthly, lots of expensive modern furniture and not a single soft touch anywhere. Her bed was a platform style in dark wood with built-in floating bedside tables. The bedding was dark gray. She would’ve called it austere if it wasn’t such a high thread count. Lily had no idea how long she’d be living here, but if it ended up being more than a few weeks, she might need to go shopping for cute throw pillows or a scented candle. A few weeks? Her nerves would be rubbed raw by then. It was that difficult to be around Noah and pretend like everything was fine and that nothing had happened.
Still, he had not only agreed to the 3 percent, he’d suggested the increase. And there was an argument to be made that their predicament was exactly that—theirs. They were in the same boat, for better or worse, and perhaps Lily needed to stop being so hard on Noah.
She headed down the hall to his office. “I was thinking that I’d make dinner. If you’re up for that.”
Noah looked up and his green eyes worked their way into her soul. The part of her that had been mad at him was a distant memory now. “You don’t have to do that. I order in most nights.”
“May I?” She gestured for the brown leather chair opposite his desk. Noah’s office was by far the most comfortable room in the house. Beautiful antique desk, soft lighting and an array of cool art on the wall—black-and-white photographs and some old playbills from jazz shows at the Village Vanguard.
“Yes. Please.” He got up from his seat and walked over to a turntable in the corner and flipped the record. When he moved the stylus over to the spinning vinyl, some familiar jazz began to play.
“Oh, wow. I haven’t heard this since I was a kid. Art Tatum?”
Noah nodded. “The one and only.”
Lily looked behind her. There was an entire wall of records at the far side of the room. She got up to peruse the spines. “My grandfather used to play this all the time.”
“Are you calling me an old man?”
“No, but you are the man with a record player. I don’t think I know anyone else who has one.”
“Vinyl’s making a big resurgence. It sounds so much better than anything else, especially if you’re into music recorded in the ’50s and ’60s. That music was engineered for this medium. It’s not really meant to be listened to any other way.”
He might not be wrong about that. The record sounded amazing. “I also don’t know anyone who has this many records. You must’ve been collecting forever.”
“Not forever, but I did go through a big audiophile stage when I was a teenager. I took my dad’s record collection since he never listened to it and I built on that. I would take the train into the city on the weekends and spend hours in record stores.”
“Interesting. Were you just bored?”
“I don’t know. Aren’t all teenagers bored? I know that for me, Sawyer had moved out and Charlotte was off doing her own thing. Partying, mostly. I was a nerd. I was not out partying.”
Lily could hardly believe the words out of Noah’s mouth, but he had hinted at this the day they went out to lunch after he bought her the engagement ring. “I really have a hard time believing that.”
He held his hands up in surrender. “True story. I didn’t have my first girlfriend until I was a senior in high school. I went through a very unfortunate pudgy stage.”
“Okay. Now I really know you’re lying. You’re so trim.” Remarking on Noah’s physique was bringing back the memories of their tryst at the Hannafort wedding. Noah wasn’t just slim, he was all lean muscle. Yes, a bit lanky, but she had a big weakness for that.
He held up a finger. “Hold on one minute. Allow me to dig up some very embarrassing photographic evidence.” He crouched down and slid open a panel in a midcentury oak credenza. He rummaged around and eventually pulled out a photo album. He flipped through several pages, finally showing it to her. “There.”
Lily sat on the Persian rug, hardly believing what she was seeing. Sure enough, there was Noah’s hair, and definitely his straight nose, and what appeared to be his beautiful green eyes, but they were in a decidedly rounder and much shorter package. “You were still cute.” Her voice broke a bit and she wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe because she so often saw Noah as superhuman. The golden boy with the world at his feet. This made him seem more real, which was a ridiculous concept. She worked with him every day. She’d seen him get angry and upset. She knew that he was human. But still, this was not something she’d ever expected to see.