My brothers had come in here earlier, in actual hazmat suits that they’d bought off Amazon, and had strung up fairy lights and put some flowers in vases around the place. It still looked like a gaudy porn palace, but it had a softer edge to it now.
With a tug on the ties at the back of the blindfold, I let it drop away from her face, revealing the inside of her dream home to her.
“Where are we?” she whispered, turning around in a circle as she took it all in. “Is this a strip club?”
Damn it!
“No, this is the inside of your dream house.”
Her head snapped in my direction as she opened and closed her mouth, totally lost for words.
“I know,” I held my hands up in front of me. “It’s not what I thought it would be either, but take away the obvious bits like the mirrors—and this ain’t even the half of it—and picture it painted in neutral colors.” I shifted so I could turn the light on in the dining room. “Think about it looking like this.”
“Oh,” she breathed, rushing into the room. “This is beautiful. Can you imagine picking up a handmade wooden table for in here? We could have a matching cabinet to put our dishes in, then another one over here, and maybe get a restored record player for it.”
I grinned happily at the mental image of what she’d described. “Roy Orbison on vinyl would sound amazing in this room.”
With the idea in my head, I pulled my phone out and opened up my music app, hitting the album I listened to when I thought about Layla. You Got It began playing, the music bouncing off the empty walls of the house and making it sound slightly wrong, but the look on her face fixed that.
“I don’t want to move out of this room,” she sighed, spinning around again. “I want ceiling to floor curtains in an oyster color in here, and I think I want to paint the walls in a shade that’s slightly off-white with a tiny bit of gray mixed into it, and all of the trim has to be brightest white.”
I didn’t have a clue what oyster, off-white with gray, and brightest white was—although, I could guess at the last one—but if that’s what she wanted, that’s what we’d do.
“We can bring the music with us, Layla, or we can switch it off and brainstorm as we go, but let’s look at the kitchen.” I pointed at the door that led to it and warned her, “It’s not been updated since avocado, Formica, and laminate floor tiles were a thing, though, so don’t get too excited.”
I held the door open and waved her in, biting my lip to hold in the laughter her reaction would no doubt result in.
I wasn’t disappointed.
“Oh, it’s so- Ohh, oh, bloody hell. What were they thinking? How do you leave a room as big as this looking like something out of a test house on a nuclear bomb site?” She walked deeper into the room and turned around, taking it all in at once. “I love the area at the back that looks like a small version of my parent's dining room, but why would they add that and not work on the rest?”
“They were too busy partying?”
“Gah,” she shuddered. “This will look gorgeous once it’s got wooden flooring laid and the kitchen’s updated. It’s relatively easy work, thankfully.”
I was surprised. “You want wooden flooring in here, not tiles?”
She moved a couple of steps to the side to see around the crumbling island at where the sink was. “We could put tiles here, but I think we should keep the rest of the flooring downstairs wooden.”
That suited me perfectly.
As we walked around the bottom level of the house, we discussed and planned what adjustments we’d make to the place. She wasn’t wrong—it was all relatively easy work. Some of it I could do with our brothers, but the kitchen I wanted to be fitted by someone who knew how to do it. Dad had tried fitting a new kitchen in their house, and so had Luke, and both of them had failed miserably. I was more than happy to pay for someone who knew what the hell they were doing to do it all.
We made our way back to the entrance and stared at the staircase.
“I think we should keep the glass and the mirrors,” Layla suddenly announced.
“Really?” I barked, taking a step away from her.
“Yeah, it gives it an edge.”
I was speechless. There wasn’t even one thing I could think of that could make me agree with her. Could this be a deal breaker? I didn’t think so, but I needed her to agree that they could go.
“Layla—”
“Just kidding, that shit has got to go. Who needs that many mirrors? Seeing this when we first came in was bad enough, but when we went into the two bathrooms down here, and there were more on the wall next to the toilet? They were freaking nuts.”
Because she’d almost given me a heart attack, I didn’t tell her there was more upstairs.