Page 68 of Just One Fake Date

“They are,” she said and Ty heard in her tone that she wished the house wasn’t duplexed.

It wasn’t his problem to fix.

Even though he wanted to.

“The light is great,” Derek said, and Ty wondered if he was trying to figure out how to take pictures for Paige.

Shannyn opened the door on the ground floor and gestured them in. “We can probably fit a lot of it in here.”

The first thing Ty saw was the gleam of polished hardwood. It was a honey gold color and stretched all the way to the back of the house. The living room was at the front, just as she’d said, and he had to hide his surprise that the walls were painted a deep teal. The fireplace mantle was white stone, maybe marble, and the ceiling with its elaborate molding was white, too. It worked, the color saturated and not claustrophobic at all. The floor was bare and furnishings were sparse. There was a fainting couch upholstered in teal velvet in front of the bay window and a more modern chair in a mustard gold on the opposite side of the fireplace. There was a cluster of pictures framed in black on the wall behind the gold chair, a pair of mismatched floor lamps and a stack of books on the floor. Ty wished he had time to take a good look, but instead, he pretended he’d seen it all before. Derek did enough rubbernecking for both of them.

Shannyn and Ty lifted the fainting couch to move it aside and put it back against the wall. The velvet drapes in the living room were deep purple and had lavish gold fringe.

When Derek looked at them with obvious curiosity, Shannyn smiled. “I learned to thrift at the feet of the master. My mom scored some drapes from an old theater and made these for me.”

“Wow, she can sew. They’re amazing,” Derek said.

“She’s a dressmaker. She makes wedding dresses. It’s all custom.”

Ty listened, letting Derek ask the questions. Maybe it wasn’t all bad that he shared Paige’s curiosity.

“Where are you from?” Derek asked Shannyn.

“A little town north of Boston that you’ve never heard of,” she said with a smile and Derek laughed.

They put their first load of furniture in the living room, packing it in as Shannyn instructed. Ty got a peek into the next room, which had a huge desk with a big computer display on it. This had to be Shannyn’s workspace, where she’d been when he’d talked to her at night. The walls were painted gold with some stenciling that made them look like old parchment. He guessed from the huge plaster medallion overhead that the room should have been the dining room.

There were two maps pinned to the walls, each one big enough to almost cover the wall. One was of North and South America, with a fat red line drawn down the western coasts, then back up the eastern ones. The second was a map of Europe and Asia, and the red line started in Spain then took a meandering path east. There were postcards pinned to the maps at irregular intervals. What was that about?

He caught a glimpse of a bed in the next room—which was painted a deep purple—and a kitchen at the back with white cabinets, but then all the furniture was in the house. He’d already seen that the decor was eclectic and colorful, unexpected, creative—and completely Shannyn. The whole place hummed with her personality and he really wanted to explore it all.

Ty suddenly smelled lemons, and saw that Shannyn had dropped to her knees beside one of the chairs, rubbing at the wood with a rag. Derek was already heading back to the truck. He was surprised that the wood looked so good so quickly.

“See you in a few,” he said, but was nearly stopped in his tracks by her radiant smile.

“Thank you!” She jumped up and kissed his cheek again, making him believe this had been worth the trouble after all, then Derek shouted at him to hurry. He left his jacket in his car and got into the cab, reconciled to the dry cleaning bill and not regretting it one bit.

Would they have dinner? He certainly hoped he could convince her.

“She’s cute,” Derek said when he was backing the truck out of her driveway.

“Yes,” Ty agreed.

“I would never have put you two together, but maybe that’s the point.”

“How so?”

“Opposites attract and all that.”

“Maybe that’s the key,” Ty said, choosing to let his family believe whatever they needed to. “Take this street. I think it will be faster.”

Derek and Tymade better time with the second load. Once it was all in the house, Ty took the first chair off the roof of his car while Derek conferred with Shannyn about the roof. When they went up to the attic, Ty took the opportunity to go into the house and wash up.

Shannyn’s kitchen had gorgeous blue and white tiles on the walls that looked Moorish. It smelled faintly of fresh baking and Ty acknowledged that her place was more of a home than his apartment. There was a litter box in the bathroom, evidence of the cat who was hiding. He took off his watch and soaped up to his elbows, feeling good about everything with Shannyn, then he saw it.

There was a man’s razor on the vanity.

And a bottle of cologne, the same brand he used.

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