Page 15 of Drop Dead Gorgeous

“I’m a guy,” he pointed out. “What other kind would I have?”

“But I’m not a guy.” How could he be so oblivious to something so obvious? “I need girl stuff. So either I redo your house, or we’ll have to move somewhere else.”

“I like my house.” He was beginning to get that digging-in-his-heels expression that men get when they don’t want to do something. “I have things just where I want them.”

I gave him a speaking look, which made my head hurt more, because you sort of have to roll your eyes to do a proper speaking look. “At what point is it supposed to becomeourhouse?”

“When you move in.” He said it as if that were the simplest, most obvious conclusion in the world. For him, I guess it was.

“But you don’t want me touching anything, buying a chair that fitsme,fixing up an office for me, or anything like that?” My raised eyebrows told him what I thought ofthatidea—and again, raising my eyebrows hurt, but when you don’t use Botox it’s really hard to talk without any expression. For the next few days, though, I thought I might try really hard to imitate Nancy Pelosi.

He scowled. “Shit.” He saw the point of the conversation, which was that no way in hell was I satisfied with the status quo regarding his furniture, and if he wanted me living with him some adjustments had to be made, but he didn’t like it. His eyes did that narrowed, piercing thing again. “My recliner stays where it is. So does my television.”

I started to shrug, then stopped when I remembered that moving was not a good thing. “That’s fine. It isn’t as if I’ll be in there.”

“What?” He not only wasn’t pleased to hear that, he was getting pissed.

“Think about it. Do we watch the same things on television? No. You want to watch baseball; I hate baseball. You watchallsports. I like football and basketball, period. I like decorating shows, and you’d rather have splinters shoved under your fingernails than watch a decorating show. So if you want me not to go mad and kill you, I’ll have to have my own television and a place to watch it.”

The truth is, I don’t watch much television, except for college football, which I’ll actually go out of my way to catch. For one thing, some nights I don’t get home until after nine o’clock, and even when I do I usually have paperwork. There are a couple of shows I’ll TiVo and watch on Sundays, but for the most part I don’t bother. That doesn’t mean I’m willing to fight Wyatt for use of the television whenever Idowant to watch something, and even less does it mean I’m willing to give up those few shows. Not that he needs to know how little I watch; it’s the principle of the thing.

“All right,” he said grudgingly, because after all fair is fair. “Though I’d rather have you with me.”

“We’d have to watch what I want to watch half the time.”

And what a disasterthatwould be. He knew it as well as I did. After a pause he abandoned that idea and gave in. “Which room will you use? One of the upstairs bedrooms?”

“No, because then I’d have to redo it again and move everything in a few years when the kids get their own bedrooms.”

His expression didn’t soften, but it filled with heat—the I-want-to-get-you-naked kind of heat, not the mad kind. “There are four bedrooms,” he pointed out, thinking of the process of making babies to fill those bedrooms.

“I know. We’ll have the master, we’ll have two kids—I’m not ruling out three, but I think probably two—and we’ll have a guest bedroom. I’m thinking the living room will work out best. Who needs a formal living room? Oh, and I’ll need to redo all the window treatments. No offense, but your taste in window treatments sucks.”

The hands were back on his hips. “What else?” he asked in a resigned tone.

Huh. He was giving in easier than I’d thought. Took some of the fun out of it. “Paint. Not that you weren’t smart to go with neutrals, since decorating so isn’t your thing,” I added hastily. “It’s just that decoratingismy thing, so now you can relax and leave all those decisions to me. Trust me, a little color on the walls will do wonders for the house. Plants will, too.” He hadnohouseplants, a point I’d already made. How could any sane human live without houseplants?

“I’ve already bought you a plant.”

“You bought me ashrub.And it’s planted outside, where it belongs. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do anything with the plants, other than move them where I tell you to move them, when I tell you.”

“Why don’t you just put them where you want them and leave them there?”

Was that a male point of view, or what? “Some I will. Some I’ll put outside on the porch during warm weather and only bring them in for the winter. Just trust me on the plants, okay?”

He couldn’t see how I could do anything sneaky with plants, so grudgingly he nodded. “Okay, we can have a few plants.”

A few? He was so clueless. I loved him anyway.

“And some rugs.”

“I have carpeting.”

“The rugs go on top of the carpeting.”

He shoved his hand through his hair in raw frustration. “Why in hell would you put a rug on top of carpet?”

“For looks, silly. And there should be a rug under the breakfast room table.” The breakfast nook floor had the same tiles that were on the kitchen floor, and they were cold. A rug for there would be one of my first purchases. I smiled at him; smiling didn’t hurt. “That’s it.” For now, anyway.

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