I was shocked, but pleased, to see Raul and Carly walking toward me with his arm around her waist. As they got closer, she said something I couldn’t hear, and he nodded.
They drifted several centimeters apart instantly.
So much for that, but at least I hadn’t been hallucinating, I guess?
It was clear to me that Raul had been interested in the chase, and while Carly had been having fun with us, she was more interested in her career.
There was more between us and her, and I was willing to push until we uncovered it. I wasn’t even bothered by this morning’s headlines, though it was my understanding that Carly was going to fix them by burying them. I didn’t want that.
I’d pull the three of us together and she’d be ours, and in the meantime I could be disappointed at the friction between Carly and Raul when they weren’t flirting or fucking.
When they were close enough, I greeted them with a warm smile, gave Raul a quick kiss, and grasped Carly’s fingers. “Feeling better?”
“Sleep-wise? Yes, thank you.” Her pulling away was gentle but clear.
Her entire body was rigid. From Raul?
“Did I miss something?” I asked.
Raul shook his head. “Curtis stopped by to offer his congratulations.”
“And the world thinks the three of us are married.” Carly drove straight to the point.
I was bothered by the Cutis news, especially since he’d been here yesterday, too. After we turned down his proposal, months ago, I’d hoped that would be the last we saw of him. I also hated that Carly was already pushing to clear up the misunderstanding about our relationship.
“So, you want to make sure the world knows the three of us aren’t married, but perhaps let Curtis keep believing it?” I pieced some things together based on their posture when I first saw them.
Carly caught her bottom lip between her teeth and frowned. “I mean he’s just…” She finished with a huff.
“He’s an ass,” Raul said. “After what he did to us?”
At the words, Carly jerked her head up. “Wait. What did he do to you?”
Best to tell her now, and make sure we were all on the same page. “Fortunately, nothing.”
She raised her brows.
“But,” I added quickly. “He was pitching us a building idea about the same time we approached the partners at Raphael. We heard his pitch, we didn’t like it, and we turned him down.”
“Curtis doesn’t like to hear no, even if it’s something he doesn’t want. How did he take the news?” Carly said.
Raul shrugged. “He told us we’d regret the decision and that it didn’t matter what kind of connections we had, our restaurant would never be anything without his help.”
Curtis’s words had seemed carefully picked to imply threat without being a direct threat.
We’d seen them as a threat. “Honestly, we haven’t seen him since, until two nights ago. I figured he’d gotten over it, and moved on.”
“If he thinks he should have this contract and your business, he hasn’t moved on.” There was an almost haunted look in Carly’s eyes. She shook her head and the expression vanished.
Right. “So, we have to make sure everyone in the world knows our wedding was pretend, except your ex-husband?” I wanted to make sure I had the rules straight.
“That is… The important thing here is that you don’t lose your funding.” Carly’s answer was as diplomatic as anything I’d ever heard.
It also felt intentionally vague for a woman who hadn’t had any issues with being direct up until now.
“Lyndsay—our social media guru—is working on a solution,” Carly said. “She’ll tell us what to do, and until then, we don’t touch public platforms. It’s easier to fix saying nothing than it is to fix saying the wrong thing.”
“Agreed.” It wasn’t as though I had any interest in denying the rumors anyway.
Carly clapped. “Right, then. Let’s get to work.”
Tear down was happening in the kitchen today. We wanted to save as much of the original wood as possible, along with stained glass, and structure. But over time, new walls had been put in, and things had been moved and modified.
For the next few days, we’d remove the old, everything that was going, and make room for renovation and new structure.
Raul and I wanted to be as hands-on as possible during this process. Partly to keep an eye on things, but also because this was our dream. Seeing it grow and evolve would be indescribable. We weren’t allowed to do certain tasks, for insurance and licensing reasons, but for today as long as we followed safety procedures and stayed out of the deconstruction zone, we could help haul debris out to the dumpster.
I was surprised to see Carly grab a pair of heavy gloves, and join in the work. She looked just as sexy with her hair pulled back, a few loose wisps catching her face while she dragged sheetrock out of the building, as she had last night walking home.
It was hard to say why I was so certain Carly belonged in our lives. Sure, I could list things that drew me to her—in addition to being stunning, she was smart, she wasn’t flustered by Raul, and Eloise was drawn to her. But the parts made up a bigger whole, and I knew there was more there.
Once I proved it to her, we’d be on our way to happily ever after.
The work crew was tossing the debris into a large pile, and a lot of the pieces needed to be broken down into smaller ones, in order to be removed. We agreed that Carly would help with the breakdown, and Raul and I would take turns wheeling the results out to the dumpster.
Carly tried to argue that she could do that as well, but a test run showed that she wasn’t quite tall enough for the task.
I finished emptying the wheelbarrow while Raul and Carly returned to the trash pile to break things down. When I joined them again, Raul was saying something about, “They’d better be ready to pay rent. Oh, and they need to stay out of the important rooms.”
Carly swung her sledgehammer into a giant piece of plaster, and made an impressive dent. “You’re not zoned for residential.”
“I don’t assume they’re living here. They probably have their own restaurant,” Raul said.
I grabbed a scroll saw and took it to one of the beams, temporarily halting the conversation. When I finished I asked, “Who’s paying rent?”
“I wanted to know if there are any ghost stories about the buildings around here.” Carly loaded chunks of plaster and wire frame into the wheelbarrow.
Raul and I disagreed on whether or not ghosts were real, and each of us was fine with knowing the other was wrong. “Did Raul tell you no? Don’t listen to him.”
“You heard what I told her. If there are any of those bastards here, they’d better not think they get a free ride.” With that, Raul grabbed the newly-filled wheelbarrow, and pushed it toward the exit.
“He’s not a believer,” I said to Carly.
“I noticed.” She continued her portion of the demo. “Are you?” Her question was all curiosity and no judgment.
“Absolutely.”
Once again, I had to interrupt the conversation with the saw, and I made my way through all of the current lumber while Raul returned, then left again with another load of trash.
“I don’t know one way or the other,” Carly said. “There are some things that are obviously not real, at least to me, and others I can’t explain. Maybe it’s ghosts, or excess psychic vibes. I didn’t get a straight answer from Raul—are there stories about this place? Lost souls? Apparitions seen in the night?”
I nodded. “A building this old has both energy and lingering ghosts. For the most part they’re quiet. It’s not the kind of activity that brings in tourists or anything. Essentially, we don’t bother them, and they won’t bother us.”
“How do you avoid bothering them when you’re tearing down the walls of their house?” Carly asked.
“I still think they should have to pay rent.” Raul was back.
Carly tossed more waste into the wheelbarrow. “I can think of at least a few partners who’d agree with you.”
I did the same as Carly. “They were here first. It doesn’t seem right to charge them because we moved into their home.”
“But we bring the positive vibes.” When Raul put it that way… I was pretty sure he was just making shit up. “We’re revitalizing their home. Making it happy. Cooking good food in it. That’s got to be worth something to these ghosts, right?”
“I don’t think you could call charging them for that rent.” Carly paused to drag her arm across her forehead, leaving a white smear of dust.
I wanted to reach up and wipe it away, capture one of those moments where her gaze met mine, our breath caught…
But in the bulky gloves I wore, I’d only make it worse.
“Can we call it a door charge?” Raul asked.
I shook my head and wheeled the next load of trash outside.
I returned to Carly saying, “Ghosts drink free on Thursdays?”
“Tuesday.” Raul was resolute. “Maybe—”
“Whoa.” Carly dropped her sledgehammer as she yelled, and pushed past us. “What the fuck?”
At the anger and panic in her voice, I whirled to follow her gaze. The backhoe doing demolition brought its bucket through a load-bearing wall.
“Stop,” I shouted at the same time as Carly. My feet were already moving, carrying me in a sprint to the site supervisor. “Shut the demolition down.” I yelled at the top of my lungs.
Marcus, the supervisor, looked at me, unimpressed. “Excuse me?”
“That’s a fucking load bearing wall, and your man just took out the main beam. Shut. It. Down.”
That spurred Marcus into action, and the room erupted in chaos as the crew worked to get a temporary support structure in place.
An hour later, the roof was stable, though our plans weren’t.
“Why were we told to tear that wall down, if we weren’t supposed to?” Marcus demanded to know.
I stared at him in disbelief. I knew the plans. I’d been involved every step of the way in their creation. “You weren’t.”
“I was.” Marcus yanked his phone from his back pocket, and scrolled to an email from Carly, that said Updated plans. “The new blueprint was attached to this.”
“No. That wasn’t me.” Carly sounded as shocked as I felt. “I didn’t send you that.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
She glared at me. “Yes, I’m certain I didn’t tell the crew to destroy the building. Did you really just ask me that?”
Her offense sounded real, but I was staring at the email that said otherwise.