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I give her a sly grin. “Ben hasn’t been over yet.”
She matches my grin. “But he will notice if it looks like a full-on bachelor pad.”
I grab her hand. “Good thing I was already planning on asking you to help me then.”
She pulls my arm over and around her shoulder. “Oh, were you now?”
I purse my lips like I’m thinking about it. “Hmm-hmm.”
Millie’s eyes dance. “Sounds like a win-win to me. I get to spend time with you, and I get to spruce up your place all at once.”
“You’ve never been inside my place; how do you know it needs any sprucing up?”
“You’re a single, straight man who lives alone. Unless you hired someone to help you, or your mom and Rosie helped, it needs to be fixed.”
“Fine. But did you really have to tell him I liked pieces from his house? Now I’m going to end up with some crystal-encrusted monstrosity in my house.”
Millie doesn’t even try to hide her smile. Her laugh comes bursting out like some sort of cackle. Then she snorts which makes her laugh even harder. I love how much she doesn’t hold back what she’s thinking or feeling. It’s just so… Millie.
“I promise you won’t have to have anything with crystals in it.” She nudges me in the side with her elbow. “Unless you decide you just can’t live without it.”
I puff out a laugh. “Fat chance. For the record, this is not the date I had planned.”
Millie curls into me. “It’s been the perfect night.” She looks up at me. “Maybe leave Ben out next time.”
I lean my forehead against hers.“Deal.”
Nothing about coming home has gone as I expected, but the most unexpected has definitely been Millie. All of this is more than I could have ever imagined. I’m not falling for her. I’ve already fallen.
After I drop Millie off back at her place I can’t help but marvel at what an amazing night it’s been. How amazing she is. It’s the most honest and vulnerable I have ever been with anyone. You’d think I would be terrified right now, that I would be over-thinking every last detail, but I’m not. I’m completely cool, calm, and collected.
I’m so distracted in fact that when my phone rings I don’t even look at the caller ID before answering.
“Mark.” My father’s voice hits me like a bucket of ice.
“Dad.”
“You quit your job, moved out of your apartment, and you aren’t answering your phone. What on earth is going on with you?”
I take a deep breath. My father is really the last person I want to talk to, any day, but especially tonight.
“Nothing is going on with me.” An understatement, but it’s not like he’s asking because he actually cares.
“If nothing is going on then why did you quit your job? We worked too long and too hard for you to get where you were for you to just throw it all away.”
“That’s just it, Dad!” I snap feeling bold from a distance. “I told you from the beginning that I didn’t want help. Not with school, but you interfered. I didn’t want help getting a job, but you went behind my back and called in a favor to your old college buddy. Then I find out that you yet again went behind my back and were working behind my back to get me the promotion. A promotion I wasn’t sure I wanted.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mark, of course you wanted the promotion. The youngest partner in firm history? Even I didn’t do that when I was starting out, and I was very good.”
I roll my eyes. Even when we are talking about me, it’s about him. How did I ever let myself fall under his spell?
“Well, I didn’t want it, so I left.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with Natasha, does it?”
“No. It has nothing to do with her.”
“She was never good enough for you.”
