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“Says the woman who wore a certain pair of red-bottomed shoes to our first meeting.”
So he had noticed the shoes. I kept my attention on the scraping, but an infinitesimal thrill pierced my gut. I ignored it. “That’s different.”
“Uh-huh. I bet it is.”
“Where does one find a six-hundred-dollar shirt, anyway?” I asked, returning to the topic at hand. I looked up and caught sight of the flex of his shoulder muscle, that spot where it met with his triceps, and quickly glanced away.
Anderson snorted. “The shirt’s bespoke,” he explained, then flung it over the top of the door leading inside the ticket booth.
“What about your pants?” I asked before I could think better of it. “Are those bespoke too?”
“Why? You want me to take them off?”
I spluttered a denial, keeping my eyes glued to a piece of blackened gum, ignoring the way Anderson’s chuckle made my chest warm.
Sebastian started on the glass, digging out the crusty old silicone around its edges. We worked in silence for a while, until I leaned back on my heels and wiped the sweat off my brow.
“Tired already?” He scraped a piece of grayed silicone with the edge of a utility knife, all the bare skin he’d exposed glistening under the warm, twinkling lights of the chandelier.
I rolled my eyes and pretended I hadn’t been ogling him. “You try scraping off calcified gum.”
“Still think this place is worth saving, calcified gum and all?”
I got back to work. “Of course. You don’t?”
“Nope.”
My movements paused, and I glanced over at him. He was bent over a corner of the glass, a strand of hair falling over his forehead. His arm muscles tensed as he scraped at the hardened silicone, and I watched as his teeth dug into his bottom lip in concentration. Light from the lobby doors hit the broad planes of his face, and I found it hard to look away.
“You really hate this place, huh,” I said quietly.
He grunted as the silicone finally came free in a brownish-white strip. Tearing it off, he tossed it to the ground. “I don’t hate it. It’s just out of date.”
“So you don’t care about history at all?” I asked the question with as little judgment as I could, which was hard, because history was everything to me. It represented all the people who had come before. Collective memories of family, of joy. History made me feel grounded, like I belonged somewhere. Belonged here.
Sebastian sighed and pushed the hair off his forehead with his wrist. “I like history. When it’s in books and movies.”
I gave him a flat look. “Come on. You’ve never walked into an old church or cathedral, a big courthouse or a museum, and thought, wow. This has been standing for hundreds of years. Thousands of people have stood where I’m standing. It doesn’t make you feel connected to something bigger?”
He leaned against the ticket booth counter and considered my words. After a long pause, he shrugged. “Nope.”
Despite myself, a laugh slipped out of me. “I don’t believe you.”
His lips curled the slightest bit, and he got back to work. We scrubbed off crud and wiped windows, and when I made an unholy mess of the silicone caulk, he let out the first genuine laugh I heard from him all day.
“I could never get the hang of this when my dad tried to teach me,” I admitted.
“Here,” he said, taking the gun from me to show me how to create the perfect bead around the windows once more. “Silicone can sense your fear. The first house I bought had to be seventy percent caulk by the time I was done with it.”
“I’m surprised a big shot like you knows how to do this stuff. I would’ve thought you’d have minions to do your dirty work for you.”
“There’s a lack of minions in this town, unfortunately.”
I rolled my lips between my teeth to hide my smile.
By the end of the day, the ticket booth was buffed and cleaned and ready for a new coat of paint. The gold detailing on the top of the booth would have to be replaced, but that could be done. I added it to my ever-growing list of things to do.
By the time I got home, my body ached, but I felt good. And when I thought about spending the month waking up sore and groggy from all my hard work—and the man who would be by my side throughout it all—it didn’t feel like hard work at all.
