Page 14 of Marcus

“And how old are you?”

“Five.”

“Not in school yet?”

Cella answered for that one. “She turned five in the middle of the year—I didn’t want to send her to kindergarten for half the year as a four-year-old. She starts in the fall.”

“Ah, and I bet you are excited, yes?”

“Can’t wait,” Tiffany said.

Gian stood straight, fixing the lapels of his blazer when he said, “She’s free to run around, if she wants. There’s not much trouble she can find here, and there’s a few toys in the living room that my wife keeps here for our grandkids.”

Tiffany peered up at her mom expectantly.

“Go ahead. Any mess, you pick it up. Got it?”

“Got it, Ma.”

The girl didn’t need to be told again before she darted off. That left Cella alone with Gian, and she took a moment to look around again.

“So, a surprise for her, huh?”

“That’s what I am hoping for. I will stay removed from it as much as possible, seeing as how my wife always seems to find out when I directly try to plan things for her.”

Cella smiled softly. “I think I can handle it.”

“How long do you think it’ll take?”

“Three months, maybe. Give or take.”

“Perfetto. My oldest son, he’ll be on hand for anything you need. He’s coming over later to give you his details—how long are you staying today?”

Cella met his gaze. “A while. I like to … envision.”

“Envision away, Cella. It’s all in your very capable hands now.”

Yes, it was.

Cella walked through the back hallway of the penthouse, stopping at each room to take in the different spaces, and what they had been used for. Several bedrooms were located further at the back, while a small office that also seemed to act as a library was set up closer to the entrance of the hallway. Each bedroom had its own private bathroom. Another, far larger bathroom with a clawfoot tub and a walk-in shower that would make anyone jealous with the size, was located beyond the left side of the office between it and before the last bedroom at the very end of the hall.

The master bedroom.

The biggest room in the penthouse, really, and that was saying something considering the size of the main rooms like the kitchen and entertaining areas. Cella kept her notepad out and on hand to do what she usually did when she walked through a new space that she was meant to redesign. Some jobs were more complicated than others. They required more work, for whatever reason. And she didn’t often take on ones that would need anything more than a wall or two taken out to redesign the floorplan. It wasn’t that she couldn’t do it, but those took longer … most of her clients were on a tight deadline, and she also liked that fast pace more often than she didn’t.

Given Gian hadn’t said anything about redesigning the floorplan of the penthouse, and his focus was more on updating the space to be modern to the times, she wasn’t concerned about this job being anything unusual.

Well, except for the fact that his wife was a fan of her work.

That made her a little nervous.

Just a bit.

Cella wouldn’t admit it out loud, though.

She roughly sketched out the master bedroom in her notepad, taking a moment to stare at the mostly bare walls in the space, and skipping over the four-poster bed dominating the middle. That would have to go, if only because it really seemed to take away from the size of the space. The large windows behind the bed would be a perfect place to set something like a platform bed with a half a dozen decorative pillows. Morning light would come in to spill across the blankets and touch whoever was sleeping in the sheets.

Before long, she had moved from the master bedroom to the other spare bedrooms. Given she didn’t have much of an idea what to do with those, and Gian hadn’t given her an idea to go on with what his wife might like, she simply wrote down a few notes to look back at later. Then, she moved onto the bathrooms.