Canned.
“That doesn’t look good.”
She straightened and turned, finding Peter standing just outside the open sliders to the deck.
“Oh! Peter. I didn’t know you were here.” She’d been in such a fog, she’d driven right past his parked car.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” He came a few steps closer, setting a bottle of water on the counter, regarding her closely. “Are you okay?”
Vivien let out a sharp, humorless laugh and ran a hand through her hair.
“Not really. I just got fired from the Fiona Buckman job. Apparently, I can’t take direction. Even though the direction was terrible, ugly, and soul-destroying, and I simply couldn’t bring myself to ruin a perfectly good house with it.”
Peter winced sympathetically. “Oof. Sounds like you dodged a bullet.”
Vivien shook her head and walked to the fridge, reaching for the first bottle of wine she saw. “Is it five o’clock somewhere?”
“Here, actually,” Peter said, watching her carefully. “You’re better off without her, though. You know that, right? I mean, yeah, this sucks, but you’re not the kind of person who can just slap some paint on the walls and call it design. You care too much about your work to be a ‘yes’ woman for a rich tyrant with no taste.”
Vivien sighed, pulling a plastic cup from the cabinet, then grabbing another. She turned to him with a questioning look. “Don’t make me drink alone.”
He laughed and shook his head. “Eli and I are going to the gym, if he ever gets off a client call.”
She nodded and poured a generous glass. “You know, if I were a ‘yes’ woman I’d still have this client.”
“You’ll bounce back. You’ve got too much talent not to. I mean, look at what you’ve done with this place.” He gestured toward the house that had started off with super perfection décor. Now, with all these people and the possibility that they wouldn’t sell, it looked like…a home. A beach house for a happy family.
Vivien smiled and raised her glass to him. “Thank you, Peter. It’s nice to see you.”
He held her gaze with a smile of his own, letting her feel that tiny new connection they were forming.
Peter McCarthy was good in every sense of the word. Disarming and genuine and…yeah, good. So why was she still thinking about the gleam in Danny Sullivan’s silver-blue eyes when he asked her on a date?
Vivien took a long sip, letting the crisp wine soothe her frayed nerves before setting the drink down. “Well, looks like I was totally wrong, by the way.”
Peter raised an eyebrow. “About?”
She waved a hand in the air. “Danny. The hapless handyman.”
“Let me guess—he’s not actually a con artist.”
“Nope. Turns out he’s her younger brother. He’shelpingher, not sleeping with her.”
Peter’s jaw dropped slightly before he let out a laugh. “Her brother? Now that I did not find out.”
Vivien drew back, not following. “Find out…how?”
“I’m a detective, remember? I did a little digging into one Daniel Sullivan, who resides in a house on Four Prong Lake, a few miles from here. That’s when he’s not in his Tribeca condo in in New York City. He’s a successful hedge fund manager, apparently on the up and up, and I assumed he might be handling Fiona’s investments.”
Vivien’s eyebrows shot up. “He might be, but mostly he’s handling her sprinklers and broken outlets because apparently she burns through professional service people like a bonfire on a windy day.”
“Like I said, people aren’t always what they seem, Viv.”
She sipped the wine, thinking about…Danny. The way Danny had looked at her in the driveway, how easy his smile had been, how non-judgmental and even concerned he’d been by her firing. How…charming and handsome.
A hedge fund manager.Eesh.
“Anyway,” Peter said, grabbing his water bottle. “I was going to fill you in on all that, but as you walked in, I could see something was wrong.”
