“Thanks for reminding me.”
“De nada,” she said. “We can get by up here with a fresh coat of paint. The floor is…” She bent to pull up the corner of old indoor-outdoor carpet. “Plank, probably original too. Look at that. Just needs to be sanded down and refinished. We can DIY this space, save us a bundle.”
“You really want that bathroom.”
She took a few more measurements, then ran back down the stairs, into the main room. “Down here, though, I think we need to consult with an expert,” she called.
He headed down to the ground floor too, and wondered how he’d keep up with her energy. “I agree. That could be a load-bearin’ wall, for all I know.”
She went to the wall in question, with the double glass doors in its center, nodding her head and examining it as if she knew more about construction than he did. Maybe she did. She sure as hell knew more about running a business than he did. “This doorway should be arched, out to the addition, don’t you think?”
“More room if its squared-off.”
“More memorable arched. More beautiful.”
“More expensive?”
“Seriously, you have to tell me,” she said. “I feel like your family’s pretty wealthy, even though they don’t seem like rich people. You all get a cut from the ranch or something, don’t you?”
“It’s an ever-dwindling cut, but we’ve invested the profits in the past, and that part of it’s doing pretty well.”
“So between that and the hit song…?” She left the question hanging in the air.
“I’m going to take out a loan.”
She smiled at him, moving close enough to poke his chest with a forefinger. “Including enough for my salary,” she said. “I’m on the clock as we speak.”
So if he pulled her in for a kiss, it would officially be sexual harassment, Ethan thought.
He blinked the impulse away, kind of stunned by it. Then his phone went off and hers did, too. “It’s Orrin,” he said. Then he read the text on his screen aloud. “‘Video’s gone viral, just not the way we expected.’ There’s a link.” He held the phone low so she could see, too, and tapped the link.
The video of him talking last night was flirting with a million views. “That’s good, right?”
“Seems good, to me,” Lily said. “Look at the comments and see how it’s going over.”
He scrolled with his thumb, and there were several comments like, “love his music” and “good for him” and a few folks claiming their dads had murdered their moms, too, which just made him sad, and a handful of trolls calling him a washed-up wanna-be, which made him wonder if it was possible to be both.
But then came the most popular comment of all, the one that asked, “Who’s the girl?”
That comment had 1,207 replies, including, “He’s really got a death grip on her hand, doesn’t he?” and “check out the way he looks down at her at 3:47.” And “You can practically see the hearts in his eyes.” And “I feel a love song coming on.”
He couldn’t bring himself to look at Lily, so he had no idea what she was making of it all.
Just then another text came through with another link. He tapped that one, and it went to a truncated version of the original video that zoomed in on his and Lily’s clasped hands and then cut to him gazing down at her like he’d just crossed a desert and she was a popsicle.
They’d slowed that part down, into ultra slow-motion, and they’d put pulsing heart graphics over his head. His volume was up, so the swelling romantic music they’d inserted behind the clip played full blast.
He tapped and tapped to silence the dang thing, then glanced at Lily’s face. Expressionless. Too shocked to react?
Orrin was still texting screenshots of headlines. “Who’s the mystery woman healing Ethan Brand’s heart?” And “Ethan Brand’s Heartache Honey?”
That was downright insulting. Aloud, he said, “Lily, I’m so sorry. I never meant to drag you into my mess. Hell and damnation.”
She took his phone from his hand and clicked again on the doctored video. “I mean, they’re exaggerating the moment.” Then she tapped the looped arrow and played it again.
“I was shaky,” he said. “And when you came up, I was relieved.”
“Right. You were just glad to see me. That’s all that look is. And you know, they slowed it way down, and then they put that Bugs Bunny music behind it, and?—”
