Because at some point Grayson’s feelings had turned a corner from “willing to roll with this and see what happens because I worship Nolan” to “I’m starting to get to know the real Nolan and I really like him and I’m falling more in love with him by the day.” Unfortunately, Nolan seemed to be pulling in the other direction.
A black sedan with the logo of Mike’s renovation company—Mike and Sandy were business partners—pulled up to the curb, and a middle-aged blond guy hopped out.
“Hey, I’m Sandy,” the man said as he approached the house. “Are you Grayson?”
“Yes. How’d you guess?”
“My husband is kind of obsessed with home decor, so I already knew who Nolan Hamlin is. All Everett wanted for Christmas was this set of throw pillows from the Nolan Hamlin collection. I heard all about these pillows for weeks, so now my sofa has these damned purple pillows on itanda matching purple throw. Personally, I don’t really care, but they make my husband happy, so here we are.” Sandy shrugged.
Grayson laughed. “Okay.”
“You look young, so I’m guessing you’re not married. One day you’ll see. If the person you love is happy, few other things matter. A couple of overpriced throw pillows is a small cost in the long run.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. You want to see the house?”
“Yeah, give me the tour.”
When they went inside, Sandy introduced himself to Nolan and told the throw-pillow story again, but made it sound a little less judgmental. Nolan smiled. “The purple ones? Those were the worst sellers in that collection.”
“Really? I guess they are a rather vibrant shade of purple.”
“The color palette I have in mind for this house is mostly off-white and beige, because Maria, the homeowner, seems particularly allergic to color. I pitched the idea of blue accents to her and she almost passed out.”
Sandy laughed. “Yes, I’m familiar with this. I do a lot of kitchens in my untelevised life, and good Lord, white kitchens aresodull, but that’s all anyone wants. I just did a white kitchen with white counters in a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights, and getting the owner to pick one of five basically identical white quartz slabs for the counter was exquisite torture. The gray veining in the beautiful slab of Carrara marble I had originally wanted to use was too much color for her. I almost accidentally on purpose installed blue cabinets because the stuff she picked was so boring.”
Nolan smiled. “Okay. I can see we’re going to get along just fine.”
“Show me what you want to do in this beige house.”
Sandy took notes on his phone as they toured the den and the basement. He grimaced when they got downstairs. “Oh God. This is the sort of basement kids have nightmares about,” he said.
“I know,” said Nolan. “The only light comes from that bald light bulb near the foot of the stairs and two tiny windows. That’s it. I do actually want to paint everything white in here and do very light flooring to maximize what little light there is. And I think we need to add some lights in the ceiling too. What do you think?”
“Sure.”
“Do you not have an opinion?”
“I’m just here to install what you want me to install. We’ll definitely need to do some electrical work down here. And plumbing too, if you want to add a bathroom. But I don’t care if you paint the walls white or lime green. Hand me a can of paint, I’ll see that it gets done.”
Nolan nodded. “Okay.”
As they walked back up the admittedly rickety staircase, Sandy said, “You know, you guys don’t talk like designers. I mean, you obviously know what you’re doing, but I’ve worked with some design guys who have such weird vocabularies.”
“What do you mean?” Grayson asked.
“I worked with a guy on a house last month who kept describing things as ‘moments.’ We put slate tiles at the front entrance to the house and he called it a ‘tile moment.’ We put a sofa in the middle of a room instead of against a wall, and he described the furniture as ‘floating like islands’ and then said that we had a little ‘floating moment’ in the living room. And, like, sure, but also, it’s not like placing a sofa facing a TV is really turning interior design on its head, you know?”
Grayson had probably used the word “moment” in that context a few times in his life, but he made a mental note never to do it again.
Nolan seemed somewhat revived on the drive back to the city. He was chatty, talking about design ideas and some fabric he’d seen at a shop in LA that he thought would make pretty curtains for the Cruz house. He’d apparently bought twenty yards and had it shipped to the Restoration offices. Grayson hoped somebody there knew how to sew curtains, because Grayson sure didn’t.
In the end, he decided not to push Nolan on anything. Soon they would have to have a conversation about what was going on between them. But not just yet.
Chapter Fourteen
CONSTRUCTION ATthe Roberts house was set to wrap five weeks after it started, which to Grayson seemed like some kind of land-speed record for a renovation this extensive.
Most of the work happened off-camera. There were cameras in the house so that the episode could include a time-lapse view of the work done, but actual construction was neither Nolan’s nor Grayson’s strong suit, so they weren’t directly involved in that.
