Page 21 of Restored By You

Her.

Eight.

Shea

Low ceilings, warm light, a long oak bar polished to a shine by decades of elbows. String lights loop across the rafters, and there’s a small stage in the back corner where a guy in a flannel is tuning a guitar while a small crowd begins to form. The whole place smells like woodsmoke and fryer oil and faintly of…dirt? But it works.

Tavern Nine is aggressively charming in a small-town, middle of nowhere sort of way.

I changed my outfit three times, and I’m still not convinced what I’m wearing is suitable for a bar-based work meeting: wide leg, dark wash trousers, a cognac silk cami that does extraordinary things for my complexion, if I do say so myself, tucked in and paired with the cropped leather jacket. Heeled ankle boots because I don’t actually own a pair of flat ones, a fact I’m only now confronting as a personal failing.

Gold hoops, curls down. I know I look great, it’s just…

Ugh. Why am I second guessing myself? Because it’s a date. No, it’s not!

The hostess seats us at a high-top near the back, and I hop up, arranging myself, then rearranging, then decide that too much arranging is a form of being self-conscious, so I force my hands flat on the table.

This is a business meeting. I have a folder. There is a tab system.

I’m as prepared as anyone could be for a potential-restoration-show-pilot.

Tyler eyes the folder without a word.

“Don’t judge,” I snark at him, my nerves getting the best of me. “Some people prefer to stay organized, Tyler.” Referencing our earlier fight over the mess of shoes cluttering our shared living space at the resort.

He rolls his eyes, then glances past me. “He’s here.”

My spine straightens so fast it’s practically audible.

Rhett comes through the door with a roll of paper under one arm, and I watch the room adjust around him. A hand lifts from the bar, someone calls his name, he answers without stopping, just a nod, a word, a squeeze of a shoulder as he passes, and the whole thing takes eight seconds.

The moment tells me more about this town than two days of walking it have.

Everyone knows him. Everyone likes him. And he doesn’t seem to notice either fact. Or, he does and has known for so long it doesn’t phase him in the slightest.

He changed. Not dressed up, but…changed. Dark, long-sleeved henley pushed to his forearms, jeans that aren’t dusty work jeans, hair still damp at the edges. He shaved. Not entirely, just enough to try, and something about that small evidence of effort does something to the underside of my ribs as a fashion designer slash stylist.

He spots us and that rationed smile makes an appearance as he strides this way. “Hey, Shea,” he says, sliding onto the stool across from me and setting a roll of paper down. “Tyler.”

“Not-Plumber Guy,” Tyler says in greeting, popping in an earbud like his work here is done.

The waitress arrives and takes our drink order alongside a few appetizer plates per Rhett’s recommendation. Then, the plans come out. Rhett unrolls them across the table, weighting one corner with the salt shaker and one with his beer. I lean forward and my jaw drops.

He’s drawn my house.

Not printed. Not clip-art’d into some software template. Drawn. Clean pencil lines, careful lettering, dimensions marked in a tight, blocky hand along every wall. The kitchen with the partition gone. The upstairs with the ensuite tucked into the dead space over the stairs, which I would not have thought of in a thousand years and is obviously the only place it could ever have gone.

“You did this…today?” I say in awe.

“Rough pass.” He turns it toward me. “Nothing’s final.”

“You did this today.”

He shrugs one shoulder, and I realize he doesn’t know. He genuinely doesn’t know what it does to a person to be handed proof that someone spent their afternoon taking her seriously.

I stare down at the plans so I don’t have to look at him. Is it hot in here? I take a sip of my mojito. “Explain this part to me,” I manage, clearing my throat as I point to the angled island.

And he does. He talks and I ask and he answers, and somewhere in there the folder gets opened and the tabs get used and it becomes clear that we’re in sync.