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“Working on a Sunday?”

“You guide on Sundays, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t feel like work.”

“So, you’re saying spending time with me will feel like work?” I tease.

“Spending time with you is the only saving grace to all this work, let me tell you.”

“Come on, you can’t tell me that proving Greta wrong about you isn’t a big motivation.”

“Well, that, too.” Her smile drops a bit. “Um, somehow, Greta realized we’d, you know, and told me to keep it professional.”

“She knows?” Christ. “How did she figure that out?”

“Apparently I was looking at you like you were a Christmas puppy.”

I laugh. Greta Giordani obviously has a dry wit Willa and I haven’t seen yet.

Toni chuckles, but she’s a little red in the face. “Was I?”

“Maybe a little.”

Toni furrows her brows and taps her chin with her finger. “And how did that make you feel?” she says in a breathy, thoughtful voice.

I laugh. I haven’t laughed so much with another woman, besides Willa, in years. “You sound exactly like my therapist.”

Our gazes lock. There is so much electricity between us I’m surprised literal sparks aren’t flying through the air.

“How about we table that question and answer for a few weeks, huh?”

“Only a few weeks?”

“OK, Casanova. Stop. Let’s get to work making your dream a reality.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

AUDREY

The whine of the vacuum cleaner stops and the air fills with the faint sound of Christmas music. Willa pulls the cord out of the wall and winds it around the hooks on the handle. “Let’s invite Toni and Greta over for dinner, she said. It’ll be fun, she said.”

I roll my eyes. Vacuuming the house is Willa’s favorite chore, though God knows why.

“I saw that,” she says.

“You had your back to me.”

“Your eye rolls are deafening.”

“Your protests are lame,” I say. “We’ve barely been here all week. You didn’t need to vacuum.”

Willa puts a hand on her hip. “We can’t have Greta and Toni come over and the place be a mess.”

I pause, very briefly, in stirring the roux for my seafood gumbo. We’ve only been in our townhome for a week, but it looks amazing. We decorated for Christmas on Sunday. The tree is standing by the front bay window, its multicolored lights glowing pleasantly through to the street.

“You’re right,” Willa says. “The place looks great.” She puts the vacuum up, fluffs some pillows because she really can’t help herself, and finally pours us two glasses of Sauvignon Blanc. She pushes one across the kitchen island and sits on a barstool. “So, is there some sort of code word, or a gesture or something when you want me to execute the plan?” she asks.

The plan came to me on Friday afternoon, when Toni was trying and failing for the fourth time to practice her presentation. All week while we worked together, I’d watched Toni’s confidence wax and wane, going from self-assured and confident, bordering on cockiness, to being humbled at the scope of her idea and the amount of work it would take. A couple of times I thought she might give up, but a well-timed check-in from Greta on Wednesday had been enough to motivate her. I’m still not sure if Toni wants to make Greta proud or prove her wrong. I suspect it’s a bit of both. You better believe I subtly pushed those buttons every time I saw her attention start to wane.