Page 129 of Right Where I Want You

She nodded quietly, then rummaged through her pocketbook until I sighed and said, “What you’re looking for is in your zipperpocket.”

“Oh. Right.” Smiling, she got out a small spiral bound notepad andpen.

Holding her to my side, I kissed the top of her head as we made our way outfront.

“Justin will be upset he’s missing this,” she said. “He’s run all the comps in the area and hasopinions.”

“Why do you think I planned it for a day I knew he couldn’t make it?” I snickered. Moving hundreds of miles away still hadn’t made the bastard any less nosy. Aside from his daily request for renovation photos, it seemed as if he was crashing on our couch every otherweekend.

From behind, I put my hands on Georgina’s shoulders and tried to assess the front of the house with a sense of detachment. When deciding where to list it, it wouldn’t do to see it as a place with history—myhistory. As my sister’s and my roots, as my mom’s home. I had to see it as a potential buyer would in order to determine the right price, but after seven months of restoring it with Georgina, that was nearly impossible to do. We’d put a lot of ourselves into the property, and our relationship had deepened and strengthened on so many levels right here in this house. “A million,” Isaid.

She laughed. “We can’t sell it for a million, but we do need to figure out if we’re starting at the high end or hoping to incite a biddingwar.”

“What if someone snatches it up rightaway?”

She looked up and back at me. “That would be great, wouldn’tit?”

“But then what?” I asked. My sister’s husband had e-mailed me a new listing a couple days earlier for a foreclosure a few streets over. It was a bargain, and Aaron kept reiterating what a great team Georgina and I made. He and my sister both thought we should be flipping houses for a living. Somehow, I couldn’t seem to muster the same enthusiasm. Fixing up the house had been a project brought together by a perfect storm—I had the emotional attachment to painstakingly restore it while keeping its charm,andI had good reason to set it free. In the months since I’d sold my New York apartment and had made the leap to living full-time in Boston, I’d made great strides—with Georgina’s help—working through my issues over the house and my mom. It was time to let another family have theirturn.

“Did you have a different idea?” Georginaasked.

“No, not really.” I squeezed her shoulders and turned my attention back to the job at hand. “One of the shutters on the right window is coming loose, and the landscaper still hasn’t fixed thehedge.”

She made notes. “We should sic our secret weapon onhim.”

“My sister,” I said, nodding gravely. “She’s a beast when it comes to getting contractors inline.”

We walked up the front steps and into the living room. I shut the front door, inspecting the marks on the inside of it. “We have to fix these scratches before the first openhouse.”

“Mark that under ‘Opal and her separation anxiety,’” Georginareplied.

We’d recently left the dogs at the house alone for the first time while picking up pizza for a long night of cleaning ahead. Opal had done a bit ofdamage.

Georgina pointed her pen at one corner of the living room. “There are still some spots of blue paint on thehardwood.”

“I tried,” I said. “It won’t come up. Mark that under ‘my friskygirlfriend.’”

Her cheeks reddened, a sexy complement to her chestnut-colored hair and cinnamon-sprinkle freckles. “It wasn’t all me,” she said. “If you hadn’t started the paint fight in the firstplace—”

“It wouldn’t have ended with what probably looked like Smurfporn?”

She shoved my shoulder. “There you go defiling innocent thingsagain.”

I caught her in my arms. “Likeyou?”

She shrugged and said in explanation, “I don’t stand a chance against badboys.”

“Good thing for me. I’m bad at lots ofstuff.”

She laughed, wrapped one arm around my neck and smoothed my hair from my face with her other hand. “Sebastian, mylove?”

“Georgina, mylove?”

She pursed her lips as a mix of pity and sympathy crossed her delicate features. “Are you going to be able to paint over the kids’ heightcharts?”

My sister and her husband had helped with the house as much as they were able to. They’d brought the kids nearly every weekend, and I’d gotten in the habit of measuring Carmen and José in the laundry room. Although it had always been the plan to paint over the marks before we sold, for some reason I’d envisioned filling the wall with colorful charts, from Libby’s kids to our dogs to our own children. “We have to,” I said. “Can’t exactly list this place as gut renovated minus some random kids’ heightcharts.”

“Can I say something you might not want tohear?”