“Right,” Harrison said, putting Paige on the couch in the living room. “Here’s the deal.”
Paige sat poised and ready. If he could be level with her during this conversation, then all her questions would be answered.
“As you know, I run a charter helocarrier service and I make good enough money doing it that it seems like a pretty dumb idea to switch it up for another career. Now the thing is, and this has been happening for years, I get customers up here to get a view of the mountains and the ice fields from overhead. They want coffee, sandwiches, snacks, and sometimes they even want a place to stay overnight. You should see how disappointed these people are when the only place I can recommend to them is the café I took you to in town. The other thing is that my house, though a run-down heap, is probably gorgeous under the grime. Sometimes people who are passing by stop to take pictures and occasionally I’ve had them come up to the front door and ask for a tour. But usually, they come halfway up the walk and then turn away because they realize that this place is only pretty from a distance.” Harrison took a breath and looked Paige straight in the face. “I thought that if I could fix these problems, I might be able to make more money and get more customers. I don't want to use the words 'tourist destination' but that might be what I'm aiming for.”
Paige gaped. Her eyes unconsciously flipped to a spot on the wall where the wallpaper was torn off and she could see the drywall.
“If we do well with the first few phases I have in mind, we might be able to make enough money to build cottages on the property and expand the house with bigger facilities.” Harrison followed her eyes to the wreckage in front of her and specifically to the spot where the wallpaper was peeling. “I know what you’re thinking. It’ll take forever and it’ll cost a fortune to even bring this room up to snuff, but I’m not kidding that this place could make money. If we work hard at this, we’ll have enough to pay your debt by the end of the year, which is good, because your bank is demanding payment by then.”
Paige winced. “What happens if we can't pay the debt by then?”
“If we're making steady payments, even if they aren't as much as the bank would like, they won't bother us too much, except that they'll still be charging us interest, so we'll have to pay more.”
“And if we don't make any payments?”
“They'll repossess you,” he said shakily, like saying so was about as much fun as choking on his own tongue.
Paige didn't know exactly what that could mean, but she would bet the situation would be even less favorable working off her debt with the bank than if she had never been bought from Sleeping Beauty Inc.
She sighed.
Even without him throwing in that last tidbit, she didn't need any encouragement to help him. He was her owner. “Where do you want to start?”
“With this room. I think we should scrap the whole living room concept and go for something closer to a dining room in a restaurant. I want to put a window seat in that bay window and as many tables and chairs as can fit comfortably.”
Paige could see what he was talking about. It could be a very charming room if they changed some things... almost everything.
“With some work, this place could be the pretty little spot that becomes a couple’s favorite place to run away to for the weekend,” Harrison continued.
Paige nodded. “Sounds like it will make more money than if I made you over.”
Harrison smiled. “Great! Let’s start by going through the furniture and deciding what stays and what goes.”
Harrison and Paige’s Renovation Project
Take One
“How can this thing be so heavy?” Paige gasped, trying to lift the massive tube that used to be the carpet in the living room. It felt like her shoulders were going to snap off.
“Normally, I’d say we should cut it up into manageable pieces and carry those, but I think it should go to a better place. Don’t you?”
“Don't the words ‘a better place’ normally mean the garbage?” Her fingers were slipping around the carpet.
“Don’t let it drop! Come on, Paige! Toughen up! I want it on the floor in my workshop in the hangar. We’re going to use the workshop a lot during the renovations. You’ll be happy it’s there so you can kneel on the carpet instead of bare cement.”
Paige groaned.
Harrison let his side of the roll droop. “Okay. I’ll tell you what. Once we get this out there, you can start ripping down the wallpaper in the living room.”
“What?” Paige asked breathlessly, dropping her side.
Harrison paused and started tracing a little pattern on the backside of the carpet. “Well, I saw you eyeing it and I saw you kind of snarl. You think the paper is really ugly, don’t you?”
Paige felt transparent. How could he have read her expression so easily?
“You want to pull it down, don’t you?”
Paige knew he was baiting her, and with pretty pathetic bait at that, but what about it? He owned her. She had to do what he said no matter what and if he wanted her to let her rip down that hideous paper, who was she to argue with him? She heaved up the carpet and tried again with her second wind.
Take Two
WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!
“Harrison!” Paige screamed and ran to the staircase of the tower where all the noise was coming from.
He was there with a sledgehammer in his hand, pounding on the wall with complete abandon. He had white dust on his cheeks, and the shoulders of his navy shirt were turning baby blue.
“What are you doing?” Paige gasped in surprise.
Harrison stopped beating the wall and turned around to greet her. “Hi! Isn’t this a great idea? We don’t need this whole casing to the stairwell. Don’t you think it hides the beauty of the staircase? I’ve always thought it needed to go and now is the perfect time to get rid of it.”
“But I thought we were starting with the living room? We haven’t even finished taking out all the carpet yet.”
“True, but we should start with what inspires us, right? Like I let you work on the wallpaper. Right now, I wanna get rid of this wall.” He hit it again and a sheet of drywall came loose.
Paige stared at the ceiling doubtfully. “Are you planning on taking out the studs and everything?”
“Probably. Why?”
“Aren’t you worried there might be a load-bearer in there? What if you bring down the whole tower?”
Harrison smirked. “I’m not going to take down the load-bearer. Honestly!” He whacked one of the studs and something above them let out a nervous creak.
Paige shuddered.
“Well,” Harrison said hesitantly. “Maybe I’ll redo the drywall around that one and make a pillar.”
“Good,” Paige said, inching away. “I’ll still be able to sleep up there tonight, right?”
Take Six
“This stuff smells awful!” Paige whined through her mask.
Harrison pulled his mask down. “You said you thought these armchairs were worth saving if only they were refinished. Well, I told you how to refinish them and the first thing we need to do is get this grodilated paint off.”
“But the stripper doesn’t even take all the paint off it because there’s like ten coats of paint on it. How many times was this piece of crap painted? They painted it white, orange, brown, and we haven’t even found the wood yet. For all we know, this chair is made of paint.”
“Don’t be silly,” Harrison said, completely undaunted. “It’s too heavy to be made of paint.”
“Then metal, and then there'll be no pretty wood to uncover. This was a dumb idea.”
“No,” Harrison said cheerfully. “It was a good idea, but if you’re tired of doing this you could go work in the conservatory.”
Paige shivered, tightened her mask, and got back to work scraping the brown paint off the back of the chair. She’d rather work on the terrible chair than work in the conservatory. Harrison kept reassuring her that they would have a few warm months where it would be nice to work there. Paige remained unconvinced because it wasn’t just the temperature that sent her scrambling. There were also loads of smelly rotten plants that needed to be dug out, so the choice wasn’t complex.
Paige smiled though. Harrison let her work on anything she wanted. It was just as well. There was no TV, or regular web access, or anything else to do.
Take Eleven
“Purple,” Paige said, holding a color wheel up to the living room wall.
“Purple? Really?” Harrison asked doubtfully. “I know I said that I wanted the place to be romantic, but purple? I don’t know if I can live in a house with purple walls. It’s too…”
“Girly,” Paige supplied, choosing another color. “What about cranberry, then? But that’s not very summery and we will get most of our visitors in the summer, right?”
“White?” Harrison asked.
“Too boring,” Paige hummed.
“Should we paper it again?”
“Only if you take my advice and do the lavender brocade.”
Harrison took out his phone and pulled up one of the catalogs Paige had been leafing through earlier. He stopped at a page. “Is this the one you were talking about?”
“No.” She flipped to another page and pointed. “That one.”
“Huh? Well, I like the pattern. I think that wallpaper is a pretty simple way to make this place look done up, but why—for the love of all that’s holy—does it have to be purple?”
Paige fanned her color wheel, showing him all the colors in the world. “If you don’t like purple, what do you recommend?”
“Green.” Harrison chose a forest green. “What do you think?”
“I hate it.”
“What about one of the black and white ones then?” he said, showing her a wallpaper sample on his phone.
“Hmm. They’re prettier,” Paige conceded. “But I already went through the effort of scraping and sanding and staining and picking out new fabric for those miserable crap chairs and if I could have just slapped another coat of white paint on them instead, then—”
“Ah!” Harrison pretend-screamed. “I get it! Stop. Not white, but not purple.”
“A color that would impress rich people. Rich!” Paige emphasized.
“Red?”
“Yuck, makes me think of pizza or a barn.”
Harrison turned the page and both of them stared at the screen.
“Light green?”
“This green?”
They agreed in a second.
Take Fourteen
“Paige!” Harrison yelled. He had combed the house three times and he couldn’t find her anywhere. He scowled. He knew she was hiding from him. Ever since he showed her his cordless power sander with all the attachments, he hadn’t been able to get it away from her. She had been on the hugest sanding binge. She had already sanded four picture frames, two side tables, and believe-it-or-not, all the kitchen cabinets. Well, he’d had it! He could never find it when he wanted it and whenever he did find it, it was only because he followed the soft humming the gadget made.
He stopped and listened for the sound it made. He was positive he could hear something. It was up the tower. Slowly, he mounted the steps and went up. Paige’s door was open, so he stuck his head around the corner. He expected to find her doing some other ludicrous project, but instead, the room was empty. The sound was coming from the bathroom.
Harrison grimaced. He didn’t want to approach Paige when she was in the bathroom.
Then the humming stopped and Harrison heard Paige singing.
Harrison was about to turn away, thinking he had imagined that she was bathing, but when he saw the bathroom door was open a crack, he changed his mind about leaving. After all, who would be stupid enough to leave the bathroom door open if they were naked? She was probably in there doing some reno project that he hadn’t given her permission to do.
Well, he was going to confront her about it!
He swung open the door and there was Paige, wrapped in a towel with one foot up on the sink.
Harrison was gobsmacked. Embarrassed to his ears, he was about to turn away, but Paige was quite collected and asked, “What do you need?”
“Sorry,” Harrison said, still quite red. “I was looking for my… I heard a noise up here so I thought that you’d squirreled away my…”
Paige turned on her electric razor.
Harrison felt sick. That was the noise he had heard. He had caught her shaving her legs.
“Yeah, sorry. I’ll go now,” he said, pulling the door shut when suddenly, he saw his yellow sander on the floor of the bathroom. To be exact, it wasn’t on the floor. It was sitting neatly on a folded towel on the floor with a string tied to the handle of the sander and the other end tied to the towel rack. Harrison stooped to pick it up. “What is this?” he asked, his voice accusing.
“Your sander?” Paige supplied, biting her lip.
“Clearly. I mean, why is it tied to the towel rack? It isn’t a dog.”
“Well, I thought it might get away.”
“U-huh.”
Intermission
“Has that money from Narissa come in yet?” Paige asked, knocking on the door to Harrison’s bedroom.
He came out and shut the door behind him. “Yep. She finally transferred it.”
“What took her so long? Didn’t she know that we spent all our money on stuff for the house and we’ve been eating cardboard boxes?”
Harrison rolled up a piece of paper he was holding and whacked Paige in the forehead with it.
“Hey!”
“Don’t talk about Narissa like that. I’m sure it just took her a while to arrange things with her buyer, or maybe she needed to find a new buyer.”
Paige rolled her eyes. Harrison’s outburst was only the tip of the Narissa iceberg. When the power tools were silent he spoke of her endlessly. “You know what’s great about Narissa…”, “Narissa makes the best…”, or Paige’s favorite, “Let’s call Narissa. I bet she knows how we can solve this.” Paige knew Harrison didn’t mean to be tiresome. Actually, he wanted to keep his affection for Narissa quiet, since she was a married woman, but he failed miserably. Part of the problem was that Harrison wasn’t used to having his every word listened to. He was used to being alone and saying whatever was on his mind out loud. The other thing was that having Keziah as his in-town love interest was clearly part of his public image, but he never talked about her. He didn’t complain about the way Keziah got under his skin or act as though he missed her. It was obvious to Paige that even though Harrison didn’t want to go public with his feelings—Narissa was the one in his heart.
Paige got that easily enough. Narissa was willowy and very, very, very, blonde. Plus, she had this slightly lost look to her that just screamed to any nearby man that she needed protection. It was very natural for Harrison to respond to her that way.
To Paige, it seemed very different from the way he responded to her, the woman living in his house.
Paige rolled one shoulder. She was probably sitting somewhere between subordinate and friend in Harrison’s books. That was fine… for now. She knew the exact moment she wouldn’t be fine with it anymore. That would be the moment when he found someone he really loved. A man could own a woman and marry a different woman at the same time.
That time might never come. After all, Narissa was owned by Wystan as well as being married to him. Harrison didn’t have a single reason to hope he would ever get together with Narissa.
Take Twenty-one
Harrison came into the kitchen. “What’s that wretched smell?”
Paige was jabbing at the sink with a skewering stick and clearly losing her mind to panic. “How am I supposed to know? I didn’t do anything. It backed up on its own.”
“What are you doing to it?” Harrison said, looking over her shoulder.
“Well, what else am I supposed to do? The guck won’t stop coming out.”
“You could try a plunger.”
“A what?” Paige gasped. The water level in the sink was rising.
“Step aside, Rose Red. I’ve got this.”
Paige jumped back and Harrison jammed the plunger into the sink, completely saving Paige’s day. She came up behind him and looked sideways into the sink. It was bubbling and the water was draining.
“Thanks,” Paige said, grateful he had known what to do.
“What have you been running down the sink anyway?” he asked, but the look on his face was good-natured.
Paige smiled and put her hand on his shoulder. “Who are you blaming for what? I just got here. The question should be: what have you been running down the sink?”
“Whatever. Use this the next time it happens,” Harrison said, turning away from her to rinse off the plunger.
It wasn’t very much like a knight wiping blood off his sword, but Paige was just as grateful.
Take Twenty-three
“We should get the wrought iron patio set,” Paige argued.
“But the table is so small,” Harrison argued back.
“Yes, but we could put it in the gazebo in the summer,” Paige whispered in his ear.
Harrison perked up. “Huh,” he said, squashing his shivering ear into his shoulder. “I hadn’t thought too much about the gazebo. If we’re going to do that we should make an effort to make the garden better. How’s your green thumb?”
“I don’t have three thumbs,” Paige replied.
“Never gardened before?”
“Well, I never hung wallpaper before and I did it. I never refinished furniture before and I did it. That isn’t what bothers me. I honestly wouldn’t mind gardening, if only it weren’t so cold outside. I’m not used to it.”
Harrison seemed to rethink his suggestion. “Actually, forget it. I want you to be in charge of the kitchen when we have guests. We’ll start by offering muffins and sandwiches and stuff like that. You take care of that and I’ll take care of the yard.”
Paige paused. “Does that mean that we can have the iron set?” she asked quietly, pointing to the picture on the screen.
“Sure, Rose Red. Order it!”
Take Twenty-nine
“This one, this one, this one, and two of these.”
Harrison followed Paige around the superstore with a shopping cart. It was the first time he had brought her to the city since he had purchased her. It was just a day trip to buy kitchen wares, and she was having a ball.
“Wait. Wait. Wait. What’s that?” Harrison asked, halting her one-person party.
“Which one?”
“That,” he said, lifting out a yellow floppy rubbery thing.
“A muffin tin.”
“A muffin tin? How so? It looks like a tent tarp that melted in the sun.
“You’re so negative!” Paige exclaimed. “Look, you take this little tool and you can reshape the cup. So, you can make muffins in the shape of squares, diamonds, or hearts.”
“How about circles?” Harrison asked dryly.
“It does that too! Isn’t it amazing?”
Harrison yawned. He thought it was adorable that she was so excited over heart-shaped muffins, but he had to keep that to himself. He’d never seen a woman so easily pleased. If someone showed that contraption to Keziah, she would have snorted her coffee up her nose and grouched saying it was a waste of time. Narissa would have smiled patiently and moved on. Unlike them, Paige was happy and the muffin mold didn’t cost much. Harrison hoped it worked well for her.
She tossed something that looked like a syringe in the cart and Harrison scooped it out to see what it was. Another doohickey for baking—for cookies this time.
Harrison looked into the cart. Everything, from the plates to the mixers was yellow. It rang a bell with him. Something else in their house was yellow.
“Paige,” Harrison said, grabbing her by the elbow and pulling her up to his chest so she had to look straight into his eyes. “I just noticed something about your shopping habits and I wanted to ask you a question.”
“Shoot,” Paige said, glancing at his hand curled around her upper arm.
“Did you buy all your kitchen-wares to match the power sander?”
Paige offered him a half-smile. “Either that or my coat.”
Take Thirty-six
“So, Harrison,” Paige said, stretching her legs out over one of his as they sat on the window seat in the living room he had just finished. “Now that we’ve finished the living room and the kitchen, I was thinking about what you said about guests staying over. What room were you planning on renovating for them?”
“I wasn’t planning on renovating anything,” Harrison said, casually resting his hand on her stockinged foot. “I’ve been saving the carpet in the guest room forever. It just needs to be aired out. I suppose that if you desperately want to do something in there, you could take the leftover wallpaper that we used in here and do one of the walls.”
“But Harrison, I’ve stuck my head in there. Isn’t that the most boring room in the house? If you want this to be a memorable spot, we should redo the tower. If we let our guests stay up there, they will never want to leave.”
Harrison rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I hear what you’re saying and don’t think I don’t agree with you, but we can’t do it now. We’re out of money. As it stands, my first trip of the season is next week. It’s a couple who told me I should turn this place into a resort that serves coffee and snacks, so I know they’ll be here for that. After that, I’ve got enough ice field tours booked to keep the furnace running during the winter, but we need to earn extra money if we’re going to pay off your debt by the end of the year. So, stop thinking about renovations. I know it’s liberating to make this old hellhole look new again, but if we don’t pay that bill, the only renovation you’ll be doing is installing wheelchair ramps.”
Paige frowned uncomfortably. She didn’t know if he was joking about the debt collectors breaking his knees or not.
“I got a history of your bank statements,” Harrison said suddenly. “Do you want to look at it?”
“Wow,” Paige said cynically. “They sure took their sweet time getting it to us.”
Harrison took his phone out of his pocket and pulled up the statement. “It took them some time to find everything. Some of the records were very old. Apparently, they’ve already changed systems twice since then.”
Paige took the phone away from him and scanned through the dates until she found what she was looking for. Then she said, “Okay, this is the day before I lost my memory.”
Harrison peeked over her shoulder and commented, “And the next day someone deposited one-point-three million dollars into your account? Do you know what that was for? Do you mind me asking?”
“It shouldn’t bother you. I sold myself. The original contract was for ten months.”
Harrison whistled. “That’s a lot of money for ten months.”
Paige smiled and looked distant. “You know, at that time, the money meant absolutely nothing to me. I didn’t care about the money and yet I made the buyer raise the amount over and over and over again.” Paige absently withdrew her legs from Harrison’s knees and tucked them under her.
He let go of her and his chin lowered an inch.
“After that, I naturally didn’t spend any money at all until the contract was over ten months later. Then the withdrawal activity looks pretty normal. See? I was paying my bills, but because I earned so much interest in those nine months, I hardly touched the principle. Now as we get closer to the time that I sold myself to Sleeping Beauty Inc., it looks like I was traveling a lot, and my balance goes down accordingly.”
Harrison leaned in closer.
“Now,” Paige said, wetting her lower lip. “We get to the day before I had my memory wiped. I withdrew all my money, took my whole overdraft, and maxed all my credit cards! Why the heck did I do that? How much does it cost to have your memory wiped?”
Harrison shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, but I bet it doesn’t cost one-point-five million. I thought the price of getting your mind wiped was pretty equivalent to getting a face-lift.”
Paige sighed. “We’ll have to research it.”
“Can you think of a logical reason why you got your brain wiped?”
She nodded.
“Does it have anything to do with the guy you sold yourself to?”
She looked down to evade Harrison’s gaze. “It has everything to do with the guy I sold myself to.”
______________
Author's Notes: Thanks for reading! I'm new here, so I appreciate it.
