He looked down at his plate, surprised. “Do you not like Italian?”
“Don’t you have a cook?” she blurted out. “I mean, you’re rich. You can afford a cook, right?”
He frowned at her, then put his napkin down on the table. “Eldon’s cooking is sufficient.”
“I can’t eat it,” she told him. “It’s not you. Trust me. I just . . . I’ll gag if I have to pretend to like another mouthful.”
“You already gagged,” he pointed out.
She wished he would smile so she could tell if he was joking or not. “Yeah, I did. Thank God this dinner party is only for two, right?”
“Is the wine acceptable?”
She nodded and chugged the rest of her glass, determined to wash away the taste of Eldon’s cooking. “It’s very quiet here, too. I find that unnerving.”
“Quiet?” He tilted his head, regarding her as if the idea were foreign to him. “Do you not like the quiet?”
“I live in SoHo,” she told him, and held out her glass for him to refill. “There are cars on the street at all hours, and noisy neighbors, and people going up and down the stairs of my walkup. It’s never quiet. You never feel isolated and alone like you do here. I guess I’m just not used to it.”
“I see.”
She had no idea what he meant by that. “Your house is gorgeous, though. Please don’t take it as a slight against this place.”
“I don’t.” He looked over at her, and she realized that, for the majority of their dinner, he’d taken great care not to look at her.
“Well, I appreciate you letting me stay here, regardless.”
“But you do not like it here.”
“How can anyone not like it here? It’s like a castle.”
“Castles are not pleasant for those in the dungeons.”
“Well, if my room is a dungeon, it’s the most enjoyable dungeon I’ve ever stayed in. Seriously, it’s fine.” She took another sip of her wine. “I can’t believe I’m insulting the grandest house I’ve ever stayed in.”
“Perhaps it is not the house,” he began slowly. “But the lack of company?”
Gretchen smiled gratefully at him. “That’s probably it, yes.”
“What about your cat?”
“Well, Igor’s not much of a conversationalist,” she teased.
He got that funny expression on his face again that made her think he was blushing. “I meant you could keep him with you.”
“Oh. That’s very nice of you. I worry he might get lost, though. My room’s larger than my apartment.”
“If he gets lost, I will help you find him,” he said gravely.
She pictured that—the stuffy billionaire on hands and knees, calling her hairless cat—and stifled another smile. “You’re very kind.”
“Would you . . .” He paused again. “Would you like to meet again for dinner tomorrow night?”
A smile curved her mouth. He’d sounded so utterly reluctant saying that, and yet . . . she didn’t think he disliked her. She didn’t know what he thought of her. “You don’t sound excited by the prospect.”
“It is you who should not be excited. Eldon will be cooking again.”
She laughed. “Can he make a sandwich?”
His expression seemed to thaw a little, though he still did not smile. “He can make a mean sandwich, yes.”
“Then dinner sounds terrific.”
***
One Week Later
Gretchen stared at the thirtieth letter and contemplated burning the entire trunk of them. “Seriously, Igor, I don’t see how a project like this could be so mind-numbingly dull.”
The cat didn’t get up from his spot under the lamp, basking in the glow of the artificial light. He didn’t even stir.
She sighed, carefully placing the letter back in the trunk and stripping off her plastic gloves. At least it was close to dinnertime. Strange how the project she’d been so excited about had turned out to be a total snooze-fest, and the billionaire she’d initially thought to avoid turned out to be the highlight of her day.
Over the past week, Gretchen had woken up early, dressed (well, sometimes), and headed to the library to dutifully work on the project. Each letter was opened up, attached to a specialized clipboard with delicate care, and then transcribed. There were better ways to do such things, as she’d pointed out to Eldon at least once, but he seemed very against her ideas. When she was finished with cataloging the letters, she’d be able to move on to the next phase of the project, which involved turning all her notes into some cohesive sort of storyline that would make a novel.
Of course, that was going to be a bit trickier than she’d anticipated. The letters were boring as hell. Written in a tight, crabby script, Ms. Lulabelle Vargas droned on and on to a Mister Benedict Benthwick about the weather in Rochester. Or how the family vacationed for the summer in Jersey. Sometimes she commented on flowers in her father’s gardens or the upcoming Christmas Eve ball that seemed eons away. Sometimes she commented on her fashionable new neighbor, down to the number of bows the woman wore in her bonnet (thirty-nine).
Finishing seemed eons away for Gretchen, too. She’d gone through plenty of the letters and they’d only gotten to September of 1872. She still had most of the trunk to go through. By the time she got through all the letters, she’d know the weather patterns for the entire time period, the neighbor’s wardrobe, and she’d probably want to jump off the balcony from the sheer monotony of it all.
And because the letters were so incredibly dull it was taking her a damn long time to work through them. She had a month to catalog the hundreds of letters. She’d gone through thirty in the last week. At this rate, she’d be done by, well . . . she thought of upcoming holidays and cringed.
Her agent would kill her if she blew an important deadline like this one. Not only was she behind on her Astronaut Bill deadline, but now this one? It wasn’t looking good.
“We’ll just have to buckle down, Igor,” she told the cat, reaching out to scratch behind his enormous triangle-shaped ears. “I’ll come back after dinner and then we’ll pick up round two. Sound good?”
The cat ignored her.
Figured. She’d only been at this big, empty house for a week and already she was talking to the cat. Again. “I don’t know how Hunter does it,” she muttered to herself. Give her another week or two and she’d probably be talking to the furniture.