“We’ll see.” I clap a hand on Q’s upper arm. “If he’s got a problem with it, then he should’ve made a fucking appointment like anyone else.” I glance over at Roux, where she’s curled up in her bed in the corner. “You wanna come, girl? That’d make a statement.”
My dog shoves her snout farther into the cushion.I’ll take that as a no.
I leave my best friend and my dog staring after me as I stride out of the office.
You want to see me, Mr. Karas? Well, here I fucking come.
Eighteen
Scarlett
“It’sa pleasure to welcome you to Curated, Meryl.” I open the door myself to greet her and let her inside.
As Meryl steps across the threshold, I watch her face for reactions to the main floor of the store. With bright eyes, she scans the room and grins. “This is lovely. And it’s all for sale?”
“Almost everything. Some of the furniture is from my personal collection and not available for purchase.”
She wanders inside and turns in a circle, stopping to look more closely at a pair of sterling silver ballet slippers sitting on the end table. “My daughter would love those. She’s in her fourth year of ballet.”
“According to our records, they used to belong to one of the members of a dance company in Moscow.”
Meryl smiles. “In that case, I must have them.” A light laugh follows. “And to think I was resistant about coming. I’ve hardly made it through the front door and already found something I can’t live without. This is going to be dangerous, isn’t it?”
My grin is so wide, it almost hurts. “I’m not sure what you were expecting, but we pride ourselves on having a unique collection of one-of-a-kind items that will tempt you unmercifully because once they’re gone—they’re gone forever.”
Amy hovers a dozen feet behind Meryl, at the antique desk where we process payments from the general public when we’re open on Fridays. She’s been even more anxious than I have for this appointment, because she knows how much I’ve wanted Meryl as a customer for months. Even though I promised I could handle it on my own and Amy could take the afternoon off, she stayed to see exactly how it went.
“Would you like to follow me upstairs? The third floor is where all the newest items are displayed.”
Meryl glances around the room. “Do I get to come back down and pick from all of this as well? Because I’ve got my eye on a few other things, and we’ve barely scratched the surface.”
“Absolutely. The entire store is your playground for the afternoon, Meryl. We can take however long you want.”
She squeezes her hands in front of her, and I wonder if she’s secretly trying to stop herself from clapping them together like a kid standing in front of a bakery case. “All right. Show me the way.”
“If you’ll follow me.”
We reach the third floor, and Meryl’s mouth drops open.
As soon as she called on Monday afternoon to make this appointment for today, I pulled out all the stops in our restocking. Did I go a little overboard? Maybe. But I don’t care. I want to impress her—needto impress her. I’m not sure why I care so much, but it goes deeper than me seeking her approval.
I think ... I think I want her friendship, and this is the best way I know how to start. There’s just something about Meryl Fosse and her commitment to her causes and her convictions that inspires me to grow and evolve.
Curated can’t just be about creating the perfect social media feed, and I’m starting to realize that it never was. It has always fed my need to make sure that unique and beautiful items aren’t lost and forgotten in our world where everything seems to be disposable and nothing is built to last anymore. I want people to appreciate amazing workmanship, and the time and effort it took to craft so many of our pieces by hand.
“Oh my word, it’s like Ali Baba’s cave—full of treasures,” Meryl says in a soft voice as she turns in a slow circle.
She walks toward the curio cabinet with mismatched hand-painted pieces of china displayed on delicately tatted lace. But before she reaches it, she stops next to the sofa and studies a blown glass lamp in the shape of water lilies.
“Scarlett ... this, this is incredible.”
She stares at the lamp in awe, reaching out to touch it, but stops before her fingertips make contact.
“You can touch it. It’s delicate, but not that breakable. It makes me think of Monet.”
Meryl’s head turns toward me. “I learned how to paint by studying the water lilies. This takes me right back to my teenage years when the only thing that made any sense was a brush in my hand and paint on my smock.”
“I didn’t know you were an artist.”