“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.”