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“Okay, you want what now?”
Rose stands, places her hands on the small of her back, and stretches while her thumbs press into the kink just there. Then she brushes a hand across her sweaty brow and looks up at her handiwork. Which, admittedly, should probably not be called handiwork since the most she’s done so far is demo.
At her words, Luisa immediately prances into the room, wraps her arms around Rose’s waist, and leans up on her tiptoes so that she can rest her chin on her shoulder. She kisses her cheek and then makes a disgusted smacking noise. “Ugh, you’re all covered in sweat, and it’s not the good kind of sweat, and there’s dust, and the dust tastes nasty, and—”
Rose turns and kisses her proper, then she pulls away, raising her eyebrows. “Better?”
“A little.” Luisa frowns. “You’re still all gritty.”
“Tearing down the inside of our new house,” Rose says, gesturing around her with one hand. She turns back to the room. “What all did you want me to do with this again?”
Longbourne is, admittedly, much better than Rose expected. It’s still hot and sweaty in the summer because they’re still in Florida, but the lake makes for a nice breeze every now and again. She’s taken to standing on the porch of the little inn Luisa runs, leaning on her elbows on the railing, and staring out at everything. Her hair’s all frizzy and full of corkscrews the way it had been in the Caymans, and she’s got it half-pulled back behind a Crayola blue bandana with its normal pattern in what is quickly becoming a stained white.
Lu’s been having her do renovations on the inn all summer; she has huge plans for how she wants it to look and feel, and most of those huge plans have to do with their own personal suite. Ever since she moved up to Longbourne, Lu has a room of the inn to herself – the suite meant for whoever runs the whole thing – but now that Rose is staying with her, she wants it to be bigger. Better. As though Rose wouldn’t have been fine with it being the way it was.
(Not that Rose minds bigger. She just doesn’t want to be the main workhorse.)
Today, Rose leans forward the same way she always does, elbows propped onto the railing, arms bare in the Florida sun, covered with freckles, lean muscles apparent in the light filtering through the surrounding trees, a glass bottle of lemonade in one hand, regretting that this is just normal lemonade but never wanting to tempt Luisa by getting something harder. She sighs, takes a deep gulp of her lemonade, and then wipes her lips with the back of one hand.
She could have done exactly none of this in her previous role as Sin Rostro.
Well.
She could have done some of it, but not while she was masquerading as Emilio Solano’s trophy wife. Rose Solano could have done none of this, could only have decided the designs of things and then never been directly involved in the implementing thereof.
But it’s nice – it’s welcome, actually – to let Luisa take on most of the design choices (with the exception of Rose pointing out when things would look absolutely horrible and then having to put her foot down, even when Luisa looks up at her with the biggest, roundest puppy dog eyes that are normally impossible to fight except no, Luisa, she is not painting that hot pink design over wine-purple walls; it would be ugly) and then to just be the grunt doing the job.
She’s….
She’s missed this, actually.
Not that you’ll ever hear her say it to anyone else.
Luisa shoves Rose into the shower nightly because Rose works in their suite until long after dark. By the time Rose makes it back to their bed, she’s too exhausted to do much more than lie there, which Luisa does not appreciate. But on weekends, Lu forces Rose to take a break and drags her around to her different favorite locales. Lu’s been in Longbourne far longer than Rose has, and she’s had time to become a regular at certain restaurants (the one diner and then the local pub, where she assures Rose she has never gotten anything even remotely alcoholic, and the bartender unsurprisingly backs her up, while giving Rose an unhappy look) as well as the one grocery store, where she’s become friends with the owner, and the one clothing store, which is as open to modification as Rose’s face changing plastic surgery ring had been.
Soon, Rose becomes a regular about as much as Luisa does, and she finds it’s oddly…comforting.
Again, not that she’ll ever say it to anyone at all.
But Luisa can see it, can see when Rose suggests they go to the pub for her favorite barbecue ribs instead of the diner for hot chocolate, can see the way her nose turns up at the idea of going to the clothing store because she would rather order stuff online than get something from that penny-pinching miser woman who runs the store (and then goes back anyway because she never means it), and she feels her heart – which was already three sizes too big – grow even bigger.
“Okay, you’ve got to keep your eyes closed.”
“Why does it matter when you’re covering them?”
“I know you can see through my fingers, Lu.”
Rose walks Luisa to their brand new, finished suite. She keeps Luisa’s eyes covered with her hands, although she probably should pull that old bandana out of her back jeans pocket and tie that around her eyes instead. The problem is that, after having been kidnapped…more than once, Luisa doesn’t take as kindly to having a bandana tied around her eyes as she used to. It’s made some of their play a little tamer on occasion, but Rose will never hold that against her. Better safe than sorry, after all. She’s just glad Lu told her instead of trying to push through it and hurting herself.
As they walk forward, Luisa giggles with nerves like a schoolgirl on her first day to a new class (or to high school, although Rose has only ever been to boarding schools and private schools since Elena took over her tutelage). “Is everything the way I wanted it?”
“Wait and see.”
Rose shoves the door open with the tip of one steel-toed boot, leads Luisa in a little further, and then murmurs, “Three, two, one,” into Luisa’s ear before dropping her hands.
For a moment, Luisa doesn’t say anything. This doesn’t scare Rose, because she’s never scared of anything, but it’s certainly odd. Lu’s never quiet like this.
Then Lu lets out a squee of excitement. “It’s perfect!” She turns and grabs Rose towards her in a big hug, dancing in a circle with her back into their room. Then, after a final squeeze, she drops her arms and races into their bathroom, where she lets out another little squee of excitement – louder this time, given that it echoes in the bathroom.
Rose chuckles lightly to herself as she follows her into the room, and when Lu finally comes back out with a big smile on her face, she says, “I take it you like it.”
“It’s wonderful!” Lu exclaims. “But, now that you’re done,” she starts, walking towards her, “I’ve got some ideas for fixing up some of the other rooms—”
“No.” Rose gives Luisa the most firmest look she can, staring down at her, and Luisa’s face falls. Then a corner of Rose’s lips curves upward as she says, “At least not until I have a good week off.” She bops the tip of Luisa’s nose. “I want to break our room in first.”
Luisa’s eyes sparkle with good humor. “Let’s start now.”