Time to Control (14 page)

“Ooh, I like this room,” I said,
stopping the cart in front of one of the pre-made room displays.
 
I went and flopped on the couch.
 
It didn't give.
 
“Okay, not this couch.
 
But what do you think of the
entertainment center?”

“And you need an entertainment
center why?
 
I thought we were
getting a flat panel to hang on the wall?”

I blushed.
 
“Oops.
 
Forgot.”

“List,” he tapped at the
notebook.
 
“Follow the list.”

We struck out on the couches.
 
Some were soft enough, but didn't have
enough room to snuggle on.
 
Most of
the arms of the sofas were hard and square, and I loved leaning back against an
arm of a couch to read.
 
These just
wouldn't be good for that, and I didn't want to spend my (well, Eddie's) money
on something that I didn't like.

“How high was the railing?
 
The half wall thing?”
 
Eddie asked, looking at the bookcases.

I stopped and tried to think.
 
Obviously, I didn't carry a measuring
tape around with me.
 
“Um, I leaned
against it when I wasn't paying attention.
 
Just above my butt, I think.”
 
Eddie got far too much enjoyment using one of the paper measuring tapes
IKEA offers to see how high my waist was.

“Are you done being fresh?” I
snapped, conscious of women's stares and men's grins.
 
I got a quick glimpse of one guy before
he turned away, and the creepy grin reminded me of Alan.
 
Ugh.

“Yep,” he said, giving a slap on my
rear when he got up from his knees.
 
I was mortified, and horny.

The half sized bookcases would fit
nicely under the railing, and we wrote down to get two of them when we got to
the self-serve section of the store.
 
We marked down to get three of the full sized ones for the wall.
 
We had to guess – we didn't know
how many would fit, but three seemed about right.
 
We had to hold the slipcover up to the
different colors of wood to choose what stain we would use, and go back for a
different slipcover.
 
I liked the
dark brown wood the best, and it simply didn't go with the dark brown
fabric.
 
Had to go with a light tan
instead.

I looked for additional throw
pillows and a throw blanket for the bed, but didn't see anything I liked.
 
The list of “find elsewhere” was getting
larger and larger, and I didn't know where to go after here.
 
Eddie said he had an idea, but wouldn't
share.

The kitchen table was the easiest
and least dramatic.
 
Sturdy, square,
dark wood.
 
Four matching
chairs.
 
Bingo.

We got through the rest of IKEA rather
quickly, especially since Eddie wouldn't let me buy most of what I would have
bought here.
 
He took one look at
the kitchen goods, and said we were going to Williams Sonoma instead.
 
I have to admit; I didn't fight too hard
on this one.
 
I loved looking in
Williams Sonoma, but since it was out of my price range, never bought anything
there.

Eddie was surprised that I passed
up the towels and linens in the store.
 
I said I preferred the products at Kohl's, and he was buying that at
first.
 
Then he had to ask what
Kohl's was, and finding out it was the department store near where we shopped
earlier, that wasn't nice enough.

"You're starting to act like
my parents," I warned him.

"Once you've had thousand
count sheets, you won't go back," he promised me.

If it was a quality decision, I
could stand behind that.
 
My parents
went with the concept of "if we had to pay more, it was a better
product".
 
That didn't always
mean that the quality was higher; in fact, that often led to cheaper products
overall.

Eddie turned his nose up at the
dinnerware, saying we could get better stuff at Williams Sonoma.
 
I was getting tired of not getting what
I wanted, though.

“Fine, but I'm getting silverware
here.”
 
I headed straight to the
display.

“You don't need to get it here to
prove a point to me.”

“I like this silverware.
 
It's plain; no stupid flowers or
patterns.
 
And it's thick enough to
not bend when you scoop out ice cream.”
 
I grabbed two sets, and dared Eddie to take them out of the cart.
 
He backed down.

Putting the self-serve items on the
cart was always the hardest step for me.
 
I was never an athlete.
 
Eddie, though, could fling the hundred pound boxes around without a
problem.

When we were told the wait for
delivery was three weeks, Eddie asked to speak to a manager.
 
Apparently delivery is same day if you
tip enough.
 

At this point, I was getting glad
they were doing the delivery.
 
I was
tired, darn it.
 
I just wanted to go
back to the hotel and take a long, relaxing bath with the romance that I had
barely cracked the cover on, and go to sleep.
 
Instead, we had to drive all the way
back to the townhome and wait for the delivery truck to come in the next few
hours.
 
We carried to the car the
contents of our laden shopping cart, which thankfully included lamps; I hadn't
remembered seeing overhead lights in any room other than the kitchen.
 
That'd make unloading rather dark.

"Oh, crap, utilities," I
moaned, only now figuring out that we hadn't gotten those switched on.

"Already taken care of,"
Eddie assured me on the utilities.

"Already?
 
When did you do that?"

"Mike took care of it for
us."

"Eddie, you can't just throw
money at everyone to have them move you to the front of the line, or make them
do things outside their job description."
 
I tried to keep my voice level when I
said this, but I was starting to get aggravated at the 'rich man' mentality.

"Chill, Schroeder.
 
I know that," he snapped back at
me.
 
I guess he was getting as
cranky as I was.
 
"It's one of
the standard services the complex does.
 
It was part of the paperwork I filled out while you were staring out the
window."

"Oh."
 
I stared out another window so he
couldn't see my flushed face.

He squeezed my knee to let me know
he wasn't upset with me, and I squeezed his hand in return.

I insisted that we had enough time
to make a quick run into Kroger's, and picked up light bulbs, toilet paper,
soap, snacks, and sodas.
 
After a
second thought, I went back for laundry detergent and fabric softener – I
hadn't gotten that many new clothes.
 
After we got kitchen stuff I'd do the stock up trip, but for now, I
wanted to have something to get by with.

“Well come on, let's get started,”
Eddie said, tearing into the first box.

“No.”
 
I took the coffee table out of his
hands.
 
“Tomorrow.
 
I'm too tired tonight.”

“Aww, come on, it'll be fun.”

“And you're doing it without any
organization,” I told him.
 
“You're
going to lose pieces the way you're attacking this.
 
And we really should be putting the
dining room chairs together first, so we have something to sit on.
 
And don't throw away those directions,
you'll need those.”

“Pshaw.
 
I've done this before.”
 
He waved the instructions away with a
flick of his hand.

I stared at him.
 
“Fine.
 
A contest, then, if you will.
 
We each do a kitchen chair.
 
He or she that does not have any pieces
left over, and the chair is put together properly, and the chair doesn't wobble
or anything, wins.
 
That person
decides the course of the evening.”
 
I have this in the bag, I thought.

“Deal.”
 
His dimples were so cute, I had to kiss
one.
 
That got us sidetracked for a
few minutes.

“So you still want to put things
together, or do you want to go back to the hotel?”
 
I realized what I said, then backtracked
hurriedly.
 
“Wait, that came out
wrong.”

Eddie roared with laughter.
 
He gathered me back up in his arms and
hugged me tight.
 
“We can go back to
the hotel.”

We ended up going to Neiman-Marcus
for furniture instead, and scheduled delivery for the next morning.
 
We took fabric samples with us to the
local home improvement store, and grabbed some paint to do the rooms before we
had all the furniture set up.
 
Since
Eddie was buying, I had no problems going with the expensive one-coat
paint.
 
Besides, that way we would
have less to do.

The weather was warm and dry, so
not only were we able to paint the rooms on Saturday, but set out the
unfinished IKEA furniture in the garage with stain to set.
 
There was a near disaster with me on top
of the ladder in the living room, which quickly got Eddie in charge of doing
the top part of the rooms.
 
I didn't
mind; I wasn't a fan of heights anyway.
 
We left the windows open so when we returned Sunday morning the place
would be dry.
 

Eddie and I put another coat of
stain on the wood while waiting for the furniture to arrive.
 
It finally came right at the end of the
delivery window, which made me wonder when it would have been delivered if
Eddie hadn't tipped extra ahead of time.
 
Rather scary.

“Ready to do more shopping?” Eddie
asked me after we finished staining the last piece.

“Sure.
 
Swing by the hotel and get cleaned up
first?”

“Nah, you look beautiful just as
you are,” he said, giving me a kiss.

“I was more meaning the paint
stained clothing.”
 
I gestured to
the reds, greens, and browns on his jeans and my sweats.

“They'll take money from us same as
if we were in suits,” he assured me.

The shopkeepers were fine taking
our money, but I still felt awkward walking around the Galleria in paint
stained sweats.
 
I would have felt
under-dressed in one of my new skirts.
 
The Galleria was full of stores completely in Eddie's price range, not
mine.
 
It did have the closest
Williams Sonoma, which is what we were there for anyway.

Williams Sonoma is not really
designed with a shopping spree in mind.
 
The aisles – what few they have – are narrow, and there's no
carts to put goods in.
 
Even the
registers don't have much space to put things down on.
 
We ended up making a lot of trips up to
the register to deposit pots, pans, the only dish pattern we could agree on,
dish towels, gadgets, and utensils.
 
I let the sales lady talk me into an expensive set of knives, which I
always wanted but never could afford.
 
It wasn't hard for me to talk me into them.

Eddie even let me splurge on
foodstuffs from there.
 
I didn't
know if I'd ever eat some of them, but the packaging was so pretty.
 
Worst comes to worst, it was decorations
for the kitchen.

We ended up making three trips to
the car to carry it all out.
 
It
might have taken less, but there was a lot of heavy items, and Eddie took pity
on me and carried them himself.
 
The
trip from the driveway into the house was shorter, of course, and I do think I
held my own in carrying stuff inside.
 
I was greatly looking forward to testing my new bathtub.

“Hey!
 
That's a five thousand dollar
couch.
 
Don't even think of sitting
on there in those filthy clothes!”

Eddie looked at me pointedly from
where he had sprawled, and made sure I saw him cross his legs and stick his
sneakers on the fabric.

I walked over without a word, and
picked his legs up and dropped them on the floor. I walked around the back of
the couch, heading towards the bathroom, and he grabbed me around the waist and
pulled me over the couch and on top of him.

“Hey!” I said again, but stopped
protesting when he started kissing me.
 
I shifted my arms to support me, resting my hands against Eddie's
head.
 
My fingers ran through his
dark hair, pulling and tugging at him to move his head how I wanted to for
better kissing.
 
I wiggled my hips,
and he took the hint and uncrossed his legs so that mine could be more
comfortable.

Eddie ran his hands up and down my
back, and I responded by running my fingertips
 
along his neck.
 
He shivered, and I giggled.