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“This building has a standing contract with BSC. They keep several apartments open for us at all times. For out of town guests who have extended business in the area. Several of us even live here.” She smiled. “If they refuse us an apartment, no matter how short the notice is, BSC reserves the right to remove all of its clients and employees from the building with no notice and no penalties. To have so many apartments become available at once in such a prestigious building would of course crumble its reputation. Other tenants would wonder what happened, and of course—”
“They’d look elsewhere.”
“Exactly.”
Stacy was still chuckling under her breath when the man returned. “I have six apartments available that would allow the lady to move in immediately.”
“I want a balcony with a nice view,” Stacy said.
“That narrows the list down to three.”
“At least two bedrooms...”
“That narrows it down to two apartments. One of them has two bedrooms and the other has three.”
“A large kitchen...”
“Still two apartments,” he said.
“Shall we see them and let Stacy decide which she would prefer?” Tina asked. Stacy was positive it was more of a rhetorical question. She was certain that the manager would deny her nothing at that point.
“Of course.” The manager excused himself again and returned with two sets of keys. “Please follow me.”
They climbed onto the elevator and went up seven floors. He unlocked the door and stepped back to allow the women to enter. Looking around, Stacy wasn’t really impressed. She wasn’t sure what it was about the apartment that turned her off to it, but she didn’t think she wanted to live there.
“Can we see the other one?” Tina asked as soon as the manager joined them.
“But you haven’t...of course,” he amended.
Returning to the elevator, they went up six more floors. This time, when Stacy entered the apartment, ironically numbered thirteen thirteen, she knew instantly this was the one she wanted.
“This one,” she whispered to herself as she approached the sliding glass doors. The apartment had a spacious balcony with an amazing view of the river a few miles away. Taking a self-guided tour around the rest of the apartment only steeled her resolve that she had found the perfect place. The apartment even had three bedrooms instead of just two.
“I want this one,” she told Tina and the manager. She was so taken with the apartment, she hadn’t even bothered to ask how much it would cost her.
“Very well. If you just follow me back to my office, we’ll fill out the paperwork.”
She couldn’t believe that within an hour she’d gotten a job that would pay her close to triple what she was making the week before and found such an amazing apartment. Allowin
g a small distance to form between herself and the manager, she began to chew on her lip as she wondered if she could afford the place.
“BSC pays the rent,” Tina told her, placing a comforting arm around her shoulders.
“Why? Why are they so generous?”
“Oh, trust me, they aren’t. Okay, they are. But you are on-call at all times. I’ve had to take a client home with me more than once.” Stacy’s eyes grew round. “Once we were in my apartment, I never had to do anything that I didn’t want to do,” Tina quickly added. “They aren’t pimps. There were plenty of times that I didn’t do anything but provide supper and a conversation for my guest. But the bosses want to make sure you have someplace nice to be able to take their clients, should the need arise.”
Nodding, she accepted what Tina told her. After all, she couldn’t exactly back out of it now. Not after she’d signed that contract in blood. Could anything be more binding?
Within thirty minutes, Stacy was tucking the keys to her new apartment, security card and parking pass into her purse.
“Now I just need to figure out how to furnish it,” she laughed, climbing into Tina’s car.
“Well, maybe we can go out and look this weekend. There’s just too much other stuff that we have to do today to add that to the list. I’m sorry. Besides, what are neighbors for?”
“We’re neighbors?” Stacy couldn’t help the hopefulness in her voice. It had been too long since she’d had any real girlfriends. Thomas had seen to that. She wondered if part of that reason was to keep her from discovering sooner that he was cheating. To prevent her from having someone to turn to if she ever did find out the truth...
“Yup. I’m in thirteen-oh-seven. We share a view.”
