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Armand, her next door neighbor Viola’s old cat, was lying across Kitty’s driveway as she pulled up to her house. She flicked her brights on in an attempt to get the cat to move out of the way, but Armand just stared back at her and yawned.
Great. First, it was her friends. Now even the local cat was giving her attitude.
Kitty was pretty certain Viola wouldn’t take too kindly to her cat being run over, so she parked her BMW convertible (a luxury splurge after a particularly good real estate year) halfway down the driveway, a good three yards away from the slumbering feline.
She’d just killed the car lights when Armand stretched out his hind legs, then slowly sauntered his way back to Viola’s.
“Sure, yeah, now you get out of the way,” Kitty muttered, locking her car door. She glanced over at Viola’s house. It was almost eleven, but the living room lights were still on.
Viola Pantini had been Kitty’s late grandmother’s best friend. The two of them had founded the Gray Flamingos, a local senior citizen activist watch group. The Flamingos liked to go around town wearing matching T-shirts and protesting anything they thought infringed on their rights. Like the time The Harbor House, Whispering Bay’s fanciest restaurant, had done away with their early bird senior special. The restaurant’s owner had been forced to bring it back after the Flamingos had staged a (somewhat) peaceful sit-in blocking the restaurant’s parking lot.
Kitty briefly thought about knocking on Viola’s door and asking for her advice. Viola hadn’t just been her grandmother’s friend, she was now Kitty’s friend, as well. She was dating Steve’s uncle Gus, so she knew a little about the Pappas family dynamics.
Did Viola think Steve was a lost cause, too? Kitty wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to that. Plus, despite the fact that the lights were on, it was too late to intrude on Viola. At least, that’s what Kitty told herself as she opened the front door to the house she shared with Steve.
She stepped inside the living room and was immediately hit with the aroma of fresh paint and seasoned wood. Kitty loved this old house. She and Steve had spent the past ten months renovating it. Built back in the 1920s, it was a one-story Spanish Colonial Revival that had belonged to her grandmother. After her death, Gram had left the house to her only daughter, Kitty’s mother, but in a rare generous gesture, Mom had turned around and given Kitty the house.
She made her way to the end of the hallway down to the master bedroom where Steve sat up in bed, surrounded by a pile of papers. He wore a pair of black silk pajama bottoms and his reading glasses. The light from the bedside table cast an attractive glow over the muscles of his bare chest and his dark cropped hair sported a slight hint of gray at the temples. Frida was right. Steve was six foot three and two hundred pounds of pure male gorgeousness. The whole scene looked like something out of a GQ cover shoot. How was it that men seemed to peak physically in their late thirties? Life was so unfair.
He glanced over at her. “Hey. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Thanks to my super ninja skills.”
He grinned, then took off the reading glasses and tossed them on the bedside table. Seeing him now,
completely at home in her bed, looking at her as if he’d been waiting all his life for her to come walking through the door, it seemed impossible to believe he didn’t love her. She was a lovable person, wasn’t she?
“How was Bunco?”
“Bunco was…good. We spent most of the night talking about you.”
“Of course you did,” he said, still smiling. Then his smile faded. “Really?”
Okay, so maybe she shouldn’t have said that. She tried to make light of her slip up. “What do you think, silly?”
“I don’t think your friends like me much. Well, except maybe Frida, but that’s because I buy coffee at her place every day.”
“My friends like you.” Sort of.
He made a sexy, grumpy sound.
Kitty slipped off her shoes and pointed to the paper in his hands. “What do you have there?”
“A resume.” Steve was part owner of Pappas-Hernandez Construction, a company he and an old army buddy, Dave Hernandez, had founded. Steve was in charge of the north Florida office, while Dave ran the Tampa branch of the operation.
A high school dropout with nothing more than a GED under his belt, Steve had worked his way up the construction ladder to own his own company, eventually teaming up with his third ex-wife, Terrie, to make a fortune in the Florida real estate construction boom. Kitty was proud of him and his accomplishments. She was also extremely happy that he’d severed all professional ties to Terrie, a real estate attorney. Kitty cringed whenever she thought of the woman. Terrie was beautiful (not that Kitty was jealous or anything), but she was also pushy as hell. Kitty would rather wrestle a gator than cross paths with Terrie Hargrove.
“I’m interviewing this guy tomorrow for a supervisory position,” Steve continued. “Tom Donalan. Ever heard of him? He’s living in Atlanta right now, but he’s a local.”
“Sure, I know Tom. He’s Reverend Donalan’s son. He was a few years behind me in school. His ex-wife moved back to town last year. She owns that new retro boutique next to The Bistro.” When Steve didn’t say anything, Kitty added, “Are you going to hire him?” She hoped the answer was yes. Tom’s ex, Lauren, was a sweetheart. At Kitty’s urging, she’d recently been added to the Bunco Babes’ sub list.
“He’s got an impressive resume. A fancy degree from the University of Florida and some great work experience. But I’m not sure I can pay him what he’s probably used to.”
Kitty bit her bottom lip. “He has a son, Henry. I think he’s ten, maybe eleven. I’m pretty sure Tom wants to make this move so he can be closer to his family.”
“Do you know everyone and everything that’s going on in this town?” Steve asked.
“Pretty much,” she admitted. Sometimes it was hard for Steve to understand small town dynamics. He’d grown up in Cocoa Beach, another small Florida beach town, but he’d joined the army when he was nineteen and had spent most of his adult life in Tampa.
