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“Insist? I seem to recall a different director to a certain naked situation. I was only following orders.”
“You can say no. You say no to people all the time at Clay’s.”
Carine stared at her.Reallystared at her ridiculously pretty face, which was becoming increasingly difficult, even when Heidi wasn’t wearing one of her more domineering expressions.
She’d been foolish to ever have thought that messing around with Heidi would be no different than those drunken kiss-and-grope sessions she’d had with friends back in college. Those had been light and playful. Those encounters were cuddling gone awry—the intimacy of mutual convenience when all they needed from each other was fun and attention. She’d never sat down next to any of those women thinking they were capable of clit-twiddling the soul out of her.
“I’m…going to go find pants.” Carine did a rapid about-face and hustled back to the closet before Heidi could hook her into another unbalanced battle of wits. She found a pair of one-size-fits-most leggings in an organizer bag behind the door and shimmied into them.
Needing a moment more to screw her head on, she located her phone, cringed at the multitude of notifications, and turned off the closet light.
She padded to the bedroom door while deleting social media message alerts and scrolling through various non-urgent texts from Lipton. In the tangle of it all was a message from Valerie, which she promptly opened.
And then promptly squealed.
Within was a picture of everyone’s baby wearing the little cap Carine had bought her. Carine had given it as a gag, but the tiny hat was styled to resemble a wig of red yarn curls and should have looked silly on any child.
Leave it to Valerie to have a baby who could make that thing look natural.
She hurried to Heidi, shimmying the phone at her. “Look. Sent a few minutes ago. Don’t know when it was taken, though. She’s in her buggy, so they must have been out.”
Heidi chuckled and held the phone back at arm’s length in her typical farsighted way. “The gummy pacifier adds something extra special to the composition.”
Carine spirited the picture into her Print Later folder and tucked the phone into a sweatshirt side pocket. “Still upset I had to miss the baby shower. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being salty about that.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Heidi mused in a slow cadence as though she’d had to thumb through the memories of the time. “You did miss it. Where were you, anyway? You missed a damned good punch. I knew better than to ask Leah what she poured into it. Some things should be left to the imagination.” Heidi bent in front of the counter and nudged the lazy Susan door. The clatter of pots and pans echoed inside the cabinet as she lifted and rearranged the contents.
“Last-minute conflict with work stuff. I told Lipton I wouldn’t be on-site and not to bypass the prospect booking system to connect me with potential buyers. So, what’d they do? Scheduled a tour and told me there were extenuating circumstances. A family was driving down from Newark. They had no idea Lipton had coordinated the appointment after normal business hours. They were sorry about it, but I don’t blame them. They were desperate to find someplace to live, and Lipton is always desperate to sell land and services.”
“Did they end up buying a lot, at least?”
“Even easier. They bought the property that was supposed to be the next model home. The first design Val did completely without Lipton’s oversight. Didn’t even have drywall put up yet. The lady told me she wouldn’t care if the roof was half off. They just needed an address to get their kids enrolled in school, and a moving company booked. Apparently, the guy had started a job down here and had been commuting back to Jersey every weekend. They’d already sold their house there and were living with relatives. I think they were all at their breaking point.”
Heidi whistled low and stacked three casserole dishes atop the slick black counter. “Worked out in your favor, but still pretty bogus that Lipton disregarded your boundary.”
“It is, but I’m just hanging in there until I figure out what I want to be when I grow up.”
“You could sell luxury yachts. Have you considered that?”
“Work for Tim, you mean?” Carine snorted so hard that her sinuses whistled on her next inhalation. “Ha ha. I have a rule about working for people who’ve seen me in a state of undress, partial or otherwise.”
“Well, if you ever change your mind, I’m sure he’d be quick to make you an offer. I happen to know the payroll budget is healthy, and with a sales record like yours, the risk of job failure would be low.” Heidi opened the copy ofHearty Pasta Dishes for Now and Laterto the bookmarked page, lifted Carine’s hand, and set the tip of her index finger onto the entry for “Stuffed Shells.”
There were approximately eighty-five ingredients, starting with what was probably an entire bag of garlic. For a week, Carine would probably smell like she’d tried to break up a vampire orgy.
Heidi opened the pantry door, gestured to the knife block, and tossed Carine an apron.
“I’ll keep the job in mind.” Carine tied on the stark, gray thing and tugged the sweatshirt hem below the ties. “But there’d be a learning curve, and I go out of my way to avoid those nowadays. And what will you make while I do pasta alchemy?”
“Coffee.”
“Is that all?”
Heidi shrugged. She tilted her head toward the television. “If you’re going to turn that on, you best do it before you befoul your hands.”
“You think of everything, don’t you?”
“That’s what Tim pays me to do.” Heidi grinned. “So, yes. It’s an unbreakable habit.”
