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CHAPTER EIGHT
Lord, what if Kevin’s here?
Carine rolled her eyes at herself because she hadn’t had that thought until after she’d deployed Heidi’s doorbell. She thought the truck parked at the side edge of the communal parking pad was Kevin’s. If he were at home, Carine would have to go to Plan B. She’d ask Heidi for the shirt she needed to “borrow” for work and be on her way.
As the door creaked open, Carine held her breath and clenched her cheeks. She hated what anxiety did to her body. She’d nearly chewed her lip into a bloody pulp by lunchtime.
Please like me.
Heidi leaned into the doorframe and looked Carine up and down.
Carine did not sigh, but her inner voice’s demand that she do so was a loud one.
She’d been in meetings and showings all day, and had needed her foundation, mascara, and lipstick. Without the cosmetics boost, she’d feared she’d disappear against the contractor-white walls of the model homes.
Heidi, as always, looked like she’d just stepped off a magazine page. Carine wasn’t certain which one. Whichever one did fashion spreads of Southern belles over forty who wore their hair too long and paired tweed skirts with tight vests.
“You’re wearing makeup.” Carine’s internal recklessness dampener had sputtered to a halt and died, and the nearest replacement was three sleeps away. “You can’t really say anything about mine, but I’ll take it off, anyway…” She cleared her throat and tried to tune her hearing to the inside of the condo. She couldn’t hear any voices—live or on television or radio. “Kevin’s not here, is he?”
One of Heidi’s pristine eyebrows twitched. “Why?”
“Isn’t that his truck?”
Heidi leaned out the doorway to see what Carine had seen. “Yes, that’s his. He’s not in town, though. He dropped it off here this morning.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Carine snapped her fingers, remembering something she’d scanned on the Shora job site calendar. “He’s working with Frank this week. Lipton wanted him and his full-time contractors to get some training on new building materials before they finalized the new general contractor service agreements. I don’t know what I was thinking. I actually saw them all pile into the van at Shora this morning. Probably got tangled up in my memory because so many of them were wearing good clothes for a change.”
Heidi gestured toward the interior. “You know where the makeup wipes are.”
“Yes, I know where the wipes are.”
Carine’s inner pick-me girl heaved an exhalation of relief as she crossed the threshold. She stepped out of her pumps at the door, then made a beeline for the bathroom.
She was sure that after the long day she’d had of constantly powdering her greasy face, the skin beneath looked like unholy hell. Still, she was going to be glad to have the paint off. It felt like it weighed a pound.
She had the bottom of her face wiped clean when Heidi stepped into the bathroom.
“I hope you have a tube of brick red lipstick in your purse,” the blonde said without prelude.
Carine stopped wiping, and her gaze went hazy on her reflection.
Oh shit.
She’d been in a hurry to get out of the house in the morning. She then had driven straight from Shora to Heidi’s right after the last car full of potential buyers had driven off the premises.
Steeling her spine, she resumed the gentle circular swipes of her skin. “You really do mean what you say, don’t you?”
“I don’t waste words. I’m a grown woman. My prerogative to not speak more than I need to.”
“Mm. Right.” Carine wondered what Heidi’s prerogative would be when she found out Carine had forgotten to bring the one thing she’d told her to have.
She pulled another wipe from the canister and attacked her forehead. It was going to be a four-pumps-of-moisturizer night. She could already tell.
“If you want to be fed, there’s lo mein in the kitchen.”
“Where’d you get lo mein around here?” Carine had gotten just about all of her mascara off. Whatever Heidi had spent on those lush, quilted makeup remover wipes had been worth every penny. She hoped that Heidi being focused on food meant she’d forget about the other thing.
“New place at the end of Broad. Perhaps they’ll stay open longer than six months. Hard for outsiders to get traction here in this culinarily uninteresting meat-and-veg place.”
