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Valerie let her have a bite of the brownie and climbed into the SUV. “Just so you know, she’s expecting clients in about forty-five minutes.”
Not Naomi, Heidi realized in her brownie-staring delay. Carine.
“Forty-five minutes is plenty of time to discuss housing options,” Heidi opined. “Don’t you think so?”
“Mm-hmm. Housing options.”
Valerie drove off with the brick of a brownie dangling between her teeth.
If anyone had told Heidi when she was a child that one of her best friends would end up being her husband’s second wife, she would have asked them what they were smoking and where she could get some.
She fixed the tuck of her shirt, straightened her cuffs, and locked the truck. Groaning at the midday sun, she shimmied her sunglasses onto her nose and stepped onto the path.
Usually, she worked through lunch and avoided things like light and fresh air, but she’d been distracted all morning by the comings and goings of the HVAC contractors. With the addition of the constant foot travel of the admin staff past her office door’s window, she simply couldn’t keep her eyes on her laptop. If she hadn’t left when she did, the reports she was working on would have been riddled with embarrassing errors that would likely cause Tim to under-order boat parts they needed and over-order the ones they already had too much stock of. She prided herself on accuracy and opted to take a rare break rather than make a mess.
“Well, this is cute,” Heidi mused as she climbed the charming white stairs to the gingerbread-decorated porch. The Shora development’s model house was a bit frilly for her tastes, but not quite to the extent of being garish. They were trying to attract a very specific customer base, and Heidi was not in it. Heidi had been the little girl who didn’t mind wearing a new dress on Easter Sunday but definitely “accidentally” ripped the lace off the hem during service.
She spotted Carine through the storm door, standing at the rear of the receiving room that should have been a living room. Her back was turned, and Heidi didn’t want to startle her. “Knock, knock,” she called as she opened the smooth-gliding door.
Still, Carine spun toward her in a hurry, round-eyed and slack-jawed, and dropped the stack of papers she was organizing.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Might as well be. Jeez. You’re the last person I would have expected to see here. I thought I’d fallen asleep standing up and dreamed it or something. Give a lady some warning.” Carine let out a huff and folded her body precariously in her stilettos and pencil skirt to scoop up the paperwork. “Where’d you park?”
“At the side so I could make an easy left to get out. Driving the truck today.” Heidi let the door close behind her and stepped into the over-chilled room. Although she’d visited the community numerous times to drop Kevin off for his construction work, she’d never gotten around to looking inside the model home where Carine and Valerie had their offices. She hadn’t had a good reason to.
She took in the shapes of the room, wondering where real-life furniture might fit.
That little niche over there would be perfect for a piano.
Heidi didn’t even play anymore, but suddenly, she wanted a baby grand piano and a place to put it.
“Oh, Lord.” Standing, Carine put her free hand on her hip and gave Heidi a doleful gaze. “Don’t tell me I left your house wearing some ofyourclothing.” She took her hand off her hip to make air quotes around the word “your.”
Heidi put her hands into her pockets and peered at the workmanship of a built-in bookcase. She was used to seeing composite materials in homes of a certain age. However, those shelves were solid wood, as was the casing. Few home ownership vagaries irked Heidi as much as peeling MDF that took on the puckered cardboard texture after being vigorously cleaned numerous times. She didn’t subscribe to many of her parents’ lifestyle philosophies, but buying the best-quality furniture she could afford was one she agreed with.
“No, everything you left wearing last night was yours.” Heidi turned to her and studied her expression. She hadn’t driven all the way to Shora to talk shop. She’d decided to give herself a gut check and see what Carine’s mood was like. Too often, people got caught up in the excitement of an evening they hadn’t wanted to say no to. The next day, they realized what they had done and didn’t know if they still liked it. Because Heidi knew Carine better than most people she had sexual encounters with, she cared if Carine still liked it.
“I like your shirt,” Carine said in her typical by-the-way way.
“Do you?” Heidi couldn’t remember for sure, but she thought the sheer, cream-colored blouse printed with tiny skulls arranged in paisley patterns had been a souvenir from one of many business trips she’d taken in recent years. She always liked to juxtapose the extreme with the mundane, so she’d styled the shirt with belted, wide-legged black slacks, crocodile mules, and a sleek bun.
“Yeah, I do. You really get away with that at the office?” Armed with her sheath of papers, Carine got closer and squinted at Heidi’s right sleeve. “Of course you do. I don’t know why I always expect you to be in coveralls and a hard hat.”
“Oh, I’ve donned my fair share of coveralls. Back when Tim was getting the business scaled up, I was the one painting the striping on all those race boats. Hell on the shoulders. I was glad when the business got big enough for us to pay someone else to do it.”
“Did you ever worry the business would fail?”
“Every damn day and still do. You probably shouldn't be in business if you don’t worry a little. You can’t just get yourself an LLC and see what rides. You have to constantly be innovating.”
“That sounds exhausting,” Carine said cheerily in a way Heidi knew was Carine’s variant of sarcasm.
“Oh, after a while, innovation becomes just one more line item on your agenda. It’s a routine task to check off your to-do list.”
“You seem to have a way of distilling complicated ideas down to absolutely nothing. Or at least, to make them seem like they are.”
“I believe it’d be more accurate to say I don’t make things hard that aren’t supposed to be.”
