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CHAPTER NINETEEN
For the first time in longer than Heidi could remember, she was stirred awake not by the sounds of obsessive fitness but by her brain’s awareness that it was a workday and that she needed to get payroll handled by one o’clock.
Rubbing her greasy eyes, she whispered, “Carine.”
Carine had an arm and leg slung over Heidi like a koala clinging to a eucalyptus branch. “No,” Carine murmured without stirring.
Chuckling, Heidi rubbed Carine’s upper back through the comforter. “My, my. Aren’t we defiant in the morning?”
Having someone that warm and soft snuggled against her tempted Heidi to do a bogus work call-out. The last time she’d done that, she’d been hooked into aCSImarathon, and the channel guide told her there would be no good stopping point.
It’d been five years since that happened. Heidi didn’t play hooky.
I could work from home. Take a little more time to screw my head on.
That wouldn’t change the fact that Carine was also supposed to be at work, and her job was far more public-facing than Heidi’s. If Carine didn’t show up, Lipton couldn’t sell houses.
Heidi nudged her thumb gently into the hollow at the base of Carine’s skull and massaged there. “Sweetheart.”
“No.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“I was reminded two hours ago when I got up to pee.”
“So, you know what time it is, then?”
“I’m just guessing it was two hours. Felt like two.”
“Two, three, or however many, I think you have to go to work.”
Still not opening her eyes, Carine snarled against Heidi’s side. “It’s like taking a security blanket away from a puppy. You wouldn’t take a blanket away from a puppy, would you?”
“If that puppy had a job to go to and bills to pay, I certainly would.”
“Puppy needs to find herself a person who’ll pay all her bills for her and buy her gourmet treats.”
Heidi knew Carine was joking with that quip. Carine wasn’t a woman who was used to being pampered. Even when Heidi had loaned her a car after Carine’s well-loved coupe had staged a Shakespearean demise, Carine had kept trying to offer her funds as though the favor had been a leasing arrangement.
The idea of Carine drifting about all day and never having to wear a bra for any professional purpose didn’t bother Heidi at all. Being far too rigid and routine-oriented, Heidi couldn’t personally subscribe to such a leisurely lifestyle, but she certainly didn’t judge people who could afford to do it. In fact, she liked the idea of finding Carine, dishabille, in her home when she unlocked the door every evening after work. She liked it so much that she didn’t notice the precise moment Carine had drawn Heidi’s nipple into her mouth.
Heidi clicked her tongue scoldingly. “You’ll suck off all the novelty. Careful.”
Sighing, Carine rolled onto her back. “Then I’ll find something else to suck off it. I’m adaptable, remember?”
She sat up, though she didn’t look pleased about doing so.
Shuffling toward the bathroom, she muttered something emphatically. All Heidi could make out from the cascade of words was “unfair” and titties.” Then she stared down at her chest—at one slick, tautened nipple and one undisturbed.
“Yes, sweetheart. That certainly was unfair.”
Heidi was still thinking about Carine’s stolen nipple slurp when she arrived at Shora that evening with a box of groceries and a sheath of signed real estate forms.
She nodded a greeting to the prospective homeowners descending the model home’s porch steps and let herself into the foyer.
In a form-fitting white dress printed with grape leaves and with strappy three-inch stilettos on her feet, Carine was refilling a wax warmer with cookie-scented pellets.
Her eyes went round, and her grin went wide when she spotted Heidi.
