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Heidi didn’t think she’d ever get used to that reaction. So many of her encounters in the past had been somber affairs, likely because her partners fed off her energy without consciously knowing they were. Whatever Scorpio vibes Heidi was putting off, Carine seemed wholly unaffected by them.
“I was afraid to text you,” Carine said through a laugh.
Heidi shifted the food box to her other hip and attempted to raise an eyebrow.
Might need to go easier on the injections so those babies can read my expressions.
“Why?” Heidi asked. “I thought we came to an agreement.”
Heidi suddenly had a reasonable idea of what Carine must have looked like as a young teen. Her face lit up with an energy she tried to suppress, like a girl used to smiling big but who was self-conscious about her orthodontia.
Heidi wasn’t used to that, either—having a girlfriend capable of “giddy.”
“It’s like making a deal with a fairy.” Carine tittered and tossed the cookie pellet remnants into a bureau drawer. “There’s got to be some traps and loopholes in the verbiage or scribbled into the margins in invisible ink.”
“I’m not so cagey. Here.” Heidi gestured to the box with the paperwork she held. “I had a hunch you hadn’t shopped, or if you had, that the results of the errand were mostly smoothie mixes and freezer meals. I brought you actual vegetables.”
“Did you bring me time to cook them?”
“You’re a big girl. I guarantee you’ll find time to sort out your new routines.”
There were other things in the box, too. Heidi had pulled one of her precious bags of Valerie’s maternity leave meat sauce out of the freezer and picked up fresh spaghetti noodles on the way over. Easy to cook, easy to eat, and hard to waste time with. She didn’t want to give Carine busy work or fiddly shit meant to teach the lesson of “implied quality.” She was a selfish bitch who wanted undivided attention from her woman since she, apparently, had one.
Like cauliflower, she was going to need extra time to digest that.
Carine took the box and peered inside.
“And this is some paperwork for the design development. Need to schedule the closing of the lot. Val’s already sketching plans.”
“I know. She was here earlier meeting with a couple who wanted some modifications on their cookie-cutter traditional,” Carine said with her head inside the refrigerator. “I have a hunch she’s not going to bother running your plans by Lipton. If the siding fits the community theme and the house doesn’t have an abstract shape, they’re not going to know anything’s different about the inside until the inspectors file their stuff. By then, it’ll be too late for them to give a damn. If anyone asks them how you got special treatment, Lipton will blow some smoke and say you had special considerations due to owning a premium lot or some such bullshit.” She blinked a few times rapidly and slowly lifted a gallon freezer bag. “Is this…Valsauce?”
“A whole gallon. In theory.”
“Lord, have mercy. Is it the venison kind or the beef and pork?”
Chuckling, Heidi leaned against the kitchen island. She watched the sway of Carine’s ass as she sorted groceries onto shelves and into drawers. “So, you’re familiar, I take it.”
“She gave me a couple of bags from the last batch. I stretched it out with a little water and made it last three weeks. How much did she give you?”
“She gave me two, but I knew where she kept them, so I got three more. Those are beef and pork, by the way. I’ll tolerate a little bear on occasion, but Bambi is where I draw the line.”
“Does she know you scavenged?”
Heidi shrugged. “I gave her a pre-trained husband. The least she could do was give me sauce.”
“You could give Spock a run for his money. Not that he had any. But if he had…” Bumping the fridge door closed with her hip, Carine looked at her watch. “Damn. Thirty-three minutes until the next clients. I’ll have to wait to eat. Sauce has to be defrosted gently, or the big tomato chunks lose their shapes.”
Heidi wasn’t going to wait to eat. She’d been a responsible grownup all day and had already expended her patience allotment.
She handed the paperwork to Carine.
Like the thorough real estate professional that she was, Carine immediately began scanning the places where initials and signatures were inked, and Heidi tugged down the boat neck of her top.
Carine stopped scanning. Her eyes swiveled a few degrees upward.
Heidi had left her bra in the truck. Generally, she preferred to feel put together, but above all, she valued efficiency.
Carine only had thirty minutes.
