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“Oh, you’re up,” she declared, stopping short at seeing me sitting there waiting for her.
She chose to pack a simple work dress I had seen her in a few times before, tight but not clingy, in a deep eggplant purple color. I knew without seeing it that it had an exposed silver zipper from the hem all the way up her back and between her shoulder blades. The bodice was cut high – as they almost always were with her work clothes – going straight across her chest right under her clavicles. Her feet were in a pair of nude heels, casual by her standard with only about a three-inch heel. Her hair was pulled back as it so often was, something that should have drawn attention to swollen eyelids thanks to all that crying. But she must have been up long enough to use cold compresses to bring that down. Her eyes were as bright as ever.
“How long have you been up?”
“I get up around five-thirty most days.”
“Christ,” I grumbled at the very idea. “Why?”
“Normally, I might workout, then clean up, make breakfast, shower, get ready. Get coffee. Get to the office. There isn’t enough time for all of that if I got up later.”
“You have a full day before most of us even wake up. You know, life wouldn’t explode if you decided to give yourself some slack, Jules. But,” I went on when she tried to interrupt me, “you might implode if you don’t ease up on yourself a bit.”
“Thirty,” she said on an exhale.
“Sorry?”
“The plan is to slow down when I turn thirty. When I was supposed to be married, settled in a home, then maybe becoming a mom.”
“Planning to relax kind of defeats the purpose. And, honey, that is years away still.”
“Bill Gates said he didn’t take a single day off in his twenties.”
She had a planner that said Hustle hard in your twenties so you can relax in your thirties.
“What do you do on Sundays?” I asked, knowing she had most of the day off unless there was a big case. She would stop in the office in the morning, but generally only stayed a few hours at most.
“I have brunch with my mom and sister. Then I run errands, get my dry cleaning, deep clean my apartment…”
“Your apartment is immaculate. What could require something called ‘deep cleaning?'”
To that, she shook her head as though I was clueless. “Scrubbing the fridge, the oven…”
“But you are never home to cook.”
To that, there was simply a look of almost… helplessness.
Like she couldn’t help it.
Like she needed to deep clean it even if she didn’t use the oven at all.
No wonder she and Finn had always seemed to get on well even though she hadn’t forged deep bonds with anyone at the office. When he was going through one of his spells or whatever the PC way of describing his tendency to get completely OCD, and clean until his fingers bled every few weeks. She was the only one capable of calming him down when he came into the office to scrub the heating ducts, the bathroom until the bleach smell would make you light-headed, your office without your permission.
In fact, if she was out running an errand for someone, Quin would actually call her back to rein in Finn.
Because she understood him.
Because she had a bit of a compulsion to clean things herself.
“Do you ever just sit around and relax?”
“I read before bed or while dinner is cooking, or waiting for delivery.”
“Why don’t you have a TV in your apartment?” I asked, unable to help myself. Who didn’t have a TV? Even just to watch the news?
“We weren’t allowed to have electronics in our bedrooms growing up. Mom thought they made you dumb if you spent too much time in front of screens. And it is too easy to lose hours or whole days with screens. If I really need to watch something, I will go on my computer or laptop. But I usually just don’t have the time anyway. Plus, they’re ugly,” she added, giving me a little smile. “Do you want anything from the buffet?” she asked, going to grab her key card.
“Grab me whatever,” I said, climbing out of the bed. “I’ll get done while you’re gone.”
She clearly wanted to get moving. I didn’t want to get a frustrated Jules on my ass.
With that, she ran off while I showered, coming back with fruit bowls, granola bars, coffee for her, orange juice for me, and, oddly, a side of bacon. At my questioning look, she shrugged. “I didn’t know if the fruit and granola would be enough for you.” We ate in mostly silence before she turned to me, bursting out, “What are we going to do, Kai?”
“About what?”
“About Gary. If we track him down. What do we do? I don’t think he is just going to politely hand over my money. Not after all the work he’s put into this.”
