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Not that it matters, but I nod, and ask a question that I hope leads her away from the subject of the gorgeous doctor, “What can I get you to drink?”
“Vodka?” She laughs but follows it up with a much tamer answer. “A glass of cold water would be heaven, Els.”
I walk to the kitchen, sliding one of the glasses from the cupboard. I fill it with tap water, stopping to drop two ice cubes from my freezer in it.
When I hand it off to Pen, she downs more than half in a single gulp. “Thank you.”
I nod, waiting for the right moment to ask her if she’s ready for our measurement session. We’ve been playing phone tag for days in an effort to find a time that worked for both of us to meet up. That time is now.
“I’ll go slip into my slip.” She glances toward the hallway. “Can I use your bedroom for that? Or maybe the bathroom?”
“You pick.” I laugh. “My room, the guest room and the bathroom are all in that direction.”
“Perfect.” She plucks the Liore Lingerie bag that she arrived with off my coffee table. “I’ll be back in a flash and we can get started.”
Since we haven’t spoken much in the past week and a half, I feel the need to check in to make sure she’s as excited about the dress as she was when she first showed me the picture of her grandma.
“You’re still good with this, right?” I ask just as she’s about to head down the hallway. “Are you sure you want me to start working on the dress next week?”
“I’m so sure that I’ll be transferring the money to you while I’m here.” She grins. “I need your banking details. I’m full steam ahead on this, Els.”
“Good.” I smile. “I worked up a design in my sketchpad. I think it’s identical to your grandma’s, but I did add a little extra something to the neckline that I think you’ll like.”
“I’ll love it,” she says with confidence. “Give me two minutes to change and then you can show me.”
“Deal.”
As soon asthe door to my bedroom clicks shut, a loud knock sounds at the door that’s less than two feet from where I’m standing.
It’s my apartment door.
I haven’t ordered takeout and I’m not expecting anyone, but Astrid knows the security code to the main door and she has a set of keys to this apartment. Sometimes when she stops in at Vinyl Crush, the record store she owns, she’ll make the trip two floors up to surprise me.
To save her the trouble of having to jam her key in the sticky lock of the door, I swing it open.
“Hey, babe,” Philip greets me with no exuberance at all even though we haven’t seen each other in almost two weeks.
The last time I was with Philip, he was headed out of Atlas 22 after he took a video of Daxton dropping to the floor.
“Philip,” I say his name with the same level of excitement he has at the moment. “What are you doing here?”
“What kind of question is that?” He barges past me, not bothering to wait for a formal invite. “I ordered us a pizza. It’ll be here in fifteen. Do you still have the beers I bought?”
Since I don’t drink beer, I nod, but stop myself and shake my head. “How did you get in the building?”
He glances in my direction before his gaze settles on the window behind me. “Castle let me in.”
Naturally, the new manager of Vinyl Crush would give Philip carte blanche to step inside the building without so much as a warning to me. They hit it off when Philip stopped in there to buy an album for his dad.
Philip taps his shoe on the hardwood floor. “The beer, babe.”
“You need to go now.”
He glances around. “Why?”
I study his face. His brown eyes still lack any depth. His blond hair is cropped even shorter to his head than it was two weeks ago. He’s wearing one of the many tailored suits he invested in when he landed his job with a well-known financial firm.
He’s everything I should want, but he’s never been what I need.
