Sabrina paused in the kitchen to nibble down a strawberry-filled toaster pastry straight out of the foil packet and survey her beautifully decorated home in dismay. These older houses are money pits, Jackson had warned her before they purchased it together. He had been right, but Sabrina had been too smitten with the property to care. They had hired skilled laborers to refinish the old longleaf pine floors, strip the walls of the peeling wallpaper and repaint the interior and exterior. But the old pipes still creaked and groaned whenever a tap was turned, and the hot water heater was perpetually on the fritz. The front porch listed ominously to the south, a sure sign that foundation problems would soon be staring her down.
In retrospect, it probably hadn’t been wise to blow a substantial chunk of her savings on the large ruby-upholstered sectional, intricately carved Moroccan secretary desk and teak coffee table. Or two sets of Egyptian cotton linens, one for the master bedroom and one for the spare. At least the trio of Peter Max originals that hung over the fireplace was hers — an engagement gift from Jackson — as were the bed, desk and stackable washer/dryer.
Before she got engaged, the number on her monthly stub was a constant reminder. This is why I can’t have nice things. Sabrina had been constantly aware that her public servant’s salary was disproportionately unimpressive compared to her title as Theo’s Chief of Staff. When she and Jackson agreed to buy the house, she finally felt as though life were throwing her at least one concession.
She would finally have her own home.
The only problem was that a home in Cadence Corners had been made possible only by Jackson’s impressive income and the promise of Marriage, Inc.
Sabrina felt sweat bead her brow. How was she going to make the mortgage payments on her own? She couldn’t ask Theo for a raise, even though she was long overdue for one. Molly’s harebrained “save the day” idea was to lease out the spare bedroom. Sabrina peered into her pristine kitchen and had an invasive vision of the range top caked with spaghetti sauce.
No boarder. No way.
There had to be another alternative.
After she tossed her messenger bag and freshly laundered gym gear in the back of the Audi, she drove to the neighborhood gym for her early-morning workout. Forty-five minutes and a quick shower later, she was back behind the wheel. She nipped by Café Firenze, her favorite coffee spot, and placed her usual order, two large Styrofoam cups of latte — one for the road and the other for the office.
Sabrina’s morning drive through Cadence Corners to the regal Capitol complex in downtown Austin was the most relaxing part of her daily routine. It was hard for her to believe that her childhood neighborhood, with all its genteel shabbiness, was quickly becoming one of the most coveted places to live. When her parents had moved into a two-bedroom cottage two houses down from the Parkers’, the Corners had been the only alternative for young couples not fortunate enough to have been born into the old wealth of Peyton Heights or established enough to afford the bright, shiny newness of Westin, neighborhoods that bordered the Corners’ perfectly square, almost precision-mitered parameters.
But compared to its stuffier, well-kempt siblings, the Corners was the aging flower child of what neighborhood old-timers called “Disappearing Austin.” It had funk, verve and vibe. Elderly oak and elm trees leaned over the streets protectively, long-standing reminders of the neighborhood’s importance as not only a registered historic district but the first freedman’s town west of the Mississippi. A drugstore, television repair, barbershop, dress boutique, dry cleaner, and nursery — mom ’n’ pop holdovers from the fifties and early sixties — gave the neighborhood a distinctly retro feel.
Sabrina was a Corners lifer and had no intention of pulling up roots. She loved the modest craftsman-style bungalows painted the shades of pastel mints with their porch swings and handkerchief-sized flower gardens. People who had no sentimental attachment to the neighborhood — people like Jackson — saw the charming properties as one more return on an investment. But whenever she walked past Newton’s Drugstore and caught a waft of bacon cheeseburger straight off the grill of the store’s soda fountain, it reminded her that home was far sweeter for dyed-in-the-wool Corners girls.
Sabrina also never tired of seeing her neighborhood just as the sun was rising. Workers at the local nursery unloaded large barrels of gold, bronze and maroon chrysanthemums from the back of a truck. Across the street at Newton’s Drugstore, Pete Carlyle, pharmacist and mild-mannered neighborhood eccentric, was turning the “Open” sign around on the door. As far back as Sabrina could remember, the widower Newton had sported small Coke-bottle glasses and long gray hair tied back in a ponytail. He was also well known for his eclectic wardrobe, which wasn’t always soothing to the eyes. This morning, Pete was keeping Austin weird in rag-tag jeans, red Converse high-tops and a bright purple T-shirt that said “You know there’s a pill for that.”
Sabrina turned onto Congress Avenue, the busy main thoroughfare that took her to the Dome, and let her mind go blissfully blank. She idly tuned the radio to KCAP, a local station known for its obscure progressive rock and call-in shows featuring Gen-X sex therapists. The morning program blasted through the airwaves. She rolled her eyes at the familiar jingle.
“Fitz and Giggles” was a stupid name for an equally inane show. Shock jock Fitz carried the program while sidekick Gideon, a.k.a. “Giggles,” played straight man. When the two men weren’t engaging in dude-punctuated banter, they were looking up old girlfriends on social networking sites, perusing online dating profiles and giving single male callers advice on how to close the deal.
Reprehensible pigs that they were.
Yet in the three short months since it had first aired, “Fitz and Giggles” had rocketed to the top of the morning radio show charts. Men openly embraced the Fitz ethos of “Every man is an island with at least one hula girl.” Women tuned in just to see how the shock jock would offend them next. Like sucking the filling out of the occasional Twinkie and perusing People magazine, the show was a guilty pleasure Sabrina was loath to claim. She turned the volume up.
“Frustrating — lemme underscore that — sums up my weekend, dude,” Fitz grumbled.
“What happened, dude? You didn’t get laid?” Giggles queried with his trademark chortle.
“Thought it was in the bag, man. I was in a wedding. You know what you find at weddings, doncha?”
“Hawt chicks.”
“And none of them compliant.”
“Wait a minute, man. You went to a wedding and didn’t get laid?”
“It is curious, isn’t it? Public displays of matrimony — well, the post-cake and toast bullshit — were expressly created so members of the wedding party can get drunk and hook up,” the alpha jock waxed philosophical. “I did not hook up in the most, ah, corporeal sense of the word. But I made an honest effort.”
Sabrina reached for her latte. So she’d been spot-on about men who went to weddings with the sole intention of poaching the available women. Why was she not surprised?
“—I’m talking about the Maid. Of. Honor, Gideon, my friend,” he said thickly.
“Whoa! You almost reeled in the big fish?”
“Took me right back to the days of Boone’s Farm and dry-humping Lacey Adams in the back of my big sister’s ’82 Impala. Only this woman was — whoa, dude. Whoa.”
A brief chorus of Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” interrupted Fitz’s reminiscences.
Sabrina groaned. It never ceased to amaze her that in an enlightened era of gender equality in the workplace, throwbacks like these were given a public platform for airing their misogynistic grievances.
“So the chick was hawt?” Giggles goaded.
“Supremely so. Tiny little thing, all cow eyes and lashes. Sexy-as-hell voice. Husky, like she just woke up. We mugged, but no offer was forthcoming. Not that I ever had a prayer. She’s chief food taster and wine bearer for a state representative … whassis name, Mr. ‘Go, Go Green—’?”
It took only a split-nanosecond for Sabrina’s ears to register the now-familiar timbre of his radio voice. The wheels of the Audi squealed to a stop as her foot hit the brakes reflexively. Fitz. Fitzgerald.
Gage.
“Oh, hell!” The coffee that hadn’t seeped into her linen skirt was splattered over the car’s cream-colored leather interior. Adding injury to insult, the Audi lurched forward suddenly, another victim of Austin’s many arm’s-width-distance tailgaters. Sabrina pulled down the visor to procure her proof of insurance and heard a scraping sound as the car behind her backed away.
“Seriously?” she wailed as the other vehicle navigated its way around the Audi and quickly scooted away. Tears of frustration sprang to her eyes.
“—goes to show you that when it comes to Type-A career women, the cuffs aren’t always as stiff as the collar,” Gage concluded happily.
Sabrina dropped her head to the steering wheel in supplication at the bawls of laughter that erupted over the airwaves. Summoning up her bluest language, she beat her temples against the wheel softly, half-aware of the curious stares coming from the drivers in slow-passing vehicles beside her.
She whipped her car into the moving lane, cutting off a Prius filled with nerdy Silicon Corridor carpoolers. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the wheel tightly. Gage Fitzgerald had let her believe he was in Austin for the weekend. She didn’t need to wonder why. First base? Right. He thought he could hit it out of the ballpark. As long as she didn’t know shit from shinola, he could bed her and bolt the next morning without leaving a phone number.
Playing the small-town Iowa boy had been a nice touch. He made her think he was teaching her a thing or two about how the boys in Hayseed did things back home. But oh, he knew exactly what he was doing as his teeth gently tugged on her earlobe. He was seducing her in the same way urban bar prowlers did. Toward the same end goal.
What a jackass …
Still steaming, she parked the car in the garage and went around back to inspect the damage. The license plate was tipped at an odd angle, but the car had survived. Thank heaven for small mercies. The last thing she needed was to scrounge up the cash to make an insurance deductible.
Sabrina pushed thoughts of auburn-haired pretenders aside. Today she officially resumed her life. Her real one.
CHAPTER FOUR
Cruising for a bruising, aren’t you, son?
Gage heard Grandpa Fitzgerald’s voice in his head as he pulled his headphones off during the next commercial break, aware that his last ad lib was dangerously revelatory. Gage normally made it a rule to regale his listeners with tales of one-night stands and girlfriends from his distant past. Skewering Sabrina March on air — even though he hadn’t mentioned her or her boss by name — had been a little over the top.
But how could he resist after she handed him the perfect fodder?
“So say, dude.” Gideon downed the last of his energy drink and looked at Gage curiously. “That story about the maid of honor — you’re not just yanking my chain, are you?”
“Absolutely not,” Gage replied with a lazy grin. “God created Mondays so man could make his sordid weekend confessions.”
“Then you better hope the lady herself isn’t listening,” Gideon laughed nervously and downed the last of his energy drink. It wasn’t even eight in the morning, and Gage’s lanky coworker was already on his third can.
“Not a chance,” Gage assured him. “She’s more of the NPR type.”
Or perhaps she was into classical music. He could easily imagine Sabrina driving to the Capitol office in a brand new Lexus — she was a luxury car kind of woman if he’d ever seen one — and listening to Chopin plink through the speakers. There was no way she would intentionally tune into “Fitz and Giggles,” he assured himself.
He’d stayed well inside the safe zone.
Gage took advantage of the rest of the break to refresh his coffee and check in with his assistant, a recent college graduate who gave him the rundown on the types of calls that were coming in. Predictably, a lot of former groomsmen had phoned in with their own tall tales to tell. Even more predictably, most claimed to have sealed the deal with one of the women standing on the opposite end of the aisle. Am I the only one willing to admit defeat? Gage wondered.
While pre-taped props for sponsored advertisers aired, he kicked back in his chair, sipped his coffee and put his brain on idle. When he embarked on his career, he’d discovered that his best ideas came to him when he didn’t try to script them out in advance. Fortunately, the station had paired him up with Frank Gideon, a talk show veteran of fifteen years and master of ad lib who didn’t mind letting Fitz take center stage. “Giggles” fluidly fed into the on-air banter, goading Gage into riotous monologues and punctuating his one-liners with jittery chuckles.
The position at KCAP had opened up at an opportune time, and in light of Chicago’s floundering economy, Gage had booked a one-way ticket to Austin posthaste as soon as he’d received an offer from the station. That his oldest college chum, Sebastian Cole, happened to live in the same city was added incentive. After the two men graduated and went their separate ways, they had kept in touch through the rare phone call and even rarer cross-country visit. But to Gage, it seemed as though they spent most of their talk time frenetically trying to play catch-up with each other’s lives. Now he looked forward to reconnecting with the kid genius at leisure. They’d drink a few bottles of beer over a game of pool, just like old times. In the process, Gage hoped to get to know Sebastian’s new bride, Molly, much better.
Gage never doubted he’d made the right move. “Fitz and Giggles” had reached dizzying levels of success during the first month that it had aired. For the first time in his life, he felt like he’d found a permanent place for the rest of his career to play out. There was no shortage of lonely men in the City of the Perpetually Single, so his show came with a built-in audience — mainly blue-collar workers who needed to vent about angry ex-girlfriends, nasty breakups and bar prowl failures. The station’s program director came around for the occasional finger-shaking whenever the show took a sudden foray into subject matter of questionable taste. But for the most part, The Powers That Be kept “Fitz” on a long lead.
Gage could think of worse things to do with his day than shooting the breeze with Gideon for the better part of five hours. He looked around at the soundproofed studio. The small room was decorated with concert posters, station stickers and Gideon’s collection of vintage bobbleheads. A large dry-erase board affixed to the wall behind them tracked the number of times a technician had to use the dump button whenever a caller used language forbidden by the FCC. “Fitz and Giggles” had racked up an impressive five hash marks, he noticed.
And it was only Monday.
“You gonna try to see this chick again? Pick up where you left off?” Gideon leaned in closer for the confidential scoop with a lascivious smile.
“Oh, I’ll see her, all right,” Gage told his coworker. That much was unavoidable. “But the chances of anything coming to fruition are zero to nil. She and I usually don’t frequent the same social circles, as you might have guessed.” He reached for the tin of Hershey’s chocolate syrup that resided next to the coffeemaker and poured some into his cup.
“I dunno,” Gideon said. “If I were you, I’d try to run the rest of those bases. Trust me, dude. Those hard-edged types end up being a pretty soft squeeze once you get them inside the four corners of your mattress.” His coworker cracked open another energy drink and lifted the can in a knowing salute.
Soft squeeze or not, there was one thing that Gage intuitively knew about Sabrina March. She was five feet and three inches of nothing but trouble. When he asked Sebastian about the maid of honor he’d likely be paired with if Jace pulled one of his disappearing acts, Sebastian had summoned up his best academic’s flair and pulled out a quote from “The Taming of the Shrew.”
That gave Gage a fair outline of what he could expect from Molly’s best friend, but it was stil
l only a bare sketch of her personality. Then when Sabrina had told him that she was Chief of Staff for one of Austin’s most renowned legislators, he saw the full picture. Determined and career-focused, she was exactly the kind of self-made woman who’d scrapheap a long-term relationship if she had an inkling that she wouldn’t always get to call the shots. Gage could see her meticulously striking out items on a “honey do” list while the poor schmuck who summoned up the balls to propose played water boy to her star hitter.
“Confession: I was going to keep this little baby for myself,” Gideon drawled slyly. He produced a business card from a grubby wallet and flicked it in Gage’s direction. “But because you struck out so miserably at the wedding, she’s all yours.”
“I don’t know anyone named Tara Reese.” Gage studied the card, which identified its former owner as the assistant manager of Oasis, an upscale day spa.
“Remember the marathon the station hosted last week? We ran into her there. You definitely made an impression.”
“Which one was she?”
“Tall? Blonde? Hot body? D-cups? I think she had a boob job,” Gideon smirked.
“Congratulations, bro.” Gage feigned enthusiasm. “You just described almost every female contestant in the race. So what the hell am I supposed to do with this?” He tossed the business card back to his colleague.
“Call her.” Gideon pushed it back with his fingertips. “She asked me if I thought you would.”
“Wonderful. What did you tell her?” Gage groaned. His coworker had one criterion for sussing out what he considered to be women suitable for dating: their level of physical “hawtness.” For all Gage knew, this Tara person could have the personality of the average houseplant.
“I told her that you might or might not. That you were fickle that way.”
“Jesus, Gideon,” Gage groaned. “You’re an ass.”
“Hey, I just do whatever it takes.” His coworker shrugged. “Seemed to make her even more interested.”
Something About You (Just Me & You) Page 4
