by Wendy Wax
Avery closed her eyes and groaned, though a grunt would have been more appropriate. “Oh, God. I don’t have the heart to tell Nicole or Maddie just how tedious and backbreaking a job that is.”
“I can get my guy and his people to do the whole thing,” Chase said easily, and she wondered if he were a better actor than she was or simply didn’t feel all that zinged between them. “But it’ll be pricey. We can cut the overhead significantly if you all handle the staining, too.”
The grunt rose in her throat and Avery bit it back. Having to agree with Chase was almost painful, but he was right; she’d much rather keep that money in their pockets. “All right,” she said finally, meeting his gaze while being careful not to be drawn into it. “But you can do the demo and get everybody started. You can be the slave driver that everybody hates. I could end up banished from the clubhouse.”
He nodded but didn’t look away. His eyes dropped to her lips, and she knew exactly what he was thinking about.
“And about that kiss?” she said, pulling his gaze back up to meet hers. “I think we should pretend it didn’t happen. Because of course it shouldn’t have. And we don’t ever want it to happen again.” She realized she was blathering and stopped, not caring one bit for the glimmer of amusement that had stolen into his eyes.
“Are you listening?” she asked, off kilter now as he’d no doubt intended.
“Of course,” he said smoothly. “You want to pretend that we didn’t kiss the hell out of each other in the pool house.”
“Um, right.” He was standing too close again, making it difficult for Avery to catch her breath. If they hadn’t been outside she wouldn’t have had enough air to breathe. “So what do you have to say about that?”
He shrugged. “What is there to say other than ‘what kiss?’ ”
Madeline had thought glazing was tedious, but it had nothing on hand sanding. At first when Chase gave them each a piece of two-by-four wrapped in sandpaper and explained that they’d be using it to sand the edges up against the walls of the rooms, the thresholds, and then the balusters and front edges of both sets of stairs, she’d squinted at the small block of wood in her hand and assumed he was joking. He wasn’t.
Without even a hint of a smile he’d positioned them around the upper floor and put them to work. She and Kyra started in Avery’s back bedroom, away from the electric sander and the fine wood dust it kicked up. Kyra sat on her rear and attacked a small section at a time before scooting along to the next section. Her video camera sat on the floor nearby and her head bobbed to some tune playing on her earphones.
They were supposed to finish the upper floor and begin on the stairs before the end of the day. It had only been an hour and a half and her hand was starting to cramp and her shoulders ached; she’d barely made it through the L of one bedroom wall.
The loud whir of the sander in the master bedroom prohibited conversation, but it also camouflaged the muttering and the groans. Deirdre and Nicole each had a front bedroom while Avery worked her way down one side of the hallway.
When it was—thank you, God—at last time to break for lunch they hobbled downstairs and fell into kitchen chairs. Even Maddie was too tired to contemplate so much as spreading peanut butter over a slice of bread. Through one of the kitchen windows she watched Chase Hardin conferring with the steam heat guy Nicole had found them in New York. When her neck could no longer support her head, she folded her arms on the table, laid her forehead on them and thought longingly of her mattress in the pool house, which just went to show how relative the concept of comfort could be. As she closed her eyes and tried to regroup, she did her best not to think about what Steve was or wasn’t doing. She hadn’t been able to speak to him since his cryptic email and had the sense he was avoiding her, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to give up all hope.
If there was anything she’d learned from working on Bella Flora, it was to focus on one task at a time and refuse to be overwhelmed by the enormity of what still had to be done. She would not be Chicken Little or the Little Red Hen. She’d be that ant in the proverb who consumed the elephant one small bite at a time.
Kyra, who sat at the opposite end of the table, raised her camera to pan across their ravaged faces. Even Deirdre, who’d spent the longest in the pool house bathroom that morning, looked tired and disheveled.
“Really?” Nicole asked, apparently unable to mount a full protest. “Do you have to?”
Kyra shrugged. With her hair pulled up in a high ponytail, the big gray eyes and the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, she might have been twelve except for the rounded belly and bulging breasts. Maddie knew that Kyra still clung to the hope that her hero, Daniel, was going to swoop in and carry her off into the sunset, but since the call from Tonja Kay, they’d established a certain détente; Kyra no longer voiced her expectation, and Maddie no longer tried to break her of it.
“We’re getting too many followers both on YouTube and Twitter to just disappear now,” Kyra said.
“Oh, joy,” Maddie thought, raising her head. She did not want to think of all of those strangers watching and commenting on their daily struggle.
The doorbell rang, and they all looked at each other, silently willing someone else to get up and answer it.
“I couldn’t get up right now if it was Ed McMahon with a check for a million dollars from the Publishers Clearing House,” Nicole said.
“Ed McMahon’s not delivering checks anymore. He’s dead,” Deirdre said. “Johnny, too.” She said this with regret.
“I don’t care,” Nicole said. “I wouldn’t even get up if he came back from the other side especially to deliver it.”
“Me, neither,” Avery chimed in. They turned to Maddie as if she were going to get up any minute and go to the door, but she couldn’t even make herself walk the five feet to the refrigerator.
Chase poked his head into the kitchen, saw them drooping around the table, and strode to the front door. Maddie couldn’t imagine moving that quickly ever again.
All of them perked up when he reappeared with two pizza boxes emitting the most heavenly smell. He’d barely set them on the table when the first was thrown open and they were reaching for slices.
“Bless you,” Deirdre said. “Remind me to tell your father what a good boy you are.” She took a large bite and sighed with the same degree of pleasure she’d previously reserved for caviar and the other delicacies she and Nicole occasionally bought for their sunsets.
“I agree.” Maddie dragged herself out of her seat and went to the fridge to retrieve the pitcher of iced tea. Kyra struggled up out of her chair and went to the cupboard for glasses. “If I weren’t so busy stuffing my face I’d call him right now and tell him.”
“Me, too,” Nicole said between bites. “I’m going to email him as soon as I’m done eating.” She licked her fingers and then beat Avery to the last piece in the first box. Kyra flipped open the second box and helped herself to a slice.
“It was very sweet of you to provide lunch today,” Maddie said. Her shoulders still hurt and her back ached, but she could feel her spirits rise with each bite. She only had to make it through the rest of today and tomorrow. Chase had shown them the mop-like applicators they’d be using for the staining and sealing. Surely that would be easier than all this hand sanding. Like the ant versus the elephant, the floors were just one more bite.
Avery ate as rapidly as the rest of them, but she was eyeing Chase with suspicion. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch, ladies. Especially not where Chase is concerned.”
He smiled amiably but didn’t deny the accusation. “I can’t have you fainting from hunger,” he said. “And we don’t have time for hunting and gathering.” He reached over to pluck a stray pepperoni from the box. “We’re on a tight schedule.” He walked over to the counter and carried the napkin holder to the table. “Even monkeys need a banana now and then.”
Nicole gritted her teeth as she sat on the couch in the pool house
and viewed that night’s YouTube posting. It began with shots of the last two days’ hand sanding and was cut to the theme song from the Monkees. Every other shot was a close-up of a female hand clutching a wood sanding block. The skin on those very different hands was scraped and bloody; the fingernails jagged and dirty.
In between the shots of sandpaper in motion were unforgiving close-ups of sweat-soaked faces, the set of hunched backs and shoulders. She cringed at the first glimpse of her own face furrowed in concentration, her age and discomfort clearly etched in the lines that bracketed her mouth and radiated outward from her eyes. Once again Kyra had demonstrated their monkey-like servitude, but had also managed to capture their grim determination now that the end of their labors was within sight.
Chase Hardin would undoubtedly get a good chuckle out of the video and its music track. Giraldi would probably enjoy it, too. The agent had been absent for the last four or five days, which both relieved and worried her as she continued to wrestle with whether to tell him about her conversation with Malcolm or assume that he already knew. She had no idea what her brother would think if he could see what he’d reduced them to. If he checked out Kyra’s YouTube postings, would he feel guilty or care in the least? All she knew for sure was that barely three weeks remained until August 25; she was running out of time to figure out her next move.
The music changed and drew her back to the video. She heard the plaintive “we-de-de-de” and then the “a-wimawehs” of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” covered by shots of them sleeping on their mattresses in the sardine can of the pool house, their exhaustion apparent in the sprawl of their bodies beneath the sheets. The bright yellow ball of moon hung over the pass, clearly defined in the pool house window just as it was now.
In another five or six days when the floors were done and dry, the designers would take over the interior of Bella Flora and the monkey squad would move outside to help paint the exterior of the house. Avery said they’d be done sometime the week before Labor Day. Which meant she could go meet Malcolm on the twenty-fifth without arousing suspicion if she chose to.
The video ended, and she scrolled down to read some of the comments. They now had eighty-five thousand views and a surprisingly large number of viewers who posted regularly. The odds that her clients and friends in New York and L.A. didn’t know she was slaving away on this house out of desperation were small to no-way-in-hell. If she ever saw Malcolm again, she’d have to be sure to thank him for it.
Thirty-two
After a week of almost cloudless skies, it rained during the night. In the morning, they treated themselves to breakfast at the Seahorse, then walked in a light drizzle back to the house, where everyone but Avery climbed into Maddie’s van for a trip down to a Sarasota design center. Avery noticed that Nicole no longer quibbled about accepting a ride in what she’d dubbed the mother-mobile, but seemed perfectly happy to give up the shotgun seat to Deirdre.
As they backed down the drive and disappeared around the corner, it hit Avery that these onetime strangers were now among the handful of people she knew best. Alone, Avery walked around the house to the backyard. On the loggia she stared out over the repaired but still empty pool. Despite the raindrops that still fell, sweat pooled between her breasts and slid down the small of her back; her T-shirt clung like a damp rag. She would have liked to take a shower and stretch out on the couch in the pool house with the air-conditioning set on “igloo”; having the space to herself for a few hours would be completely heavenly. But she had work to do.
“Onward,” she muttered, throwing open the French doors to the salon, whose wood floor needed its final coat, and inhaled a face full of chemicals. Sputtering and gasping for breath, Avery turned her back on the room that had been shut tightly against the rain, hoping that at least some of the pent-up fumes would escape.
After drawing in a few deep breaths of fresh, if humid, air she eased out of her sneakers and stepped into the room in her white socks. The wood, laid inside a basket-woven brick border, already gleamed brightly. Just one more coat, she told herself, trying to keep her breathing shallow. One more coat and a day to dry and Bella Flora would be ready for humans again, as long as they wore white socks those first few days.
Carefully, she poured the polyurethane into the pan, which she’d set in the rectangular room’s far corner, and dipped the mop head into it. Gently she began to spread the protective layer, smoothing it on with the grain of the wood, spreading it as evenly as she could, as she worked her way back to the French doors.
The smell seeped into her nose with each breath, making her throat burn and her eyes water. As she squinted against the assault, she wished she’d thought to bring goggles and a mask. For a moment she imagined tears squeezing their way out and landing on the floor, possibly causing the wood to bubble. Would she be able to catch them before they landed? The thought made her smile.
She worked steadily, trying to concentrate on each stroke and each backward step, but the thoughts flitting around in her head began to flit more quickly and then began to border on the bizarre. She stumbled and used the mop handle to keep herself from falling into the still-wet polyurethane.
Outside a truck rattled onto the brick driveway. A single door opened and slammed shut. Chase materialized in her mind, contributing to an odd light-headedness. A cartoon heart drew itself before her eyes and thumped wildly, which struck her as hugely entertaining. She laughed out loud.
Still smiling, Avery took two steps back and pulled the pan of poly with her. Her lips felt larger than usual, her tongue too thick for her mouth. It slid out to smooth her dry lips, and she realized they’d automatically twisted up into a kind of loopy smile.
Chase’s footsteps crunched on the gritty concrete around the pool, and she stole a peek out the window. He stood contemplating the pass as she had earlier, his expression reflective. Then he walked to where the pipes for the steam heat system still lay exposed and crouched down to inspect them. Avery giggled.
Although he couldn’t have heard her, something made Chase turn toward the salon. His brow furrowed as he stood and looked her way. Avery pushed the mop back and forth a few times and giggled harder.
“Avery?” Chase’s voice sounded behind her.
Startled, she turned and teetered precariously, almost falling into the section she’d just finished. His hand shot out and wrapped around her upper arm to steady her. It was warm and firm, just as his lips had been. She glanced down at the patch of floor she’d just finished and knew she was lucky her socks weren’t now stuck to it. Then she turned and looked at him.
He smiled, and she burst into laughter.
“What’s so funny?” He leaned close to peer directly into her eyes. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, which made her head spin wildly. This, too, made her laugh. Chase looked at her as if she’d gone batty.
“Avery?” His hold on her upper arm tightened, and he reached across her to take the mop. “How long have you been in here breathing these fumes?”
She felt her eyes get big as he put the mop down and used both arms to lift her off the floor and cradle her against his chest.
“Don’t know,” she said, surprised when the laughter turned to tears, unable to make sense of what was happening. “But I can’t cry on the floor.” She looked up urgently. “It’s not good to let it get wet.”
The tears slid down her cheeks, but Chase carried her out of the room and onto the loggia before they could land. There he dropped onto the wicker sofa, still holding her against his chest with her bottom cushioned in his lap.
“Tha’s nice,” she said.
His chest rumbled beneath her ear, and she raised her head to look into his laughing eyes. “’S not funny,” she said as the tears continued to slide down her cheeks, dampening both of their shirts. “Don’t want to have to start over. Have to kill myself first.” She buried her face in his dampened T-shirt, her thoughts still swirling. “Hey,” she said in amazement. “You smell good.”
>
“You are completely blotto,” he said, setting his chest humming again against her ear. “That’s what happens when you try to seal a floor without proper ventilation.”
She wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but she liked the way his arms felt around her. She especially liked the feel of his chest rumbling beneath her ear, the safe feeling that enveloped her.
“Can I kiss you?” she asked but then went ahead without waiting for an answer. His lips felt even better than she remembered. And so did his tongue when she managed to locate it.
“Avery.” He pulled his mouth free but didn’t let go of her. “I don’t think . . .”
“Good.” She breathed him in and felt him all around her. “Don’t think.” She brought their lips together again and kissed him more fully, pressing her bottom into his lap. He hardened underneath her. “I’m not.” She moved her tongue to his ear while the rhythm of her blood whooshed in her own. “Can’t think right now. Don’t want to.” Her mouth formed the loopy smile that it apparently preferred. For fun, she nibbled on his earlobe and repositioned herself slightly so she could rub her chest against his. “Doesn’t that feel good?”
He groaned and shifted beneath her. “Jesus, Avery. You’re not going to like it when you wake up and realize . . .”
She stopped the words, which made no sense to her at all, with her mouth, kissing him until he finally shut up and kissed her back like she wanted him to. Thoroughly. Deeply. Completely.
Then, although she hadn’t realized it was possible to kiss all the way into oblivion, she must have figured out how to do it. Because all of a sudden, everything went dark.
“Avery?” There was that rumble under her ear again. “Ave?”
She tried to burrow into the sound. “Hmmmm?”
“Avery, you’ve been sleeping on my arm so long it’s gone numb. Put your arms up around my neck. I’m going to carry you into the pool house and put you to bed.” Her arms slid up as directed. There was movement. “That’s it. Hold on.”
