Page 91 of Save the Date
“That’s true,” Cara said. “What else did he say? Did he tell you his plans for the building?”
“Not really. He said it looked like the previous owners had been pretty slack on maintenance. He’d seen the water stains on your apartment ceiling, so he wanted the roof and chimneys checked, and was concerned about the air-conditioning unit after seeing how hot it was on the second floor. I think he must have been up there in the past week, now that I think about it.”
“Oh my God.” Cara shuddered. “It gives me the creeps, knowing he was sneaking around, looking at my stuff, checking everything out, and I had no idea he was even here.”
“Yeah. It sucks your landlady didn’t even have the decency to let you know she’d let him in to check it out,” Jack said.
“Did you tell him you know me?” Cara asked.
“I didn’t see any reason to tell him, especially since I figured you’d be pretty upset about all this anyway.”
“‘Upset’ is putting it mildly.”
“Have you ever been up to the top floor?” Jack asked.
“No. There’s stairway access through a door at the end of my hallway, but that door was locked when I rented the place. I just figured the Bradleys were too cheap to get it redone. And I was glad to have the building all to myself.”
“Did you say the Bradleys were your landlords? Do you mean Bernice and Sylvia Bradley?”
“They’re the ones. So, you know them?”
“They live a couple streets over from my parents. Couple of old tightwads,” Jack said. He held up a key. “I got the impression Cullen Kane plans to open up the third floor and get it redone. We could take a look—if you’re curious.”
“I am curious. But I’ve got too much work to get done this morning. I’m already behind schedule—and we’re not even officially open.” She glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Bert’s got five minutes to get here, and if he’s late again today, I might have to start looking for a new assistant as well as a new address.”
Jack stood up. “I’ll leave you to it then. But if you don’t mind, I think I’ll run upstairs and take a look at that third floor.”
“Suit yourself,” Cara said.
He went down the hallway toward the stairs, then thought better of it.
“Hey. Whose wedding are you doing tomorrow? Not Lindsay Crawford and Will Becket by any chance?”
“No way,” Cara said. “What? Are you the best man?”
He grinned. “Nah. Just an old friend from high school.”
“Does that mean I’ll see you there tomorrow night?”
“I wasn’t gonna go,” Jack said. “Ryan and I are working tomorrow. But now that you mention it… maybe I’ll change my plans. Especially if you’re gonna wear that pink dress of yours.”
“Oh geez. That’s right. You’ve seen me in that same dress now what? Three times? How embarrassing.”
“I love that dress,” Jack said enthusiastically, remembering how it swished about her knees when she danced, and the view of her cleavage. “You were wearing that dress the night we met.”
“And I was wearing a dirty T-shirt and grubby shorts earlier that day when you stole my dog,” she reminded him.
“Wear the pink dress, okay?” He waggled his eyebrows in that comic way of his. “For me.”
36
At the stroke of nine, Bert walked in the back door. He held only one coffee cup in his hand, which he emphatically set down on the worktable before beginning to leaf through the day’s phone orders.
“Hello,” Cara said pointedly.
“Hey.” He got up and went to the walk-in cooler, plucked an armful of roses, carnations, and ferns from the buckets, and slammed the cooler door. In another moment, he was whacking away at the flowers, stripping leaves, snipping stems in a flurry of barely contained violence.
She debated asking Bert why he was pissed—because his body language told her he was. And then she decided she didn’t care why he was pissed. Some days it was better not to poke the bear. Was that an expression her father used, or was it one of her grandmother’s?
