Molly Harper - Better Homes and Hauntings

“I take it there was some pining?”

“I’m not going to pretend he was the great love of my life or anything. I didn’t hear church bells ringing when I ran into him again at Mr. Whitney’s offices. Heck, I really didn’t think about him that often in the years after. I had a lot of other stuff going on. But it did sting like hell when I introduced myself and there was not an iota of recognition on his end. I mean, how many Cindy Ellises are there out in the world? And more important, who’s going to forget all this?” She gestured to her hourglass figure.

“And so modest, too,” Nina observed dryly.

“Hey, I’ll do false modesty about a lot of things but not the cookie jar.”

“OK, so that brings me to the question, why haven’t you told him?”

“Would you want to admit that you were so attractive and fascinating that a guy completely erased you from his memory banks?”

“Good point. But I don’t know if feeding your ego a steady diet of righteous indignation is healthy.”

Cindy frowned, crossing her arms over her considerable chest. “No, but it feels a lot better than seeing him staring at me and trying to figure out what sort of dud I must have been if he can’t remember me.”

“So you’re just going to let him keep digging himself further into a hole with every conversation?”

“Yeah, that’s the plan.”

“Can we make it into a drinking game?” Nina asked, an inappropriate edge of excitement creeping into her voice. “Every time he makes a reference to not knowing you very well, we take a shot. If he asks you out on a ‘first date,’ we take two shots.”

Cindy stared at her, eyebrows quirked. “You’ve got a dark, snarky center hidden under that wounded-baby-deer vibe, don’t you, sweetie?”

“It’s coming back to me, slowly but surely.”

CONTRARY TO POPULAR belief—meaning Cindy’s belief—Jake wasn’t a womanizer. If anything, he was a serial monogamist. He had a long string of girlfriends whose inability to get him to settle down stretched back to his dorm days. Over the years since what Deacon’s cousin, Dotty, called his “free-for-all” dating period in college, he’d definitely developed a type. It wasn’t so much about build or hair color as a mind-set. He leaned toward driven women, women who liked to spend as much time at the office as he did. Because in general, those women were going to time their “long-term commitment goals” carefully after they built up their careers, and he didn’t feel pressured about proposing after three months.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to settle down; he just wasn’t ready yet. He liked his life. He liked trying new restaurants every night. He liked being able to drop everything and go skiing or diving for the weekend with Deacon. Or forcing Deacon to leave his office at water-gunpoint and making him go skiing or diving. Committed girlfriends, the women who were in it for the long haul, had objections to that sort of thing.

But Cindy. The minute he saw her, he felt as if he’d run out of oxygen. It wasn’t just the fact that she was outrageously, undeniably beautiful. He’d been around a lot of beautiful women, and they’d never affected him like this.

Cindy was unspoiled, unpretentious. He loved the way she didn’t try to cover up her feelings, even when it meant turning that acid tongue on him. He loved that she actually ate in front of him during the group’s shared meals. She drank beer. She cursed. She walked around in dusty shirts with smudges on her face. She wasn’t trying to impress him. She wasn’t trying to cover up any flaws. She just was . And he knew he could trust her. If she was this rude to his face, she couldn’t possibly do or say anything worse behind his back. The same couldn’t be said about some of his ex-girlfriends, who were so accomplished at masking their emotions (through finishing school or Botox) that he couldn’t guess what was going on in their heads. There was Sophie, whom he’d caught going through his banking statements when she’d asked to use his bathroom. Or Caroline, whom he’d overheard telling her mother that Jake was “boring as hell but a suitable escort for parties.” And then Elizabeth, who had done a full financial and background check on him before orchestrating a meeting at her friend’s Labor Day party—and then didn’t understand why Jake found that unsettling.

But Cindy kept rejecting him. He didn’t understand it. He’d asked her to join him for a beer and watch the sun set over the bay. She’d said no. He’d asked if he could take her off-island for dinner at his favorite Italian place. She’d said no. He’d snagged a few blooms from the plants Nina was having brought over for her garden plans—prompting sweet, quiet little Nina to threaten him with one of those mini-rake things—and left a pretty bouquet on Cindy’s nightstand. He’d found it later in the trash can in the communal kitchen.

He knew she wasn’t playing coy when she rejected him. She truly, honestly had no interest in him. It was baffling. Most women liked him. Most people liked him. He was a likable guy. But Cindy seemed to have had some sort of grudge from the moment they met. Maybe it was a money issue? Could it be that she had a natural aversion to wealthy people after years of cleaning up their messes? That seemed as unfair as people in his circles discriminating against people without money. It wasn’t his fault that his family had been well-off from the time they strolled off the Mayflower . He knew it had kept him from some of the fundamental experiences growing up, such as mowing his parents’ lawn, having an embarrassing summer job, or driving a secondhand beater truck. But while it took care of most basic problems—food, shelter, education—it created others. Social competition, discontent, the pressure to keep up with the Joneses. His parents had provided for his basic needs but had never figured out how to connect with the son whose parenting they’d primarily left to nannies and various coaches. Then again, he knew how lack of money had affected Deacon and Dotty, and he was thankful that he’d never had to worry about that. He was even more thankful that the distinction had never caused problems between him and the people he considered family.

But none of this was helpful at the moment, because Cindy was standing in front of him in the second-best guest room, furiously tapping the toe of her sneaker against the floor. “Just what do you think you’re doing, telling my crew that they’re not allowed to work in the guest rooms? I have a schedule to keep, Mr. Rumson. And that schedule includes clearing out those rooms before that wall gets knocked out.”

Jake scowled at Cindy, despite the fact that she looked downright delightful in her royal-blue “Cinderella Cleaning Service” T-shirt with a matching slipper-printed bandanna wrapped around her head. “What are you talking about? We’re not knocking any walls down in the guest rooms.”

Cindy pulled a sheaf of papers from her blue, color-coordinated clipboard and showed it to him. She pointed to the big red “APPROVED” stamp at the top of a diagram showing several different shelf units. “I sent Mr. Whitney a proposal for some extra storage rooms to maximize the displays for his collections. He approved of the plans last week.”

“Well, I appreciate Whit’s input. But considering that I’m the architect, how about I decide which walls we knock down?”

Cindy’s blue eyes narrowed. “Or you could listen to what the client wants instead of insisting that you’re right just because you have a certain job title.”

“I’m not insisting I’m right because of a job title, I’m insisting I’m right because I’m actually right!” he exclaimed.