Artfully Yours (6 page)

“One, I don’t have a loser sister. And two, while I do like the picture of martyrdom you paint, nope. I already quit before you called. I’ve been applying for jobs for a few weeks now.”

“Huh. But why here?”

“Why not?”

“Does Chris want to come live here? Not many investment banker opportunities in Emerson.”

“Chris doesn’t factor into it.”

“You broke up with him?”

“Few months ago.”

“Wow. What happened?”

“Nothing.” Elle drew patterns in the ice cream at the bottom of her bowl. “That was the whole problem.”

“I’m shocked,” said the surprise divorcee. “Thought you guys were solid.”

“We were. Too solid. Like a rock. When we got together, we were like…lava.”

“Lava. Sexy.”

“For a while. And then the lava cooled, and all we were was a weirdly-shaped lump of rock. Cold and gray.”

“Let me guess. You think it’s because of you.”

“I worry, Jenny. I worry that it’s me. When we met, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Three years later, and forget about the sex. I was lucky to get a kiss more than once a week. Somehow, and I don’t even know when it happened, we turned into friends. Roommates. It’s like I sucked the passion right out of him. Like I’m a vampire.”

“Yeah. You’re a taker. Remind me about that whole dropping-your-entire-freaking-life-to-rush-home-and-fix-your-sister bit again?”

Elle pulled a face and grabbed the second tub of ice cream. “You ready for round two?”

Jenny gagged.

“Huh. I was wrong. You are a loser.” Elle served herself another bowlful, loaded it up, and dug in. After a spoonful she said, “You’re kind of artistic and stuff, right?”

“No.”

“Sure you are. Look at the yard.”

“That’s gardening. Not art.”

“I know, but you’ve always been artistic. More than me.”

“There are dogs out there more artistic than you.”

“Can’t argue with that. Do you know anything about architecture?”

Jenny selected a bright red M&M. She popped it in her mouth. “Yep.”

“There aren’t any examples of oh, say, the Gothic architecture typical of medieval Europe around here, are there?”

Jenny considered her for a long moment. “Why?”

“No reason. I was thinking about gargoyles, that’s all.”

“Elle. Why are we talking about gargoyles?”

“I’m not crazy. I just met this guy at the store.”

“And you think he was a gargoyle?”

“No, but he said he had one. He said he was buying ice cream for his gargoyle.”

Jenny frowned, then leaned forward and peered into Elle’s eyes. “Have you hit your head?”

Elle pushed her back, smiling. “This ice cream should have been Chunky Monkey, only he got the last tub.”

“I love Chunky Monkey!”

“I know. I fought. I fought hard. But he won.”

“And he said it was for his gargoyle.”

“Yeah. It was weird. He was beautiful. But really,
really
weird.”

Jenny popped another M&M. “Beautiful, huh?”

“Big guy. Built like a lumberjack. His shoulders were this wide.” She held her arms out, sketched him in the air. “Now I think about it, he could have been an actual lumberjack. Had a beard, plaid shirt, beat-up old jeans. The works. And he kept staring at me like…I can’t think how to explain it…like he’s this bear and he’s not sure if he wants to eat me or swat me to the ground and…” She trailed off and shivered.

“And? What? And what?”

“You know.” She lifted and lowered her eyebrows. Meaningfully.

“Think you might have the wrong idea about bears, Elle. They pretty much want to eat you, or they wander off. There is no sweet loving.”

Elle shoved the last spoonful of ice cream in her mouth and muttered, “I didn’t think it would be sweet.”

“Right.” Lila hitched a hip onto her Swedish-cool blond wood desk and tapped at her tablet for a moment before setting it down. “First the good news. I’ve got some listings for us to look at, which isn’t good news, it’s fabulous news, considering the rental market around here is damn flat.”

First the good news? Elle looked at Jenny, who opened her eyes wide at Elle to indicate ignorance. Elle turned back to Lila. “What’s the bad news?”

Lila hitched up her other hip to sit on the desk, and clasped her hands in her lap, swinging her legs lightly.

Oh, no.

Lila and Jenny had been friends since kindergarten, and Elle had seen that particular ankle crossed, carefree-little-ole-me pose from her before. Many times. Usually it had happened right before Elle had to go and apologize to someone on their behalf, then promise to replace the window/take the toilet paper from the tree, or lie through her teeth to the teacher that yep, sure, the pair of them were doing homework and, what do you know, the hamster snatched it through the cage bars and ate it.

“It’s not bad news. It’s excellent news! I sold the house!”

Elle squinted at her. “In other words, you’re kicking us out of Jenny’s house.”

Lila uncrossed her ankles and crossed her legs at the knee instead with a gleeful bounce. “Phew. Glad that one’s off my chest. You’re welcome.”

“Yay,” Jenny said. “Officially homeless.”

Lila reached out and ruffled Jenny’s hair. Jenny squawked and smacked her hand away. “Which is why I opened with the good news that I’ve got some places for you to view today. Unless…”

“What?” Elle said.

Lila eyed her speculatively.

“What?” Elle said again.

“We can traipse around town all day while I show you these rentals, or…” She glanced at Jenny.

“Lila.” Jenny shook her head.

“Or,” Lila talked over her, “you could buy.”

Elle managed not to laugh. “Maybe next year.”

“Sure? Sure-sure? You’re thirty-three. It’s time to be investing, don’t you think? Time to build that property portfolio.”

“Sadly, I’m kept pretty busy with my huge investment portfolio, so I can’t see where I’m going to find the time.”

“Sassy. Rental it is.” Lila hopped off the desk and pointed between Elle and Jenny. “Think this is really cute.”

Elle stood and reached down to help Jenny. “What’s cute?”

“You two. Doing the whole modern-family thing. Living together.”

Jenny had her crutches tucked under her arms, and froze in the middle of handing her purse to Elle. She shot Lila a horrified look. “Living with my sister isn’t exactly my plan A.”

Elle glared at her. “That’s a shame. For me, it’s a dream come true.”

Lila buttoned her suit jacket and shot the cuffs of her silk blouse. “This is going to work out great. We’ve got five places to hit this morning. Let’s go. You guys want to follow, or you want to hop in the back of my car?”

“Follow,” Elle and Jenny said at the same time.

They fell into step behind Lila, and Jenny leaned in. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. She’s way too upbeat. We might need to make a break for it.”

“Gotcha.”

Lila hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said the rental market was flat. None of the fabulous places she had to show them worked out. Not one of them was even approaching what they needed. If they didn’t find somewhere in the next forty-eight hours then, like it or not, they were going to be sharing a one-bed apartment over the laundromat. That, a motel room, or the back of Elle’s Prius.

The next day, matters didn’t improve. Once again they met at Lila’s and, after a good twenty-minute back-and-forth wrangle with Jenny while Elle sat and sipped her takeout coffee, knowing when not to get between the two of them, Lila convinced them to expand the search to Middlebury, the next town over. Last place, she told them, that was remotely possible. “Unless…” She left the word hanging.

“Middlebury’s fine,” Jenny snapped.

What Lila should have said, Elle thought as she parked outside the building and double-checked the address on her GPS in disbelief, was the last place she was trying to scrape off her books, because…seriously?

“
Seriously?
” Jenny didn’t even open the car door once Elle switched the engine off. “She thinks I’m going to bring my daughter here?” She pressed the lock down.

“Maybe it’s really nice inside?”

“I don’t care if it looks like Buckingham Palace inside, since outside it looks like that.” She jerked her chin at the crushed beer cans and broken-down couch sitting on the lawn—driveway?—lawn? It was fifty percent asphalt and fifty percent weeds, so who could tell? The building on the uninspiring lot was multi-occupancy, and according to the upbeat pitch Lila had given them back in town, was split into five apartments. As it had about the same footprint as Jenny’s house and had three floors, Elle wasn’t sure how that worked out.

“I give up,” Jenny said suddenly. “I surrender. Enough. We’re out of time, out of options.”

Elle stared at her. “You want to go inside?”

“No. Fuck, no. That’s not at all what I—” Her gaze darted to the open doorway, and she said, “Drive.”

“What?”

Jenny shoved her shoulder. “Drive, damn it, drive!”

Elle threw the car into reverse, backed over a pot-hole, then peeled away as Lila bounded out and watched them turn at the end of the street. She dwindled in the rearview mirror until she was a tiny little woman with her arms over her head.
What the hell?

“This is rude,” Elle said.

“This isn’t rude. What I’m going to say to her later when I calm down? That will be rude.” Jenny slunk down in her seat, and Elle’s cell phone began to ring.

Jenny reached over to pick it up from the center console, glanced at the screen, and cancelled it. “What?” she said as Elle looked at her. “It was Lila.”

The phone rang again.

Again, Jenny cancelled.

It rang.

Elle’s hands clenched on the wheel. “Jenny, can you get that?”

“No.”

“Get the damn phone!”

“Fine.” Jenny answered and jumped right into it. “Are you kidding me, Baxter? I know that was Lila the realtor, because Lila my friend wouldn’t waste my time showing me places like that. You’re so desperate for commission you’re willing to house your goddaughter in a crack den, is that it?
It looked like a crack den
. Or are you trying to make me so desperate I’ll… Wait. Oh, wait a minute. You magnificent bitch.” She sat back, listening. “Fine. Okay. I said fine. I don’t know, we’ll have to see how it goes. Okay. I’ll do it. Yes, Lila, right now. Thank you. Bye, honey. See you at book club.” She hung up, then rolled her head against the back of the seat to blink at Elle. “Lila dumped us.”

Elle shrugged a shoulder. “Can’t blame her. She saw us run.”

Jenny giggled tiredly, then leaned forward and switched the radio on. They drove back without talking, both keeping their thoughts to themselves. On the outskirts of town, Jenny spoke up. “Take a left here. There’s one more place we need to go.”

Elle flipped on the indicator and turned. “I thought Lila dumped us?”

“Yeah,” Jenny said, and the cautious tone of her voice made Elle cut her a sharp glance before she focused back on the road.

A road that skirted town, passed the gas station where she’d run into that weird
hot
weird guy, and happened to lead somewhere she knew she didn’t want to go. “You’d better not be taking us where I think you are,” she said to Jenny as the tension in the car thickened.

“For God’s sake. You know I am. We don’t have any alternative.”

Elle glared out the windshield, her fingers tightening on the wheel. “I don’t understand how this can even be a possible solution.” She shifted on the seat. When Jenny had called to ask her to come home, she hadn’t thought she meant it literally.

“Are you talking about our stupid pinky promise to never live there again?” Jenny asked. “Because homelessness trumps pinky promises.”

“Can’t argue with that. But I was talking about the tenant.”

“It’s vacant right now.”

That explained Lila’s not-so-subtle pauses and
ors
and
unlesses
. “But here?
Here
, Jenny?”

“You want to live in a motel? Or in your car?”

Elle didn’t reply.

“Well?” Jenny demanded.

“I’m thinking.”

CHAPTER SIX

Alex sat on the porch with his boots up on the railing, sipping from a sturdy mug of coffee. Gargoyle sprawled beside him, fast asleep. Alex’s attention narrowed on the road as he picked up the muted roar of a sporty engine. Gargoyle leaped to his feet, barked once, and scurried into the house. Alex continued to drink his coffee and watch as a sleek black Porsche took the curve a shade too fast, was corrected with unflustered skill, and came to a stop with a flamboyant spray of gravel from beneath its wheels.