“Watch her sometime,” she said cannily. “You’ll see. She puts things in her mouth. It calms her down or something.”
“I don’t—”
“And think about what I said. She isn’t a goody-goody. Not even close.”
She knew when to stop selling. She stood and moved behind me. Then she put a hand on my shoulder and bent her lips to my ear. “I’m glad you’re home safe.” She kissed my cheek. “There’s extra Kleenex in the linen closet.”
And with that, she left. Damn her.
Christy was in another of her bouncy moods after aerobics on Monday. And this time Wren wasn’t a killjoy. If anything, she encouraged her.
“So I was thinking,” Christy said. “Over the weekend. While you were in
Atlanta.” She absently handed me her duffel bag and danced ahead of us. “I want to completely redo my
“Do you have time?”
“If you help me I will.”
“Okay,” I said cautiously.
Wren didn’t even
I sent dark thoughts in her direction.
She ignored me.
“I don’t want a pose like the Gaul. Maybe you can try a bunch of different ones, so I can see what I like.”
“I know what she’ll like,” Wren muttered beside me.
I shot her a glare, which she also ignored.
“Can we start tonight?”
“I dunno,” I said. I wanted to write a letter to Gina.
“Please, please, please, Paul. I really wanna start.”
“Okay, I guess. As long as it doesn’t take too long.”
“Will you help me carry up some lamps?” Christy asked after dinner. “I need more light to sketch.”
“Can do.” I said, and gathered all three lamps from the living room.
“And would you mind grabbing a bottle of wine?” she added.
“I’m kinda running out of hands here. Okay if we leave the lampshades?”
“Sure. We don’t need them. I’ll get the wine.”
I returned the shades to the tables where the lamps belonged.
“Anything else, your highness?”
She missed the sarcasm. “No. Just you.”
I hauled the lamps upstairs and nearly ran her over at the door to her studio.
“Oh, rats! I forgot a corkscrew. You set up the lamps. I’ll be right back.”
She scampered down the stairs.
I plugged in the first lamp and turned it on, followed by the second. The third plunged the entire floor into darkness.
Trip looked up when I stomped through the dining room. “I thought I
heard—”
“Blew a fuse.” I added a few choice curses for the original contractor.
“Yeah, thought so.” He joined me.
I grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen drawer and opened the door to the basement. I cursed the contractor all the way down the stairs.
“We need to upgrade the entire service,” Trip said as I opened the fuse box. “This thing’s older than we are.”
“Add it to the list,” I groused. We’d been halfheartedly making a list of all the things we wanted to fix around the house.
“We need to start working on it,” he said. “For real.”
“Then add the list to the list. Classes, projects, workouts, football, judo, Sayuri’s house… am I missing anything?”
“Sleeping and eating?”
“Sex,” I added.
“Can’t forget that.” He hesitated. “And on that note…”
“Yeah…?”
“Wren wants me to find out if you slept with Gina.”
“I—”
“Chill, dude. I told her you wouldn’t tell me. And even if you did, it’s none of her business.”
“Thanks.”
“But she made me promise to ask. So… I asked. You told me ‘no comment.’ Sound good?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” I looked at him sharply. “Did she tell you about our conversation last night?”
“Um… yeah. Woke me up, in fact.”
My eyebrows rose.
He blushed. “She was in the mood.”
I laughed.
“I swear, dude, she’s been wearin’ me out lately. Every time she talks about Christy, she gets worked up and takes it out on me.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” I teased.
“Yeah, well, you try having sex a couple of times a night,
See if you have any energy the next day. I’ve thought about calling for a pinch hitter.”
“Batter up!”
“Laugh all you like, man, but I’m serious.”
“Oh. Okay. Then let me know. You wanna plan something?”
“Wish we could. But Wren says we can’t until after you and Christy…
you know.”
“Oh, you’re fucking kidding me.”
“’Fraid not. Sorry. She has a plan…”
“Lemme guess,” I said. “I get together with Christy. We convince her to become a swinger. Then Wren can fool around with whomever she likes.”
“It’s almost like you’re in her head,” he said dryly.
We laughed, and I replaced the fuse.
“That did it!” Wren shouted from the kitchen.
“How can you tell?” Trip called back.
“Duh! Christy yelled down.”
“Oh,” he said conversationally. “Christy yelled down.”
“She’s actually pretty helpful.”
“Don’t underestimate Wren,” he said. “You know how she is. She usually gets what she wants.”
“Usually.” I closed the fuse box. “I don’t think she will this time. Gina and I had a really,
He laughed and clapped me on the back. “Still, Wren’s on a mission. And she won’t stop till she gets what she wants.”
“Point taken.”
“All right. Let’s go up. Oh, and if you have time, I still want to go over Renaissance and Baroque. And you’ll have to explain the difference between it and Rococo.”
