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“You’re not a believer in western hospitality, I take it?”
The doorbell rang and Bella went to answer it.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Niki took off her vintage fur and draped it on the coat rack, then gave Bella a hug that almost cracked her ribs. Niki’s shoulder-length blond hair had a lavender streak this week and her breasts spilled beguilingly out of the low neckline of her scarlet knit dress. “No word from the scumbag, I take it?”
Bella shook her head, frowned and jerked a thumb in the direction of her battered guest.
Niki raised her eyebrows and walked into the kitchen. “Well, hello there. I thought for a second you were Bella’s soon-to-be ex, and I was about to give you a choice piece of my mind.”
“No need for that—the lady of the house and I have already gone down that road. I’m Charlie, by the way. How do you do?” He extended a hand, and Niki took it in both of hers, turning it palm up and studying it closely.
“I’m Niki, seeing as how we’re only doing first names. Wow, that’s some long life line you’ve got there.”
“Oh, yeah? Wish I’d known that when bad guys were shooting at me.”
Bella was sure he was looking down the front of Niki’s dress. She needed to get him the hell out of here.
“You a drug dealer?” Niki sounded fascinated.
“Nothing so romantic. I was a cop.”
“Was?”
Bella was trying to give Niki the signal to lay off her questions, but of course her friend wasn’t paying any attention. Niki never did, if there was an attractive man in the vicinity. Bella knew it was all just show, since Niki was devoted to her husband, Tom. But the guys her friend hit on for fun didn’t know that.
“I moved on. Now I’m in real estate.”
“So you’re going to sell Bella’s house for her?”
“No, he most emphatically is not going to,” Bella snapped. “I’m selling it myself. You remember—you were the one who told me to, Niki. You said your uncle Giovanni would have helped me figure out a price, except—”
“Except he’s got Alzheimer’s,” Niki interrupted. “I know, I know. We agreed you’d sell it yourself.”
“There you have it.” He shrugged. “You ladies for sure know your own minds.”
“Have to be on the ball when you’re a woman.” Niki pointed at the tape and gauze. “What happened to your head?”
“Ms. Monroe and I were having a few words and she chucked a mug at me.”
“Go, Bella.” Niki gave her a thumbs-up. “Repressed anger leads to illness, and you don’t want that.”
“It was an accident.” Bella scowled at Charlie. “You don’t have a concussion, and I patched you up. So you can go now.”
Niki went over to him and stroked her finger over his bandaged wound. “Did you know she got a big chunk of your hair trapped inside the tape? Here, let me fix that for you.”
“Niki, for cripes sake, lay off, would you? You can’t take him home—Tom won’t like it.”
Niki sighed dramatically. “Sometimes marriage is very limiting.” She undid the tape and tenderly freed the hair. “You married, Charlie?”
“Divorced.”
“Kids?”
“One daughter. Emma’s twenty.”
“Which makes you what, forty something? You don’t look forty something.” Niki gave him a serious look as she patted the bandage back in place. “You don’t look a day over thirty. Eight.”
“Forty-four.” He grinned, obviously pleased with his view down the front of Niki’s dress. He had a pirate’s grin, Bella thought. That is, if pirates had good dental plans. But then, real-estate salesmen were pirates, weren’t they?
He said, “To misquote a famous lady, this is what forty-four looks like.”
Niki nodded. “Good old Germaine. What’s become of her, anyway?”
“She got herself married,” Bella said. “And there went another feminist.”
“Oh, marriage is no deterrent to feminism,” Niki said. Finished with her Florence Nightingale act, she wandered over to the cupboard and took down two mugs. “What’s your daughter’s name again, Charlie?”
“Emma. She’s in her second year at the University of British Columbia and she wants to be a doctor.”
“That’s encouraging. We need more women doctors, don’t we, Bella? There are some things only a woman understands.” Niki filled the mugs with coffee and handed him one.
“He can’t stay,” Bella said, reaching for the mug a moment too late. He eluded her and took a hefty sip.
“I’m not in any hurry,” he said. “Good coffee. Got any cream?”
Niki got a box out of the fridge, adding some cream to her own coffee before she handed it to him. She got two spoons out and gave one to him. They stirred companionably.
She said, “So what kind of career move is that, going from copping to real estate?”
“Not lateral, I’ll tell you that.” For the first time, Bella could sense he was uneasy. His grin faltered. “So what do you do, Niki?”
“Hair. Nails. On really bad days, bikini waxing.” She shuddered. “Yuck. And on the other end of the scale, brows and lashes. Didn’t you like being a cop?”
Bella gave up and waited for his answer. Trying to stop Niki was like trying to stop a tank. She’d just roll on until he’d told her everything she wanted to know.
“I liked it fine. It was just time for a career move.”
Niki nodded. “Midlife crisis, huh?”
“I guess you could call it that.” He downed the rest of his coffee in one long gulp and got to his feet. “I hate to drink and run, but duty calls.” He gave Bella a wink. “I know you’re dying for me to stay, but I have other unfortunate souls to harass.”
“Important work. Don’t let us keep you.” She was on her feet in an instant.
“Interesting meeting you again, Ms. Monroe. A real pleasure, Niki.”
“Likewise.” She gave him a seductive smile. “And for God’s sake, call her Bella. Ms. Monroe smacks way too much of Marilyn, and we don’t need that much drama when we’re trying to clean up a house.”
Niki paid absolutely no attention to Bella’s glares, and fluttered her perfectly manicured hand at Charlie, who saluted and ambled toward the door.
Bella waited until it closed behind him before she got herself a fresh coffee and slumped on her stool.
“God spare me from any more real-estate vultures.”
“He said you knew him. Where from?”
“I made the colossal mistake the other day of going into Fredricks Real Estate, over on Dunbar. I thought they might give me some suggestions about selling this place myself, like what price to ask. Instead, they unleashed every salesperson in their office on me, all trying to change my mind and list with them. He’s just the latest one. And you weren’t exactly helpful. Why were you so friendly?”
Niki clucked her tongue. “Bella, Bella. You’re a single lady now and he’s a distinct maybe. He’s available, doesn’t strike me as a serial killer, doesn’t reek of liquor, has a job, good teeth and presumably other working body parts, to say nothing of a sense of humor. But you’ve got to change your attitude, honey. You catch more flies with sugar, my dear old Granny Ruthie used to say.”
“You didn’t have a dear old granny. Ruthie was a mean old woman who used to dose us with that awful worm medicine and send us out to buy her cigarettes, remember? She never even let us keep the change. We hated her.”
“Figure of speech. That weasel in the corner store sold them to us, too. He’d never get away with that these days. What I’m trying to get across to you, sweetie, is that you’re not going to find eligible men hanging off lilac bushes, y’know. You have to be a little friendlier. Men like friendlier. And sexy. I don’t want to criticize, but that paint all over your arms and neck doesn’t do a thing for you—it’s in your hair, too. Come over and collect your birthday present, because you need a new do. And at the moment, you’re bordering on anorexic. Aren’t you eating?”
Bella put her cup down—one accident a day with coffee was enough. She leaned toward her friend. “Niki. Read my lips. Gordon left me ten days ago, I have debts you wouldn’t believe, my kids are acting out, to put it mildly and my mother is threatening to arrive at the door any minute.”
“I thought Mae was happy over there in Blue Hair Haven, or whatever it’s called.”
“She was, until I told her about Gordon. Now she doesn’t think I’m capable of raising Josh and Kelsey on my own, and figures we ought to pool resources, seeing that we’re both abandoned women. As if I need any more suggestions about decorating and single parenting, or snide remarks about how I drove Gordon away by being a short-tempered shrew.”
Niki shook her head. “You? Testy, maybe. What did she give you for your birthday?” Mae’s inappropriate gifts had always made them both laugh.
“She outdid herself.” Bella opened the catch-all drawer and pulled out a thick book. “Ta-da.”
Niki took it. The Dummy’s Guide to Living Well? She snorted, and then erupted into giggles. “She has outdone herself this time.”
Bella had to smile. “I thought so. The Dummy’s Guide to Poverty might have been a wiser choice.” She grew sober, remembering how close she was to bankruptcy. “I had no idea how much in debt we are. Gordon was an accountant, and he was supposed to be managing the money. Instead, he’d let the house mortgage lapse, the lease on the store is three months in arrears and our overdraft is maxed out. The business is in the toilet, and there’s nothing to do but shut it down. I have to somehow sell off what stock I can and get this place in good enough shape to sell. And I have to do it all fast, because I have no money.”
“You didn’t tell Charlie boy that, I hope? Because guys tend to get a wee bit nervous if you mention money right off the bat.”
“Of course I didn’t.” Actually, Bella wasn’t too sure what she’d said to him. She was pretty much nuts these days, and not responsible for what came out of her mouth. “Anyhow, there is no way I want anything to do with another man unless he’s a filthy rich plumber slash handyman slash landscape gardener, who loves to paint and has his own home.” She ran out of breath and gulped. “So no more men. Not now, and probably not ever.”
Niki wasn’t impressed. “You’ll change your mind. Your libido will kick in, and when it does you’ll remember this hunky real-estate cop and regret the way you acted.”
“Not in this lifetime. Now, are you going to help me paint and let me whine some more about my problems, or are you just going to keep lecturing me about hormones?”
“Whine away. And do you have something truly awful—like what you’re wearing—that I can change into? Because I don’t want to get paint on this dress. It’s pretty hot, and it’s going to drive Tom crazy. I just bought it at the New to You on Dunbar. This end of town is a gold mine for expensive secondhand clothes.”
“I’ll get you that purple track suit of mine.”
Niki groaned. “If I should fall off the ladder wearing it, do not let the paramedics in the door until you get me back into my dress.”
“You are so vain.”
“I know. It’s one of my strengths.”
Bella surprised herself and laughed.
Niki looked pleased. “There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“Not around you, you whacko.” Bella put an arm around Niki’s shoulders and hugged her tight. “I’m so glad you’re here. The thought of painting the downstairs in eight hours or less makes me dizzy and sick.”
“It’s not the painting that’s doing that, it’s hunger. When did you last eat a whole mess of greasy, fried junk food?”
“That would have been the day before Gordon left, when we ordered pizza and chicken wings. Can’t afford order-in anymore.”
“Yeah, well, I’m ordering in right now. You want anchovies? Pineapple? Zucchini? My treat, Mrs. Angelino tipped me forty bucks for making her hair look thick. And I refuse to paint on an empty stomach.”
“No anchovies. Pineapple’s fine. How’d you manage that? The thick hair thing, I mean.”
“There’s this polymer stuff, that coats each strand and puffs it up, at least until you wash it again, but Mrs. Angelino’s from the old school. She only washes her hair once every two weeks or so, when it starts to smell, so she’s good to go for a while.”
Niki dialed and ordered two extra-large, loaded. She donned Bella’s purple track suit and set to work on the dining-room wall, first painting a four-letter word across it, so she’d have to finish it before the kids got back.
When the pizza arrived, Bella found she was actually hungry.
Chomping down on her second slice, she told Niki about the harmonica.
“I bought it for myself, for my birthday. The day before, actually. I was reading the astrology column and found out I was born on the same day as John Lennon and Jackson Browne. I probably should have returned it—it was expensive—but I’ve been blowing in it every night, so it’s too late now. I can play ‘Three Blind Mice.’ Want to hear?”
Niki shuddered. “Not if I can avoid it. What made you go for a mouth organ? My uncle Popeye used to play one, remember?”
Bella nodded. “So did my dad. He played and I’d dance.”
“You were so close to him. Weird you never heard from him after he left.”
“Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.” When Bella was fifteen, Oscar Howard had left Mae and waltzed off into the Florida sunshine with Dinah Flynn, the neighborhood widow slash home wrecker, never to be heard from again.
Long time ago, Bella, she reminded herself now. Don’t go there. Sufficient unto the moment is the pain thereof.
She and Niki ate and talked and painted for the rest of the afternoon, and when first Kelsey and then Josh arrived home, the teens were so happy to see Niki and the leftover pizza they even forgot to be rude.
If only she could bottle essence of Niki, Bella thought later that evening. She knew her friend had challenges of her own—Niki and Tom wanted a big family, but after twelve years of marriage and many consultations with experts, they still hadn’t managed to get pregnant. Niki was now thirty-nine, and time was running out. She joked about each procedure she went through, making it sound ludicrous and funny, and she never complained.
The problems she’d started out with that morning were still the same, Bella thought, sinking into a tub of scented hot water. They just seemed a lot less important after a healthy dose of her friend’s slightly outrageous humor.
Bella even chuckled, remembering the fiasco with the coffee cup and the real-estate cop. Charlie boy, Niki had called him.
At least she didn’t have to worry about Charlie boy ever coming back.
CHAPTER TWO
HE WAS GOING TO HAVE TO find a way to soften her up, Charlie decided as he’d climbed into his battered Ford truck and backed out of Bella’s driveway. He was going to get the listing for her house, even if it damn near killed him.
“It’s an FSBO, a tough one,” Rick had warned, using the acronym that meant for sale by owner. “The location’s prime, and there’s a thousand dollar bonus in it for anybody who changes her mind. Why not give it a shot, bro?”
Charlie knew that everyone else in the office had already tried to get the listing. Being low man on the totem pole, he also knew they were likely laying bets with Rick that he, the new boy, couldn’t change the lady’s mind, either.
Charlie longed to prove them wrong. It wasn’t that he had a knack for selling real estate. So far, he pretty much hated it. He was a lousy salesman and he knew it. He was far too inclined to point out water stains on the ceiling and signs of dry rot in the attic. But he had to earn a living, and the career options for an ex-cop who was also a recovering alcoholic, had alimony payments to meet and a daughter in university, weren’t good.
