“I’ll make it easy for you,” he told her. “There’s an entire area in Anaheim that has store after store dealing with bathroom fixtures, tubs, medicine cabinets, tile and marble—”
But she shook her head, holding up her hand to stop him from going on. “There’s no point in telling me where those stores are. I wouldn’t know where to begin, or how much I needed of any particular thing,” she told him.
Eddie frowned inwardly. He didn’t want to put himself out there and volunteer to take her to the various shops. If nothing else, traipsing from one store to another would be very time consuming.
On the other hand, if he didn’t offer to go with her, he’d have nothing to work on tomorrow or next weekend, and this project could drag on indefinitely. He needed the money sooner rather than later.
Besides, he wanted to be able to get his head together for the new class he’d be taking over Monday morning. It wasn’t that he couldn’t multitask, but he definitely preferred not having his mind going in two different directions at the same time. It was a lot less stressful that way.
And just like that, without a single shot being fired, Eddie surrendered.
“All right, why don’t I take you to the different stores tomorrow?” he suggested. “That way, I can at least point you in the right direction and you can make the choices.”
He waited for her to agree. Instead, Tiffany had a strange look on her face. Not as if she was thinking over his offer, but more like she was trying hard to place something.
It turned out to be him.
Out of the blue, her light blue eyes pinning him down, Tiffany suddenly asked, “Do I know you from somewhere?”
She’d almost succeeded in knocking him for a loop, but Eddie managed to regain control over himself and the situation. “Yes, I’m the guy who was swinging the sledgehammer in your master bathroom all day.”
“No,” Tiffany said impatiently, “I mean, do I know you from somewhere else?”
“Possibly,” he allowed. “I’ve been lots of places.” And then, because he didn’t want to risk losing this job—he really did need every penny he could earn—he told her, “I’ve got to get going. I’m meeting someone in an hour.”
For just a split second, she felt her stomach drop. “Oh.” Tiffany immediately took his response to mean that he had a date. She didn’t want to seem to be trying to keep him here, especially if he did have a date—and why shouldn’t he, considering his looks?
She was just trying to place him. It was probably her imagination, anyway, she decided. A lot of people looked like someone else at first scrutiny.
She took a breath, ready to wave him on. “Well, then I won’t keep you.”
Eddie gazed at her without commenting.
He’d told her a lie. He wasn’t meeting anyone, but it was the first thing he could think of, and it must have done the trick because she was backing off.
Maybe he’d enlighten her tomorrow about why she thought she knew him. But he wasn’t up to going into any of that tonight. Especially if, after he told her that they’d gone to school together and wound up competing against one another more than once, she decided to tell him to get lost. He needed to be fresh and on his toes if it turned out that he had to talk her out of terminating him.
So for now, Eddie quietly took his leave. “I’ll be here early tomorrow,” he told her, just before he turned toward the sliding-glass door.
“Of course you will,” she murmured under her breath. She meant to say that to herself, but it was loud enough for him to hear.
He took it as a complaint about the time.
“All right, then how about eight thirty?” he proposed gamely, thinking that was a compromise.
It might have been, but obviously not in her eyes. “Eight thirty is still early,” she pointed out.
He wondered if she was being deliberately difficult or if it was just an unconscious reaction on her part. “It’s half an hour later than this morning.”
“Half an hour only means something if you’re a fruit fly,” she said in exasperation. “What time do those stores you mentioned open?”
He didn’t have to think to answer. All this had become second nature to him in the last few months, ever since he’d lost his teaching position. “They open up at eleven on Sunday.”
It wasn’t perfect, but it was better, she thought, and she said as much out loud. “Okay, come at ten thirty,” she instructed.
He didn’t like getting a late start, not when there were other things he could do while he was waiting to take her on that hardware safari.
“If I come earlier, I can do prep work,” he told her. That was important, since he was fairly confident they were bound to come home with at least some of the things needed to remodel her bathroom.
“If you come later,” she countered, “then I can sleep.”
“You can always sleep,” he responded. “Besides, sleep is highly overrated.”
Tiffany could feel her blood pressure rising. This was the most annoyingly stubborn man... Regrouping, she blew out a breath.
“Tell you what, let’s compromise. You can come here at eight.” She shuddered as she contemplated the early hour. “As long as you promise not to make any noise. And I get to sleep until it’s time to leave for those store you’re so anxious to have me go to.”
Eddie suppressed a frown. He knew it was useless to argue; and if memory served him correctly, Tiffany could argue the ears off of a brass monkey without blinking an eye.
So he gave in. “You’re the boss,” he finally told her.
In response to his capitulation, her grin was positively beatific.
“Yes, I am, aren’t I?” Anxious to have him leave before he changed his mind, she quickly led the way to the front door. “Okay, see you tomorrow.” Tiffany opened it and held it wide. “Have a good night,” she said as she waved him on his way.
She thought she heard him grunt in response, but she wasn’t sure.
What she did know was that the house was suddenly quiet.
Blissfully, wonderfully quiet.
After a few moments, though, it seemed almost too quiet. Especially after all the noise she had endured for most of the day.
“I’ve got to be going crazy,” she muttered.
Turning away, she headed into the living room. She was just about to turn on the TV—which was her usual method of combating the almost oppressive late-afternoon quiet—when she heard the doorbell ring.
Now what?
With a sigh, Tiffany pivoted on her heel and hurried back to the front door. Without stopping to look through the peephole to make sure it was the contractor, she opened the door and asked, “Did you forget something?”
“Not that I know of. But perhaps you have forgotten your manners.”
It wasn’t the contractor. Instead, there on her front step was five-feet-nothing of angst and the source of not a few of her headaches.
Too surprised to even force a smile, Tiffany asked, “Mother, what are you doing here?”
The model-slender woman raised her small chin. “Is that any way to greet the woman who gave you life?”
That was her mother’s opening salvo in almost every exchange they had. “It is if I’m not expecting to see the woman who gave me life.”
Mei-Li