Brushing crumbs from her breakfast, a nutri-quasi-Twinkie bar she’d chomped between Michigan Avenue and State Street, Rosie checked the plastic digital watch face she’d taped to the console.
It was already mere minutes after eight.
Okay, maybe she’d be running, not speed-walking, to her desk, but she’d be gripping her pencil and inserting commas by a quarter after, at the latest.
Whomp. The car lurched over a speed bump, the back fender scraping its adieu. Cringing, Rosie listened for any telltale clanging behind her. None. Good! Her budget didn’t allow for another muffler pipe replacement.
Ahead, to the right, she spied the familiar concrete steps that led up to the back entrance of the posh Loop office building. Directly behind those steps was her coveted parking space. Like a little home away from home.
Home. Her insides twinged as she flashed on the family farm in Colby, Kansas, where she’d lived all of her life before moving to Chicago seven months ago. Through the crack in her windshield, she peered at the gray Chicago air and wondered where along the way the blue skies of Kansas turned dirty. Or at what point the breezes that rustled through wheat fields became winds whistling down streets filled with cars and pedestrians.
She passed the steps and turned into her space….
Screech.
And slammed on the brakes.
Or at what point some jerk pinched her parking space!
Blinking, she gripped the wheel, amazed she’d managed to miss rear-ending a sleek, black BMW that had taken up residence in her space. Her space! Shaking from the near accident and the gall of the intruder, Rosie shoved the gear into reverse and backed up a few feet. After setting the brake, she jumped out of the car.
Splash!
Her loafer-clad foot landed solidly in a pothole filled with dirty water. She looked down at the splotches of dark water on her white leggings. Some of the mud had also splashed onto the bottom of her brown corduroy skirt. Her co-workers would think she’d slogged through trenches to make it into work. Although she doubted any of the editorial staff at Real Men magazine would believe that excuse for her tardiness, especially Teresa. Now she’d have to park blocks away. Rather than mere minutes late, she’d be mega minutes late.
She glared at the splotchless BMW. Sidestepping the pothole, she moved closer—her feet making squishing sounds as she walked—to the offensive automobile and scrutinized the license plate. ILITIG8.
I litigate. “I’ll just bet you do,” she muttered, eyeing the upscale car.
Her eyes narrowed as she peered up at the bank of square windows along the third floor of her brick office building. Real Men magazine, her company, took the bottom two floors of this building. On the third floor were some stockbrokers, accountants, and if memory served her correctly, one lawyer.
“Now I’ve got you,” she said, pleased with her impromptu sleuthing. She was going to be substantially late to work now because it would take forever and a day to find a parking space. If I’m going to be mega-late anyway, after walking back, I’ll take a few extra minutes and pay a visit to the third floor before heading to my desk.
Honk!
Rosie turned and glared at a square yellow truck stopped behind her Dodge. A burly arm, covered with hair and tattoos, waved at her in a very unceremonious fashion.
“You own this alley, lady?” The truck driver’s voice sounded hairier than his arm.
Men. Couldn’t deal with a little inconvenience. Rosie brushed back a curl that had toppled over her right eye. “As a matter of fact, I do!” she retorted, seizing the opportunity to vent. Falling back on the coping mechanism that started in her teenage years when she had to deal with her four strong-willed, overprotective older brothers, she adopted the personality type of one of the Greek goddesses to give her strength.
Although she was much better at running, she sashayed back to her Dodge with the grace of Artemis, a perfect choice for an alley goddess. After settling into the driver’s seat and easing the car down the lane, Rosie twiddled her fingers in a goodbye wave to the fuming trucker.
“GOOD MORNING!” A hand, wriggling bright orange-tipped fingernails, snaked around Benjamin Taylor’s office door.
Ben gripped his cup of coffee as his ex-wife’s head followed the hand. Meredith’s lips were the same color as her fingertips. He momentarily wondered if that was a real lipstick color…or if she’d been kissing those plastic pylons the city put on the streets. New lipstick. New nails. Maybe she’d just broken up with her latest boyfriend, Dexter-Something, and was turning to cones for attention and affection.
Or turning to her ex-husband, easygoing, always-there-for-you Ben.
“No good morning?” Meredith put on her best pout, which—to Ben’s still blurry precoffee vision—looked as though she’d condensed her cone-orange lips into a circle of glowing lava.
“Morning,” he barked, then quickly took a sip of hot coffee. Please, God, don’t let those lava lips feel the need to plant a kiss somewhere.
“That’s better,” she simpered. The rest of Meredith appeared in the doorway. He tried not to squint at the visual blast of bold orange, green and blue that comprised some satin kimono-robe-thing she was wearing. Typically when she dropped a boyfriend, or vice versa, Meredith also dropped her old look. The facts were stacking up that this new oriental theme was the result of a recent breakup with Hex…Lex…whatever his name was.
She eyed a lamp in the corner. “I saw the most to-die-for coatrack—black lacquer, faux mother-of-pearl inlay—that would look perfect there….”
Ben stiffened. Typically, when she took on a new theme, so did Ben’s office. That’s what happened when one’s ex-wife was an interior decorator who had enough money to indulge these whims. New themes weren’t a bad thing, except when the jobs were left incomplete. History had proven that she’d start redoing some wall or chair—or coatrack—in a to-die-for style, fall madly in love with some new man, and leave Ben’s office in mid-theme.
Ben had long ago decided that just as archeologists interpreted the lives of cavemen from the wall drawings, someone would someday track the love life of Meredith Taylor from the various decorating themes in Ben’s office.
“That lamp stays,” Ben warned.
It still irked him that she’d kept his last name. You’d think an ex-wife who’d been remarried and divorced since your divorce would keep husband number two’s last name. Or revert to her old, original name or use any name other than the name the two of you shared during a short, fitful marriage that, at best, was a millisecond of insanity in an eternal universe.
“All right, lamp stays.” She blinked her overmascaraed eyes at him. “You’ve never spoken to me in that tone of voice.”
His outburst had surprised even him. But one look at Meredith’s eyes told him to tread carefully—this was a brokenhearted woman on the redecorating rebound. “I plead not enough coffee.”
She arched one eyebrow. “Darling, sometimes you say the oddest things.”
“Lawyer talk.” Yep, she’d definitely broken up with Dexter-Whatever. She never called Ben darling when she was involved with someone.
“Like my hair?” she asked, gesturing toward it with those orange-tipped appendages.
He wondered when the hair question would raise its head. He tried not to frown as he checked out the hodgepodge of curls and what was sticking out… “What are those? Pick-Up Sticks?”
“Darling, they’re chopsticks!”
Chopsticks? “It’s so…Dharma.” The way bits of her hair stuck out, it also looked like a bird’s nest