She had yet to tell her mother that she and Jerry were no longer a couple. In all honesty, she had never told her parents that he was still married, even though he was legally separated at the time.
What a tangled web we weave, she thought. “Yes. Yes, he is,” she lied.
“Hmm? Oh. Yes. Well, tell him hello for me.”
“I will.”
Lizzie squinted through the window, making out a shadowy, familiar figure in the falling snow.
Gauge.
She instantly relaxed against the cushions. Her hot tenant of the past four months was walking up her driveway, toward the garage and the apartment above it that he was renting. She craned her neck to see around a large evergreen in order to follow his movements until he disappeared.
The voice at the other end of the line sighed.
“Are you okay?” she asked her mother. “You sound…distracted.”
Could it be that Bonnie Gilbred was rethinking her situation? That the reconciliation Lizzie, her sister, Annie, and brother, Jesse, hoped for was just around the corner? Just in time to make Christmas feel somewhat like Christmas again?
“Me? Yes, yes. I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Lizzie nearly dropped the phone when she heard a male roar on her mother’s end. She absently rubbed her forehead and closed her eyes, wanting to hang up yet straining to hear her father’s words.
“What in the hell did you put in this, Bonnie? Are you trying to kill me, for God’s sake? You are, aren’t you? Is it arsenic?”
Her mother’s voice sounded much too joyful. “No, it’s not arsenic, you old fool. I fixed the meat loaf the same way I always fix it. Your taste buds must not be what they once were.”
“Don’t hand me that b.s.!” There was a clatter of plates and then her father cussed a blue streak.
She heard a door slam.
“Mom?” Lizzie said.
“Hmm?”
Apparently Bonnie still had the phone to her ear, but wasn’t much paying attention to the fact that she was having a conversation with her daughter.
“What did you put in the meat loaf?” Lizzie asked.
“Salt. Lots of it.”
Lizzie smiled in spite of the exasperation she felt. “You know Dad’s watching his sodium intake.”
“I know. Why do you think I did it?”
Lizzie rested her head back against the pillow. “So is there a reason you called? I mean, other than wanting someone to witness your evildoing for the night?”
“I’m not doing evil. I cooked him meat loaf.”
“Sure, Mom. Is there anything else?”
She could imagine Bonnie thinking for a moment. “Nope. I figure that about covers everything.”
“Good. Oh, and next time you want a buffer between you and Dad, call Annie,” she said, referring to her younger sister.
“Will do, dear.”
“Good night, Mother.”
“Good night, Lizzie.”
She punched the button to disconnect the call and checked for any missed messages. None. So she read Jerry’s text message before tossing the phone to the sofa again.
God, but she really was a sorry sack, wasn’t she?
A sound drew her attention back to the driveway. Gauge had reappeared. He was wearing the same hooded sweatshirt and denim jacket he’d had on minutes earlier. She thought maybe he was leaving again. Only he wasn’t carrying his guitar case; he was shoveling her walk. She found the action incredibly hot.
All thoughts of her mother, Jerry and her missing waffle maker drifted from her mind. Replaced by ones related to the sexy drifter who had taken up residence in her garage apartment in August.
His name wasn’t really Gauge. Well, his last name was, but his first name was Patrick. Lizzie folded one arm under her chin and took another sip of wine, the alcohol beginning to work its magic by warming her a bit even as she watched Gauge out in the cold.
She didn’t know much about him. Her brother Jesse’s ex-girlfriend, Heidi, had recommended him; Gauge was part owner of the BMC bookstore café downtown where Heidi used to work. He was a musician. A guitar player, if the case he carried and the strumming she’d heard coming from his place when it was warmer were any indication.
Their paths rarely crossed. She found his rent—always cash—stuffed into an envelope in her front-door mail slot on the first of the month, and she made sure that any mail that was delivered for him was slid under his door.
That was basically it.
Well, that and the fact that he was exceedingly hot and she liked watching him come and go, with no particular preference for either, because both front and back views were worthy of a long glance and an even longer sigh.
She put her glass back down on the coffee table. Aside from a very brief crush on the drummer that had played at her senior prom, she’d never gone much for the artistic type. Career-oriented, driven guys were more her thing.
Like Jerry.
She groaned.
Of course, that was probably because she was a bit on the ambitious side herself. A bit? She needed to stop lying to herself. In three short years since graduation, she’d made it to junior partner at the law firm with a full partnership whispered to be in the offing in the not-too-distant future.
Of course, Jerry’s disappearing act wouldn’t help. She’d been counting on taking him to the office party next week to help cement her shot at the partnership slot. With, of course, no mention of his marital status.
Her friend Tabitha had suggested that perhaps she should play at being a lesbian. Lizzie had nearly spewed her iced tea at her over lunch at Georgio’s, her favorite restaurant in downtown Toledo.
“What did you say?”
Tabby had shrugged. “Surely you know that being an unmarried woman of childbearing age hurts your chances of success in the workplace.”
“And acting like a lesbian helps how?” “For one thing, there’s nothing guys like more than imagining a great-looking chick—such as yourself—getting it on with another woman.”
Lizzie had snorted.
“For another, they’d be so preoccupied with the image that they’d forget about your biological clock and the fact that you may get pregnant at any minute.”
“But there are no kids in my immediate future. The partners know that.”
Tabby had given her an eye roll. “Sure. You think they believe you? They know—or think they do—how fickle a woman is. One minute she’ll be spouting off about not wanting children, the next she’ll be pregnant with quads.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lizzie told her friend.
But Tabitha’s advice had made a twisted kind of sense. While she thought she was being treated as an equal at the office, there were small incidents that sometimes left her wondering. Like the men-only golf outings. Or the times she walked into a room full of male colleagues and everyone would go silent.
Then there was Jerry…
He’d been her first love. She had fully expected to spend the rest of her life with him when they’d met in college and immediately hit it off. It had been that sense of unfinished business, and his convincing argument that she was his first love, as well, that had compelled her to let