He saw it in my eyes and he shook his head, telling me no. I wrapped my arms around his side and rested my head against his chest, ignoring the poke of the lightbulbs against my chest. “It’ll be okay,” I whispered. “I promise.”
That night, at eleven p.m. and ankle-deep in dirty sewage, we called a plumber.
11
If I hadn’t known to look for them, I might have missed the signs. The cameras, discreetly hidden in the trees of the driveway. The alarm punch pad that Julia De Luca operated with quick efficiency. The window sensors and motion detectors and twelve-foot wall that surrounded the entire lot. The Olive Line Trail house was a fortress with Julia De Luca as its commander.
She was, by all accounts, a very friendly commander. Also, pushy. Which was why I was eating pancakes ten minutes into our listing appointment.
“Milk or orange juice?” She called out the question from her spot at the fridge, and I noted it was a double door Sub-Zero. I resisted the urge to pull out my notepad and add it to the listing description.
“Ummm… milk please.” I looked down at my plate, where a black spotted pancake stared out at me from blue china. Lots of milk.
“I’m still mastering the pancake,” she announced, pushing the door closed with her butt as she carried a gallon of milk toward me. “Martha’s refusing to teach me out of spite.”
“You shouldn’t be cooking. It ain’t natural.” The comment came from a woman who sat at the other end of the kitchen table and glared at Julia as if she was sharing enemy secrets. “Some people got the gift. You don’t.”
“It’s true,” Julia said cheerfully, pouring me a full glass of milk and pushing it across the counter. “I’m horrific.”
“I wouldn’t eat that pancake,” the woman warned, pointing an unpainted fingernail in my direction. “It’s gonna be nasty.”
“This, by the way, is Martha. She runs the house but was, apparently, too busy to make breakfast.”
“I don’t cook on Fridays,” Martha said, flipping the Miami Herald before her closed. “You know that so don’t pretend you don’t. If you’re intent on impressing houseguests, you should have put it on some other day and made me put on my uniform and manners.”
“She doesn’t have a uniform.” Julia made a face at the woman, who shuffled toward her and tossed the paper on the counter. “Manners…eh.” I watched with cautious interest as the house manager elbowed past her and peered down into the pan, then sniffed in disapproval.
“What?” Julia protested. “Too much oil? Too little?”
Martha waved a dismissive hand in her direction and left the kitchen, heading down a hall and disappearing from view. Julia turned back to me with a sigh. “You don’t have to eat them.”
“I’m sure they’re delicious.” I studied the lineup of syrups before me. “Does it matter which one I try first?”
Syrups were the reason I was perched on this stool, fork in hand. This model-thin brunette—who was definitely the girl from the yacht photo—was considering buying into a syrup company and wanted an honest opinion of the product compared to its competitors. I didn’t have the heart or guts to tell her that I was keto.
“Doesn’t matter.” She turned back to the stove and fiddled with a knob. I spread a generous amount of butter across the over-thick, over-cooked pancake and studied her from behind.
She was beautiful. Thin and feminine, with long dark hair and a face that managed to be both mischievous and sensual, all at the same time. Easton would have been all about her, had he met her before me. I was struck with the thought that maybe he had. She had to be close to our age. “Why a syrup company?”
“It’s a close friend of mine from college who’s starting it. She’s looking for start-up capital and I like pancakes.” She shrugged. “Seemed like an easy side investment, assuming the product passes my rigorous taste tests.”
I smiled at her self-deprecating tone. “Where’d you go to school?”
Julia glanced over as she lifted a ladle dripping with batter. “UM for undergrad. FIU for law school. What about you?”
I tried not to visibly sigh in relief that she wasn’t a potential Easton ex. Not that his sea of hookups could be considered exes. “FSU.” I forcibly sectioned off a piece and dipped it into a glob of Syrup #1. “Did you meet your husband at school?”
She grinned as she poured out three pancakes in a pan that was really only big enough for two. “Brad’s a dinosaur. I met him at the law firm I interned at. He was the old guy with the wandering hands.”
“Still am.” A man six foot something in a suit and with a smile that could disarm a nun walked in and wrapped an arm around her. It caught me so off guard that I missed my mouth. As I managed the first bite, he pulled her tight to his chest and kissed her on the mouth, then turned to me, one brow lifting as he took in the scene.