Instead of dropping her hand, he grabbed the other one and rubbed both of his vigorously over hers, which really were like icicles. She hadn’t noticed. “Well, I don’t think we should call you ‘the bride’ anymore. But point taken—‘jiltee’ probably isn’t the best choice, either.” He dropped her hands and began walking.
“Yeah. I was going to be Mrs. Mason Madison by now.”
“You were going to change your name?”
“No!” she scoffed. “I just meant it figuratively.” She had a vast network of business associates who knew her as Amy Morrison. She may have had a whole domestic fantasy built up around the idea of marrying Mason, but she was also a modern girl. “Give me a little credit.”
“So his last name is Madison?”
“Yup.”
“See? One more piece of evidence that you got lucky with this break up, even if it doesn’t seem like it right now. Mason Madison sounds like a porn star—a female one.”
She giggled. “It kind of does, doesn’t it? Paging Dr. Mason Madison. Too bad he wasn’t…” She checked herself. Now that she was sober, she had to stop defaming Mason. Mason was fine. Mason was very conscientious in all things—sometimes so much so that she faked it just to move things along.
I don’t make love. I fuck.
“So.” She cleared her throat. “If I’m not the bride, and I’m not Mrs. Madison, I guess I’m back to being just plain old single Amy Morrison.”
Dax led her to the edge of a path that marked the beginning of the residential portion of the island. “If you’re looking for a new identity, may I suggest Strawberry Girl? It can be your superhero incarnation.”
“Strawberry Girl?” she echoed, but then all thoughts of names, jiltings, and Mason flew away, replaced by utter delight. “Oh! This is the sweetest place I’ve ever seen!” There were no roads—she remembered reading once that no cars were allowed on the islands—just paths that crisscrossed between the houses, forming a grid between yards and gardens and the cutest little houses. Some were larger, modern structures, but most were still cottages in varying states of being retrofitted and improved. Even in the dim light, she could see that some of them were painted whimsical colors. Residential architecture in Toronto proper was almost without exception done in brick. By contrast, the brightly colored wood frame houses on the island, surrounded by lush, aromatic flowers, made it seem like they were walking through a fairyland.
“It is pretty damn charming, isn’t it?” Dax said, making a turn onto a path marked Fourth Street.
“How did you find this place?”
“To get a place here, you have to put yourself on a list the city keeps. When a property comes up, they go to the top name on the list.”
“Wait? What?” She stopped walking. “How did I not know about this?” As vice president, Amy was the real estate guru for Winter Enterprises. She usually oversaw large-scale commercial deals, though. It was completely different work from selling houses. Still, she prided herself on knowing everything about the Toronto housing market. She was a hobbyist, but a serious one. There was nothing more satisfying than poring over the Multiple Listing Service with her Sunday morning coffee. And she spent a significant proportion of her free time advising friends who were buying or selling, so much so that she sometimes joked that she should call herself a consultant and take a portion of the commission they paid their agents.
“A chink in your armor, oh Mistress of Real Estate!” Dax teased as he tugged arm her to get her moving again. “It gets even more interesting, because residents don’t own the land. We just lease it from the city for ninety-nine years.”
“What?” She didn’t care that she was shrieking. She loved this stuff. “Is it possible that today will turn out not to be the worst day of my life after all?” Look at her, making a joke on her jilting day. “There’s nothing like a little real estate oddity to perk a girl up when she’s left at the altar.” She pointed a finger at him. “I will be asking you more about this. But first I want to know specifically how you came to live here if there’s this weird list thing you have to get on.”