“Do you want to tell me what Friday’s attitude was about?”
I glare at my best friend before tilting my head toward her open office door.
She gives me a wry smile, but then nods in understanding.
“Big Daddy seemed to be in a good mood.”
I chuckle. “The man is always in a good mood when women are around.”
Her grin grows. “The man is a huge flirt.”
“Legend seemed extra territorial.”
I expect her to argue, but she doesn’t. “Big Daddy is lucky he didn’t hold my hand for longer than a few seconds. Ethan only had to puff out his chest for a minute or two before your grandfather got distracted by the wife of one of the other resident’s family members.”
“He’s a damn mess, and I wish I could blame the stroke for that behavior, but he’s been that way for as long as I can remember.”
“But he never remarried?”
I shake my head. “He always said Mamaw was the love of his life. I never even saw him date when I was growing up. He flirts, but he’s harmless.”
“I’m heading to lunch,” Pauline, Faith’s office manager, says, sticking her head into the open doorway. “Is there anything I can get for you while I’m out?”
Faith looks at me, answering after I shake my head. “No, thank you. Have a good lunch.”
Pauline disappears from the doorway, but we know the woman well enough not to start talking until we hear her car start up in the parking lot. Once we made the mistake of speaking when we heard the front office door open, only to discover her still standing in the reception area when we left for lunch.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Faith says on a sigh when I raise an eyebrow at her. “She’s trustworthy. For the most part. She’d never betray confidences. She just likes to listen to the details of other people’s lives. I think she’s been lonely since Roger left her.”
“Does she spread what she hears?”
Faith shakes her head. “I don’t think so. I know I can trust her about work stuff. Confidentiality is sort of required in a law office, but I’m not so sure about personal stuff. I don’t think she has any friends. All she ever talks about is her dog. But you need to quit wasting time. I’m not spending my lunch hour talking about Pauline.”
“Speaking of people who want in on the gossip,” I mutter.
Faith leans further across her desk, a conspiratorial look in her eyes. “Tell me all the gossip.”
There isn’t much I don’t share with my best friend. If anything, I usually get a little too descriptive about my adventures, and Faith has to tell me that I’m sharing too much, but there’s a certain level of shame, not something I feel very often, about spending a night with a man who doesn’t even remember it.
I spent way too long scrutinizing myself in the mirror after getting home yesterday, trying to determine whether anything drastic had changed about me over the last several months, something that would make me appear different to the man. That led me to ordering way too many new face creams due to the three new wrinkles I noticed at the corners of my eyes.
Faith leans back in her chair, hands splayed out on the desk in front of her. “Maybe I don’t want to know the details.”
I shake my head.
“I don’t? Did you hook up with another of the Cerberus guys?”
I scoff. “No.”
“Did you hook up with Spade again?”
I somehow manage not to growl at my best friend, but considering how astute she is, she easily recognizes my irritation.
“Did he shoot you down?” She shakes her head as if she feels sorry for me. “You know most of those guys don’t really do repeats.”
I’m well aware of this. I’ve heard the stories, witnessed firsthand women atJake’sthinking they were a shoo-in for another night just because they were allowed into the clubhouse once.
“If you flirted with him and—”