Nine
“Of all the nerve!” Avery huffed as the three of them crossed Beach Road and walked up the sidewalk toward the Hurricane, a restaurant that had evidently been a Pass-a-Grille staple since her childhood and which afforded both alcohol and a front-row seat for the oncoming sunset. “I haveneverbeen so intentionally offended! I mean, what unmitigated gall!” The busty little blonde really had her panties in a twist.
Nicole wanted to laugh. The hunky contractor had only tweaked the woman’s ego a bit. She’d like to see Avery Lawford’s reaction to a baby brother, one you’d raised and protected like your own, who stole everything you had. The urge to laugh died as she accepted that blow to the heart. Looking for a distraction, Nicole turned her attention back to her surroundings. The blocks were short and at each corner a glance to the right provided a view of the bay. Newly constructed homes sat next to fifties-era cinder-block motels with the occasional bungalow thrown in.
“I can’t believe he dismissed me like that!” Avery continued to complain, but with each block they covered the volume and level of outrage decreased.
Eighth Avenue consisted of a couple of restaurants, a post office, an ice cream place, a handful of small shops and galleries, and a bar. Another pier, this one white clapboard, jutted out into the bay.
“That must have been ‘Main Street,’ ” Nicole said. “I’ve never seen such a mishmash of stuff.”
“I think it’s quaint and kind of charming,” Madeline said with complete sincerity. Nicole bit back the retort that sprang to her lips. Based on the rapt expression on Madeline Singer’s face, compared to suburbia this place was freakin’ Utopia.
The Hurricane, which seemed like an unlucky name for a low-lying place pretty much surrounded by water, took up most of the block between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Its motif, unlike everything around it, was Cape Cod, with gray clapboard sides and Victorian trim. They took the last available table on the patio facing the beach and sat shoulder to shoulder at Madeline’s insistence so that they could watch the sunset, which was apparently what all the people streaming onto the beach were planning to do.
“He actually called us monkeys!” Avery muttered as they made room for each other on the concrete bench. “And expects us to be his grunts!” She shook her head, but agreed to a Frozen Mango Daiquiri when the waitress informed them it was a house specialty. It got quiet as they all took first sips of their drinks and helped themselves to the peel-and-eat shrimp they’d decided to share.
They talked as strangers do, sharing snippets and brief histories, putting the best light on things. Nicole noted their hesitations and evasions, storing them for future consideration, though Nicole doubted their stories were anywhere near as airbrushed as hers.
It was clear that the only things they had in common were being screwed by Malcolm—a topic Nicole was not looking forward to rehashing—and their shares in Bella Flora, a topic they all seemed reluctant to broach. She wiped the warm buttery garlic from her fingers and ordered another round of drinks as Madeline oohed and ahhed over the pinkening sky and the sun’s final dramatic exit. Even Nicole, who had watched the sun set over the Pacific, thought it an impressive display, though she found herself unwilling to admit it.
Avery’s outrage finally sputtered out somewhere in the middle of her second daiquiri. Nicole went for a third, savoring the thick sweetness of mango and soothed by its welcome wallop. The other two had slices of key lime pie.
“So, what do you think?” Madeline asked, putting her fork down on her now-clean plate. “Do we tear down, or take Chase Hardin up on his offer?”
There was a silence as Nicole and Avery tried to hide their surprise that the housewife had taken the initiative. Nicole drained the last sweet sip from her glass and waited to see what would happen.
“Are you willing to spend the summer being his . . . grunts?” Avery asked.
“Well, we wouldn’t actually be grunting for him. We’d be grunting for us,” Madeline said with only a slight quiver in her voice. “To up the asking price by two million dollars.”
“Could you really spend the next four months here?” Avery asked. “Don’t you have a family or something you need to get back to?”
Madeline shifted uncomfortably in her seat and Nicole took note. Through necessity she’d learned to read faces and assess “tells,” but she wasn’t sure whether Madeline’s discomfort was caused by the current conversation or what was going on back in the burbs.
“Well, I know you all probably have to get back to your careers and all,” Madeline said. “But I might be able to work things out if we, um, decided that staying and working on the house was the right thing to do.”
Now it was the little blonde’s turn to look uncomfortable.
Ahhh,Nicole thought.We’re all hiding . . . something.But then if there was anything she’d learned over the years spent re-creating her life and herself, it was that nothing and no one was exactly what they seemed.
Nicole needed the money from the sale of their house as soon as possible. The fastest way to get it was to tear the house down and list the land with the most aggressive high-end Realtors they could find, maybe the Yes Girls whose signs she’d seen on the way into town. Except of course that she didn’t even have her share of the fifteen thousand it would take to demolish and had no idea whether her partners did, either. Nor did she know how long it might take to sell the land; the arguments against a summer listing sounded valid, but, of course, there was no actual guarantee that Bella Flora would sell quickly once it was renovated. It was all a great big crap shoot. But when it came to gambling, Nicole had always believed in shooting for the biggest prize.
“There are a lot of places I’d rather spend the summer,” Nicole said. “But I could probably swing a couple of months here if it’s going to add another couple of million to the asking price.”
Avery shifted in her seat again as Nicole and Madeline turned her way and waited expectantly.
“Well?” Nicole asked the blonde. “You’re probably in a better position to assess the house’s potential than we are. What do you think?”
“I think I’m completely pissed off at Chase’s attitude,” Avery said, brushing a blonde bang out of her eye, her tone rising in indignation. “I mean, who is he to talk to me that way?” She drew a deep breath and let it out before continuing. “But I’m not really comfortable with pulling that house down, especially not just as a knee-jerk to his condescension.” She looked out over the beach, which was barely visible beneath the sliver of moon that hung in the dark sky above it. “It is a great specimen,” she continued, “and five million is better than two million any day. I also think he’s right that it’s the wrong time of year to put it on the market.”
This time she looked down at the pie crumbs on her plate before raising her gaze to meet theirs. Her gray eyes were clouded. “And the show is on hiatus over the summer anyway.” Her jaw tightened. “So I could make myself available if we decided to accept Chase’s offer.”
They paid their bill and ambled back toward Beach Road. It was a Thursday night, not even nine P.M., and there was hardly a car on the road. Nicole looked at the empty streets as they passed under streetlights and listened to the dead quiet. She’d never be able to troll for wealthy clients here or make the society column—assuming there was one. On the other hand she wouldn’t be tempted to shop or spend money. Nor would she need to put on her usual dog-and-pony show. If they lived in the house while they worked on it, she’d hardly have any expenses at all.
Out of the corner of her eye she studied her partners once again. Could she spend an entire summer living and working with women with whom she had so little in common? Did she really have a choice?
“I noticed a vacancy sign earlier at those rental cottages next door,” Madeline said as they stopped in front of Bella Flora. Its pale pink walls were shadowed, its windows dark. “Why don’t we sleep on it and meet up for breakfast tomorrow morning to vote?”
