Two years ago, when my sister and I had purchased the house, we'd gotten a terrific deal, mostly because on the other side of that fence was a late-night burger joint with a busy drive-through window.
Thatwindow was annoyingly close to my bedroom window, where I'd had the pleasure of listening to fast-food workers ask random customers if they'd "like fries with that" in the middle of the night.
Happily, this past June, the burger joint had relocated to a larger location a mile down the road, which had given us our first summer of peaceful sleep in ages.
For months now, I'd been on pins and needles, waiting to see whatnewbusiness would take its place.
I scanned my memory banks and recalled that the renter owned some burger joints in Florida. My stomach sank.Oh, no.Was he going to open anewone here in Michigan?
On the other side of that fence?
I stared at the guy in question. After everything I'd just said, heshouldhave looked insulted. But all he looked was amused, which only made everything worse.
My hands were still covering my mouth, and I waited a long careful moment before letting them drop. Normally, I wasn't the type to panic, but there was something aboutthisguy that was making it hard to think.
What I needed now was to make a strategic retreat. Ignoring my multitude of gaffes, I turned to the demolition guy and said, "So, um, do you want aregularmocha or the candy cane type?"
He reached up to scratch at his beard. "What's the difference?"
The answer seemed obvious tome, but if I had to stick around one more minute, I was pretty sure I'd lose it.
With an overbright smile, I told him, "You know what? I'll get you both." And with that, I turned and practically sprinted to my coffee truck, where I whipped up both mochas in no time flat as everyone else wandered back indoors.
The neighbor guy returned tohishouse while the renter and demolition guy returned to mine. By now, it was painfully obvious that all of those construction trucks had nothing to do withme.
And yet, I was still vexed.
As far as the mochas, I delivered them myself, leaving both of them on my own doorstep and ringing the bell before sprinting back to my coffee truck and getting the heck out of Dodge.
Cowardly?
Oh, yeah. Bigtime.
But at this point, I was too embarrassed to care. From now on, I decided, I would be avoiding the renter like cats avoided baths.
It wasn't just that I was embarrassed. The guy made me totally crazy, although for the life of me I couldn’t imagine why. After all, he wasn't myonlyproblem – or even my worst.
Therealproblem was that my sister was consorting with a known monster – the cold-hearted boss who'd caused her nothing but trouble.
Adding insult to injury, she was doing it in secret.
Or so she thought.
Chapter 9
Harper
Back at my aunt's place, I was still licking my proverbial wounds.The day had been a total bust. Sure, the courthouse had given me lots of business, but the five hours I'd spent near the library had netted me nearly no business at all.
And of course, the hour I'd spent near myownhouse had resulted in nothing but trouble. Not only had I made a giant fool of myself, I'd sold a total ofnegativetwo drinks – meaning the two I'd given away for free.
And this wasn't the worst of it. Ten minutes ago, while dashing out to the mailbox, I'd found something so chilling I didn't know what to do.
It was a custom pet-carrier tag, the kind you might attach to a carrier when taking a cat to the vet. The tag was silver and engraved with a name I knew all too well.
Tango.
In what couldn’t be a coincidence, that was also the name of the big orange tomcat who'd knocked up my aunt's beloved gray tabby, resulting in the five unplanned kittens.
