Chapter 48
Dirk
It’s Lucy – my impressive, duplicitous, “Mrs West” neighbor.
“What’s up?”
“Do you really hate me this much?” she says, hands on hips at the front gate.
“I don’t hate you.”
“You just bought my apartment from under me – my home, my haven. I will have to move out. Don’t worry – Dirk. I won’t be back. You’ll never have to see me again.”
“You’re angry,” I say.
“Rocket scientist. Properties go to the highest bidder, I know, but do you know how hard I fought to keep this place? Did you hear nothing I said? Did you not even notice how much I wanted it?”
I am silent in the force of her hatred.
Her stare shrivels me. Those eyes. She’s in pain.
I swallow, try to move closer, hold out both hands, but she backs away.
“I thought you were a friend, Dirk. For a while there, I thought we might even be something more. And you knew it too, Dirk O’Connell. Tell me you didn’t feel it too; what we had between us. We always had something. We still have something. That’s why you want me gone. You are a very nice man, I won’t deny it. But you. Are. An. Utter. Coward.”
“No, Lucy. You’ve ...”
Is this an act? She clutches at her left arm and pats at her beautiful chin, showing off her diamonds, and then she shoves me away. There in the street, her hands are against my chest, her whole body’s force behind them.
Lucy stares daggers at me, then suddenly sways, right in front of me. I ask her straight.
“Is this a trick, Lucy? I’m not falling for it.”
But Lucy’s the one who falls.
Right in front of me – a fake faint if ever I’ve seen one, a swoon from the best of the old bodice rippers my late wife used to read – regency romance, she called those books. Swoons were employed at least as often as the dropped kerchief or reticule, if not as often as the fluttered eyelashes – a clear play for attention.
