‘Surely not,’ I protested, feeling oddly protective of a house I’d only just set foot in. ‘Your house is beautiful.’
‘Beautiful, old and too expensive to maintain, much like me.’ She gave the arm of her chair a loving stroke. ‘You can only be one of those things in Los Angeles. She might look impressive to you, but she needs work. New windows, new roof, new plumbing, new air conditioning. Anyone with that kind of money has too much sense to waste it here, and anyone foolish enough to want to waste it wouldn’t have the money in the first place.’
‘When are you moving?’ I asked.
Myrna closed her eyes and exhaled slowly.
‘Two weeks.’
It sounded as though she could barely believe it herself.
‘Two more weeks and off I go into what my hateful stepchildren like to call God’s waiting room. Which, in my opinion, is a very optimistic name. There’s a better chance of me being elected president of these United States than a single resident in that place making it past St Peter and through the pearly gates.’
‘I’m here for another week,’ I said, drinking in the beauty of her sitting room and feeling unexpectedly sad for this fascinating woman. ‘Do you think it might be all right if I came to visit again?’
She reached for her pendant, sliding it up and down, and studying my face. ‘Sunday would be fine,’ she said. ‘In the afternoon. Visiting in the mornings is terribly gauche.’
‘Not a morning person, got it.’
She pursed her lips and made a small, affirmative noise in the back of her throat.
‘I’ll expect you at two. And feel free to dress like a grown woman next time.’
‘Can’t make any promises,’ I told her, a quick mental search through my luggage yielding very poor results. ‘But I’ll try my best.’
‘See that you do,’ she said, chasing her words with a disappointed but resigned grunt. ‘It’s the least my home deserves.’
And I had to agree with her there.
Bel’s list of things she loved about Ren was not quite what I was expecting.
With two feet on the floor of Suzanne’s pool and my upper body curled over the side, I studied her text as though it were written in cryptic code.
Like his green eyes
Hot bod
Smart
Seems nice
I hear WAP playing in my head every time I see him
Even though I was pretty sure there was only oneWAPon either side of the Atlantic, I still googled it to be on the safe side.
‘Just the one meaning then,’ I muttered as the too-catchy chorus knocked on the doors of my brain. If I let it in, it would never leave and as much as I loved Cardi and Meg, I had a feeling it wasn’t the right soundtrack for the greatest, most romantic love letter of all time.
‘Siri, play some Motown please?’
I almost clapped with pure delight as Stevie Wonder echoed through the invisible speakers hidden around the garden – I was getting used to Suzanne’s swanky LA lifestyle far too easily – and read through Bel’s list again. OK, so she wasn’t a whizz with words, that wasn’t a secret. Just because she wasn’t waxing lyrical about hiseyes didn’t mean her feelings weren’t real. Some people saw one colour, some people all the shades. She hadn’t spent as much time with him as I had. She didn’t know they were so much more than green. Sometimes emerald, sometimes more like fresh-cut grass, or the misty, mossy shade of trees reflected in the water and ringed with pure black, set off by his perfect, burnished bronze skin and fringed with lashes so thick and long, the thought of them fluttering against my cheek as his face came closer to mine made my heart thud in my chest.
Clearing my throat, I rushed back to the present, water swishing around my legs, the early evening sun warm on my shoulders. I was getting myself in the right mindset, that was all.
Green eyes was a much more concise way of saying exactly what I’d come up with. Bel was efficient, nothing wrong with that.
‘Hot bod,’ I said aloud. ‘Seems nice.’
Hot bod went without saying but Ren didn’t seem nice, hewasnice. It was one of the things I liked best about him. He was kind when he didn’t have to be, generous with his time, honest and open. He’d gone out of his way to make me feel welcome and if that wasn’t nice, I didn’t know what was. And then there was the look on his face when I told him about Bel’s love letter. He wasn’t afraid to show his feelings. Only that letter was still a blank piece of paper because my brain was holding all my words hostage. It was so long since I’d tried anything like this. All my romantic leanings were locked away safely where they couldn’t get me into trouble and now I wanted to release them, they were nowhere to be found.
