“You already have someone in mind?”
“Me?” I gave a nervous choke of laughter. “I barely know anyone.”
Alex gestured at himself. “What am I, chopped liver?”
My gaze fixed on the leaves at our feet, but not quickly enough to hide my blush. “I’m still new to all this. I don’t have your vast experience with affairs of the heart—”Crap. “I meanexpertise. Which is why I asked you for help.” His expression remained dubious. “Like how an FBI agent might consult someone from the other side of the law to help with a tricky investigation.”
“So I’m a serial killer, and you’re using my inside knowledge to catch a different murderer?”
My shoulders slumped. It had sounded so persuasive when Terry talked about her crime shows. “I just remembered how you knew that Will guy was a dud.”
He snorted under his breath.
“Yes, well, it may have taken some of us a little longer to figure it out.”
“That was the accent, probably. Happens to the best of us.” With the arm draped along the back of the bench—the one I’d been pretending not to notice, while secretly enjoying its warmth—he patted me on the back. “What you need is the opposite of him. Someone fun. Easygoing. Capable of smiling without spraining his jaw.” He tugged the end of my ponytail.
“Of course,” I breathed, stunned by the undeniable brilliance of his suggestion. “If Will was a Cecil Vyse, then obviously the antidote is to find a George Emerson!”
Alex frowned. “You lost me.”
“It’s from a book,” I explained. “Cecil is the snobby upper-crust fiancé, and George is the one she ditches him for, because he’s authentic and passionate—the kind of person who goes skinny-dipping in the woods with some other guys and kisses Lucy in a field of violets.”
“So he swings both ways?”
It was my turn to frown. “Ithinkthe swimming scene is about being at home in nature and not bound by propriety and suffocating social strictures, but it’s possible I missed some subtext.” There was no time to worry about that now. Leaping to my feet, I offered Alex my hand. “Thank you.”
His warm palm pressed against mine. When he didn’t let go, I tugged lightly, pulling him to his feet. My gaze traveled from our clasped hands to his face. “I should go in and do some ... things,” I said faintly, swallowing against the sudden dryness in my throat.
The pounding of my heart measured out the time as I waited for him to reply. The look in his eyes was impossible to read. Inside the house, the phone rang.
“You probably need to get that.”
It felt like there was a different question layered under that one, but I had no idea what he was asking or how to answer, so I nodded dumbly.
Alex released my hand. I watched him disappear through the gate. Only then did I walk slowly toward my back door, and a phone that had long since stopped ringing.
Dear Diary,
It’s crazy how much personal grooming has changed over the centuries. Back when respectable young women couldn’t show so much as a glimpse of ankle, or leave the house without gloves, or do anything to their faces beyond the pinching of cheeks, there was no reason to shave or exfoliate or moisturize or trim your cuticles—never mind the concept of “contouring,” which I still find too daunting to try, no matter how many videos Arden shows me.
Obviously I’m glad corsets have gone the way of the hoop skirt, but sometimes I think it would be easier to keep more of yourself under wraps, at least from a skin care perspective.
M.P.M.
Chapter 18
Arden waited until my bare feethad been submerged in a bubbling basin of magenta-tinted water to drop her bombshell. “Mission accomplished.”
Lydia lowered her magazine. “The mission of getting us to pay someone to paint our toenails? Even though it’s not sandal weather?”
Halloween had passed, and the weather was chilly enough to make my feet flex with relief in the warm water. A little color and sparkle would not go amiss now that the world had taken on the brown and gray palette of late autumn. Even if that hint of brightness would mostly be hidden by socks.
“I found him,” Arden said, ignoring Lydia’s jab. “Our George.” She paused to confer with her nail technician about which shade of turquoise she’d settled on. “The opposite of Will, who was really a what’s-his-name,” she explained, lifting one foot from the water and propping it on a towel.
When I called to explain the idea, Arden had leaped immediately into planning mode, pausing only long enough to congratulate me on this stroke of genius. It seemed simpler not to muddy the waters by introducing Alex Ritter’s name.
Lydia still looked confused.
