“You didn’t mean to ban me, did you, Winnie?” I say in the empty car as the sedan purrs down her street.
She’s completely oblivious that I’m watching her as she half carries, half drags that dog toward the front door. She opens the door and makes happy noises when she realizes her house has been cleaned.
I wish she wouldn’t live alone. There are dangerous men out here, after all. Or at least get a real dog, like a German shepherd, or even an actual border collie. That thing that is howling because it’s getting rained on doesn’t count. Fidget wouldn’t last a day at my father’s desert compound.
My phone rings again.
I send my older brother to voicemail. Doesn’t he know this is our special time?
I’m being facetious. No way would I actually fall in love, especially not with Winnie. This is a minor obsession. It’s best to just let this play out. I’ll get bored of her in a couple of weeks, maybe buy another property to develop. Then I’ll move on.
“I am not my father,” I say aloud.
Anyway, this is nothing compared to the time I decided to start a pygmy-goat-farming operation.
“I’m never going to get rid of all of those animals,” I mutter as I hold the spyglass up to my eye, an impulse buy from a Sotheby’s auction when I was in Manhattan lastmonth. Eighteenth century. Belonged to a pirate. No longer useful for stealing gold, but for peering into a woman’s inner sanctum?
Perfect.
While she’s in the shower, the water sluicing down her body with the suds from the fancy shampoo I replaced that drugstore garbage with, I take my favorite spot by the window.
Winnie won’t realize anyone’s been back here. She knows someone’s been in her house, but she’s probably assured herself she’s not being watched.
I wink at the nonfunctional camera attached to the eave. It’s easy to hack those Ring cameras if your brother owns the server farm.
I watch her pad around the cozy little Craftsman cottage, talking to herself as she sees what surprises I left her.
“No, don’t heat that up in the microwave for that long. Seriously, didn’t you read the note I left you? I finally got a chance to use my vintage typewriter, and you don’t even read the note.”
Winnie settles down with the square ceramic container of lobster mac ’n’ cheese with a towel.
No, I didn’t make it. Remember, I don’t like her that much. Had the chef at one of my hotels prepare it.
She looks so cozy as she settles down in the nest of blankets on the oversized sofa. All I want to do is curl up next to her, lay my head in her lap, and let her pet my hair.
She has music softly playing from her laptop, and she idly flips the pages of her book as she eats.
“Oh no, Winnie, a third glass of wine? Drink some water. You’re dehydrated. That’s why you were so cranky today.”
It doesn’t have anything to do with me buying her out. I wasn’t intending to scare her. I bought the building because her shop was in it, and I want to own that little piece of her.
She just makes me somad. She doesn’t get to speak to me like that after everything I’ve done for her.
I relax my clenched fist.
Winnie sets down the empty dish.
I don’t have to leave her dessert—she makes the best pastries. The strawberry cream drips down her hand as she takes a bite.
“I just want to keep her in a cage made of pastry,” I whisper in the dark.
The dog looks up.
I duck down. Hear Winnie get up off the sofa nest.
Headlights briefly illuminate the front yard as a car pulls up.
Fury floods me. That better not be a man. Winnie will not have a boyfriend. I won’t allow it. I just got rid of her weird neighbor. I definitely caught him checking her out. Now his company’s had him transferred to Toronto.
