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The ice didn’t cool my temper in the slightest, especially not when I returned to the email that had started it all. Sebastian Anderson was pond scum. Not that he’d ever want to incorporate green space or water features in his development proposals. He was pondless pond scum, so I guess that just made him plain ole scum.
The man really wanted to tear this place down. His application suggested that the oldest Second Empire home in town presented no historic value. He was a menace.
Wood screeched against wood downstairs. Huffing, I glared at the towel. “What are you doing?”
There was a pause. Then, “Nuh-uh-uh,” he singsonged. “We don’t talk through the towel, remember?”
Ugh! Slamming my feet on the wooden floor, I made sure to stomp extra-loud on my way to the hole. I kicked the towel aside. “Is this really the time to be dragging furniture around?” I asked the void at my feet.
A dark head appeared below. My neighbor glanced up, the warm, low light of his bedroom caressing his jaw and cheekbones. Damn him for being handsome. He knew it too, the jerk. That’s why he acted like such an arrogant asshole. “Your bath is a solid cast-iron beast. It probably weighs five hundred pounds.” He arched his brows meaningfully at me, then at the jagged wood lining the hole. “I’m not sleeping somewhere that thing can fall and crush me in my sleep.”
I rocked onto my heels. That made sense. Apparently, the man could rub his brain cells together and make a coherent thought. Life was full of miracles.
He crossed his arms and lifted his gaze back to mine. The fabric of his tee clung to his shoulders and arms in a way that was far too distracting for someone so insufferable. “Will that be all, Your Majesty? I’ll have you know I also have an important meeting I should be preparing for.”
“Are you aware that you’re a colossal dick?”
For some ridiculous reason, the question made a giddy sort of smile light up his expression. “It’s been mentioned once or twice.”
Sick of his stupid face, I replaced the towel, then cast about for something more substantial to cover the hole with, finally dragging over the side table I used for the bath. That would have to do.
My mood was marginally improved with the application of a few hours of sleep and an unhealthy amount of caffeine. Ignoring the hole—and the man moving in the apartment below—I prepared for battle.
I dressed in my favorite navy skirt suit and most luxurious white silk blouse. I tied my hair back in a low bun, smoothing all my flyaways until I looked like someone who couldn’t be bullied into anything by anyone.
In the early days of my career, I’d found I got more respect from men and women alike when I wore shapeless suits, sensible shoes, and ill-fitting blouses. But as I got older, I realized that life was too short for sensible shoes. If a man couldn’t respect me wearing makeup, heels, and a fabulous skirt, he simply wasn’t worth my time. I could do my job just fine no matter what clothes I wore.
And when things got serious, I wore designer stilettos. My favorite pair cost as much as three months’ rent, which had been a rare indulgence with an even rarer dash of irresponsibility. They were as comfortable as six-inch pumps could be when they had a needle-thin heel, and they made me feel invincible. Today, invincible was exactly what I needed.
I clip-clopped my way down the internal stairway, out the house’s front door, and past the quaint, weathered sign that read “Radcliffe House Apartments.” Pausing for a moment, I frowned at the warped wood and faded lettering, then straightened and moved on. Nothing a lick of paint couldn’t fix. It wasn’t like it needed to be torn down.
A midnight-blue Maserati was parked in front, which was strange. Perhaps the new neighbor’s? He seemed like the kind of man who needed a fancy car to feel important.
Snorting, I turned the corner and got into my own vehicle, Ted. Ted was an unpretentious 1998 Toyota Corolla that had seen me through my entire adult life. We’d been through a lot together, me and Ted. His familiar rumble and vague scent of decades-old dust and burned rubber eased my nerves. Today’s meeting would be a piece of cake.
The town council offices were located in a beautiful stone building that doubled as the local court. New Elwood had a population of approximately ten thousand residents, and we boasted our own courthouse and full-time judge. Sure, Judge Harold Kane was a crotchety old bastard who won the election every six years by default because no other applicants wanted to move here for the year required to qualify for the position, but he was fair and he was ours.
The man in question burst into my office—a repurposed storage closet in the basement of the building—and slammed his meaty palms on my desk.
I rolled back in my chair a scant few inches before my seat-back hit the concrete wall behind me. The important thing to do when faced with someone larger and more powerful than you was not to flinch. Something I should’ve remembered later, when meeting another man.
“What can I do for you, Harold?”
Judge Kane was a tall, wide man who was intimidating even when you knew he hid a heart of gold behind his steely gaze. He still had all his hair, a shock of pure white which he proudly coiffed to add another two inches to his already considerable height. That morning, he regarded me with piercing blue eyes, no sign of the kindly grandfather I knew him to be. “You meeting that Anderson fella today?”
I checked the time and nodded. “In twenty minutes.”
“Give him hell, Reeves.”
My lips twitched. Judge Kane’s wife, Gladys, was one of the curators at the local museum. Both of them believed in preserving the town as much as possible. “You know I will.”
“Good.” He gave me a curt nod, then whirled out of my office and went to bark at someone else. His voice echoed in the narrow underground hallways until he disappeared into an elevator.
After reviewing the notes I’d prepared one last time, I tapped the sheets to line them up, then slipped them into my leather-bound zipper folder. I grabbed my stamp and ink pad, and my favorite pen—red, of course, as was appropriate for a man of Anderson’s ilk—and stood. It was time I went to meet my enemy.
I took the stairs to the third floor, using the walk to center myself. Brick by brick, I built my façade and ran through my arguments in my head. Being in this beautiful building helped.
For a small town, our council building and courthouse were surprisingly grand. I took in the marble steps, listening to the echo of my fabulous shoes and the chatter of other public servants starting their workday. My fingers drifted over the smooth stone balustrade, tracing the curlicues at the bottom and top of every landing. The floors were off-white, shot through with veins of black. The leaded windows let in the late-spring sunshine, bathing the stairwell in gold.
