Page 4 of Spark of Attraction

I pushed my glasses down on my nose so I could press my thumb against a spot above my eyes that a chiropractor had said could help relieve headaches. Was he mansplaining or simply looking out for a friend? After life with Gareth, sometimes I found it hard to tell. I settled for a bland, “Thanks. I’d appreciate your advice,” because he was in the business and would know who to trust.

“You haven’t had your morning coffee yet, have you?” Malcolm asked, his head tilted to one side as he watched me.

“No.” Ah. Caffeine withdrawal tied with sleep deprivation. No wonder I had the mother of all headaches building to an explosive pressure in my skull.

“Why don’t I take you down to the Pancake Shack? You can have a coffee and breakfast, and we can talk more about your plans.”

I looked down at the outfit I’d hurriedly tossed on. Pink and purple? What had I been thinking? I love bright colors, especially pink, but this combination was bizarre even for me. Then again, maybe it was an unconscious, “Fuck You, Gareth” statement since he had always insisted I dress in dark colors.

“This is much more slimming on you,” he’d murmur, taking a colorful garment I chosen and replacing it with a gray, black or brown version. “Someone with your body type shouldn’t wear bright colors. And someone with your hair color should never wear pink.”

The week before we’d been married, Gareth had taken me to a stylist and had them tone down my hair color to a shade he found acceptable. It wasn’t until I was getting dressed for his funeral that I’d realized that, much like my hair and my closet, my entire life contained absolutely no color. The next week, I’d culled most of the clothes he’d chosen for me and gone on a shopping spree to replace them with clothes in bright, happy colors. I’d let my natural hair color grow out and found my joy again. But this morning’s pink and purple combination was a little too out there, even for me.

“Let me get properly dressed and I’ll meet you there, okay?”

“Go. Get dressed.” Malcolm’s voice, like his eyes, held a warmth I’d longed for but never received from the one person who should have looked at me the way Malcolm did now. “I’ll wait for you however long it takes.”

Why did it sound like he wasn’t talking about meeting me at a restaurant? Was I seeing a spark of attraction that I’d once thought I’d seen back in high school? Or were my own needs projecting? I’d spent too many years convinced that no one other than Gareth would ever be interested in me, so the hope that flared at the way Malcolm leaned toward me created a long-forgotten flutter in my body.

Choosing the third outfit for the day took me longer than I’d expected. By the time I picked up my purse, at least a half dozen different pairs of pants and a dozen or more tops lay on the bed, the dresser, and across the boxes I hadn’t yet unpacked. I’ll put them away later, I promised myself.

I stopped in the bathroom for yet another check on my makeup. After Gareth’s death and with working from home for the last three years, I’d gotten out of the habit of wearing makeup unless I knew I had to be on camera for a meeting. Where it used to take me less than fifteen minutes to end up with perfectly applied eyes, lips and lashes, it took me twice as long today. I’d hesitated while deciding whether to put in my contacts that Gareth had insisted I wear in public. Ultimately, I decided this was Port Paxton and Malcolm, both of whom had seen me in my pimply, gangly teenage years, and put on my favorite purple cats-eye glasses.

Gareth wouldn’t have approved of the woman who stared back in the mirror, but I was starting to like her again.

CHAPTER FOUR

MALCOLM

Being midweek in April—in other words, when the tourists hadn’t descended yet—less than a half dozen cars were parked in the Pancake Shack’s lot, which meant I could grab a booth where Ellie and I could talk without a lot of people overhearing.

I wondered if Ellie realized how much work, time and money even a simple kitchen gut could take, let alone changing the configuration of the house’s plumbing to give the primary bedroom an ensuite. Though she’d inherited the house and probably wasn’t saddled with a mortgage, I wasn’t sure how financially secure she and her husband had been before his death, or if she’d been left with a ton of debt that had wiped out any life insurance or savings they’d had, if he even had life insurance.

I grabbed my phone and called the one person who could give me an inside scoop.

“Josh speaking,” he answered after the receptionist put me through.

After we shot the shit for a few minutes, I said, “I got a call from your sister this morning. She blew a fuse.” I realized how that could be misinterpreted, so I added, “As in, literally.”

“Let me guess. You found that there’s more wrong with that dump than a blown fuse?”

Dump? Hauser House needed work but in no stretch of the imagination did I consider it a dump. Had he seen something I’d missed? I hadn’t been upstairs yet. Was there some major leak that had rotted the wood floors, or gotten in behind the walls? Was there a room full of black mold?

Or did he suspect I might try to hook up with his sister again? “What specifically are you worried about?”

“Other than the roof?” There was a pause and I figured he had taken off his glasses and was pinching his nose, a habit he’d had even back in elementary school. “Look, I do numbers, not remodeling projects, but from what El told me, old lady Hauser let things go after her husband passed about ten years ago, so I’m worried you might find it needs a lot more work that I didn’t notice.”

A fair concern, but that he hadn’t seen anything upstairs relieved some of my suspicions.

“I tried to convince her to sell it and buy something newer, that needed less work,” he continued. “Something smaller so she wouldn’t have so much to keep up on her own, but you know Ellie.”

I did, but I stayed quiet.

“So how much is going to cost her? To fix up whatever is wrong with her wiring?”

This is where the conversation got sticky. Ellie was my client, not Josh. I’m not a doctor so there isn’t anything in our relationship that means I can’t discuss any problems I’d found, but it still felt like I was betraying Ellie. “I’ll give her a quote and if she cares to share it with you, that’s up to her.”

“That much?”

---