Page 22 of Pity Parade

“I don’t know about then, but surely we can be friends now. Can’t we?”

“You kissed me,” she says heatedly. “I don’t kiss my friends like that.”

I think back to our one moderately chaste encounter and a low current of desire starts to vibrate through me. It was a nice kiss. So nice I had to remind myself I wasn’t looking for a relationship. “Our date was last year,” I tell her. “Surely that’s long enough ago that you’d be comfortable being my friend now.”

“To what end?” she wants to know.

“Do you define your relationships with other women?” I ask.

She shifts from one foot to the other like she’s building enough steam to make a run for it. “No.”

“Then why do we have to define ours?” I know I’m playing with fire, but I don’t care.

After several moments, she decides, “We don’t have to define ours, because we don’t have one.”

“You’re saying no to being my friend.”

“That’s what I’m saying.” Is that a glimmer of regret behind her smug expression? She suddenly adds, “You should get a higher SPF in your sunscreen if you’re planning on spending a lot of time outdoors.”

“That’s something a friend would say.”

“You know what a friend wouldn’t say?” she demands. I raise my eyebrows in question. “Don’t get a higher sunscreen and burn to a crisp, for all I care.” Then she turns around and storms back into her cottage.

I’m not quite sure what to do now. I want to follow her, but there’s no point in making her so mad there’s no hope for any congeniality between us in the future. Having said that, I really don’t want to leave things on a bad note tonight.

I don’t have a chance to make my move though because moments later I hear a car door slam out front and a car loudly peels away. If I had to lay money on it, I’d say that Trina has left the building.

Going into my cottage, I pull a beer out of the fridge and try to formulate a plan for future contact with the beautiful lady next door. Against my better judgment, I want to get to know her better. I want to find out what it takes to make her laugh. I want to know what her favorite ice cream flavor is.

While I ruminate on the possible answers—Wayne’s World with a side of butter pecan?—I remind myself that I’m way too interested in Trina Rockwell. I force my brain to conjure an image of Jess. Per usual, the two scenes that come to mind are of her at the altar during our wedding ceremony, followed by her at the bottom of the stairs where I found her dead body.

I can never experience the death of my wife again, and the only way I can make sure I don’t is to never get remarried. Which means I really need to stop thinking about Trina. Unfortunately, that’s proving a lot like telling myself not to think about purple socks, and then purple socks are the only thing I have on my brain.

Picking up my phone, I try to distract myself by looking at my messages. There are twenty-seven from Shelby—all are marked urgent.

The first one reads:

Heath, you need to call me immediately. I’m not kidding.

The next twenty-six are equally vague and demanding in tone.

Historically, my partner does not give into histrionics, but then again, she’s also always been able to get ahold of me when she’s needed to. She picks up immediately after I hit the return call button.

“Where have you been?” she demands angrily.

“I’m not telling you that. In fact, I wasn’t even going to look at my messages for a week so you’re lucky I’m calling now. What’s the problem?”

“Jeremiah Engle is threatening to pull his share of funding from the new building. He says that ever since people started working from home, he hasn’t been convinced there will be enough interest in the office space to pay for the building’s overhead.”

I’ve worried about the same thing, and tell her as much. Focusing on the bright side, I remind her, “The Cornerstone Hotel Chain has already signed on to rent out twenty floors. That should be enough to bring in a clothing chain or two. Not to mention several restaurants.”

“Yes, but even with thirty floors of luxury condominiums, that will leave us with over forty floors to fill. If Engle doesn’t think he can recoup his investment, we’re not going to be able to get this building up.”

“Then we should consider going with something smaller,” I tell her. “Who cares if the building is ninety floors or fifty?”

“I care!” she yells. “We’re the kind of developers who make a big splash. I don’t want to be some middle of the line yokel.”

“Shelby,” I tell her as calmly as I can. “You and I both have more money than we’ll ever be able to spend. Why not build things that are more reasonable and have less risk involved?”

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