Page 23 of The Fixer

So Charliedidprefer women—or at least he had a thing for Zoe Saldana. Joy felt an unexpected flutter of relief, followed by a surge of happiness, which made absolutely no sense.

“Okay, that’s enough,” she said aloud to herself or the dogs, she wasn’t sure. “This girl needs a shower so she can get to work at her mother’s house.”

Ugh. What a downerthatthought was.

She trudged back to the bathroom, closing the door on two curious puppy faces. “I shower alone, girls. Well, unless there’s a hot man wanting to shower with me. Yeah,that’snever gonna happen.”

Shucking her clothes, she studied her reflection in the mirror. Her critical voice yapped, “You’re all ribs and bones, and what padding you have is in all the wrong places. No wonder you’re showering alone.” Her gaunt face stared back at her; her shoulder and collar bones protrudedobscenely. Flat stomachs were a good thing, right? Except hers was concave, accentuating the sharp points of her pelvis. The image unsettled her, and without thinking, she grabbed the mirror’s edge and yanked, revealing a medicine cabinet.

“Ha! Eventhisis neat.” Curiosity had her scouring the sparse contents, immediately noting no feminine articles were among them.

The inner voice hissed at her to shut the door, but she couldn’t resist investigating her contractor just a wee bit more. She was being a responsible detective—one needed to know what kind of character one was embarking on a business journey with.

Regular toothpaste—not the whitening kind—an electric shaver, a bottle of ibuprofen, a comb, and a bottle of pleasant-smelling aftershave—which she sniffed twice—made up the bulk of the cabinet’s contents. Would he keep condoms in here? She went up on tiptoe to inspect something suspiciously compact and flat, brushing her fingers against a glass shelf. The shelf tilted. To her horror, the thing collapsed into the sink, bringing everything with it, including the other shelves and their items.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!

Her phone clanged not two beats later, sending her pounding heart into a frenzied rhythm. Estelle’s smiling face filled her screen, and Joy quickly picked up. “H-hello?”

“Are you jogging? You sound like you’re out of breath,” her astute assistant quizzed.

“No, I’m panicking!” Joy blurted out.

Alarm rose in Estelle’s voice. “Why? What’s going on?”

Joy explained as she gathered the debris from the sink. Thank God the shelves were intact, and thank God Estelle could keep a secret!

“Just put it back the way you found it,” Estelle advised helpfully.

“I don’trememberhow I found it! Worse, this guy barely has anythingtorearrange.”

“Perfect. Makes it simpler.”

“No, it really doesn’t,” Joy spat. “It makes any rearranging glaringly obvious. He’s a total neatnik. You should see this place.”

“Just tell him you needed something, and you looked inside the cabinet, and whoops! There it went.”

“And just what was I trying to find in his medicine cabinet that sounds legit? ‘Hey, I needed to shave my legs with your electric razor.’ That’s a hard no!”

“I think I need to fly out there and help you.”

“No, you really don’t.”

“Okay. Let’s figure this out from a man’s point of view.”

“Which neither of us has.”

“Minor detail.” Estelle talked her through what might go where, relying on her experience with her brothers and boyfriends. And oh, the “condoms” which started this whole crazy mess, turned out to be sample packets of cold medicine.

“Oh, good grief,” Joy wailed. “I have no idea if anything’s in the right order, and he’ll know it was me the next time he looks in here!”

“Unless a hookup stops by between now and then. It’s a sacrifice, but I volunteer my services.”

“Would you just stop it? You’re not helping.”

“Says the woman who couldn’t figure out where to put the toothpaste,” Estelle snorted.

“Um, I really do need to take a shower and get going. Were you calling for a reason?” Joy’s tone carried more of a bite than she’d intended.

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