Page 26 of Under Daddy's Spell

Striding to the front, she checked the thermometer and wanted to cry. Starting out at eighty degrees, in late August, during a heat wave, with the humidity at 100 percent, didn’t bode well for the day.

She dialed her landlord as she walked to the mechanical room out back, not caring what time it was. Naturally, she got his voicemail. In four years, had he ever deigned to answer one of her calls? She escalated her need for service from urgent to critical in her message.

The outside unit behind her shop was humming away. She didn’t see a tree branch sticking out of it or dents or holes from the hailstorm—always a good sign. Inside the tiny room with the fuse box, water heater, and the second central air unit, all things she had in her garage at home, she stood with her arms crossed, unsure what she was looking for.

The unit was running and sounded the same as it always did. There weren’t any bangs, screeches, or sick sounds, and water was slowly dripping from the plastic condensation pipe into the pan—also normal.

Except for an obvious problem, like it was off or on fire, that was the extent of what she knew to check. ?

She couldn’t help wondering what it was like on Jordan’s side of the wall. She checked her watch. The Body Shop didn’t open for another hour.

Using more unladylike words, she stomped inside but not before propping the door open. It let in the humid air, but the outside temperature was cooler than inside her store.

***

“IT’S TEN DEGREES COOLERover there, at least,” Angie announced when she returned from her reconnaissance mission next door.

“We use the same system. Blaming the oven for the heat doesn’t fly because it hasn’t been on since yesterday. If the gym is cool, we should be plenty comfortable over here. What the heck is going on?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “But something’s got to give.”

“I’ll take care of it. I promise.”

Strong words for someone who was at her wit’s end over what to do, short of calling a repairman herself and asking the owner to reimburse her for the expense. It was a helluva risk. If something major and costly needed to be replaced, she didn’t have enough in her savings account to cover it. She could use her operations funds, but if Mr. Thompson was his usual difficult self and didn’t reimburse her, she wouldn’t be able to keep the lights on and make payroll.

Jordan said he’d be back at midday today. Did he consider that twelve o’clock straight up or anywhere from late morning to midafternoon? Since she couldn’t be sure, she checked both parking lots for a shiny black F-150 every hour on the hour.

Her frustration mounted each time she came up empty.

At one o’clock, when she looked out, she whispered, “About damn time,” and was halfway across the store before the metal door, which had a broken automatic closure, slammed shut with a bang. It was something the landlord was supposed to fix months ago but hadn’t.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” she called to Martha, who was ringing up a sale at the register. Without waiting for her acknowledgment, she was out the door and hurrying down the sidewalk to The Body Shop.

In the lobby, it surprised her to see her nemesis, Seth, behind the reception desk.

No longer all smiles and commentary on the tightness of her skirt, he groaned when he saw her. “What is it now?”

“I saw Jordan’s truck.”

“In his office,” he replied. “I believe you know the way.”

She ought to. She’d been in it every day for the last three. But her discussions with Seth had gotten her nowhere. It was why she had to struggle not to react to his sarcasm or shoot him a dirty look as she marched past. ?

Tessa had told Jordan she didn’t want to be that neighbor who complained constantly and made their lives hell. But why should she, her staff, and the customers still coming into her bookstore/sauna be the only one’s suffering?

And it wasn’t only the heat. The thumping of the weight machines against their shared wall was growing intolerable. On Wednesday, Seth had said he’d address it, but as she watched The Body Shop’s growing membership coming and going, it only got louder every day.

The next day, she’d trotted right back over with another noise complaint. This time, it was about the obscene and, frankly, scary grunts and roars the weightlifters emitted. Especially when they wafted to her side through the vents during preschool story time on Thursday morning. ?

On Friday, her complaint was that his gym members had no qualms about parking in her clearly marked reserved spaces. Worse, she’d seen drivers pull into the handicapped spaces then head to their trunks for their gym bags. That got her really heated. As did the protein bar wrappers and smoothie cups she found routinely on the grassy strip beside her store, on the ground around the trash can on the corner, and in the employees-only parking lot behind the stores.

Each time, Seth assured her he’d take care of an issue, only to have another, more significant problem crop up. He apparently wasn’t appreciating the seriousness of her situation. This meant Jordan was about to get an earful.

To get to him, she had to dodge two stick-thin, spandex-clad women with big hair chatting in the middle of the aisle and skirt around bulging, grunting, sweating men. She averted her eyes from the guy on the thigh machine. She feared each time he abducted in his itty-bitty shorts, something would pop free and tell her more than she ever wanted to know about him.

When the same guy grunted loudly, her eyes cut to him.

She knew that sound.

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