Page 23 of Rest In Pink

That was the first positive thing I’d heard in a while about Burney’s future, although it also meant the Porters had a lot of debt. Still Patsy was no fool with money, and their reputation was stellar. They’d be fine.

“Why did Cash think you would sell?”

“Because he’s going to get a cut of the sale and he thought the offer was really good,” Will said. “He should have known we wouldn’t take it, even if it was more than the place was worth before we built it up.”

How the hell Cash could look at the back lot and think that they’d sell was a mystery. But then the only smart thing Cash had ever done was date Liz in high school, and he’d screwed that up, the moron. If there was ever a woman you didn’t play fast and loose with, it was Liz.

“Good,” I said. “I’m glad you’re not selling."

“Interesting, though. Not long after Cash, some woman came by. Made a counteroffer.”

“Who?”

“No idea. She just left a card and said whatever Vermillion was offering, she’d beat it. Patsy has the card. Some company called ECOmena.”

That was a new wrinkle. What the hell was going on in Burney?

“The paint color?” Will prodded.

“I’m thinking Candy Apple Red.”

Will laughed.

He can laugh all he wants.

Liz will love Candy Apple Red.

Chapter Eleven

Anemone and I worked all day, taking breaks so we could move Peri and her Hello Kitty designer luggage into one of the four bedroom suites upstairs and so Marianne could feed Peri and us. After lunch, Peri dragged the big red bear farther into the living room next to the big blue couches so she could sit on its leg and read while we tried to keep our arguments aboutAnemone RisingPG.

“So Anthony saw you inBeach Bunnyand fell in love,” I said, scanning the typescript of Chapter Three.

“It’s all in there,” Anemone said. “Why are we going over this?”

“And after you were married, his mother made you help with the family construction business.”

“She didn’t make me, I wanted to. Does it say she made me? Take that out, I volunteered.”

“And six months later she retired because you were doing everything, and a year later the business had expanded and was making twice the profit it had before.”

“Yes, but I don’t think that’s interesting.”

I put down the typescript. “Anemone, that’s fascinating. I let you skim over that because we were just getting started, but now that I’ve written the rest of your life, that’s crucial.”

“How?” Anemone looked annoyed. “It was a construction company. I didn’t stay running it.”

“You built houses, Anemone. You went out in hard hats to supervise. You invested the company in low-income housing. You—”

“Liz, that’sboring.”

“Then you married an actor and invested part of his portfolio in more low-income housing. You married a musician and started a low-income housing charity. You married a senator and let him take your charity as his own.” She’d married a writer, too, but the less said about that, the better. “Then you let it all drop for ten years.”

“I moved on,” she said.

“But you picked up homeless charities instead,” I said.

“Well, there was all that money. It would be wrong to keep it all for myself. None of that has anything to do with mylife.Really, I think the marriage chapters are what make the book—”

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