"You already said that."
Lacey shook her head as she left. If she couldn't wipe the relaxed look off his face, what hope did she have of winning the bet? She stopped in the hallway with her hand on the front door handle, and whipped out her phone again.
No coffee for #PamperedPlayboy this morning. He's learning how the other half live. #TheBaxterGames
She waited, silent, to hear his reaction. Nothing. As if he really didn't care that his day in her cheerless apartment would be dismal. Frustrated, she typed in another tweet.
Headed to the warm library, leaving #PamperedPlayboy in the cold. #TheBaxterGames
Still nothing.
She shut the front door behind her harder than she'd intended. Her phone didn't beep until she was walking out of the building.
#LovelyLacey looks even better in white than she does in red. #SexyLibrarian #WhoNeedsCoffee?
Bastard. He was undermining her by making her readers think there must be something sexual going on. That had to be it.
In the bus on the way to her father's, she called Ally. "Help," she said. "I need to think of a way to make my apartment so horrible, Bronson won't be able to stand it."
"I thought you did that already?" asked Ally.
"Yeah." She sighed. "You'd think falling through the floor and almost dying might do the trick."
"You … what?"
"You haven't seen my tweets yet? Anyway, point is, it wasn't enough. I need something worse."
There was a short silence on the other end. Then Ally said, "I'm not sure what more you can do. But I've designed some caps and T-shirts. This whole thing is blowing up, way more than I'd hoped. Have you seen the numbers? They're huge. And our readers want merchandise."
Lacey blinked. "What do you mean? What kind of T-shirts?"
"I've posted an ad for them on the blog, so take a look and tell me what you think."
"This afternoon, when I get to the library." Lacey peered out the window. She was almost at her Dad's hospice. "I've got to go. Call me back if you come up with anything to get Bronson out, okay? It's important."
"If he sticks it out a few more days, it'll be great for our numbers," said Ally, before she could hang up. "How about you let him stay and get comfortable, so he relaxes his guard. At the end of the week, hit him with something so awful it makes him leave right away. It'd be the perfect scenario for the blog."
"That'd be a dangerous game. It's my dad's home we're playing with, remember? And Bronson's far more resilient than I'd have guessed."
"Okay. Well, just a suggestion. Worth thinking about, though, right?"
Nine
It was too cold to walk around the house in his underwear, so Bronson stayed in Lacey's bed, working through his emails on his phone, until Carla turned up with his clothes.
"This place is a lot worse than I thought," she called to him, looking around the living room while he got dressed in the bedroom. "I checked out the photos on Lacey's blog yesterday, but they don't capture the smell, or the dampness. And it's filthy. There's dirt everywhere. How can she live like this?"
"She doesn't, usually. You'd better organize a house cleaning service." He pulled on the warmest of the clothes she'd brought, easing a long-sleeved top and sweater over his sore ribs. "See if you can get them to come right away, and have some heaters delivered as well. I'll also need a coffee machine, and groceries."
"I can have a chef prepare your meals and deliver them."
"Just get groceries." Bronson sat to put on his shoes. "This is the first holiday from the social scene I've had in a long time. I'll be online, of course, but I want a break from eating restaurant food."
"Not quite the holiday I was hoping you'd take." Her voice was drily amused. "But anything's better than nothing."
"I'd forgotten how much I like cooking."
"You cooked?"
Fully dressed, he joined her in the living room. "Why is that surprising?"
She shook her head, her expression still bemused. "The doctor's coming at eleven." Tilting her head to one side, she hesitated a moment. "Are you going to tell me how you got the bruises? I know I shouldn't ask, but I'm about to burst."
"Lacey's already made the photos public, so half of Sydney knows." He opened the door to the spare room and gestured to the devastation. "I took a tumble."
Her eyes widened and she drew in a loud breath. "Don't tell me you fell through the floor? Bronson, you could have died." Her gaze went to her feet and she stepped back nervously. "How bad is the rest of it? Is the whole building about to collapse?"
"That room was the worst, but the sooner the tenants are out, the better. I'm going to pay a visit to the ones who are still living here. Whatever it costs, I'll make sure they move out right away."
"What about you? You're going to risk your life here for a whole week?"
"Short of physically carrying Lacey out and boarding the place up behind her, it's the only way I'll get her to leave." He stared grimly at the hole. "I could bring in an entire team of experts to tell her the building was too far gone to save, and it wouldn't do a bit of good."
"According to her articles, her father wants to come home to die," said Carla. "I feel for her. But surely she's got to realize she can't bring him here?"
"She knows what she wants, and she's determined to get it. I have to admire that she won't take no for an answer." Bronson tested the room's light switches. "Get someone to come and check the wiring, make sure the building's not going to burn down in the next week. And the toilet's broken, so get it replaced."
"Top of the list," she promised with a grimace.
"I'll need someone to take a proper look at the woodwork, in case any more support beams are rotted through. And I want the chimney checked, to see if we can get the fireplace working. It'll warm the place up and help it dry out."
"It's a gorgeous fireplace." Carla peered at it. "The old tiles are so intricately done. Unusual to have something like this in an apartment building. A real feature."
He shot her a look. "I've already got Lacey talking up the historic value of the place."
"Sorry, boss." She walked over to peer into the fish tank under the window. "What's in here?"
"Nothing. Whatever it was must have died." He paused a moment, thinking through what else he needed. "You'd better organize for a small bed. Some kind of camping bed or stretcher."
"You think it'll fit in here?" She looked over at the enormous bookcase, its dehumidifier still humming under the plastic covering. "Is that thing holding an entire library? It's taking up half the room."
Bronson walked over to it. Most of the shelves were filled with large, dense-looking volumes. Biographies about Karl Marx, Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Fidel Castro. Others had titles like Socialism for a Sceptical Age, and The Encyclopaedia of Activism and Social Justice. Strangely enough, while most shelves were packed tight with books, one shelf was completely empty.
"We'll squeeze the bed in," he said. "At least I should get a few more hours of sleep than I normally do."
"Some people go to the beach to relax. You camp out in a building that could collapse on your head." She leaned against the back of the couch for a moment, then wrinkled her nose and brushed dust from her skirt. "Looking on the bright side, Lacey's doing a great job of publicizing your bet. I've had calls from all kinds of people wanting to know more. Even my mother's heard about it. She said it was all anyone talked about at her indoor bowls club."
Bronson nodded. "The extra publicity should be good for the clubs. I'll check in with the PR team and make sure we're making the most of it. If we tease the question of whether I'm going to back out of the bet and turn up at Play tonight, we could get a big crowd waiting to find out."
"Remember, you promised to relax this week. In between making sure this place isn't going to collapse, I mean. Plenty of time to get back to work once you've won the bet." Carla glanced sideways at the hole. "If you survive that long."
"Actually, the more I think about having a week away from the clubs, the more I like the idea. I'll have time to plan, and work through some of the numbers. I'm also going to follow up with the private detective. For the last three years, he's given me a progress report at the same time every month, and this is the first time I haven't heard from him. Maybe that's a good sign and he's finally got a lead on where my brother went after Thailand."
"Why don't you lie around in your pyjamas and read a good thriller? I'll pick up a Lee Child, or one of those John Milton novels, shall I?"