Only In His Sweetest Dreams(12)

As she bolted back to the cart, Pete was seating himself.

“I won’t be held accountable if your wife catches you with one of these,” she told Pete, handing three cigars to Harrison.

Pete nodded to the plastic container he’d left on her seat. “Cookies for the kids.” He peeled a beer off the dewy six-pack in his lap. “She wants you to come for dinner while you’ve got them.”

“Thanks.” Mercedes smiled and handed the plastic tub to L.C. so she could get behind the wheel again. “Cowboy cookies. Fully loaded. Help yourself. Give me one, too.”

“All right.” Harrison rubbed a cigar between his palms. “Packed and rolling. Now take the long route, Mercy, so we can get a few puffs in.”

Accepting the cookie L.C. handed her, Mercedes cut across to the eastern side of the Ring Road that circled the outer units of the complex. Behind her, a can tab popped.

“L.C.?” Pete offered.

“No, thanks.” L.C. said around a cookie, turning his head to admire the vintage Thunderbird in the Jefferson’s driveway.

“Don’t start drinking this early?” Harrison asked.

“I don’t stop. Not until a court appearance is necessary. This place is a lot bigger than it looks from the road.”

Mercedes lost her footing on the accelerator, making the cart lurch into a crawl before she jammed her foot back into place and got them rolling at top speed again.

L.C. glanced at her.

She didn’t turn her gaze to meet his. She tightened her hands on the wheel, kept her nose forward and let her brain reconfigure. Scorpio and Cancer. Bad mix. Very bad.

“Seventy-eight duplexes,” Harrison said as if he hadn’t heard the admission of alcoholism. “Another twenty bungalows like mine, plus the apartment building which is forty single-bedroom units. That’s where Mercedes lives. It all needs work. That manager I was talking about? Frank? He was skimming. Said he was fixing things, but our board was four birds who couldn’t change a light bulb between ‘em. That’s why Pete and I signed on. At least we know what bullshit smells like. You want a cigar?”

“Can’t. Makes me want to drink.”

Mercedes pressed her numb foot flat on the accelerator, trying to work up enough speed to waft the cigar smell out of the cart.

“You’re no fun a’tall, are you?” Harrison said.

“You’ve been talking to my ex,” he accused. “Why are these units different back here?”

“Different developer,” Harrison said. “The original guy had a greener vision so there’s garden space back here. The crowd here’s a little different than the folks up front.”

“Hippies,” Mr. Dolinski said. “Gotta watch for pot plants.”

“Oh, for—” They’d have him snorting lines of coke off their bald heads in a minute.

“What?” Harrison asked.

“Nothing,” Mercedes muttered, gripping the wheel with clammy hands as they reached the bottom of the Ring Road. Above them, the rust-colored cliff that bordered the back of the property rose five stories. To the left, where the road outside neared the corner of the property, a berm hid the chain link fence that Zack and his friends had broken through.

Mercedes parked in the tiny sliver of shade cast by the cliff. As she stepped out, Harrison said, “We’ll stay and finish our beer. You show L.C. the unit.”

“Sure,” she murmured, stepping from the cart. She couldn’t meet his gaze and led him across to the sidewalk on the inside of the Ring Road.

“One offer of a drink isn’t going to knock me off the wagon,” he told her.

Was she that obvious? Self-conscious heat replaced her cold sweat. Mercedes unlatched the wrought-iron gate in the waist-high stone wall that surrounded the patio on the derelict side of the duplex.

“Are you in A.A.?”

He shook his head, joining her on the unswept patio, but looking back toward the cart with a thoughtful roll of his tongue along the front of his teeth. “I prefer to white-knuckle it. Feels more like personal accomplishment. You’ve had some experience with drunks, I assume?”

“I come from a family that is very good at getting there, yes.” She brushed at the stain left by a leaf on the top of the gray brick wall. “Been through lots of stops and starts. Not enough stopping,” she murmured faintly, thinking of Porsha drying out through both her pregnancies, but honestly, had she skipped so much as a day since Ayjia had been born? Mercedes wasn’t even sure she was stopping at alcohol these days, but wasn’t letting herself dwell on it because the implications with the kids were so huge.

“I’ve been sober a couple years and I’m motivated to stay that way. Keeping busy helps.”

Lifting her head, she studied him, thinking she could see the years of hard living in the lines at his eyes. She saw honesty and it scared her. Everything he’d said had only confirmed that she had no business wanting to know him better, yet she felt an overwhelming urge to do so.

“For instance, assessing the repairs on a building might keep my mind off things I shouldn’t be thinking. That’s the sort of coping strategy I’ve developed,” L.C. prompted.

As comprehension dawned, Mercedes realized she was staring. His expression remained deadpan, but the lines at the corners of his eyes deepened a fraction. The twitch of his sexy lips said, Or we could do what you’re thinking.

Her insides tightened and a flush of sexual arousal went through her.

She so didn’t need this. She’d show him the units, work out a schedule for Zack to fix them, and say, Adios.



L.C. stepped into the thick air of the abandoned unit and a cloying smell hit him. He gagged, losing the fantasy of pulling Mercedes into a kiss while they had some privacy.

Mercedes winced an apology. “No one has lived here since Mrs. Fairmont died three years ago.”

“Have they removed her body?”

“She had cats. Close to forty, I think. The people next door moved out and no one would buy either unit. The smell is almost as bad over there.”

“It’s really bad,” L.C. said, breathing through his mouth as he took in the layout of the kitchen and dining area with a lounge around the corner. A short hallway opened into a bathroom, a laundry, and two bedrooms. “These carpets have to go.”

“I know.”

They toured quickly. Every doorframe had been used as a scratching post and the gas fireplace had acidic pock marks that likely came from cat spray. The bathroom fixtures were caked with soap scum, toothpaste and dust. In both bedrooms, the blinds hung broken and battered, abused by animals ducking through and around them.

“Where are the appliances?” he asked when he came back to the main lounge.

“Good ol’ Frank sent them out for repair. Oddly no one had ever complained they were broken and somehow they never made it back. He totally gutted the other side.” She shook her head.

He ducked into the laundry, glanced at the chewed wiring. “You wouldn’t think mice would come in when it reeks of cats, but... Man, was this room the litter box?” He pointed at the stained grout. “That’s gotta come out or you’ll always have this cheery aroma. It might even be in the sub-floor.”

“Can Zack fix something like that?” she asked with an apprehensive frown.

L.C. shook his head, genuinely sorry to be the messenger on that bad news. “The clean up and cosmetic stuff he can do,” he assured her. “Ripping up carpet and painting, no problem. But he’s never rebuilt a floor and wiring needs an electrician.”

“Mrs. Garvey will love seeing bills for trades.” Mercedes’s bottom lip came out in a discontented pout.

L.C. pulled his thoughts from nibbling that lip and onto Zack and sobriety. “Can I see next door?”

“Of course.” She didn’t bother locking the broken door before leading L.C. through the little iron gate between the two sides of the patio.

Harrison and Pete saw them move to the second unit and left the golf cart. Mercedes pushed through the other broken door, leading L.C. into a unit with the reverse layout of the first.

Here was where his jackass son had partied himself into a jail cell. Beer cans with ashes on their rims cluttered the counter. In the dust on the mirror over the fireplace, someone had drawn a self-portrait from the waist down. The toilet had been used despite its dry bowl, leaving a fresh stink on air already heavy with the musk of cat urine and old cigarettes.

However, as L.C. toured the compact unit, he saw the place was in pretty good shape. Better than next door. “Zack could have this side livable in a couple of weeks with minimal help. It’s actually only a few days work, but he’ll be doing it around school.”

“Still, that’s pretty good.” Mercedes brightened with optimism. “What about the other side?”

“That’s going to be expensive.”

“Oh.” Her expression fell.

“Don’t forget the fence,” one of the men said from outside.

They walked out to find Pete picking at the flaking paint around the doorframe. Harrison leaned on the stone wall surrounding the patio, eyes closed.

“What happened to the fence?” L.C. asked.

“They pulled it back to make enough space to get through,” Pete said.