“I will,” I said as I tucked the key into my front pocket. “Thanks for the opportunity. I will take really good care of Sunshine.”
She walked me to the front door, and when Magnus and I stepped out onto the porch, she said, “You feel like an answer to a prayer, although I haven’t spoken to God since my Bruce died.”
“You’re kind of an answer to a prayer for me, too.”
But apparently that was too much emotion for her, as she just muttered, “Bah,” and shut the door in my face.
I grinned. I liked Gladys.
I walked back up the road toward Noah’s house while Magnus tried to sniff every rock and twig we passed. The moving crew’s van was gone, but Shelby’s car was still out front. I let myself inside the house, calling her name.
She came out of the kitchen. “Hey! You were gone awhile.”
“Yeah, I just got a job with Noah’s neighbor. She’s going to pay me to dog sit, so I’ll be there for a couple of weeks.” Then I told her about how my morning had gone and my checking account situation and that the down payment Gladys had given me would tide me over until the bank put my money back.
“That’s a relief,” she said. “And yay for you for expanding your business. Speaking of business, have I mentioned that this is my dream job?”
“Maybe once or twice,” I teased.
“Noah said not to go too crazy but that I had no budget. He would trust me.”
Wow. That was a mistake of epic proportions. “Does he know how you are?”
“I won’t go nuts.”
“Ha. Famous last words. Maybe you should give him solid-gold countertops.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I expected her to tell me it would be too tacky, but instead she said, “The weight of them would crush the cabinets underneath.” She grabbed her sketchbook and put her laptop into her purse. “I need to get home and start ordering some stuff. The permits should come through by this Friday, and then we can start construction first thing next Monday.”
“Okay,” I said. “See you at home.”
She hesitated. “Aren’t you leaving, too?”
I gestured toward Magnus. “I feel like I should keep an eye on him and explain the situation. When did Noah say he would be back?”
“Six.” She took her keys out but had that knowing look I hated. “And you’re, what, going to wait for Noah to come home? Because you miss him and want to see him again?”
My stomach flipped over lightly that she could read me so easily. “It’s not like that.”
“Oh, I think it is.”
“You’re entitled to your delusions,” I told her.
“You say delusion, I say complete and total fact.”
“See you at home,” I repeated so she would take the hint.
“Or not,” she responded, waggling her eyebrows at me. “Dealer’s choice.”
“Just go,” I said with a laugh.
She waved and gave Magnus a wide berth as she headed for the door. I heard it close and then realized I was hungry. Noah was supposed to be home in an hour. I could probably wait until then. I considered going into his kitchen but decided that was rude and possibly invasive, although technically I was doing him a favor, and feeding me was, like, the least he could do.
I messed around on my phone for a while but it started getting low on battery, so I put it away. Magnus came in carrying his food bowl in his mouth.
“Are you hungry, boy?” I asked, taking it from him. “Me too. But let’s get you taken care of first. Where’s your food?” I followed him to a skinny pantry and found a massive bag of kibble. I filled up his bowl and put it down for him. “Here you go.”
And that was the most exciting thing that happened to me for the next few hours as five turned to six and then seven and eight and finally, a bit after nine o’clock, I heard the keys in the front door. Magnus ran to greet Noah, barking loudly.
No part of me was excited that he was home. I was sitting at the kitchen table, drumming my fingers, and I was so thoroughly annoyed with him. Plus, I was now starving. Why did he say he’d be back by six when he wasn’t? Maybe six meant something different where he was from. But we’d both been born in Southern California, so that couldn’t be it, either. Maybe it was because he never went to a real school and was just really bad at counting.
I heard him telling Magnus hello and I couldn’t resist calling out, “About time!”
“Juliet? You sound pleasant.” There was muffled movement, like he was taking a jacket off and hanging it up in a closet.
“Yeah. Because there’s this movie star I know who hired a flaky dog babysitter who then said he’d be home by six and it’s now nine, so I’ve been stuck waiting here for him.”
He was talking to Magnus, and then he called back, “You didn’t have to wait. Magnus would have been fine on his own for a little while.”
Nope. There was no way I was letting this go south for Shelby. She was going to do what she did best and would be a huge success and every movie star in Hollywood was going to put her on speed dial to decorate their houses. I was about to explain to him how responsible she’d been in calling me so that Magnus didn’t escape again when he walked into the kitchen and . . . and . . . and . . .
. . . and . . .
He was dressed as Malec Shadowfire. He had on the wig with the long black hair and his trademark suit of black leather armor. I even saw folded wings.
OMG, I was going to die. I was going to shatter into a million pieces and nobody would ever be able to put me back together again.
Noah walked over to the fridge, took out a half gallon of milk, and drank it straight from the container. It was such an incongruous sight—Malec drinking a modern thing of milk—that my brain couldn’t process what was happening.
Maybe that was because I couldn’t get enough oxygen to it. How had he sucked all the air out of the room just by being dressed that way?
“Could . . . could you go . . . and . . . could you go change? I can’t . . .” control my involuntary hormonal reactions to you. “I can’t take you seriously when you’re dressed like Malec” was what I settled on.
It was amazing I was able to form words at all. I felt like I was having a series of mini-strokes.
“You know who Malec is? Did you finally watch the trilogy?” he asked, not moving to go change like I’d very nicely asked him to. I had asked him, hadn’t I? I couldn’t remember.
And had I finally watched the movies? I owned them all in three different formats. I’d come this close to ordering a life-size cutout of him as Malec. Had I watched the movies?
“Yeah. Yes. Shelby and I binged them after the first time you and I met.” That was technically true, although probably not in the sense of what he would consider the full truth.
And there was no way I was telling him the whole truth now—that I’d lied to him the first night we met about not knowing who he was. Because Shelby had her dream job and it was going to make her career take off, and I would do anything to help ensure that happened.
If any part of her belief was true—that he’d hired her solely because she was my friend—well, what happened if he and I stopped being friends because I’d lied to him? He would fire Shelby.