Her Big Neighbor

“Another message from Kevin.”

I sigh, sudden heaviness and exhaustion weighing me down. My brother has been trying to get a hold of me for weeks. But I don’t really want to talk to him. After everything last year, I just don’t have the energy.

“You want to know what it says?” Patrick asks, following me into my office.

“Not particularly, no.”

He tells me anyway. “He really wants to come for a visit. For some ‘bro-on-bro’ time. He says he misses the long talks that you used to have.”

“He means the way he would go on drunken rants while I was forced to sit there,” I say, rolling my eyes.

“Should I put him on your call schedule?”

I glare at Patrick, but he’s practically laughing. “Absolutely not.”

My brother has made some bad choices in his life, and wants to escape them as much as possible. I’m not unsympathetic, but there’s only so much that I can do if he continues to make those choices. And letting him come visit me so he can take a break from the consequences only to go home and fall back into the exact same patterns isn’t the answer.

But I have bigger things to worry about right now. “What’s on top today?”

Patrick runs me through the schedule for the morning, which is a gauntlet of calls on projects we’re trying to get off the ground. Some are in the final stages which means heavy logistics and digging into details that will drive you mad like delivery receipts for construction and delayed progress. Some of them are early in the process which is more brainstorming and hand-holding. But it’s all good. I love the projects we’re working on.

The morning flies by so quickly that I’m genuinely shocked when I look up and see that it’s noon. My stomach is growling with hunger, and I’m a little fried from being on the phone for the past four and a half hours. “Patrick?”

He pops his head into my office. “What’s left for the day?” Opening his mouth to launch into my afternoon schedule, I hold up a hand. “Let me rephrase that. It’s Friday afternoon, and I haven’t taken any days off in months. Is there anything on the schedule that will be horribly affected if we push it till Monday?”

Patrick shakes his head. “No, not at all. Your schedule this afternoon is actually lighter than usual.”

“Perfect,” I say, starting to gather my things.

“You all right?” he asks, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe. One of the reasons that Patrick is an excellent assistant is that he is astute. He picks up on things that other people wouldn’t notice, sometimes even before I do.

“Yeah,” I say. It’s the truth. “I’m fine, I just want to relax a bit.” Relax, and make the first move.

Patrick almost rolls his eyes. “You know, housework doesn’t exactly count as relaxing.”

He’s been after me to hire a housekeeper for almost a year, but I don’t want to. I don’t like strangers coming into my house, and I find the simple tasks soothing. They take so much less thought than what I’m doing all day. Besides, I’m just one person—I don’t make that much of a mess. “I don’t need a housekeeper.”

“That’s debatable,” he mutters as he goes back to his desk.

“Call me if something urgent comes up,” I tell him.

“Will do.”

I slide into my car, plans already forming. From what I can tell by just observing, the Palmers are doing some sort of massive cleaning or renovating. Julia has been coming out of the house every day with bags upon bags of trash and their garbage bins have been overflowing. I’m going to take the opportunity to see if she’s as attracted to me as I am to her.

Nothing too forward, I’m just going to wash my car. Without a shirt. And hope that she comes out with one of those trash bags and is stopped in her tracks. Maybe I’ll even take the chance to say hello. After that, who knows.

But I’m done waiting. There’s something telling me that I need to get to know this woman, and I go after what I want. And I don’t stop until I’ve accomplished the goal or it becomes impossible. And from what I see, romancing Julia Palmer is very possible.

3

Julia

My brain is a puddle of mush. After an entire working day of sifting through papers that have been kept far longer than they should have, my head is swimming. After I went through all of my high school papers—and only kept one that I was particularly proud of—I spent the rest of the day helping Mom go through old case files and financial records. They’re pretty well organized but I don’t think they’ve been sorted through since I was a kid.

Don’t ask me why the office is one of the places that needs to be cleaned, since as far as I know the gala guests won’t be invited in here, but my mother is insistent that it’s important and that everything has to be in order.