The house she rented was tiny, just a little Cape Cod that was in okay shape, but there were two reasons why she'd picked it over the other ones she'd looked at when she'd come to Caldwell: It was in a school zone, so that meant there were a lot of eyes around the neighborhood, and the owner had allowed her to put bars on all the windows.
Marie-Terese parked in the garage, waited for the door to trundle shut, and then got out to enter the darkened back hall. Going through the kitchen, which smelled like the fresh apples she always kept in a bowl, she tiptoed toward the glow in the living room. On the way, she tucked her duffel bag into the coat closet.
She'd empty it and repack it when there was no one around to see her. As she stepped into the light, she whispered, "It's just me."
Chapter 4
He slept with her.
The following morning, Jim's first thought was a real shitkicker, and to try to get away from it, he rolled over on his bed. Which just made his wakey-wakey worse. Dawn's early light was kicking the ass of the curtain next to him, and as the brightness barged into his skull, he wished the frickin' window were made out of Sheetrock.
Man, he couldn't believe he'd slept with that gorgeous, vulnerable woman in his truck - like she was some kind of whore. The fact that he'd then come back here and drunk himself into a Corona-tose state was a little more believable. But what it all added up to was that he still felt bad about what he'd done and he was going to have to hammer nails all day with a hangover.
Great. Planning.
Throwing off the blanket, he looked down at the jeans and flannel shirt he'd worn to the club. He'd passed out before he'd had a chance to get naked, so everything was rumpled, but he was going to wear the Levi's to work. The shirt, on the other hand, he had to save from twelve hours of construction. It was his only "good" one - which meant no paint specks, no holes, no missing buttons, and no frayed cuffs. Yet.
Jim stripped down and dumped the shirt into the leaning tower of dirty laundry by the bed. As he walked his headache into the stall shower, he was reminded of why not having a lot of furniture was a good thing. Short of his two piles of clothes, the clean and the needed-to-be-cleaned, all he had was the rattan couch that the studio had come with and a table with two chairs - all of which were mercifully out of the path to the bathroom.
He shaved fast and showered quick; then it was boxers and the Levi's and four aspirin. Undershirt was next, followed by socks and boots. On the way to the door, he grabbed his tool belt and his work jacket.
His rental was on top of a garage-like outbuilding, and he paused at the top of the stairs, squinting so hard he bared his teeth. Goddamn...all that eye-piercing light made it seem like the sun had decided to return the Earth's attraction and move a little closer to seal the deal.
Down the creaking wooden steps. Across the gravel drive to the cold truck. All the way with an expression like he had a spike through his foot.
As he opened the driver's-side door, he caught a whiff of perfume and cursed. Images came back to him, all of them carnal as hell, each one of them another source of inspiration for the headache.
He was still cursing and squinting as he drove out the lane and past the white farmhouse, the owner of which was his elderly landlord, Mr. Perlmutter. No one had lived in the big place for as long as Jim had been a renter, its windows boarded up on the inside, its porch perennially empty of wicker anything.
That nobody-home routine along with the thirty days' notice to get out were his two favorite parts about where he stayed.
On the way to work, he pulled into a gas station and bought a large coffee, a turkey sub, and a Coke. The quick mart smelled like old shoes and laundry softener, and there was a probability that the sandwich had been made last week in Turkey, but he'd been eating the same thing for the last month and was still upright in his boots, so the shit obviously wasn't killing him.
Fifteen minutes later he was steaming up Route 151N, drinking his coffee, wearing his sunglasses, and feeling marginally more human. The job site was on the western shore of the Hudson River, and when he got to the turnoff for it, he recapped the Styrofoam mug and ten-and-two'd the wheel. The lane that went down the peninsula was pothole central, thanks to all the heavy-duty machinery that had barreled across its bare back, and the truck's shock absorbers bitched and moaned the whole way.
At some point there was going to be manicured lawn everywhere, but for the moment the rolling earth resembled the skin of a fifteen-year-old boy. There were countless tree stumps across the shaggy winter-brown grass - pimples on the face of the land that had been created by a team of guys with chairt saws. And that wasn't the worst of it. Four whole cabins had been torn down, their footings and the bald plots beneath their first floors all that was left of structures that had been there for over a hundred years.
But everything had to go. That was the command from the general contractor. Who was his own client.
And about as much fun as a hangover on a cheery, chilly morning.
Jim pulled into the line of pickups that was forming as more of the workers came in. He left the sandwich and the Coke behind on the floor of the cab to stay cool and crossed the tire-chewed dirt tracks toward the gestating house. With its skeleton of two-by-fours erected, its skin was now going up, the particleboard sheets being nailed onto the bone structure of the frame.
Fucking thing was a monster, so big it was capable of making those McMansions in town seem the size of dollhouses.
"Jim."
"Chuck."
Chuck, the foreman, was a six-foot guy with square shoulders, a round gut, and a perpetual cigar stub shoved in his mouth - and that was about it for conversation with him. Thing was, Jim was clear which part of the house he was working on and what he was going to do, and both men knew it. With a crew of about twenty carpenters on the project, there were varying degrees of skill and commitment and sobriety, and Chuck knew the drill with everybody. If you had half a brain and could throw a hammer well, he left you alone, because f**k knew he had enough on his plate with the jackholes.
Jim braced himself and headed for the supplies. The nail boxes were kept stacked in a lockable cabinet on the six-car garage's concrete slab, and next to them, lined up in a row, were the gas-powered electrical generators that were already going at a roar. Wincing at the noise, he stepped over the snakes of extension cords that ran out to the table saws and the nail guns and filled up the pouch on the left side of his tool belt.
It was a relief to head for the southern side of the house - which, considering the floor plan, was practically in the next county. Setting to work, he began hefting six-foot-by-four-foot sections of particleboard and locking them in place against the framers. He used a hammer instead of a nail gun because he was just that flavor of old school - and because even with the manual stuff he was one of the fastest carpenters around.
The sound of a pair of Harleys coming down the dirt drive brought his head up.
Eddie and Adrian pulled their bikes in together and dismounted in sync, removing their leather jackets and their black sunglasses in the same rhythm too. As they approached the house, they came gunning in his direction and Jim groaned: Adrian was looking at him with a whole lot of what-the-hell-happened-with-the-hottie on his pierced face.
Which meant the guy had noticed that Blue Dress disappeared about the same time Jim did.
"Shit," he muttered.
"What?"
Jim shook his head at the guy next to him and refocused on what he was doing. Positioning one of the sheets against the frame, he held it with his hip, unhooked his hammer from his belt, got a nail, and pounded. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat - "Have fun last night?" Adrian said as he came up. Jim just kept on pounding.
"Ah, come on, I don't need all the details - but you could spare me a few." Adrian glanced at his roommate. "Back me up, would ya?"
Eddie just walked by and knocked his shoulder into Jim, which was his version of a good morning. Without being asked, he took over bracing the particleboard, which freed Jim up to hammer twice as fast. They were a great team, although Adrian balanced out the pace. He was less than industrious, preferring to spend his time f**king around and running his mouth. It was a wonder he hadn't gotten fired in the four weeks he'd been on the site.
Ad leaned against a naked doorjamb and rolled his eyes. "You aren't going to tell me whether you got a birthday present or not?"
"Nope." Jim positioned a nail and creamed the head of it. Two hits and the top was flush with the board and then he got another fresh shot at imagining Adrian's face on a target.