Mad, Bad and Blonde - Cathie Linz [28]
“That was in my past life,” Faith said.
“What is a Pimp My Bookcart contest?” Abs appeared intrigued then suspicious. “Did you make that up?”
“It’s a contest where book carts are decorated, sort of the way people decorate parade floats. Check it out for yourself,” Faith said. “Go ahead. Google it.”
“I will.” Abs quickly typed on her keyboard. “Wow. I’m impressed.” She seemed to be telling the truth.
“Yes, well I was just part of a team that created that. Just like I want to be part of the team here. I could clearly learn a lot from you if you’d be willing to teach me.”
“Show me how to pimp up a cart for the staff break room and you’ve got a deal.”
Faith returned home to find her new bed and mattress set up just as she’d requested. She loved it when things went according to plan. Heading straight for her linen closet, she dug out the floral sheet set that Alan had said was “too girly” and refused to let her use.
Dancing across the bare cherry-stained hardwood floor, she put her sheets on her bed. Hers. All hers. Only hers.
When she shifted the nightstand a bit, something fell onto the floor. She glared at Alan’s compact discs before scooping them up and taking them into the kitchen where she dumped them into a Restoration Hardware shopping bag. Then she spent the next hour scouring the condo looking for other hard-to-find things he might have left behind—like the beer making kit she found in the back of her kitchen cabinet or the mustache trimming kit hiding in the bottom of the linen closet. Not that Alan actually ever had a mustache, but he wanted it in case he decided to grow one.
She gathered it all up and was tempted to just dump it in the garbage. Kick it to the curb. Instead, she took what she considered to be the more responsible adult choice and carried the bag down to Yuri’s station in the lobby. Then she took out her BlackBerry and texted Alan for the first time since the botched wedding.
“Have left final bag of your stuff with my doorman. Have someone pick up in 24 hours or it all goes.”
She was responsible but not a saint. She wasn’t going any further out of her way than this. The ball was in Alan’s court now. She was done.
“If someone doesn’t come in twenty-four hours to pick this bag up, just get rid of it.” She handed the shopping bag to Yuri and felt ten tons lighter.
“Okay.”
“So you and Caine really do know each other?” Faith said.
Yuri nodded.
“I can still count on you keeping him out of this building, right?”
Yuri appeared insulted by her question. “Of course.”
“I’m sorry, but I had to ask. I mean, you two go way back, apparently. And you probably have some secret handshake Marine thing going on.”
“Yeah, we share Secret Decoder Rings,” Yuri said dryly.
“I’m sorry. I sounded condescending, and I didn’t mean to.”
“That’s okay.”
Faith casually inquired, “So, was Caine always as impossible as he is now?”
“I don’t know what he’s like now, but he was a rock when I knew him.”
“Unemotional, you mean.”
“The words Marines and emotions aren’t usually used in the same sentence.”
“Right.”
“By rock I meant you could count on him, put your life in his hands, and he’d have your back.”
Caine had had more than her back; he’d had her entire body. And she couldn’t seem to forget what that felt like.
She looked down at her BlackBerry and was startled to find a text message from Alan. “Give me more time.”
She instantly texted back, “NO.”
To which he instantly texted “Be reasonable.”
Reasonable? She stared at the screen. How could she have thought this was the man she wanted to marry? What did that say about her judgment? That she was an idiot.
“24 hours,” she texted back. “Or your Wagner operas CD collection is smoke.”
Then she programmed her BlackBerry to ignore any more messages from Alan.
“Bad news?” Yuri asked.
“If someone doesn’t pick up that bag in twenty-four hours, can you see that it’s donated to Goodwill? Or thrown away. Whatever.”
“Sure. No problem.”
Faith sighed. “Could you tell Alan was an ass?”
“Let’s just say he wasn’t at the top of my Facebook friends list.