By Design Read online

  “I don’t care,” she wailed.

  “Would you care if I said it made your butt look big?”

  “No.”

  “Wow. You really did have a bad day.”

  “I told you.”

  Trish plopped onto the sofa. “It’ll be okay,” she said, just like she would comfort one of her boys. “Really. It’s just Wilma. You know how he is.”

  “I know,” came the muffled response. “He sucks.”

  “Yes, he does.” She licked her lips, then said tentatively, “Maybe you should think about finding another job?”

  Emmie raised her head, horrified. “Are you kidding me?”

  Trish tried not to laugh. “Um, you have . . .”

  “What?”

  “Your . . . um . . .” And she pointed at Emmie’s face.

  “What?” Emmie demanded, gingerly touching her forehead. She felt indentations from the embroidered couch cushions. “Oh great. See what a train wreck I am?”

  “You’re not,” Trish said emphatically. “And it is possible to get another job, you know.”

  Emmie tipped herself right side up and rubbed her eyes. “Oh, God, Patricia, where in the world would I get another job in Jemison? Or even all of Iroquois County, for that matter? It’s not like the interior designer industry is just chugging along in our burg.”

  “There’s always room for one more,” Trish said with a wicked smile.

  Emmie didn’t get it. “What?”

  “I mean,” she said, draping her arm over the back of the couch, “maybe you should, you know, go out on your own.”

  Emmie gaped. “I can’t do that.”

  “Oh my God, Emmie, it’s not like I’m suggesting you murder the man, bury the body in your garden, and take over Wilman Designs while you tell everyone he’s ‘out of town visiting friends.’”

  “That’d be easier. And safer.”

  “People start their own businesses all the time.”

  “People go out of business all the time, too.”

  “Or not.”

  Emmie sighed. “Businesses cost money, and you know I don’t have anything saved. Wilma owns me.”

  “Business loan?”

  “They’d laugh me out of the bank.”

  “But—”

  “Trish, I can’t,” Emmie cut her off with a finality that made it clear it wasn’t really about the money. And she buried her face in the cushion again.

  Trish started to argue, but she was cut off by a cry of “Wassup, wassup?” as Kyle entered, his sudden presence sucking all the air out of the room. Kyle acknowledged Trish with a curt nod. “Patty-cake.”

  “Urinal cake,” Trish muttered under her breath as she rooted around in her purse for her car keys. “Hi, Kyle,” she said, louder, tossing a chilly smile in his direction.

  It was no secret that Trish and Kyle weren’t fond of each other, mainly because Trish didn’t approve of the way he treated Emmie, so he didn’t like her in turn, and around and around it went.

  “Hey, baby,” he said to the back of Emmie’s head. “What’s for dinner?”

  Emmie’s shoulders tensed. Trish went to bat for her. “Emmie’s had a rough day,” she told Kyle in her tough-mommy voice. “Be nice to her.”

  “I’m nice!”

  “That means don’t expect her to cook for you tonight. She’s upset.”

  “But it’s dinner time.”

  “Then go make dinner!”

  Kyle laughed as though Trish had just cracked the funniest joke he’d ever heard, but he stopped short when she pinned him with her fierce mommy-glare. Kyle’s mouth flapped a couple of times, fish-like. “I can’t cook.”

  “Nobody’s asking you for coq au vin, Kyle. Scramble some eggs. You can do that, can’t you?” As Kyle wandered off toward Emmie’s kitchen, trying to wrap his head around this foreign concept of “cooking dinner,” Trish leaned closer to her burrowing friend. “Breakfast for dinner,” she cooed. “That should make you feel better.”

  Emmie raised her head and gave her a hopeful, weak smile. “Pancakes?”

  “Aw, hell, I can’t make pancakes!” Kyle exclaimed from the kitchen.

  Trish rolled her eyes and patted Emmie on the shoulder. “Maybe eggs. Depends on what the Redneck Chef can whip up without blowing up the kitchen.” She hoisted her purse onto her shoulder. “I’ve gotta go.” She kissed Emmie on her dented red forehead and whispered, “Make him take care of you for a change. Don’t help him in there. Got it?”

  “But—”

  “Do not!” Trish raised an admonishing finger. “And think about what I said before, about your job.”

  When Trish left, Emmie snuck a peek over the back of the sofa to see what Kyle was up to. He stood in the middle of the kitchen, looking lost, with a carton of eggs in one hand and a frying pan in the other. At least he found the frying pan, she thought. And the eggs. That was impressive, for him.

  When Kyle felt Emmie’s eyes on him, he turned hopefully toward her, likely expecting her to take over. But Emmie decided to see what kind of humor the sitcom In the Kitchen with Kyle could provide. She ducked back down and busied herself with the newspaper even though she’d already read it that morning.

  Late that night, Emmie found herself wide awake, staring at the darkened ceiling of her bedroom, wondering if Kyle’s snoring was going to suck sections of paint off it. Kyle rolled onto his side, which lessened his snoring, but he flung his arm across her neck, throttling her. She flipped his arm onto the pillow above her head and shifted toward the edge of the bed, where she teetered precariously.

  Emmie clamped her eyes shut and tried to sleep, but Trish’s voice was echoing in her head. “Throw it out,” her friend had said about her lackluster relationship, and now about her job as well. It was sort of obvious that Trish didn’t approve of the way she lived her life. Emmie admired Trish’s super-confident decisiveness, but sometimes she resented it. Trish had made all the right choices in her life and was always in control, while Emmie often felt as though her own existence were a crazy gallumphing Labrador retriever out for a run, and she was merely hanging on to the other end of the leash, shouting, “Heel!” and trying to avoid doing a face-plant onto the sidewalk.

  Emmie turned onto her side and stared at the wall for a while. Kyle found her again, draped an arm across her once more, and grasped her left boob through her nightshirt. Even in a deep post-sex sleep, his inner homing beacon never failed to locate her breasts. It was uncanny. Suddenly irritated, she unsuctioned his palm from her boob and slid out of bed.

  She made her way into the living room, sat at her desk, and turned on the lamp—a vintage brass number she had dug up at a garage sale and rewired. She flipped open her laptop and went to Circle-O. She hadn’t been there since her drunken stalking of Juliet Winslow and had never spent much time reading up on her former classmates’ lives. Now, however, she was curious about what those other people were up to. Well, she had to admit that, in her present state of mind, she was probably drawn to compare her life to theirs and see if she was better—or worse—off than she thought.

  She clicked on her class year, 1995, and studied the list of names. Her graduating class wasn’t that big—about three hundred students—and about half of them were listed on the Circle-O site. She recognized very few of the names. She and Trish had stuck together all through high school, and she had never had much need to become close to other classmates because of it. Boys were few and far between; Trish had only ever dated Rick, and Emmie never had a boyfriend, just a few flirtations that never really went anywhere.

  Emmie perused the list of people who had allegedly been her classmates. She had halfheartedly “waved” at or “waved” back at a number of them over the past few months, even if she wasn’t quite sure who they were, but had never checked their profiles. Now she clicked on one name or another to see what they were up to. Eventually she made it down the list to Juliet’s name. She clicked on the link to her profile.

  “Damn,” Emmie
whispered.

  For a second or two, she thought that Juliet had posted her yearbook photo. She seemed not to have changed one iota. Slim and trim—even her arms, noted Emmie, as Juliet was confident enough to be photographed in a tank top—without a wrinkle on her face or a hint of a sag in her jawline. Unbelievable.

  Then Emmie clicked on the profiles of the classmates they had in common on Circle-O, which led Emmie down the dark, perilous path of the Popular Girls. She cringed. These women apparently had been trapped in amber shortly after graduation. Emmie shrank in her chair as if they could see her sitting there, all frumpy in her flannels.

  And the profiles! Successful businesses—consulting firms, boutiques, graphic design studios, art galleries—or high-ranking titles at major corporations, plus some PhDs. Apparently the Popular Girls remained at the top of the heap forever.

  She went back to Juliet’s profile. She was married, with two children, a boy and a girl (“Of course,” muttered Emmie), with a florist shop “Coming soon!” Plus she had a laundry list of charities she donated her time to, including her church and an animal shelter. Emmie looked at Juliet’s photo again, checking for the halo she must have missed the first time.

  At this point, she was more than ready to bail out of Circle-O entirely, but Juliet’s last update, dated July 30, caught her eye: “Taking the plunge. The fam is moving back to the old hometown at the end of August. Can’t wait! Nothing like new beginnings in old, familiar places! Loooove Jemison! Looking forward to getting together with everyone! Maybe we can tailgate at some games. Go Panthers!”

  Emmie shut her laptop down. Juliet hadn’t lived here for years, but she was here now. Maybe her husband had taken a position with one of the new data-management companies sprouting up like mushrooms in what had been the rural area ringing the town. After decades of decline, the town had redefined itself, hosting new tech businesses that gave the area a healthy dose of cash and brought in lots of employees who enjoyed the finer things in life. Upscale businesses were thriving, noses were tipping a little higher, and developers were tossing up McMansions by the hundreds. That was good news for Wilma—the new folks moved right into those unadorned boxes and needed someone to fill those blank canvases with color, and they gave him free rein . . . for better or worse.

  Emmie had never been a fan of newly built houses; she preferred her little bungalow, even if it was in a sort of dicey part of town that was rapidly becoming more commercial than residential. Sure, new houses had the benefit of being a clean slate. Walls and floors were straight and true, and there were no remnants of previous owners—no forgotten boxes of junk in a corner of an attic or dried goo in the back of a cabinet. But she had a thing for the funky character of old houses. When she had seen her tiny Craftsman house for the first time, she fell in love with the beamed ceiling, the built-in cabinets with leaded glass, the hardwood floors.

  She had poured a lot of love into the place—not to mention all that bottled-up creativity that Wilma wouldn’t let her express at work. She had installed the brightly painted Mexican tiles around the fireplace. She had stripped layers of old paint off the oak trim, groove by groove, and refinished it. She had chosen her furniture carefully, one piece at a time, from antique stores and secondhand outlets.

  Her tastes differed from Wilma’s, that was for sure, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Wilma was all about ostentation, displays of opulence, formal grandeur—the finest fabrics, the most expensive furniture, the most dramatic artwork and accessories by only the most noteworthy craftspeople. The kind of elements that should have the price tags left on in order to fully appreciate why they were there in the first place. But Emmie preferred comfort and homeyness—furniture you could relax into, rugs that could incorporate a little cat or dog hair, well-loved wooden tables with dings, accessories with chipped enamel and faded paint from having been used instead of just put on display to collect dust. Was there a market for her kind of interior design? Did she even have a style, or was she kidding herself?

  She turned back to her desk. That blank canvas of a house from earlier today . . . she had her own ideas about what to do with it, and there was no law against playing around to see what she could come up with. Even if Wilma wasn’t interested in her ideas, she could please herself. She pulled out a piece of paper and started to sketch.

  Emmie sat back, stretched, and massaged her fingers. The only sounds in the house were Kyle’s snoring and the thunk of the wall clock in the kitchen. That was one of her favorite finds: She had dug that treasure right out of a Dumpster, when her old school was being remodeled and expanded to make room for all those new kids in the new housing tracts.

  Emmie looked over her sketches. She liked what she had just created. A lot. So much so that her warm fuzzies extended to encompass everything else in her world. She forgave Wilma, she loved Trish’s strong opinions, she didn’t mind her neighbor’s yappy little dog. She even was grateful for Kyle. She tucked her drawings into her notebook and dropped it into her workbag. Then she headed back to bed, intending to crawl into Kyle’s arms and appreciate her blessings.

  Kyle, however, had taken over the whole bed, splayed out like a starfish and snoring loudly. She pushed, she shoved. Kyle was so far gone, he was immovable. With a sigh, she yanked her pillow out from under his head and returned to the living room. She also loved and appreciated her sofa. And a good thing, too.

  Chapter 3

  Emmie slouched across her desk at work, the heel of her hand mashed into her cheek to keep her head propped up. Her night on the sofa hadn’t been very restful. At all. Of course, she could have reclaimed her bed. She could have moved Kyle if she’d tried hard enough. She could have made him sleep on the couch. She even could have woken him up and sent him home, no matter what the time of night. But she hadn’t. Sometimes she wondered if she even knew how to make demands on other people. Maybe she could ask Trish to give her a few lessons in assertiveness.

  Right now, however, her only goal was to stay awake without the assistance of caffeine. Wilma never let her make a pot of coffee unless there were clients in the office, and though he was out at the moment, she didn’t even think of disobeying. The most daring thing she could do was to allow herself to slouch like this—Wilma would have murdered her on the spot if he saw her looking so unprofessional. He was worse than a headmistress at a finishing school. Sit up straight, don’t chew your nails, smooth your hair out, be more polite, speak proper English, act like an adult . . .

  Emmie’s eyelids drooped. She rolled her shoulders and tipped her head to the left, then to the right to keep herself awake. She wished Wilma didn’t insist on having classical music playing in the office—it wasn’t helping. She had to do something, get herself moving. Was there any pressing work to be done? Nothing that couldn’t wait, said her drowsy brain. Maybe if she just shut her eyes for a moment . . . just one teeny-tiny moment . . .

  The clanging noise reverberated in Emmie’s head like a fire alarm. She lurched up and glanced around wildly. Had she actually let her head rest on the desktop, even for a split second? Then she realized the fire alarm hadn’t gone off—it was just the antique brass bell over the door of the shop, and it was far quieter than it had seemed through the haze of her impromptu nap. When Emmie first brought Wilma the bell, which she had found at a flea market one weekend, he had dismissed it as tacky, but she had convinced her boss that customers would like being greeted by its quaint, friendly jingle instead of an electronic sensor’s beep. Now, however, she hated the thing; she never thought it could scare her half to death like that.

  She tried to calm her thumping heart as she rubbed her blurry eyes. Yes, someone had come in and was standing by the door. But there was no screaming. That meant it wasn’t Wilma. A man, but taller than Wilma. And definitely quieter, she noted.

  “Can—can I help you?” she stammered.

  “Er, I hope so, yes,” the man said, in a melodious baritone that woke Emmie up completely. She’d never had her nerve e
ndings put on high alert by a mere voice before (unless she counted the negative physical reaction she had whenever Wilma spoke), but she felt a distinct tingling now. “I’m looking for . . . John, is it?”

  The man came closer to her desk; Emmie did her best to smile. She suddenly realized the side of her face was wet, near the corner of her mouth. What . . . ? Drool? Dear God. She’d have preferred it if someone had shot her and the dampness was blood instead. Blood was dramatic; drool was just pathetic. Emmie tried to subtly wipe it away, and she heard a faint tick as something landed on the desk. Her earring? She looked down. A paper clip. A paper clip had been stuck to her face. Good grief!

  The man was now standing directly opposite her, his hands in the pockets of his relaxed, low-slung jeans, his pose bunching up the bottom of the tweed blazer he wore over an open-necked white cotton shirt. Emmie let her gaze travel upward. She had a bad feeling this person before her was going to be extremely good-looking. She felt her face get a head start on the inevitable blush.

  Oh, just great, she thought as she tried to unobtrusively rub the spot on her cheek where there might have been a paper clip imprint. He was definitely hot. But not unrealistic, male-model-type hot. No, this guy’s look was even better. He was . . . realistically hot. Nice build—solid, she noted, but not massive—nice shoulders, friendly face. Black hair, a tad longish, gracefully going to gray at the temples and brow . . . and then her gaze locked onto the man’s blue eyes, and she found herself unable to look away. She had never seen such blue eyes in her life. Not the shocking iciness of light blue eyes—no, his were a deep, rich shade with a depth she could easily fall into. He smiled politely, and the blue eyes were suddenly caressed by the most charming crow’s-feet Emmie had ever seen.