now was an excellent time. If she didn’t mind hanging on a moment, he would see if he could locate the rental agreement that Herb had signed for him. He didn’t remember anything about Herb’s family, but maybe he had something in his records.
Tracy sat quietly, despite every instinct to hurry the man along, and simply waited.
chapter eight
The day after she wreaked havoc in the lives of three old men, Tracy spent the morning getting estimates from tile installers. The tile arrived in the afternoon, and because she didn’t completely trust her neighbors, she asked the two high school boys who delivered it to pile it out of sight behind her back door. Not that far from spending their summers with a pile of Lego, the boys carefully made six stacks with just enough space between them for the door to open. When she walked between the towers Tracy felt menaced. She really had to get the tile on her floor soon.
The first installer’s estimate, produced right on the spot, was so high she tore it up. The salesman at the flooring warehouse had said he was the best, but not cheap. Tracy was planning to be okay with second best, or even third, as soon as the other two drew up formal estimates.
In the midst of the interruptions she still managed to get the first coat of paint on her living-room walls. She wanted to finish before the tile went in, so she didn’t have to worry about dribbling paint on her new floor. She was pleased with her choice of color, and the improvement gave her a new shot of energy.
By late afternoon she was tired but proud. She cleaned up her mess, then took a well-deserved shower to get ready for dinner with Lee. While she toweled herself dry in her tiny bedroom, she considered her wardrobe.
Clothes were communication, but she was out of the habit of thinking about the message she was sending. With CJ, there had only been one. He had wanted other men to envy him, and Tracy’s role was to be provocative and unattainable, a woman men would fantasize about having, while knowing that the possibility was eternally out of their reach.
As far as Tracy knew, CJ had been pleased with his choice of a third wife—the first two, acquired while he was building his empire, having failed to meet his exacting standards. He had rewarded her with jewelry, with vacation homes and surprise trips to world-class destinations. These had been payment of a sort for fulfilling the unspoken promises she had made to him. She had been a wife he could point to with pride.
Since the divorce and the humiliation and the exile, she had stopped dressing like a kept woman. She’d stored some of her wardrobe, placed some in consignment shops, given some to charities—with the proper deductions. What remained were not things she had bought to satisfy her ex-husband, but things she simply liked to wear. Now, searching through the closet, she wondered what message Lee was looking for?
Did she care?
Lately, those kinds of thoughts plagued her. Her up-bringing had seemed normal. At her mother’s knee she’d learned that pleasing a man was the road to a secure future, and “secure future” meant a net worth of eight figures, minimum. She’d been perfectly comfortable basing her life on this. Digging deeper hadn’t appealed to her. What was the point, when her own plans for the future seemed to be working out just fine?
Now, and not for the first time, she silently cursed CJ Craimer, who had believed that laws were only written to keep the little guy under control. If CJ had been even marginally more upright, Tracy would not have to consider all these difficult questions.
By the time she was ready, she felt wrung out, not from the hard work of the day, but from figuring out who she was and who she wanted to be. And this was only one date. The possibility that the rest of her life might be this complicated terrified her.
When she heard Lee’s footsteps coming up the walk, she didn’t wait for a knock. She grabbed her purse and a beaded shawl, and opened the door. She saw instant admiration in his eyes, and she forgot she had almost decided admiration didn’t matter.
“What a great dress,” he said.
She liked the dress, too. Royal blue, with drifts of green, it seemed to float when she moved, light, airy and cool. She’d bought it off