An Offer He Cant Refuse - By Christie Ridgway Page 0,10

foot to the gas. Nothing was going to ruin this meeting, she promised herself. Checking her watch, she was pleased to see she was still early, as planned. That would give her a few minutes alone to polish the collected, capable first impression she intended to make on Johnny Magee.

She turned into the driveway, following it past a tangle of overgrown vegetation and around a curve. Her foot shifted to the brake, slowing the Volvo as the drive dead-ended in front of a six-car garage. Other vehicles had beat her to the circular parking area, a gleaming Jag, a nondescript sedan, and a taxi-yellow moving van, its back gate lifted and ramp folded down. It appeared half-full of furniture.

So much for a few minutes alone.

Disappointed, yet curious all the same, she parked her car alongside the moving van then stepped around to its yawning opening to take a peek inside.

From the dim interior came a feminine voice. "Tea?"

She hid her guilty start by reaching for her sunglasses and sliding them down to squint toward the sound of her name. "Yes?"

"Tea Caruso, what on earth are you doing here?" From out of the shadows, a woman strolled down the ramp of the truck as if it were a fashion runway, placing one strappy sandal in front of the other, heel-to-toe, heel-to-toe. "You're the last person I expected to see here."

Tea pushed her sunglasses back and forced herself not to fidget. Lois Olmstead, she of the frosted-blonde hair, delicate features, and wrinkle-free wardrobe of a model for St. John resort wear, never ceased to make Tea feel rumpled and blowsy.

It wasn't the other woman's fault, but one look from her and it was seventh grade all over again, the year Tea had gone from smug and chubby Mafia princess to a missing felon's fat daughter. In all the year;; since, no low-carb diet, no hair-straightening process, no figure-diminishing foundation garment, or moustache-removal technique had made over the misery of that year when her father's vanishing act coincided with the acute self-consciousness and peer-awareness of preteenhood.

She sucked her navel toward her spine. "Hello, Lois. I didn't expect to see you here either."

And then it hit her, the reason the other woman was at the house. She was Tea's competition for the design job. No. The moving van must mean Lois was already the winner.

Warmth crawling up her neck, Tea began backwalking toward her car. Seventh grade had also taught her the importance of hiding her feelings - including humiliation. "I was just, uh... " Her thighs made contact with the heated metal of the Volvo's rear bumper.

"You were just what?" Lois asked, coming closer. The skin of her forehead was an alabaster that didn't wrinkle when she frowned.

"I must have misunderstood." Tea pretended a casual shrug, replaying the earlier phone conversation in her head. "I thought I had a meeting."

"With Johnny Magee?" Lois's eyes widened in disbelief.

Tea shrugged again, trying to slough off the blow. It had always been a long shot, she knew that. As a matter of fact, from the first she'd wondered if he'd contacted her by mistake. If she hadn't done her senior project on modern design, she wouldn't have dared preparing the bid. "But I see the job is yours."

"The design job!"

Tea clutched her car keys tighter and trudged toward the driver's side. "Good to see you, Lois."

"I'm not here for the design job," Lois said. She glanced over her shoulder as two beefy young men came toward the van carrying a portrait-sized mirror between them. "That's it, then. Twenty mirrors. We're done."

She looked back at Tea. "I did the staging."

The Ziowe-staging, Tea deduced. It was a growing trend - paying to have homes professionally de-cluttered or empty homes filled with furniture while they were on the market. "I didn't know you were into that now."

"The money's good. We take out tacky and bring in good taste, not to mention mirrors and more mirrors. The trick is to make prospective buyers see themselves in every room."

And apparently Johnny Magee had seen something that made him want to purchase this place. Tea's mood-meter took a return swing toward optimism. If the other woman wasn't here for the design job, then she hadn't missed out on winning it herself, at least not yet. She stepped back toward the rear of the Volvo. "I'm sure you're a big success, Lois."

"As a matter of fact, I just prepared a house for selling that you designed in the Movie Colony," the other woman