He knocked. Several seconds later, Cynthia opened the door.
“What are you doing here?” she asked through the screen door.
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
“No? Just no?”
“Yes. That’s all.” She started to close the door.
“Wait!” He exhaled, feeling about as humiliated as a man possibly could. But he’d brought it on himself, hadn’t he?
“You were right,” he said, grinding out the words. “About Luke. I caused the fight. I said something awful, he hit me, and I deserved it.”
He waited for the I-told-you-so he knew was coming. Instead, she said nothing.
“I called the sheriff,” he went on. “Dropped the charges. And if I get the chance, I’m going to apologize to Luke.”
And still she said nothing.
“And you were right about me and Shannon, too,” Russell went on. “We’re not right for each other.”
Still nothing. He winced, waiting for her to pile it on, but she didn’t say anything else. Finally he couldn’t stand the silence anymore.
“Will you just let me come in for a minute?” he said. “The neighbors are starting to stare. You can’t see them doing it, but this is Rainbow Valley. Trust me—they’re staring.”
Cynthia looked undecided, her brows drawn together thoughtfully. Finally she opened the door and Russell came inside.
And he couldn’t believe what he saw.
It was as if he’d walked into a flea market for people with color blindness. The walls were pale pink. The ceiling was yellow. The scuffed hardwood floors beneath his feet had probably looked pretty good approximately a hundred years ago. A cracked Tiffany lamp sat on a carved wooden end table decorated with hand-painted lime green curly cues. A carved wooden bowl sat in the middle of her coffee table, filled with Starlight mints. And it was as if all of it had been thrown inside a gigantic blender and somebody had pushed the button.
On a nearby chair, two black and white cats were curled up together. Then he saw Jessie, who was perched on the top of an odd piece of furniture he couldn’t have guessed the purpose of. She looked down at him, then turned up her snooty pink nose and blatantly ignored him. As his gaze circled the room, he could feel his own nose crinkling.
“I’m betting you’re Eve’s best customer,” he said.
Cynthia frowned. “I know you didn’t mean that as a compliment, but I’m not going to take offense. You just don’t know what cozy and comfortable look like.” She paused. “Poor thing.”
“I’m not a poor thing! You’re a poor thing!”
“That’s mean.”
He drew back with disbelief. “You called me a poor thing first!”
“But my ‘poor thing’ was sympathy, because cozy and comfy are very nice things and you don’t even know what they are. Your ‘poor thing’ was you looking down your nose at me. Is it because you grew up with that silver spoon in your mouth? Because your father is a hotshot heart surgeon and your mother sells luxury homes to gazillionaires? And I’m just a little nobody from a nothing town with an average job and an average house and—”
“You said you weren’t going to take offense.”
“I changed my mind.”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, all right. It’s just that I hate being around a mess. I don’t know why. I just do.”
“I know you do. But that’s too bad, because I like messes. I may even mess up your files a little, just because.”
“Don’t you dare touch my files!”
“As long as I can find stuff, what difference does it make? Oh, yeah—I don’t work for you anymore.”
“What would it take to get you to come back?”
The moment the words slipped out of his mouth, he wanted to stuff them back in. He hadn’t meant to say that, or at least not blurt it out. What was it about her that made him do things he’d never intended to?
“Well, you might start by asking me,” Cynthia said.
Asking her?
This woman was tying his brain into a knot. He started to walk out the door until he could unravel it and get back in control again, only to imagine showing up to the office tomorrow and seeing her empty desk. No stuffed rabbit. No ceramic frog. No Jessie curled up between them. And just a little bit of panic welled up inside him.
He cleared his throat. “Will you come back?”
She shrugged offhandedly. “I’ll think about it.”
“You’ll think about it?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Well, no, not exactly—”
“Then I’ll think about it.”
No. He didn’t want her to think about it. The more she thought about it,