spoken in a couple of days. Not unusual. In fact, he was pretty sure the last thing he’d said was a vile expletive when he’d hammered his thumb working on the house a while back.
And before that... He couldn’t even remember.
“No,” she said. “No, you don’t. Though, I did leave a couple of messages for you?”
“My business manager handles that.” His words sounded disconnected. They felt disconnected.
He didn’t think about that side of his life often these days. It was why he paid someone to manage it. A payment that left his account automatically and required no effort or thought on his part.
The woman looked at him like he had grown a second head. He had to acknowledge that it was probably weird to hear a man who looked only just this side of Sasquatch say that he had a business manager.
But what this creature found weird or not weird wasn’t really his problem.
“Well. I haven’t heard from your business manager. But I got your address and I thought that I would come up here and talk to you. With... A peace offering.”
“The cookies.”
“Yes. The cookies.”
She looked around, the disdain in her muddy green brown eyes obvious.
“Are you going to invite me in?”
“Wasn’t going to.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame.
“Well, if you don’t let me in, I’m not going to be able to give you a cookie.”
“I could take it off the platter if I felt like it.”
“Well, you won’t be able to have milk.”
“I don’t have any milk.”
She didn’t seem to be deterred by that. “Well, what do you have? Coffee?”
“Whiskey.”
She straightened her shoulders, looking comically proper. Like a 1950s housewife in the thick of problem solving a dinner party dilemma. “Well, perhaps we can have cookies and whiskey.”
He stared at her for a long moment, and she didn’t shrink back.
When he’d first set eyes on her, he’d thought mousy. But mousy wasn’t the right word at all. “Why are you here?”
“To talk to you about the building that you own on Grape Street. Which I said in my message. Which I left for your business manager. Who quite frankly isn’t doing his job.”
“Her job.”
She blinked. “Fine. Her job.”
She just looked at him, expectant. “I can let you in, but there’s nothing nicer in there than there is out here.”
“Okay,” she said, taking a seat in one of the rickety wooden chairs that sat on the leaning porch.
He stayed where he stood. “So you want to talk to me about the building.”
“Yes. I do. I want to start a bakery.”
He looked at her, then at the cookies. “That’s why you brought these cookies.”
“Yes,” she said, brightening visibly. “To show you that my offer is a good one. It is. Very good.”
“And that offer is?”
“I want to rent out the building on Grape Street and make it a bakery. But the rent that you’re charging is astronomical.”
“What am I charging?” He didn’t have a clue. He wasn’t entirely sure what building she was even talking about.
She named a figure that didn’t sound especially astronomical to him. But that was the problem with him these days. He didn’t know if it didn’t sound like much because living in the Bay Area had made him numb to real estate prices. If it didn’t seem like much because he’d made and spent more money in thirty-eight years than most people would ever see in a lifetime.
Or if it just didn’t seem like much because he didn’t care anymore. About much of anything. About money or expenses or...
Much of anything.
“I can’t pay it. I was going to rent the building, but then you bought it.”
“My business manager probably did that too.”
“Well, whatever. The bottom line is that you own it. And, now it’s kind of hindering my dream.”
“What’s your name?”
She blinked. “Iris.”
“Maybe you need some more realistic dreams, Iris.”
He’d expected a reaction out of that, but she remained nearly sanguine in appearance. “I am actively trying to make my dream more realistic by changing the circumstances around it.”
“Coming up here and negotiating with me is not exactly dancing with realism. Here’s a tip. Life is tough. It’s not fair. I don’t exist to make it fair for you.” He started to step back into the house, but Iris advanced.
This time, he’d succeeded in making her mad.
If she’d been a bird, her feathers would have been ruffled. As it was, her cheeks turned pink, her lips pulling down at the corners.
“I’ve never labored under the illusion that life was fair.