disasters, fumigating the fridge, throwing a blanket over the couch and hanging pictures, making a space for her sisters. The lighting in the kitchen was fluorescent, and the floor under the carpet she’d put down in the main room was more scuffed yellow lino. I was willing to bet the bathroom was a horror show, though I wouldn’t have put it past Daisy to have regrouted the tile during her dinner break from the Emergency Department.
I asked Dorian, “What did you think, when she rented it?” Since he was still just standing there.
He said, “It’s not down to me to decide, surely. It was always Daisy’s choice.”
“Did the two of you paint it?” I asked.
“No,” Daisy said, going for a broom and starting to sweep up the broken glass. “I painted it.”
Dorian said, “I offered.”
“It’s three rooms and a bath,” Daisy said, tipping the glass into a plastic bin. “Three small rooms. I only did one coat. It barely took two days.”
I said, “I have an idea.”
Daisy
Gray explained.
I said, “What? We’re not going to live with you. No.”
“Not forever,” he said. “For a couple weeks. And I told you, it’s not ‘with me.’ You’d have your own place. Until Fruitful’s ankle is better, so she doesn’t have to do those stairs. How did you get her up here just now? It can’t have been pleasant, and going down will be worse. Until I’ve fixed your window, and you have a new car and have used it to enroll the girls in school and buy their uniforms and …” He waved a hand in a sort of blessing-the-waters gesture. “The various other things. Clothes and all. Hair. Makeup. Shoes. Whatever it is girls need.”
Fruitful said, “Uniforms?” Obedience said, “Makeup.” Dorian said, “You could come stay with us, of course. Chelsea’d love to have you.”
Chelsea just about wouldn’t. “You have a one-bedroom apartment,” I said. “I’m done fitting a whole family into a one-bedroom apartment, and as Chelsea never has done it and is six months pregnant, that’s a no. I’d like my sister-in-law not to actually hate me. Anyway, why would we stay with you when we have this? And no car, and would be farther away? Not that I don’t appreciate your offer,” I went on hurriedly, because Dorian could get his feelings hurt. Apparently, I could be blunt. “But no. And you realize, Gray, that there’s a flaw in this plan of yours.”
“What’s that?” He still looked calm. Much too calm for a man who’d just complicated his life even more, when I was willing to bet his life was complicated enough. Although with no permanent woman in it, other than his mum.
And then he said, “If it’s the can’t-be-alone-with-a-man thing, there’s my friend Iris there as well.”
Obedience said, “But you aren’t married.”
He said, “Of course I’m not married. I told you I wasn’t married.”
“Just …” I said.
He looked at me blankly, and Dorian said, “Is Iris your partner, then?” Also too calmly, like he hadn’t realized the wind had just been knocked out of my sails. Which was stupid, but there you were. I was stupid, evidently. What, I’d thought the man was pining for me and me alone? I’d known him two days, I’d been nothing but trouble to him, and we weren’t exactly engaged in a torrid love affair, even though, yes, I’d experienced a dramatic loss of clothing at a few stages during our time together. And he’d seemed absolutely unaffected by that, so there you were.
“What?” Gray said. “No. We don’t have that kind of … of relationship. She’s a … I guess you’d say she’s a tenant.”
“Not any better,” I told him. “A tenant?”
He sussed it out, because he looked stunned, and then he laughed and said, “Never mind. I can’t quite explain why it’s funny, but no. Not a tenant with benefits, or whatever you’re thinking.”
“What are benefits?” Obedience asked.
“It’s like needs, I think,” Fruitful told her. “Except you’re not married.”
“No,” Gray said more forcefully. “No benefits. No needs. Bloody hell. She’s my tenant. On my section. You’ll like her.”
“You still haven’t mentioned the problem,” I said, not addressing that, because I didn’t want to admit I was relieved. For all I knew, Gray could be shagging women left, right, and center. He had that house. He had that tattoo. He had that body.
Also, I didn’t care. It was nothing to me. He wasn’t my type. He was a rescuer and … and probably a runner-over, and I hated being needy and