Are they planning on moving in here?”
Roksana cleared her throat loudly from her hiding spot in Ginny’s room.
Larissa whirled around. “Did you hear that?”
“No.” Larissa started to creep along the landing in the direction of the noise—and Ginny panicked. “You know how sometimes dead bodies expel air. That must have been it.”
“There are no bodies to speak of.”
“Oh I didn’t mention,” Ginny said, scratching her eyebrow. “A new guest arrived just as I did. Had the whole thing arranged. Didn’t I tell you?”
“No…” Larissa paused. “Oh, who gives a shit anymore? I’m done. Let the dead bodies do as they will.”
Ginny waited until Larissa had disappeared back into her room before speed walking to her own bedroom and closing the door. “What was that?”
Roksana rolled out from beneath the bed. “Ask for the name of the investor.”
With that, she trundled back out of view.
A very unladylike curse hovered on Ginny’s lips as she stomped back out into the hallway, calling, “Larissa. What did you say this person’s name was?”
“Oh, um…what was it…” She poked her head through the doorframe. “J. Cantrell. Sounded kind of cute, too. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”
Ginny’s jaw hung in the vicinity of her knees. From underneath her bed, she could hear Roksana snickering. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or livid.
Livid. Definitely livid.
This was the second time in twenty-four hours Jonas had made a huge decision without even dropping her an email. And that was on the heels of a series of decisions he’d made on her behalf since day one. Oh, she’d walked into this relationship with eyes wide open. Less than a day later, however, she was already questioning her sanity.
“How could he do something like that without even asking?” Ginny breathed, walking back to her bedroom in a stupor. “I never would have agreed to let him bail me out. I was figuring out what to do on my own.”
“You asked for human gestures.”
“No, I didn’t. You and Tucker decided I needed human gestures.”
“Are you really so upset about this?” Roksana asked, still under the bed for some reason. “Jonas is loaded. He won’t even feel it and now we don’t have to conk old Larissa on the noggin every time we come over. It’s good for everyone.”
“He can’t make decisions this big when they affect us both. How would you feel if Elias—”
“No no no.” Roksana’s wagging index finger emerged first, followed by the rest of her. “Don’t bring him up and kill my chipper mood.”
“What happened between you two?” Ginny asked, being more abrasive than usual because this crazy huge thing just happened and Roksana was acting quite cavalier. They’d see how cavalier she’d be when someone prodded her sore spot. “He’s the reason you can’t slaughter them, isn’t he?”
Roksana smacked the floor. “I’m doing it tomorrow!”
Ginny snorted.
Larissa appeared in the doorway, staring at Roksana and her leather bustier like they were a personal offense. “Who are you?”
“Death. Here to collect,” Roksana said, unsheathing a knife from inside her boot. “Go now and I might let you live.”
Larissa ran screaming down the stairs as though wild boars were snapping at her heels.
“Well that was unnecessary.”
Roksana flipped her knife end over end and caught it. “She had it coming.”
A laugh tickled the inside of Ginny’s throat, so she smacked a hand over her lips to trap it. Was this going to be her life now? Swinging between the disturbing to the shocking to the absurd with every tick of the clock?
“Clock,” she breathed. “What time is it? I have to finish my dresses before tonight and there’s the meeting with that man about his son…”
“I’ll just be under here,” Roksana intoned, vanishing once more beneath Ginny’s queen-sized bed. “Wake me up if they bring the snack cart around.”
Shaking her head, Ginny got down to business. She wheeled the squeaky garment rack over to her sitting area and fired up her sewing machine. Thankfully there weren’t too many things left undone. She polished the hem on her green, wool A-line, for which a Christmas tree had been the inspiration, then sewed on the red holly embellishment over the chest pocket.
The formal, white silk gown required steam cleaning, along with the faux fur being affixed to the collar. And maybe she needed a trail of rhinestones traveling down between the breasts and spreading along the hips?
With a needle and thread permanently stuck between her lips, she’d never worked faster in her life and by the time late afternoon rolled around, she had a