LITMIR.BIZ

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beautiful to look at. He’d always thought her pretty, with her thick hair and expressive eyes, at least when she wasn’t terrorizing him. But her features had been a little sharp, an impression maybe reinforced by her personality. Now, though, everything had softened, from her face, to her smile, to her voice, to her attitude.

      He’d actually enjoyed their brief conversation, and would have liked to continue it. But she’d hurried away from him as quickly as she could. So maybe the long-awaited reunion hadn’t been as enjoyable to her as it had been to him.

      Which irritated him. She’d always seemed to have the power in their relationship, and it seemed some things never changed.

      He was just about to go back to his place when he saw Peggy, his friend and neighbor—and Lulu’s—waving from the front door of their building. She gestured him forward.

      “Hey, Chaz, can you give us a hand with something?”

      “I can try.”

      “Great. Marcia got a new laptop, and all either of us know about setting it up is pushing the On button.”

      “I can’t guarantee I’ll get you much further than that.”

      “Well, if you can at least get us online so we can stream the newest episode of Teen Wolf, we’ll pay you back with a steak dinner tomorrow.” Peggy wagged her eyebrows up and down and stepped out of the way to let him in the building. “Our pretty neighbor will be joining us. I see you’ve met her?”

      “You mean Lulu?”

      “Yeah.”

      He nodded. “Actually, we’ve known each other since we were kids.”

      “Oooh, isn’t that interesting?”

      “Not particularly.” Wanting to nip any matchmaking ideas about him and Lulu in the bud, he asked, “You’ve lived around here for a few years, right?”

      “Yep. We lived one block over until two years ago and right here ever since. Why?”

      “I’m just wondering...do you ever remember meeting a really gorgeous redhead? Tall, maybe five-seven, with dark eyes and a great mouth?”

      “Hey, I’m a happily married woman.”

      “I didn’t mean for you,” he said with a grin.

      “Aww, come on, Chaz, you don’t need a redhead when you were shooting some serious sparks with our downstairs neighbor.”

      Lulu? No way, not a chance. He might agree she was sexy, but the only sparks the two of them would set off each other would be if it was the Fourth of July and she stuck a firecracker down his shirt.

      “We’re just friends. We literally grew up next door to each other.”

      “Well, isn’t it a funny coinkydink, you two ending up as neighbors again. Like fate.”

      “No, it’s not fate. I hooked her up with my Realtor, who works in this area. No hidden meanings or motives. Lulu and I were childhood playmates, and absolutely nothing else.”

       Playmates, adversaries, same difference.

      “Okay,” Peggy said with an exaggerated shrug, “If you say so. But I still gotta tell ya, Chaz, from where I was standing, the two of you looked like anything but mere friends.”

      As if realizing he was uncomfortable, she changed the subject and led him up to the third-floor apartment. Chaz spent a few hours with Peggy and Marcia, helping them set up the new laptop and hook it to their wireless network. He’d never be called a computer genius, but it wasn’t too complicated.

      Though he didn’t, by any means, expect anything for his labors, he ended up accepting their invitation to a cookout the following afternoon. He told himself it had nothing to do with Lulu’s presence and wanting to even the score with her. He’d simply been out of the country for a while and looked forward to a last outdoor gathering before the doldrums of winter set in. And he’d probably need to relax and have a few beers with friends after what he expected would be a difficult breakfast with his kid sister.

      Besides, spending time with everyone who lived in the building would give him a chance to ask Marcia and the couple from the first floor if they knew a sexy, mysterious redhead. That should hammer home to everyone—including him—the fact that he didn’t care at all about Lulu.

      The next day turned out better than he’d expected, since a much more cheerful Sarah had blown off breakfast in favor of a day with friends. So he had plenty of time to unpack and do laundry, and go shopping for this afternoon’s gathering.

      He arrived a few minutes after four. Peggy had said they were cooking out early to take advantage of the daylight in the rapidly shortening fall day. He headed around to the back of the building, following the sound of voices and laughter. Marcia and Peggy were there, sitting at a picnic table across from a good-looking African-American man. The middle-aged couple who lived on the bottom floor—Florence and Herman? Sherman? something like that—were at the grill, him cooking on it, her telling him how to do it better. They both looked up at him and smiled in greeting.

      Lulu sat away from the group, on a garden swing that hung from a tall, leaf-bare tree, pushing off with the tips of her toes to set the thing in motion. Her eyes rounded in surprise when she saw him. “Chaz?”

      “Hi, everyone,” he said, setting a bottle of wine and a twelve-pack of beer on the table.

      “What are you doing here?” she asked, getting up and approaching him, sounding confused, though not exactly unwelcoming.

      “Peggy and Marcia invited me.”

      “Surprise!” said Peggy. “Chaz told me you two were pals from the olden days, and he did us a solid helping us set up our wireless network.”

      Marcia piped in. “Plus, well, the more the merrier. We wanted to share some news with our friends and neighbors and figured we’d make this a little celebration.”

      The two women glanced at each other and then Peggy went around to stand behind Marcia, dropping her hands onto her shoulders.

      “What’s the news?” asked Lulu.

      “First, we should introduce Frankie.”

      The good-looking stranger who’d been sitting at the table smiled and waved as Peggy ran down everyone’s names. “Nice meeting y’all.”

      “Frankie works with Marcia,” Peggy explained. “He recently helped us out with a very special project.”

      “More special than your internet?” Chaz asked with an eyebrow wag.

      Peggy’s laughter nearly deafened him. “Oh, yeah. You see...we’re going to have a baby.”

      Lulu squealed, as did Florence. Sherman threw his arms up and shouted congratulations in a language that sounded like Italian. Frankie looked proud, and Peggy and Marcia utterly ecstatic.

      “Congratulations,” Chaz said, smiling at both women. “I can’t imagine a kid having better parents.”

      Lulu rushed around the table and hugged them both, then said, “Okay, now tell me, which one of you doesn’t get to drink the wine or beer?”

      The two women eyed each other mischievously, then both pointed to Marcia’s belly. “Seven months without wine, coffee or junk food. I don’t know how I’m going to make it.”

      “I’m going without, too, in solidarity,” said Peggy. “Uh, except for the junk food. There’s only so much a Nacho Cheese Doritos addict can do to support the woman she loves.”

      The dinner then segued from a casual neighborhood thing to a celebration. Through it, Chaz watched Lulu, glad to see how totally cool she was with the whole situation. They’d both been raised in a pretty small, conservative town. His own horizons had expanded exponentially after he’d left, and it appeared Lulu’s had, too. She was

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