LITMIR.BIZ

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a little wider—her mother didn’t need much room to come in.

      Trying again, Tiffany asked in her best upbeat tone, “And to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure, dear Mother?”

      Mei-Li did not appear placated. “There is no need to be sarcastic, Tiffany.”

      Tiffany squelched the temptation to raise her voice in total frustration. Instead, she struggled for patience and tried a third time, keeping her voice even and respectful, despite the fact that to her own ear, it sounded almost singsong. “Mother, is there something I can do for you?”

      Walking in, the small woman scanned the room, taking in everything at once even as she rolled her eyes in response to the question. “More things than I could possibly enumerate in the space of a day,” she replied.

      “But you didn’t come to enumerate a long list of things,” Tiffany pointed out. “I know you, Mother. You came here for a very specific reason. You always do,” she added as her mom opened her mouth to deny the assumption. “Now what is it?”

      “How was he?” her mother asked without any preamble.

      Tiffany was caught completely off guard, her mind a total blank. “‘He?’”

      Mei-Li sighed, exasperated. “Surely you are not so dumb as you pretend, Tiffany. The young man I am paying to remodel your bathroom,” she said with emphasis. “Did he do a good job?”

      She made it sound as if renovating a bathroom could be done in a single afternoon. If only, Tiffany thought wistfully. But at the same time, the question irritated her. “Mother, he’s just gotten started.”

      To her surprise, her mother actually seemed pleased rather than annoyed that the job hadn’t been magically completed.

      “Oh. Good,” Mei-Li commented. Then, because they were supposed to be discussing remodeling the bathroom and not remodeling her stubborn daughter’s life, she requested, “May I see what he has done?”

      “Mainly, he left a mess,” Tiffany told her. “Right now, if you saw it, you’d probably be horrified.” And she had no desire to listen to her mother criticize what she saw. Why Tiffany felt almost protective of the man who had jolted her out of her bed was beyond her, but it didn’t change the way she felt. “Why don’t you wait until he’s finished and then I’ll show you just what he managed to do.”

      Much to her astonishment, her mother smiled and nodded. “I can hardly wait.”

      Tiffany wondered if Mei-Li was getting more eccentric as she got older—or if she was just becoming strange.

      Tiffany found herself leaning toward the latter.

Chapter Four

      “I thought women liked to go shopping,” Eddie said, in response to the less-than-pleased expression on his passenger’s face.

      True to his word, he had arrived at eight in the morning. And as per their agreement, he had gone straight to work on the master bath, preparing it for the items he hoped they would wind up purchasing later today. That allowed Tiffany to get back to bed—downstairs in the guest room—temporarily.

      Back to sleep, however, was another story. She couldn’t seem to fall asleep because she kept waiting for the noise to begin.

      It didn’t. However, the ensuing quiet didn’t allow her to drift off. After a while, Tiffany gave up her futile quest for sleep and got ready for the trip she told herself she didn’t want to make.

      They’d left at a few minutes after ten, with her looking less than pleased about the forced field trip she was facing.

      “I do like to go shopping,” Tiffany said when the silence became too uncomfortable. “I like to go shopping for clothes, for shoes. I even like to go shopping for electronic gadgets that I don’t need but that capture my attention.”

      She shifted slightly in the passenger seat. Her seat belt dug into her hip. “But I have never even once fantasized about going shopping for bathroom faucets, or showerheads, or medicine cabinet mirrors.”

      “Then this should be a new experience for you,” he told her cheerfully.

      Tiffany caught herself thinking grudgingly that he had a nice smile, but she didn’t exactly appreciate the fact that the smile was at her expense.

      “And a quick one, I hope,” she retorted.

      “That all depends on you.” For her benefit, Eddie went over the list of various hardware and fixtures needed in her bathroom, concluding with, “You find ones that you like and we’ll be on our way back to your house in no time.”

      “What’s the catch?” she asked.

      Eddie shook his head as he guided his truck onto the freeway ramp. “No catch.”

      “Then why aren’t we on our way to O’Malley’s Hardware, or One Stop Depot?” she asked, naming two local hardware stores in the area that boasted having everything a home owner might need.

      Taking advantage of a space, Eddie merged into the middle lane. “Because I’m assuming that you want quality, not shoddy.” After he resumed the acceptable freeway speed, he spared Tiffany a quick look. “At least, that was what I was told by the person who hired me.”

      “O’Malley’s Hardware sells shoddy goods?” she questioned.

      Tiffany wasn’t all that familiar with the store, only the ads that seemed to pop up every hour on most of the television stations. Even the jingle had begun to infiltrate her brain on occasion.

      “They sell ‘make-do’ goods,” he told her. “The stores I’m taking you to carry higher-end items that are made to last.”

      “And higher prices,” she guessed.

      Eddie nodded. “You get what you pay for,” he told her simply.

      She had a feeling that he was conveniently omitting one little fact. “And you get a percentage of all those high-end prices, right?”

      She thought she saw him stiffen ever so slightly, as if he’d just taken offense. “I’m charging for my work,” he pointed out. “The price—the actual price—of any fixtures gets passed on to your mother. You’re welcome to take a look at the bills of sale if you want to.”

      She wasn’t going to bother beating around the bush. “Then you don’t increase the price of each item?” Tiffany challenged.

      He shook his head. “That’s not the way I do it,” Eddie told her, although he doubted she believed him. But he had no intention of trying to convince her. She could believe him or not, that was her prerogative. He had better things to do than to try to prove his trustworthiness.

      Tiffany shrugged her shoulders indifferently.

      “Let’s just get this over with,” she told him with a deep sigh. Maybe he was actually telling the truth, maybe he wasn’t. She just didn’t want to waste any more time over this than she had to.

      * * *

      It surprised her how many choices there were of absolutely everything and how many stores were devoted exclusively to just one or two types of items. It was like entering a completely different world.

      Although she had initially just wanted to point and go, Tiffany was stunned to find herself deliberating. Specifically, she was having a hard time picking out the kind of bathtub she wanted and exactly what she wanted built into it.

      Out of the corner of her eye, Tiffany caught a glimpse of her “guide” in this gleaming fixture jungle, smiling to himself as she vacillated between two different models.

      “You tricked me, didn’t you?” she accused with only a slight frown.

      Eddie spread his hands wide, the picture of total innocence. “I’m just the

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