Brick by Brick
Loose Id Titles by Maryn Blackburn
BRICK BY BRICK
Maryn Blackburn
www.loose-id.com
Brick by Brick
Copyright © June 2014 by Maryn Blackburn
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Image/art disclaimer: Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.
eISBN 9781623001308
Editor: Crystal Esau
Cover Artist: Victoria Miller
Published in the United States of America
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This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Chapter One
“Abso-fucking-lutely gorgeous,” James said.
“You like?” My face warmed. He’d given this compliment only once in all the years we’ve been together, the first time he saw me naked.
We’re strictly jeans people, which made tonight’s metamorphosis all the more amazing. The moss-green dress brought out my eyes and showed a daring amount of cleavage, and the strappy sandals’ high heels elongated my legs. I felt beautiful. Sexy too. James had himself a sure thing after the party.
“Right back at you, handsome.” Nearly ten years ago I’d leaned on him, hard, to buy the classic Brooks Brothers suit for our wedding. Then and now, it transformed him from macho construction type into elegant gentleman, so luscious in the navy tropical wool that I was eager to get him out of it. “You’re sure this isn’t too…” I groped for a word that meant
slutty
but sounded better.
“It’s not too anything. Doug and Cynthia will be dressed up. Did I tell you he said I could wear a tux? Like I might have one.” He tugged his shirt collar away from his throat. “Like anybody in Tucson has one.” Except for weddings, funerals, and federal court, living here rarely requires so much as a necktie. “He’s lucky his bricklayer has a suit.”
My shoes clicking on the kitchen tiles, I trailed James into the powder room. He scowled at his reflection until I reached over his wide shoulders to snug his tie against his collar. I ran my nails through the shock of blond hair that threatened to fall onto his forehead, and he smiled at my reflection before turning around.
The kiss was a James special, the bold tonguing kind that often came not long before he did. Its passion startled, irritated for the instant I remembered I wore lipstick, then fully roused the part of me that his compliment had awakened. He moved calloused hands down my back, settled on the lower back of the velvet dress, and pulled me to him.
He broke the kiss to grin at me crookedly. “You ready?” He wiped at his mouth with a square of toilet paper, which came away rose tinted.
“For anything,” I said. “I’m serious. Are you sure we have to go? We could, you know, stay in.” I pressed my lips together. A mirror check showed my makeup intact.
James led the way to the back door. “I told Cyn we’d be there. She wants to meet you.” He lifted the spare key to my car from the hook.
“What, this isn’t a truck evening?” I dead bolted the door.
“Ha. It’s making that noise again anyway.” He opened the door and helped me into the passenger seat like his date, not his wife. “I figure we’ll stay an hour, hour and a half. You don’t have to stand there and smile while I’m working the party. Have a drink, meet some people, enjoy yourself.”
I admired the cords of his neck as he turned his head and backed out of the carport. “Who’s going to be there, anyone I know?”
“Considering what they spent on masonry, I’m hoping their other friends are rich people.”
“Are you sure I look all right?”
“Oh, yeah…” He paused at the foot of the driveway, and his cool eyes judged me, head to toe. “Nobody there is going to look as good as you do.”
“I’m sorry to be nervous over nothing. It’s just a party. They’re just people.”
“They’re not snobs. Hell, Doug invited us. And wait till you meet Cynthia. She’s as down-to-earth as anybody. Listen, we’ll find each other and decide then if we want to stay.” He hadn’t driven my car in a long time. It took him two tries to find first gear. “Although the way you look, I can’t imagine anything better than the private party we’ll have at home.”
Now I dreaded the party for a different reason. It wasn’t fair, how easily James could make me squirm in anticipation when it would be hours before we were home again. I set my hand on his thigh, rubbed it lightly, and allowed my little finger to stray to the bulge in the navy wool, which stirred. “Me, either.”
Chapter Two
James parked at one end of a generous brick drive that looped across the front yard. He winced when the tires squealed.
“They had me add a curb to keep people from driving off the edge. And to chew up the tires of anybody who only parallel parks a couple times a year.”
Thick with native vegetation, the yard was worth defending. Both architect and builder had to work around the one-armed saguaro, since the stately cactus was protected, but Doug and Cynthia had saved a dozen golden barrels in sizes from wastebasket to keg, a lone cholla reaching for the stars, and numerous sagebrush and manzanita between the semicircular brick driveway and the street.
Inside the driveway a paloverde tree threw shadows on us as we neared the door. The big house blended into the desert better than most new developments. I liked that its owners had not tried to re-create some Eastern ideal but embraced the Sonoran desert, right down to the color of their paint.
James reached for the bell, but the door opened before he touched it.
“Here he is,” a plump woman in a silver-and-gray silk tunic said to a man in a navy suit similar to James’s. She kissed my husband’s cheek with a loud smack. “Aren’t you handsome?”
“I clean up pretty good for manual labor, huh?” He wiped at a muted red smear, raked his hair back one-handed, then kissed her cheek.
“And how.” The woman caught my eye and sighed. “Come in, come in. I love the winter days, but these nights feel nearly as cold as New York.”
I stepped inside, James right behind me. The four of us crowded the foyer once we moved in enough to close the door. No one but me knew James’s hand petted my rear.
“Thanks for inviting us,” he said. “Really.”
“Oh, you! We invited everybody we like.” She leaned close and whispered, “And as few of Doug’s clients as we could get away with.”
Doug laughed too loudly, as New York transplants so often did for the first year or two. “You must be Natalie. I’m Doug Rosenfeld, this is Cynthia, and we’re very pleased to have you here.”
“We enjoyed James being around every day, but I ran out of things to make out of brick,” Cynthia said.
“Right about the time I ran out of money,” Doug added, “so it worked out. James, you should meet Larry Kline before he’s too drunk. He just bought Rincon Office Park, and he’s got both money and vision.” He led James away.
“I don’t think he’s trying to be rude,” Cynthia said, tilting her head toward her husband. “It’s business.”
“Doug’s a lawyer, right?” I thought that’s what James had said.
“Not Doug’s business—James’s. We’re just so pleased with the terraces and the walkways and all that we think everybody should hire him.”
I thought so too. All the trades had their lean periods, but the Rosenfelds’ business had been the only new build my husband had in far too long. Seeking more, James had tucked a short stack of business cards into his breast pocket. “He’d be glad to have more creative work. He loves the design aspect.”
“I bet he loves you in that dress too. I won’t ask where you got it, since the figure to wear it is just a recurring fantasy I have.”
I didn’t know what to say, but Cynthia laughed, so I did too.
“I’m on hostess duty for a while longer, but I hope we can talk later. I was so excited when James told me you’re a reader. Meanwhile there’s a wine bar in the big room, left and to the back, past the kitchen, and another one outside. Get yourself something to drink and mingle.”
“Thanks. I’ll probably just people watch at first.”
“That’s right. James said you were the quiet type. Doug is too. Luckily you both ended up with extroverts. I don’t think that’s any accident, do you? You go right ahead and people watch, because they’re certainly going to be watching you. Oh, there’s the bell. Later, all right? I want to know all about whatever you’re reading.”
The bartender was a tiny Mexican man with a huge smile for my breasts. “Champagne or burgundy, señorita?”
Señorita? I was thirty-three and wore both wedding band and engagement ring. “Champagne,
por favor
.”
Glass in hand, I observed the big room, as warm and sedately yet expensively appointed as its owners. Cynthia seemed to share my reading tastes, judging by the hardbounds I had in paperback, and clusters of photos showed their sons were college graduates, one married. I revised my guess of Doug’s and Cynthia’s ages from early to late forties.
I roved the edges of the party, eavesdropping on clusters of people I passed. I paused near two women in their well-preserved fifties.
“Did you see the backyard?” said the one with peach-tinted hair. “It’s all these different levels and just flows, like on one of those home shows.”
