At first, Bernie couldn’t believe her eyes. She blinked. Blinked again. It was still there, an eight-foot wrought-iron fence separating the street from the scraggly lawn of Creekwood Apartments. For a moment, she thought she’d taken a wrong turn and ended up at another apartment complex. She actually turned to look at the battered sign so she could make sure she was in the right place. The workmen scurrying around still had a ways to go before the place would be completely encircled, but that seemed to be the plan.
She pulled over, rolled down her window, and called out to a fifty-something guy in a grungy baseball cap with sweat rolling down his temples.
“Hey! What’s with the fence?”
“Upgrading. The gate goes up next. Controlled entry.”
Bernie blinked. “Here?”
The guy shrugged. “Believe me. I double-checked the address.”
She couldn’t believe it. Farnsworth had finally decided to put a little money into this place? Granted, a new coat of paint for the siding and filling a few potholes would have been a better start, but maybe this was his way of doing something visible to improve things that the residents could feel good about. And she felt pretty good about it herself. She felt even better when she pulled into a parking space in front of her apartment and started up the stairs. The handrail that had been half pulled out of the wall was gone, and in its place was a brand-new iron railing screwed so securely to the wall that it could withstand a nuclear explosion.
She stared at it in awe for a moment, then looked over her shoulder at the building across the parking lot, where she knew there were others that needed replacing. But all she saw were the original rickety, rusty ones. She walked to the next building to check it out, but all the handrails there were the original ones, too. After a little more investigation, she came to the conclusion that hers was the only one that had been replaced.
That was weird.
Okay, so maybe Charmin had designated hers to be replaced first since she’d been the one screaming about them on everybody’s behalf. But the new fence was something else entirely. That was a generalized safety issue the owner really wasn’t obligated to address.
Wait a minute. A safety issue?
She stood there a moment longer, turning that over in her mind. And the more she thought about it, the more she smelled a rat.
She pulled out her phone. Hit speed dial six. A few moments later, Jeremy picked up.
“Bernie. How nice to hear from you.”
“A fence. A controlled-entry gate. A new handrail,” she said, as she strode back toward her apartment. “Do any of those things sound familiar to you?”
“Familiar? As in, did I have anything to do with them?”
“Yes.”
“Of course I did.”
For a moment, Bernie was speechless. “Then it was you? You got the owner to do those things?”
“Yep. And he was actually pretty easy to persuade.”
“But it’s not your place to persuade him!”
“But it was a piece of cake. See, it turns out the owner sees things my way. And he’s such a nice guy, too. Handsome, intelligent, successful…”
Bernie stopped at the foot of the stairs leading to her apartment. Farnsworth was neither handsome nor intelligent, and what man could be considered successful if he ran a place like this?
“Bridges?” she said, a shiver of suspicion running up her spine. “What did you do?”
“What do you mean, What did I do?”
Then she felt silly for even thinking it. “Never mind,” she said with a tiny laugh. “Even you couldn’t have gone that far.”
“Gone how far?”
“Far enough to buy my apartment complex.”
“My God, Bernie. Do you think I’d actually do that?”
“Oh, all right,” Bernie said. “That was crazy. I was dumb to even think it.”
“No, you weren’t. I bought your apartment complex.”
For at least the count of three, Bernie was stunned into silence. Then it all came pouring out. “Bought it? You bought it? The whole thing?”
“One doesn’t generally buy half of an apartment complex.”
“No. No way. You couldn’t have bought it. Not that fast.”
“It’s amazing how motivated one seller can be, particularly when he’s looking at a cash sale. A standard contract, an expedited title search, thirty minutes at a title company, and voilà. Done deal. I’ve been looking to buy a little commercial real estate, anyway. And the price was certainly right.”
“You didn’t buy it as an investment,” she said hotly. “You bought it because you’re a big, fat control freak!”
“Hey, if you wouldn’t listen to me and move out of that hellhole, what else was I supposed to do?”
“Are you completely out of your mind?”
“I bet you liked those improvements just fine until you found out I was the one behind them.”
“You mean until I found out what a manipulative jerk you are?”
“I try to protect you, and this is what I get?”
“I don’t need you to protect me!”
“Get used to it, Bernie. As long as you refuse to make the right decisions concerning our babies, this is how it’s going to be.”
Bernie heard the line click. He’d hung up? She held out the phone, staring at it in disbelief. Then she hit speed dial six again.
“Yes, Bernie?”
“Small flaw in your plan,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“You seemed to think my neighbor across the way was a little iffy. What are you going to do about the riff-raff you think is already inside the gates?”
“Ah,” he said. “That’s where the armed security guard comes in.”
Bernie’s jaw dropped. “Armed security?”
“Ostensibly for the entire complex, but just between you and me, he’ll be focusing most of his attention on building six. See what an advantage it is to have friends in high places?”
With that, he hung up again. Bernie stabbed speed dial six. Again.
“Bernie,” Jeremy said. “So nice to hear from you. It’s been ages since we’ve talked.”
“You know what? I think you were right in the first place. I need to move.”
“Nah. You’re not going anywhere. See, I checked out the local rental market. Turns out you’re actually getting a deal there. As undesirable as your complex is, it’s at least borderline livable. If you were to pay that price anywhere else, you really would be living in a slum. Give those workmen another few days, and you’ll have a nice fence around the property and a shiny new keycard for access. Now, won’t that be nice?”
And then he hung up on her for the third time, and for the third time, the sudden silence infuriated her. She gritted her teeth and dialed him back to give him an even bigger piece of her mind. But this time all she got was his voice mail.
“Damn it,” she muttered, stuffing her phone back into her pocket. She’d had the opportunity to toss him down the stairs a few days ago. Why the hell hadn’t she taken it?
She walked up the stairs toward her apartment. Ruby stepped out onto the landing.
“Nice handrail, huh?” she said.
“Yeah,” Bernie muttered. “Nice.”
“And did you check out the fence we’re getting with the gates and all? You must have told Farnsworth you were going to blow his brains out, or something. Did you hold a gun to his head like in the movies?”
“It wasn’t Farnsworth.”
“Then who?”
Bernie unlocked her apartment door, then turned back. “You remember that guy who was here to see me a few days ago? The gorgeous one with the bad attitude?”
“The father of your baby?”
Bernie winced. Would she ever get used to hearing those words? “Yeah. He bought the place. He’s our new landlord.”
Ruby screwed up her face. “Why would he buy a crappy place like this?”
“Because he was born to piss me off.”
“Nice things around here piss you off?”
“You have no idea.”
“Well, they sure don’t piss me off. Not for one minute. Would you tell him that while he’s at it, I got a few things in my apartment that could stand to be fixed? Like maybe my leaky shower and the ants in my pantry closet. And I’m not so crazy about the holes in the carpet, either.”
“Sorry, Ruby. I don’t think he’s interested in—”
And that was when it struck her.
Jeremy was the new owner. As far as she knew, Charmin was still around, but Bernie had already determined what a bottleneck she was. And if she was a bottleneck, who was left for the tenants to go to with their problems?
Why, the new owner, of course.
• • •
The next afternoon, Jeremy sat in his office, listening to his cell phone ring for approximately the twentieth time. This time he didn’t even bother looking at the caller ID, much less answering it. He knew it was yet another call from one of the residents of Creekwood Apartments just dying to complain about something, so he let it roll to his voice mail with all the rest. Ms. Keyes wasn’t faring much better with his office phone. She hadn’t fielded this many calls since he’d dated a French supermodel who made Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction look like a cloistered nun.
He didn’t even want to know what was going on with his home phone.
As the day had worn on, he’d come to two very important conclusions. He was sick to death of his own ringtone, and Bernadette Hogan had been born to piss him off.
It was almost five o’clock. She hadn’t answered her phone all day, but by God, that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to keep trying. Heaven forbid he inconvenience her.
He grabbed his phone and dialed her number for the umpteenth time. Finally, after five rings, she came on the line.
“It’s about time you answered your phone,” he snapped. “God knows I’ve been answering mine.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t play stupid. I know what you’re up to. Eighteen voice mail messages on my cell phone alone. My personal cell phone. How did they get that number, Bernie? You want to tell me that?”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“You know who ‘they’ are! The tenants at that godawful apartment complex!”
“So today it’s godawful? Yesterday it was a good investment.”
“The calls are coming to my office phone, too,” he said, standing up to pace across the room. “After today, Ms. Keyes is going to be demanding a raise.”
“Stop being a tightwad and give it to her. She’s worth more just for putting up with you.”
“How about my home phone, Bernie? What’s going on there?”
“With luck, there were so many incoming calls that the lines melted.”
“Then it was you,” he barked into the phone. “You gave them my numbers!”
“Well, in all fairness, you are the new owner. I’ve always heard it’s best for a landlord to have a cordial relationship with his tenants.”
“Cordial relationship? All they were doing was complaining! Stopped-up drains. Nonfunctioning appliances. Holes in the wall. Bugs. Everybody had something.”
“So what does that tell you?”
“That Creekwood Apartments is a disaster area!”
“Exactly. And now you’re the owner, which means it’s your responsibility to fix all of it.”
“I’m not fixing a damned thing. In fact, if I’m smart, I’ll bulldoze the place and sell the land it sits on. And then I’m going to throttle you for having the nerve to give out my confidential phone numbers.”
“I’m the mother of your children. I thought your goal was to protect me.”
“I’ll wait until the babies are born. Then I’ll throttle you.”
She sighed. “I suppose you’re going to insist on coming over here to have a word with me about this.”
“You’re damned right I am.”
“Well, whatever you do, don’t come tonight.”
“Will you be home tonight?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then I’m coming tonight. I’ll be there at seven o’clock.”
“Bridges! No! I don’t want you here. Will you just—”
“Seven o’clock, Bernie. We have some talking to do.”
Jeremy punched the button to disconnect the call and tossed the phone to his desk, trying to remember the last time he’d been this livid about anything. It was going to be a monumental pain in the ass to have his phone numbers changed, but if he didn’t, he’d be a sitting duck. All those people would have carte blanche to disturb him night and day, seven days a week, and the thought of that was intolerable.
At seven o’clock that night, Max drove Jeremy into the parking lot of Creekwood Apartments. Jeremy eyed the partially constructed fence on his way in, a wrought-iron creation that looked totally out of place surrounding an apartment complex like this one. But if a security fence was what it took to show Bernie just how serious he was about her safety, he didn’t care if it looked like the Great Wall of China wrapped around a pup tent.
Jeremy could tell Max was curious why they were going to Bernie’s house, but he didn’t ask questions. He’d probably just call Bernie later to make sure Jeremy had stayed in line. But Jeremy didn’t want to stay in line. He wanted to throttle her just as he’d threatened, which meant Max would throttle him. But as mad as Jeremy was right about now, he decided it might be worth it.
He got out of the car. Three parking spaces away, a pair of teenage boys leaned against a beat-up Camaro, smoking and trying to look tough. They were eyeing his Mercedes with a hungry look, most likely scoping it out for anything stealable. Given the security features on the car, they couldn’t make off with much, but they could sure break a few windows trying. Then Max got out of the car and stood next to it, and suddenly those tough guys had someplace else to be. At least with him on the job, Jeremy felt relatively certain he’d come back downstairs later to an intact vehicle.
He climbed the stairs to Bernie’s apartment, admiring the new handrail he’d had installed. He hoped it had made an impression on Bernie, but knowing her, she’d refuse to touch it just to spite him.
A moment later, he rapped his knuckles against her door three times. Sharply.
He heard a commotion inside, and it was a little while before she finally came to the door. The moment she opened it, he breezed past her into her apartment. “Sit down, Bernie. We have some talking to—”
It wasn’t until he was well into the living room that it dawned on him that they weren’t alone. Not by a long shot.
At least fifteen other people were in her apartment. The guy with spiky red hair from the balcony across the way. A bleached blond with gigantic silver hoop earrings whose last makeup purchase must have sent Maybelline stock soaring. A twenty-something guy wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and five silver rings in his right eyebrow. A couple of old ladies, one in a leopard housecoat who looked approximately 130 years old. A young Hispanic woman with a baby in her arms and a toddler beside her. One person who was so androgynous Jeremy couldn’t begin to tell what sex God had meant it to be. An assortment of Texas good ol’ boys in jeans and boots. Tattoos all around.
Jeremy stared in rapt disbelief, feeling as if he’d entered the Land of Misfit People.
“Folks,” Bernie said, “this is Jeremy Bridges, the new owner of Creekwood Apartments.” She turned to Jeremy with a sweet smile. “Mr. Bridges, these are your tenants. And they’re just dying to meet you.”