Not This Gal! by Sanders Glenda

Author:Sanders, Glenda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

7

THE ONLY TIME Keeley had ever gone apartment hunting was when she moved to Orlando to enroll at the university after finishing community college in Lake-view. The hunting had been an adventure then. This time, it was a pain in the posterior.

Already disenchanted with the entire situation in which she found herself—the desperate necessity to find a place immediately, the small-town girl in her quickly wearied of the cookie-cutter city fare. By the time she’d walked through empty units in three different complexes, she had formed the opinion that one apartment was pretty much like any other. There were differences—a window above the sink, a convenient route into and out of traffic, a built-in desk off the kitchen—but the overall ambience was the same in all of them: urban crackerbox.

After leaving the fourth prospective complex, she decided to go by the store and say hello to the owner, Anne, who had come out of semiretirement to run the store while Keeley was on vacation. She wanted to ask if Anne’s son, Michael, a high-school sophomore, might be willing to help with the heavy lifting. Mike worked part-time at the shop, providing muscle whenever needed.

Approaching from an unfamiliar direction, she gambled a turn onto a street that she hoped would connect her with the highway on which the shop was located. Instead, it wound into a quiet neighborhood of charming little houses, many of them block construction that reminded her of her grandmother’s house. They were older homes, most set well back on tree-shaded lawns, with open carports instead of garages.

She could hardly believe her eyes when she saw a hand-lettered For Lease sign in one of the yards. Was it karma? Fate? Just plain old good luck? She turned into the driveway and parked, taking a close look at the house. It was a simple rectangle with a bank of steps leading to a narrow porch that ran the full width of the front. All the windows were shuttered.

All the windows were shuttered!

She jotted down the phone number on the sign, hoping the house was within her price range. Maybe, since it was old and small...

She backed to the end of the driveway and was waiting for a car to pass in the street, when she caught sight of movement near the house. A woman dressed in typical Florida day wear, knit shorts and shirt and sneakers, was running toward her from the neighboring yard, waving her arms. Keeley rolled down the window as the woman approached the car.

“Are you Mamie’s friend?” the woman asked, still on the move.

“No,” Keeley said. “I...I don’t know anyone named Mamie.”

“Oh,” the woman said, heaving from exertion. “Oh, I see. My beautician said she knew someone who might be interested in the house and she might drop by around noon. I assumed she’d changed her mind, but when I heard the car—”

“I was just driving past and saw the sign.”

“Would you like to see the house?”

“Now?”

The woman shrugged. “If you want to see it and have the time, you might as well take a look now.

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