Simmer Down by SUSAN CONANT & Jessica Conant-Park

Author:SUSAN CONANT & Jessica Conant-Park
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fiction, Women Sleuths, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9780425213858
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2007-07-15T06:27:31+00:00

ELEVEN

I arrived back at the condo to find Noah once again on the wooden structure on the back of the building that served as a fire escape and outside stairway. On the night before New Year’s Eve, he was belatedly stringing lights. Clad only in a pair of workout pants, he looked ready to provide bodily services at any moment to any interested woman who happened upon him.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, put on some clothes,” I snapped as I brushed past him. “This weather we’re having? It’s called winter.”

“Aren’t we cranky tonight,” he commented, smirking.

“Yes, ‘we’ are.” Stomping up the stairs, I hoped I was accidentally-on-purpose kicking wet slush down on top of him. “And having to look at your ass isn’t helping.”

“That’s not what you used to say,” he hollered.

Must he constantly remind me of last summer’s indiscretion? I reached my landing, jumped up and down, and mashed wet snow between the cracks in the floor boards. Then I dumped an old window box full of ice water down on him.

“Hey, cut it out! You’re not very full of the holiday spirit!”

I slammed my back door. If only it’d been cold enough earlier this week, I could have sent icicle spikes through his head.

Suddenly exhausted, I flopped down on my bed and grabbed the cordless phone from the nightstand. Three messages: Doug, Adrianna, and Josh. I kicked off my shoes and listened to the first one, from my friend Doug, who confirmed that he would pick me up at six forty-five tomorrow night to go to Simmer. Doug was so much fun that I was embarrassed to realize that I’d completely forgotten he was coming with me tomorrow night. He was a doctoral student at my graduate school and a teaching assistant in a couple of my classes. I’d met him the previous September, on my first day of social work school, when he’d rescued me in the bookshop by tossing most of my so-called required reading back onto the shelves, thereby saving me hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours of boredom. Adrianna, who was extremely envious that I had a gay friend, had been bugging me for months to ask Doug to hook her up with one of his gay friends. Since she’d started working on her own and was out of the salon scene, she’d lost touch with “her boys,” as she phrased it.

I dialed her number. “My gay friend is escorting me to Simmer tomorrow. Guess you’re stuck with a plain heterosexual to bring you, huh?”

“Damn you!” she snapped back at me. “Where’s mine?”

“Gay people are not like Halloween candy. He doesn’t have a stockpile that he just goes handing out to whoever asks!” I insisted. I couldn’t very well go to Doug to request that he fix up one of his homosexual friends with one of my straight friends as if he ran some backwards dating service. Still, having a good gay man in her life was every woman’s dream, so I felt a little selfish about not wanting to share Doug.

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