Steve Robertson grinned at the woman with the flaming red
hair who answered the door. She was cute, a little zaftig, but nice looking.
Although Steve was nuts about his wife DeeDee, he still noticed other
attractive women. “I know,” he said. “Steve and DeeDee. We hear it all the
time.”
The redhead blinked. “Hear what?”
“Steve and DeeDee. It sounds like Steve and Eydie—the singers?”
Steve suddenly felt quite old. “You don’t know who Steve Lawrence and Eydie
Gorme are?”
“I think I remember my mom listening to them.” The redhead
wiped her nose on the back of her hand and then held it out for Steve to shake.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Robertson, but I’m afraid I haven’t seen your wife.
Are you new to the neighborhood?”
“Not yet. We’re buying the house next door.”
“You’re what?” A dark haired woman poked her head around the
kitchen door. “Which house next door? The brick one or the yellow one?”
“The brick one.”
“You can’t buy that house. That’s where I live.”
Now it was Steve’s turn to blink. “We inherited the house
from Ron Schuyler. It’s our house now.”
“Oh, crap. When was I going to hear about that?”
Steve felt terrible. He’d known it was a bad idea to come to
Schuyler Square without letting anyone know but DeeDee had been sure that it
would be all right. That was DeeDee—a born optimist if ever there was one. “I’m
sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Veronica Chandler and I’m renting that house from the
Schuyler Corporation.”
“Perhaps we could work something out,” Steve began. What
that something would be he didn’t know. They’d already packed up their
apartment back in the city and their furniture and belongings were on their way
to Schuyler Square.
“There you are!” DeeDee walked up the driveway. “I thought I
lost you. I saw some of the most gorgeous flowers and I wanted to ask the owner
what they were called. I’m going to have a beautiful garden, Steve! I
want it to pop—lots of color and lots of variety. It’s going to be so wonderful
to finally have our own house after living in shoeboxes for all of these years.”
Steve put a steadying hand on his wife’s arm. “Honey, this
is Veronica Chandler and—“
“Chelsea Van Husen,” the red head said.
“It’s nice to meet both of you,” DeeDee replied. “I want to
meet all of our neighbors. I’m going to have a big housewarming party as soon
as we’re settled and I want you both to come.”
“There’s a slight problem, DeeDee,” Steve said. “Veronica’s
living in our house. She didn’t know that we inherited it.”
“Oh, dear.” DeeDee’s face lit up. “I
know! You can stay with us until you find another place to live! That way we’ll
all be happy.”
Steve looked at his wife fondly. It was just like DeeDee to
want everyone to be happy. He glanced over at Veronica and saw that she didn’t
look too displeased with the suggestion. “I’m game if you are,” Veronica said.
“Or you could stay with me,” Chelsea offered. “Besides, you
wanted to move anyway. Who wants to live in a haunted house?”
“Haunted?” Steve and DeeDee repeated together.
No comments:
Post a Comment