Michael led her upstairs to the door of the apartment next to his, he felt as if he were leading a lamb to slaughter. The two elderly ladies that lived there might look like solicitous souls, but they were as tough as nails.
He pounded on their door. Nothing short of pounding could be heard by either of them. Mrs. Weiskopf came to answer the summons. “You here to fix my leaky kitchen faucet?” she demanded of Michael.
“No, but she is,” he heard himself answering.
Mrs. Weiskopf switched her eagle gaze from him to Brett. “Where are your tools?” she demanded suspiciously. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“No joke. Mrs. Weiskopf, meet Brett Munro—our new building supervisor.”
“About time you got a woman to do a man’s job,” Mrs. Weiskopf retorted with the sting of her infamous sauerkraut.
“Who’s at the door?” her flat-mate, Mrs. Martinez, demanded. “You’re letting all the heat out.”
“There’s enough heat in that spicy food you’re cooking in the kitchen to warm the entire building,” Mrs. Weiskopf retorted.
“Is this your girlfriend?” Mrs. Martinez asked Michael with the interest of a born matchmaker.
“No, she’s the new building supervisor. I just hired her.”
“Hired her?” Mrs. Martinez repeated with raised eyebrows. Taller than Mrs. Weiskopf by a good half foot, she was also twenty pounds heavier. Her dark hair was streaked with white, but wasn’t yet the silvery gray of her flat-mate’s. Brett couldn’t tell which of the women was the oldest. She could tell which one wanted her hooked up with Michael. The other one, Mrs. Weiskopf, just wanted her leaky faucet fixed. That was a job Brett could do.
“If you’d like me to look at the faucet now, I should be able to get an idea what’s wrong with it. Then I’ll know what tools to bring later today to fix it.”
“Later today?” Mrs. Weiskopf and Michael both repeated in unison.
“Didn’t you want me to start as soon as possible?” Brett addressed her comment to Michael.
“Yes, well.”
“This afternoon is fine,” Mrs. Weiskopf interjected. “Come right this way. The toilet doesn’t work right, either. Keeps running water even when no one uses it.”
Twenty minutes later, Brett left the elderly women’s apartment with their praises ringing in her ears, and their cooking in her hands—homemade sauerkraut in a plastic bowl and fresh salsa in a glass mason jar “because It’s so hot it would melt plastic,” Mrs. Martinez had said.
Michael couldn’t believe the women’s hospitality. In the short time he’d known them, they’d always treated him as if he were personally responsible for everything that had ever gone wrong in their long and eventful lives. Now, just because Brett had jiggled a few things inside their toilet tank and promised to replace a faulty gasket in their faucet, the two women thought she could do no wrong.
He felt as if the lamb had just turned into a lion.
“So who’s next?” she perkily inquired.
He led her directly to the second floor and the apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Stephanopolis. Okay, so the old women living next door to him were tough, but they were marshmallows compared to the couple upstairs.
He should have known better. Before he could even knock on the door, Mr. Stephanopolis had it open and was kissing Brett’s cheeks while exclaiming in Greek.
Having heard stories about Mrs. Stephanopolis’s legendary jealous streak, Michael thought it in Brett’s best interest that he disengage her from the overexuberant Greek’s embrace.
“Mrs. Martinez called from downstairs and told us all about this angel who has come to save us,” Mr. Stephanopolis replied as Michael tugged Brett out of the other man’s embrace only to end up with her in his arms instead.
Brett was seized by a dizzying sense of pleasure and an even stronger sense of enchantment. Michael’s chest was warm against her back, and his hands cupped her elbows. His breath stirred the hair at her nape and sent shivers down her spine. She’d never felt this way before, filled with wondrous excitement and breathless desire—all from an accidental embrace.
“I thought you said the girl was not Michael’s girlfriend,” Mrs. Stephanopolis said as she joined her husband at the door.
“I’m not,” Brett hurriedly said, stepping away from Michael and the spell he seemed to cast on her. “I’m the new building supervisor.”
“In my time a girl did not do such work,” Mrs. Stephanopolis replied with dark disapproval.
“I’m just glad the hot water is working again,” Mr. Stephanopolis exclaimed. “I almost froze my privates off this morning.”
“This girl does not want to hear about your privates,” his wife declared with frosty fire.
As the bickering between husband and wife continued in Greek for a few moments, Michael was taken aback at the amused look that Brett shared with him. Her face had this glow that raised his blood pressure, among other things.
Brett surprised him further by breaking into Greek herself—a feat that provided momentary silence from the couple before both broke into speech once more.
Mrs. Stephanopolis’s earlier disapproval melted as she put her arm around Brett and ushered her into the apartment, leaving Michael standing on the threshold as if he were an unwelcome in-law.
Half an hour later, when he and Brett left their apartment, she’d added a bottle of ouzo to her collection of goodies.
“You’re lucky to have such great tenants,” Brett told him.
“Yeah, right.”
“So who else do you want me to meet?”
“There’s only one more apartment left. The Lincolns live next door. Since you’re getting on so well with everyone, I’ll just leave you to it. Clearly you don’t need me to hold your hand.”
The concept of him holding her hand had a sudden appeal—for its own sake, not because she was afraid to be alone. Being alone was one of many things Brett was very good at. Meeting strangers was another. “Okay. And then after I introduce myself to the Lincolns I’ll go get my things, so I can start working on that faucet like I promised Frieda and Consuela,” Brett said.
“Who?”
“Frieda Weiskopf and Consuela Martinez.”
“Oh.” Somehow Michael had never thought of the two women as having first names. To him they were simply the dragon-women next door. “Right.”
“So I’ll see you later then. Thanks again for being so sweet and introducing me to the other tenants.”
“Sweet is my middle name,” he mockingly drawled.
No, Brett thought to herself. Sexy was his middle name.
