mind refused to take in the details. In her experience, it was always better to empathize with Leonard’s latest bout of severe hypochondria than to try talking him out of his newest ailment. All she needed to do was make soothing noises.
“I tell you, I’m not long for this world. It will be almost a relief.” Leonard slumped in a chair across from her. “I’ve been ill for years.”
“Clearly, it’s taken a toll.” His neurosis had definitely shredded her nerves and, suppressing a sigh, Nora lifted her gaze from the charity invitation to give him her best look of sympathy.
“I see you’re letting your hair grow,” she said, hoping to distract him.
Leonard ran a hand over the top of his head where a barely visible fuzz had sprouted. She’d never cared for his—so Leonard had believed—trendy baldness. Now, his gleaming skull struck her as preferable to the gray-brown stubble that took its place.
“I won’t need to maintain my looks,” he murmured. “I only dropped by—with the utmost effort, I might add—to say goodbye.”
Nora’s heart lurched. “Leonard, don’t be ridiculous.”
Needing to discharge her nervous energy, she jumped up from her desk to pour a glass of water from the silver carafe on the sideboard. She held the Waterford tumbler out to Leonard.
“Here. Drink. I have whiskey, if you’d prefer.”
“Not good for my liver. My function is marginal, you know.”
Nora did sigh then. Leonard frequently tried her patience to the breaking point. Others might laugh at him, but she kept trying in her usual way to—what, save him from himself?
Dutifully, obviously stalling, he took a few sips of water, then set the glass aside. On her cherry end table. Without a coaster. Nora whipped one in the shape of a seashell from the drawer and smacked it down.
“Please, Leonard. No rings.”
He stretched his legs out, then crossed them at his bony ankles. If he had ever been the playboy he imagined himself to be, Nora hadn’t seen it. To her, he was more like Greta Garbo in drag, playing Camille.
Still, everyone had his illusions, and she maintained a certain fondness for Leonard. He could irritate her to distraction, but he had gobs of inherited money which he didn’t mind spending on the houses, condos and co-ops he’d purchased with astonishing regularity over the years.
It was a neurotic cycle, Nora suspected. Leonard became “ill,” he managed to survive the deadly disease, then bought himself a new place to live like a fresh lease on life. She had to admit the very notion of his leaving this earth now, after years of threats to do just that, would make her weep.
On second thought, she couldn’t continue to agree with him.
She tried to cheer him up. “Your color’s good today,” she pointed out. “That navy polo shirt makes your eyes look even more, um, blue.” Actually, they were almost colorless, but Nora wouldn’t be unkind—one reason, she supposed, why Leonard kept showing up without an appointment. He must know he could count on Nora for support. “If I don’t miss my guess, whatever illness you contracted during your weekend in the Caymans must be encountering all those little antibodies by now. I’d say that by tomorrow—”
Leonard shifted. “I’ve talked to Starr Mulligan.”
Uh-oh. Here we go. This was the real reason for Leonard’s latest impromptu visit. The rest had been a cover-up.
Nora’s voice chilled to the temperature of the water in the silver carafe crammed with ice on the sideboard. “I see.” He had, as usual, engaged her sympathy for his current illness, taken advantage of her kindness. Now he would tell her the truth. Nora didn’t want to hear it.
“Starr?” she said, already rethinking her earlier intention to make amends.
“I wasn’t expecting her when she turned up at my condo yesterday afternoon. I was napping, trying to preserve my strength, and not properly dressed to entertain.”
“Starr brings her own show with her.”
“Yes, well.” Leonard cleared his throat. “I think you should know she plans to underbid you on the design for my new house.”
“You bought another house? So this medical crisis—” she circled a hand in the air “—was just a ruse.”
If he’d purchased yet another home, Leonard intended to live for a while. That was good news. Yet he’d almost put one past her and Nora’s focus sharpened. If he hadn’t been her most constant client for the past fifteen years, if she didn’t need him now, she’d feel tempted to throw him out.
“I didn’t bid on your job, Leonard. I didn’t know about it.”
He adopted a contrite expression like a basset hound. “Can you possibly forgive me?”
“I’m not sure. How did Starr learn about this property in the first place?”
Leonard looked away. “Her cousin is a Realtor. He’s, uh, my Realtor.”
“I never knew that,” Nora said.
“He mainly handles commercial property. I wasn’t even in the market when he phoned to tell me he had this marvelous listing at Impressions right near Seaview.”
“Charming.” Nora didn’t mean the gorgeous new development at the shore, a few miles from Destin, and not far from the other planned community where Johnny owned a beach home. “You’ll be too far from the pharmacy,” she informed Leonard, “and the mall. And probably from the water.”
“I can practically walk from my kitchen into the Gulf.”
“I see,” Nora said again. If her life kept going this way, she wouldn’t need to worry about her presumed perimenopause. She’d have a stroke. “So you’ve gone behind my back, bought a marvelous new home—and Starr has great plans for it.” Nora couldn’t help the next words that came from her mouth, Maggie’s long-ago teachings aside. “Well, congratulations. When she fills the place with hideous pseudo pre-Columbian art and charges you a fortune, please don’t call me.”
Leonard sounded like a little boy. “Nora.”
She pressed her fingers to her forehead, easing the frown that wanted to form. Her latest Botox injections were supposed to be at their peak effect, and her forehead shouldn’t show a ripple, like the surface of an unused swimming pool in the sun.
She took a deep, steadying breath. “I’m hurt, Leonard.”
How could Starr steal her most lucrative and ever-present client? Just as she wanted to take Geneva Whitehouse? What would Nora do without Leonard? It seemed worse than her usual question: What to do with him? He had been the pain in her ribs for years, but she was, well…used to him. He had his gentler side, and until now a certain loyalty, although it wasn’t showing today.
“It’s a beautiful house,” he said in a soft, tempting tone.
And with that Nora realized she’d been played like a fine Stradivarius. Leonard had made the hackles rise
