“I don’t know. I told her not to come back without some ideas from their catalog, as well as some paint chips from the hardware store to think about what to paint the walls.”
He snorted. “How’d you manage that?”
“Sachi helped me, of course. I thought we were going to have to force her into her car.”
Sachi walked out of the office. “Yeah, she sooo doesn’t take well to being made to not work. I should have warned you our girl is a workaholic.”
Amused, Ellis crossed his arms over his chest. “Pot, meet kettle?”
She nodded. “Hey, takes one to know one, chief.”
Mandaline survived her IKEA expedition and made her way back to the Home Depot in Brooksville. She stared at the colorful wall of paint chips, agonizing indecision rendering her practically numb.
How the frak am I supposed to choose?
She understood what Sachi and Brad were trying to do, to get her out of the shop and force her to think of something besides that for awhile. She loved them for it, but this was almost a form of torture for her.
This was the first time in…well, in ever, that she’d actually had a solo voice in a major furniture or color decision. When Julie had decided to repaint the reading rooms, she’d given the staff ten choices to pick from that they liked the best.
Carl had never given her a true choice, instead painting the blah beige color palette his mother had insisted would be the most sensible. And the trailer was a rental with wood-paneled walls, not worth painting.
And she hadn’t had money to spend on “good” furniture before anyway.
This…this was sheer insanity.
How do people pick colors?
She finally started grabbing sample cards she liked. By the time she finished, she had at least fifty choices and it felt like her head was about to explode.
That’s it. Brad can do the rest of the house. This suuucks.
When she got back to the shop it was after six, thunderstorms were approaching, and she found Sachi’s last reading of the day had cancelled. “Good.” She grabbed her arm and started dragging her toward the back door. “Then you can come with me.”
“Whoa, slow down, boss. Come where?”
“To the house to pick a paint color.”
Sachi rolled her eyes. “Really? Isn’t this why you make the big bucks?”
“Sachi.”
“Why can’t Tarzan go with you? I thought the contractor got the mold cleaned up.”
“Because we haven’t got the final reports back yet on the air quality. I don’t want him there until we do. Hey, you took sides against me getting me out of the store this morning. You owe me. Please?”
Sachi’s snark disappeared, her expression softening. “You all right?”
She started to nod, then shook her head, finally ending with a shrug.
Sachi gave her a hug. “Okay. Hold on, let me get my purse and give Tarzan my keys. One of the guys from the skeet club reloads, but he wants to experiment with a different load and asked to borrow a couple of shot and powder bushings since my reloader takes the same ones his does. They’re in my trunk. He might come by to get them tonight.”
“You went to your house?” Mandaline wanted to smack her. “What the hell?”
“I didn’t go alone. I took Tarzan with me. We were there all of five minutes. Quit worrying.”
When they were pulling away from the store, Sachi cocked her head at Mandaline from the passenger seat. “You are really wound up about this furniture and paint thing, aren’t you?”
“I don’t want to screw it up,” she admitted.
Sachi let out a laugh that Mandaline recognized as her kind one, not her snarky one. “Sweetie, I think you could paint the room like Shrek destroyed a Barbie dollhouse and they both exploded, and they wouldn’t give a damn. You’re being way too hard on yourself.” She reached over and patted Mandaline’s arm. “They want you to pick the colors and furniture because they want you to feel like it’s your home, too. Those two men honestly don’t give a shit what you pick. They’ll love it because you’re living there with them.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. They flat-out told you that. You didn’t believe them?”
“I really suck at this relationship stuff.”
“No you don’t. You’re just too damn hard on yourself. Ease up. Go with the flow.” She grinned. “You lucky bitch. They’re wrapped around your fingers. Both of them.” She pulled out her cell phone.
“Who are you calling?”
“Tarzan. After we get done at the house, I’m abducting your ass for the evening. Girls’ ni—hey, it’s Sachi. Mind if I borrow your gal for the whole evening? Cool, we’ll be back by eleven. Thanks!” She ended the call and dumped the phone back in her purse. “See? You’re all mine for the night. We should call Libbie and see if she wants to go out.”
“She gets up early. She’s probably already in bed.”
“Ah. True. We have to catch her on a Saturday or Sunday. Deal?”
Mandaline glanced at her. “Okay, but if you want me to loosen up, you have to stay sober and be the designated driver.”
“No problem.” She settled back in her seat. “The other option is ordering a pizza and stopping at a convenience store on our way over to the house for a six-pack of beer. It’s been spritzing all afternoon.” She pointed at the heavy, leaden clouds making their way from the west toward town. “Bottom’s supposed to drop out here shortly.” She grinned. “We can do some nighttime skyclad rain dancing in the yard. How long’s it been since you got to do that? I mean, since the night you rescued Tarzan from the killer mold. And technically that wasn’t a happy-time dance.”
Mandaline giggled. “Okay, that’s a winning plan.”
“Cool.”
They opted to order the pizza sooner rather than later. While they waited, they went up to the master bedroom and Sachi helped Mandaline tape all the sample cards up on the walls.
“We really should be doing this in the daytime, you know,” Sachi said without snark. “Hard to see a true color even with all the work lights.” She glanced out the window where dark was falling early due to the heavy clouds. “Not the best light.”
“I know, but I want an idea of what I can live with. Most of the time I’ll be in here, it’ll be dark outside.” She immediately pulled one sample from the wall. In this light, it looked too acid-green for her tastes.
“See? That wasn’t so hard,” Sachi said. “One down, and only a bazillion more to go.”
Ellis wasn’t in a hurry to get back to the store. Brad had called him with a heads-up about the women going to the house and suspecting Mandaline needed some downtime based on Sachi’s wording. He and Brad could scrounge for leftovers.
It would do Sachi and Mandaline some good to be alone together.
Not to mention he had plenty of work he could do to keep him busy. Or…
He opened an Internet browser window on his laptop. He wasn’t surprised when he entered “Sachi murder assault Montana” into Google and came up with several pages of results about the attack and trial. He spent the better part of an hour reading about what happened. Even after having heard Sachi’s version of the events, the details chilled him to the core.
Even sadder, that Jacob’s mother killed herself after allowing doctors to withdraw life support for her son.
He leaned back in his chair and stared at the screen. He’d seen a lot of misery inside the walls of courtrooms. Other than Brad’s ordeals, he’d largely been insulated from the worst of humanity in his own personal life.
She lived for a month with her husband in jail, accused of attacking a girl to cover up their son’s crime of rape and murder. That’s hell on earth.