Accidentally Yours (16 page)

During the rest of the drive they exchanged details of their respective weekends, with Vivian telling her friend about coming home from Connecticut and finding Zack on the floor near an overturned ladder in the apartment upstairs.

“Oh, that is soooo romantic.”

“
What, finding him moaning in pain or bringing him to the ER?” Neither situation was anything Vivian had dreamed about.

“
The whole thing. I’ll bet he’s feeling real grateful, and to think he’ll be staying with you the whole week. This is a great opportunity to get to know him.”

“Yeah.” Vivian’s dull tone caught Glenda’s attention.

“What?” she said.

“Don’t you think that two people should already know each other before they start hosting each other for a week at a time? Zack’s essentially a stranger to me, Glenda!”

Glenda nodded. “You’re concerned about having a strange man in the house.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Not really, not in this situation.” Glenda began counting off on her fingers. “First of all, Zack is a respected member of the medical community. Second of all, he gave you the keys to his house, which proves he trusts you. I mean, look around. Even without a whole lot of furniture, this place has to be worth over a million dollars. Third, he’s your landlord. And last, he’s a good friend of Desireé and her boyfriend—I mean, fiancé, and his parents live right underneath you. I know it’s a little unorthodox, but I doubt he’s a serial killer, Viv.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Besides,” Glenda added with a gleam in her eye, “isn’t one dead body in your building enough in a single week?”

“Kiss my ass,” Vivian replied affectionately.
“And speaking of getting to know someone, how is Terry?”

“
Oh, he’s fine. Trying to get me in the sack. I like him, Viv, but I think of him more of a friend. If I was going to fall in love it probably would have happened by now. It.doesn’t take long, you know.”

“
Well, maybe you should stop seeing him. You wouldn’t want to lead him on.”

“
I’m not leading him on. He’s not saying anything about being in love with me, either. He just wants some nookie.”

Vivian was too busy counting the passing streets to reply. Finally she turned onto
One Hundred Seventeenth.

“
Nice block,” Glenda said. “All the houses have been refurbished...or at least most of them,” she amended when they passed one with its windows and doorway boarded up.

Vivian had to agree that she was impressed herself. There were few structures more handsome than the old brownstones and townhouses of Manhattan. It was obvious that the residents of this block loved their homes. A few of the buildings were lined with attractive black wrought-iron
fences, and some enterprising homeowners had planted flowers on the sides of their homes, giving an odd look of suburbia to the middle of one of the most urban sections of New York.

“
This is it,” Vivian said, pointing. “Let’s park.”

“
Four floors. Does he live here alone?”

“
Yes, that’s what he told the doctor.”

They got out of the car, and Glenda walked a little beyond the steps leading to the main entrance.
“That must be a separate apartment,” she said in a stage whisper, pointing to a door a few steps below street level. There’s a light over the door. Someone lives there. It doesn’t look like they’re home, but there’s a light on upstairs. You’re sure no one else lives with him?”

“
He said he leaves a timer on, because his shifts rotate. If he’s at work all night he doesn’t want anyone who might be watching his house to figure out he’s not there. He has an alarm system, too. I’ll have to disable it”

“
What?”

“
Relax. All I have to do is press a button. But the door has to be closed, so as soon as I get it unlocked, get in quickly so we can close it behind us. I’ve only got thirty seconds to turn off the alarm.”

The tall, oak door was heavy, and a loud beeping noise began as soon as she opened it a fraction of an inch. They rushed inside and closed the door, and then Vivian pressed the
“off” button on Zack’s keychain. The beeping continued, and she tried it again.

Glenda looked on anxiously, holding clenched fists at waist level and shaking them up and down.
“Hurry up, Viv. If that thing goes off we’re likely to be arrested. Or shot,” she added wryly.

Vivian
depressed the button and counted to five before letting go. The beeping sounded twice more in quick succession and then stopped. She and Glenda simultaneously let out the breath they had been holding. “That was close. Good thing I asked Zack to answer my phone.”

“
You did? What if Bernard calls?”

Vivian smiled.
“I’m sure he will. He’ll get the wrong idea about the man who’s answering my phone, but this is one case where the wrong idea can be a good thing…Glenda?”

Her friend was already halfway up the stairs.

*****

“
Well, there’s nothing on the top floor but a bathroom in the corner of a huge room,” Glenda reported. “My cousins in North Carolina have what they call bonus rooms over the garage, where they put pool tables, computers, big screen TVs, stuff like that, but imagine having one right here in New York.”

“
You ought to be ashamed of yourself, traipsing all around Zack’s house.”

“
I’m nosey, all right? Besides, I didn’t traipse about the entire house, just the third floor. I want to wait for you to go into his bedroom on the second.”

Vivian didn’t point out that the top floor was the fourth floor, when you counted the garden level downstairs.

“What’re you still doing down here, anyway? I thought you’d be up in his bedroom by now, getting some clothes for him.”

“I was…looking around down here.”

“A ha! And you call me nosey.”

“Not in the way you mean,” Vivian protested. “I wanted to see what kinds of foods he likes, like cereal, and what type of frozen food he keeps in his freezer. He likes honey-nut Cheerios, chicken pot pie, and parmesan-crusted tilapia.”

Glenda’s eyes darted about. “So what’s down here besides the living room?”

Vivian began counting off on her fingers. “A
dining room, a powder room, a utility closet with washer and dryer, and a top-of-the-line eat-in kitchen with granite counters and an island countertop with stools. Plus there’s a deck and garden out back.”

“I wanna see.” Glenda was already halfway to the back of the house. She paused in the empty dining room, running her fingertips over the pecan wainscoting. “This can be beautiful. Put a gorgeous table in here and one of those really
elegant chandeliers…why do you suppose it’s empty?”

Vivian shrugged. “My guess would be that a single man doesn’t have much need for a
formal dining room. He can eat at the kitchen table or at the countertop, or outside on the deck in the summertime.”

Glenda moved to the kitchen to the left of the dining room. “Wow. He probably spent more on this kitchen than I did on my car.” The off-white cabinetry picked up on the
color scheme of the countertops, which were a swirl of brown, off white, and cranberry. The doors of the built-in refrigerator were covered in paneling that matched the cabinets, easily spotted because of the water and ice dispensers and ornate satin nickel handles. The other appliances—microwave and oven built into the wall in a vertical line and dual-drawer dishwasher, were in stainless steel, and the cooktop was black.  The kitchen also included a full-height wine cooler. “He must drink a lot of wine,” Glenda remarked, looking at the well-stocked cooler. She opened the door and pulled out sample bottles. “Adobe rosé…Hafner red…Domaine Char…Char—” she shook her head and returned it, then pulled out the next one. “Thie-no—hey, the ones on this side must be more expensive…I can’t even pronounce them.”

“What, no Yellow Tail?” Vivian quipped.

“Hardly.” Glenda pulled out the bottle on the far right and whooped. “This cinches it. Dom Perignon. I know how much
this
costs.”

“
Enough with the wine, Glenda. Let’s get his clothes and get out of here before one of his neighbors reports two suspicious women entering the house.”

They headed for the stairs. Vivian didn’t notice a staircase leading to the garden level and presumed it had been set up as a separate apartment.

Vivian was pleased with what she saw. Zack was a neat man. Other than a few dishes in the kitchen sink and some linty patches on the area rugs that could use a vacuuming, the typically narrow brownstone was quite orderly. They went upstairs, and she simply stood for a minute or so, taking in the walnut bedroom suite consisting of a highboy, night tables, and a king-size four- poster bed. Then she went into action. As she transferred clean underwear from the top drawer of the highboy into the nylon duffel bag he’d instructed was on the shelf of his coat closet downstairs, she couldn’t help wondering how many female occupants that four-poster had known.

“
So, is it boxers or briefs?”

Vivian looked up to see Glenda standing in the doorway.
“Briefs.”

“
That figures. He doesn’t look like the boxer type.”

Vivian knelt to get a few pairs of shorts from the bottom drawer.
“What else did you see?”

“
Two more bedrooms, both empty except for window blinds.”

“
Is there another bathroom?”

“
There looks like one, but it’s not done yet. There are some pipes coming out from the floor and a round thing where the toilet would go. So when it’s finished, he’ll have three full baths and a powder room.” Glenda chuckled. “I remember I was watching this movie where a couple relocated to New York because the woman accepted a job offer. In one scene the husband was complaining about how expensive it was to live here and mentioned their rent alone was three thousand dollars. Then in the next scene they’re coming back from bike riding, and the wife asks the husband if he wants to shower first. I said to myself, ‘Their rent is three thousand a month and they only have one bathroom?’”

“
Maybe they had a full bath and a powder room. That would explain why there was only one shower.”

“
Hmph. All I can say is if I was handing over that much for rent every month, I’d want three baths.”

Vivian packed several shirts, T-shirts, and pairs of socks for Zack, as well as a pair of slide-in sandals from his closet, which was on the sparse side but was fairly orderly, except for the
wool sweaters falling over each other on the shelf. He seemed to have a weakness for hand-knit wool pullovers, but aside from that, no one could call Zack Warner a clothes horse. She fingered the textured material of the red blazer she recognized from the Valentine’s dance, closed her eyes and allowed herself to remember how nice it had been to be held in his arms while they danced that night. Maybe Glenda was right; this would be a good opportunity to get to know him better. As much as he got on her nerves, she already knew he wasn’t completely exasperating from the compassion he had shown for that patient of his—the little girl with the facial injuries. “All right, that part’s done. I just need to get some of his things from the bathroom and then we’re outta here.”

“
All I can say is that I could be real comfy cozy livin’ here,” Glenda said as they descended the elegant staircase with its polished banister. Vivian had packed Zack’s toiletries in a plastic supermarket bag to separate them from his clothing.

“
It’s nice. He doesn’t seem to have spared any expense in remodeling, but I still see a lot of unused potential.”

“
I know. I haven’t seen a man yet who’s any good at decorating. That’s why they need us. The right woman will have those empty rooms furnished in no time.”

Vivian didn’t reply. For a fleeting moment she allowed herself to imagine
she
was that woman…

*****

Zack laughed into the receiver. “Yeah, well at least I’ll be back on my feet by the time I go on my trip. That might not have been the case if I had broken my ankle. I’ve been planning this trip for over a year.”

“
I know,” Desireé replied from the other end of the line. “Ozzie would be going along with you if he didn’t have other plans.”

“
I hope you’re not upset about that.”

“
Of course not. Maybe the two of us will go next year. It’s something we’ll have to do before we start a family. In the meantime, I don’t think Ozzie will mind going to Taos for our honeymoon.” She chuckled. “I’ve got to make a couple of other calls to people who live out of town. I’ll be talking to Sydney. Anything I can tell her for you?”

Sydney Chambers was Zack
’s cousin, with whom he’d grown up. She lived in Michigan now, but had been renting the garden level apartment of his brownstone during the time Desireé was in town. “Tell her ‘hi’ and give her Vivian’s address, in case she wants to send me a fruit basket for being on the disabled list.”