Free Isabella Moon by Laura Benedict Page A

circular drive; the paving crew wasn’t scheduled for another few weeks, when all the heavy equipment and trucks were supposed to be gone. It was Kate’s opinion that the house’s stucco walls and terra-cotta red tiles on the complicated roof were better suited to the shores of the Mediterranean than central Kentucky, but it was still going to be a beautiful place to live.
    “Great,” she said. “Janet’s here.”
    She hadn’t seen the Range Rover at first, parked as it was between an electrician’s truck and a pickup.
    “I’ve got zero need to talk to that woman,” Caleb said.
    “Just tell me if she tries to put her tongue in your ear,” Kate said.
    Caleb stretched his arms above his head and yawned. Then he said, “You know, for a good-looking woman, you can be pretty nasty, Kate Russell.”
    “Kate, come on up here!” Janet had opened one of the front windows to shout down to them. “They’ve messed up the chandeliers.”
    “She’s seen us now,” Kate said.
    “I’m going in covered,” Caleb said, putting his hands over both ears.
    “You want me to have a job, don’t you? Those giant breakfasts you eat don’t come cheap.” She pulled him into the house through one of the open doors of the six-bay garage.
    “Hey,” he said, sounding hurt. “I offered to pay, but you were all about apologizing for almost blowing my head off.”
    “Oh, yeah,” Kate said. She grinned back at him. “I guess I forgot about that.”
    “Watch out.” Caleb grabbed her arm to keep her from stumbling over a rolled-up Oriental rug. “You’re a danger to yourself and others, you know that?”
    They found Janet in the master suite berating a man in work blues who stood a good six feet up a ladder in the center of the room. Kate recognized the look on his face—he was just about fed up with Janet and her demands.
    “The media cabinet looks great, Janet,” Kate said, trying to deflect her attention from the man.
    “I wanted it to start six inches off the floor,” Janet said. “Seems someone forgot all about that.” Her tone and the hard look at Kate made it clear that Kate was the someone of whom she spoke, but Kate ignored it. She’d explained to Janet more than once that the weight of the solid walnut entertainment cabinet precluded it from being free-hanging.
    Janet Rourke was a woman who used clothing, jewelry, and, Kate suspected, plastic surgery to play up her best physical features: a voluptuous, perfectly balanced pair of breasts; large, deep blue eyes; a waist that Scarlett O’Hara would envy; and a backside that seemed to laugh at gravity. Even in the tight peach velour jacket and track pants she was wearing, she gave the impression that she had dressed with considerable care. Her jet black hair was intricately styled, curled, and sprayed, and her makeup, down to her generously applied mascara and deep burgundy lipstick, was almost theatrical in its precision.
    For all her professional poise, Janet had an aggressively sexual aura about her that puzzled Kate. She wasn’t sure if it was natural or simply cultivated from long years of practice. But even though Janet was a frequent subject of town gossip, there was very little that wasn’t business-related. The men called her a “ball breaker,” but they usually gave her her own way because she had a knack for making herself and her associates money.
    “Plus, the place wasn’t even locked up when I got here,” Janet said. “That damned contractor’s not doing his job.”
    “Ma’am,” the man on the ladder said. “You want me to switch out this chandelier with the other one or not?”
    Ignoring him, Janet told Kate to deal with it.

     

    When Kate followed the electrician out of the room, Janet’s irritated mood suddenly changed. She smiled sweetly at Caleb.
    “Our Kate’s such a treasure,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.” She hurried over to the bank of windows at the front of the room, the kitten heels of her