Free Full House: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 3) by Shelley Singer Page B

with her work and possibly with one or two coworkers at
Probe
magazine, and didn’t seem to be showing much gratitude any more to the guy who’d introduced her to the guy who helped her get the job.
    The funny thing about it was, we liked each other a lot. But Chloe, who was somewhere around forty years old, had a battered emotional history that wasn’t very different from mine. Although she trusted me as much as she could trust anyone, she was pretty damned happy with her life just the way it was. Professionally exciting and emotionally independent.
    And since I wasn’t sure that wasn’t the best way to live, after all, I wasn’t about to argue with her. The way I look at it, wait and see is always the best policy when it comes to love. Unless you’ve been hit with one of those swept away, don’t-want-to-think-about-it, let’s-do-it-now bombshells. In that case, you have a choice: be a damned fool or run like hell.
    I haven’t been faced with that choice in a long time. Maybe that’s something you can do just so many times before the capacity to do it wears out.
    I wasn’t interested in falling in love; I wasn’t interested in spending a lot of time with Eva’s probably boring and unattractive relative. And even if this Lee was Aphrodite herself, she lived in Petaluma. I don’t commute.
    I had a few minutes. I repaired to my tiny office, which could best be described as a service porch, and started making lists of people to see and questions to ask.
    She showed up about ten minutes later. I heard her arrive, and emerged from the back of the house with every intention of being cordial. Maybe even gallant.
    If she wasn’t Aphrodite, she could have passed in some circles. She was in her early thirties, I guessed, not too thin, not too fat. About five seven or eight. She had green eyes and red hair, not quite orange, a little deeper on the red side, very fine and soft-looking, cut short sides and back and longer on top. She had the redhead’s pale skin, with a fine dusting of freckles across her nose. A nice nose with a small bump in it. Her mouth was spectacular: full lips and perfect teeth.
    She was wearing pearl gray pants and a turquoise knit shirt that didn’t have any animals on it. I have never liked turquoise. Suddenly I was crazy about turquoise, and redheads, and green eyes.
    We acknowledged each other with fragile smiles. For one wild moment, I considered breaking my date with Chloe. But no, that wouldn’t do. If you wear your heart on your sleeve, a woman will not let you take off your clothes.
    I offered to drive our little expedition up to Berkeley.
    Lee turned out to be perfect.
    “I noticed this car when I drove up,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”
    I couldn’t help myself. I opened the door with a flourish, guiding the older folks into the back seat. Lee stepped up gracefully into the passenger seat. I held the door until she was settled, then I closed it for her. I just couldn’t help myself. I dashed around the gleaming blue hood and climbed in beside her, released the emergency brake and started the car.
    “It sounds like it’s in beautiful condition,” Lee said. “And the interior is perfect.”
    “Rebuilt engine,” I said. “Nearly original interior.”
    “Amazing,” she replied, stroking the dash. That was almost more than I could stand. I shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb, trying not to smile like an idiot.
    Eva, especially, was delighted with the street market, several blocks, on both sides of Telegraph, ending at the campus on Bancroft. Booths, tables, displays. I didn’t know when the custom started, but I’d never known Berkeley without it. I also didn’t know how the real stores on the street, the ones that paid rent, felt about the shopless commercial enterprises that flourished on their sidewalks every weekend, but I figured they were probably good for business generally on the street, and as “street artists,” inviolable, essential to