Gibson's Girl. Anne McAllister
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every step of the way. Chloe didn’t. Once he told her what to do, she did it. And the next time he needed it done, she did it without his having to say a word. She seemed almost to anticipate his directions. And she didn’t say a word, either. Just worked.
He was amazed.
Chloe took it all in her stride.
And when they’d finished and the models had left, only then did she look at him and beam. “That was fun!”
Misty had never called it fun.
“Yeah,” Gib said gruffly. “Here.” He thrust the camera at her. “Can you load this?”
Solemnly, almost reverentially in fact, Chloe took it from him. While he watched, she loaded film into the camera. “That’s another of your jobs,” he told her.
Just as she was handing it back, Sierra came in. “I called my sister. She’d like Chloe to come over this evening at seven.”
“We’ll be there,” Gib said.
Both Chloe and Sierra looked at him, then blinked.
He scowled. “Gina would want me to make sure it’s the right place for her,” he said. “Don’t stare at me like that. She’s my sister. She doesn’t ask for much!”
“Right.” Sierra nodded wisely.
Chloe gave him a bright, entirely unnecessary smile. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Gib said. “Let’s get to work.”
Naturally Chloe thought Mariah’s apartment was wonderful.
A day in Chloe’s company had shown Gibson the truth of everything he’d feared: she thought the city was wonderful. Period.
“It’s just so...so...alive,” she’d said on the way uptown in the taxi. “Look!” She’d pointed at a man in top hat and tails, playing a grand piano on a street corner. “Wherever you look, you never know what you’ll find!”
“That’s not necessarily good,” Gib had said gruffly.
But Chloe hadn’t stopped enthusing. She enthused about the neighborhood in which Mariah lived. It was on the Upper West Side, not too many blocks above and just a little west of Gib’s own apartment on Central Park West. Not a bad neighborhood at all, he conceded. But not exactly Iowa.
Still, he reserved judgement, going only so far as to say, “I’m the one who’s deciding if it’s all right or not If it’s not, you’re not staying,” just as they were alighting from the taxi.
“What?” Chloe looked astonished.
He took her suitcases and pointed her toward the brownstone whose address Sierra had given them. “You heard me.”
Sierra’s sister, Mariah, was normal. Attractive even, in a slender, long-haired, model-like way. Her hair was brown hair, not purple. Her fingernails were red, not black. And other than tiny studs in her ears, she had no visible body piercings.
Not that Sierra had any, either. But Gib suspected she had leanings in that direction.
Mariah ushered them in and up the stairs. “I’m on the second floor. A floor-through. Everything has been pretty much gutted since I bought it this spring. The building was a wreck when I bought my place. Plaster crumbling. Wallpaper peeling. Ceilings sagging. But it’s down to the bare bones now, and the plasterers are supposed to be starting later this week.”
The apartment faced south. It was, as Mariah claimed, almost cavern-like. She had no furniture in the living room besides a television and VCR and a futon with a brightly colored Indian coverlet and lots of pillows. The kitchen was equally spartan. Appliances, a bar stool and a butcher block stacked with a small assortment of pots and pans and dishes.
“The stove is gas,” Mariah said. “It works. The water runs. Hot and cold. The refrigerator is hooked up. There’s a light overhead.” She gestured at the shop light hanging from the ceiling fixture. “Once they’ve plastered in here, the cabinet maker will begin working. Then they’re going to bring in the counter tops. They might have to shut things off briefly, but for the most part, you shouldn’t have any problems.”
Chloe took it all in wordlessly. Gib had a hundred questions.
Were these workers licensed? Bonded? Responsible? Did they have criminal records?
“Next thing you’ll be wanting to see their high school transcripts,” Chloe said irritably.
“You can’t be too careful,” Gib told her.
“I’m sure they’re very reliable,” Mariah said. She led the way into the bedroom at the back of the apartment. It needed plastering, too. But there was a queen-size bed and another pile of colorful pillows in the center of the room. It looked too big for one person, Gib thought nervously. Would some man talk her into bringing him home to share it? Would her farmer fiancé fly out for weekend trysts?
What difference did it make?
“The plasterers and cabinet maker all worked on the apartment downstairs,” Mariah went on. “It was finished this spring and it’s wonderful. I’ll ask Rhys to show you,” she said to Chloe.
“Rhys? Who’s that?” Gib wanted to know.
“My neighbor,” Mariah said. She pointed downstairs.
“We bought into the building at the same time. He’s done a great job with his place. He has the bottom two floors. Seems a waste when he’s single and hardly home enough to enjoy it.” She shook her head. “He’s a fireman. Goes all over the world putting out blazes. Oil wells, natural disasters, things like that.”
Gib watched Chloe’s eyes get bigger and bigger. He wished Mariah would confine herself to the relevant details.
“What days do they pick up trash?” he asked. “What about recyclables? Is someone checking that all this plastering gets done? Chloe won’t be responsible for it.”
“I’ve made a list.” Manah gestured toward some papers on the butcher block. “I’ve got it all written down, when everything is supposed to happen. It’s not a big deal.”
Gib snorted. Easy for her to say. She was going to be in the Hamptons. It would be Chloe who would be here. What if they were all axe murderers and rapists?
Well, he could hardly ask that. Not in so many words.
Chloe apparently had none of the same qualms. She picked up the list and smiled beatifically at Mariah. “No problem. Sounds like fun. And—” she looked at Gib, eyes shining “—I’ll get to have a real New York experience.”
Mariah chuckled. “That’s for sure.”
“She has a job,” Gib reminded them. “She can’t be here all the time.”
“Oh, she won’t have to be. Rhys can let them in.”
“I thought he was all over the world. Never home long enough to enjoy it, didn’t you say?” And now he was going to let people into the apartment. He had a key?
Mariah waved her hands. “Oh, you know how it is. When he’s gone, he’s anywhere. When he’s home, he’s downstairs. He’ll be home for the next six weeks. I’m sure you’ll meet him in the next few days,” she said to Chloe, and confided, “He’s a hunk.”
Gib’s teeth came together. “She’s engaged,” he said through them.
Mariah’s eager smile faded for a moment, then brightened again. “Well,” she said cheerfully to Chloe, “no harm in looking, is there?”
They shared a conspiratorial giggle. Gib drummed his fingers on the butcher block. When Chloe looked his way, he gave her a black scowl. She frowned right back at him.
What was that for? he wondered. He was