“I’d go shake my ass off. Go for it, Nora. Turn on the music and let loose. Have some fun. Make Trey Riordan sweat.”
She could perfectly imagine Caddy’s dark brown eyes sparkling with mischief at the last, see the curve of her naughty smile.
How could someone so full of life possibly be gone? Vanished, like some kind of cruel magic trick? Once the ovarian cancer was diagnosed, it had taken its toll with shocking rapidity. After only three months, Eleanor and her parents had been left stunned and empty-handed, wondering what the hell had just happened to them.
She recalled vividly what Caddy had said to her in the week before she died, before her limbs had started to go cold and she grew so sleepy and confused it was as if she were sampling the death state before committing to it completely.
“We all only have so much time here on this planet,” she’d said to Eleanor. “Problem is, we don’t know when our last days will be. I have no regrets. Well, at least very few,” she’d added, laughing with effort. “I lived every day to its fullest.”
Their clasped hands had been lying on top of the hospital bed. When Caddy’d squeezed her, Eleanor knew she wanted her to look at her face. Eleanor had kept her eyes downcast, however. They were full of tears, and she hadn’t wanted Caddy to see her crying. She didn’t want her sister to witness her lack of courage.
“You have so much to offer, Nora. Why don’t you leave that underworld of your job? Live in the sunlight a little, sweetie. Look life full in the face and never blink. Take a bite out of it while you have the chance, and think of me while you’re doing it.”
Presently, Eleanor noticed the glass of wine she’d poured herself upon arriving at the condo. She’d left it untouched until now. Slowly, she picked it up.
“Here’s to you, Caddy,” she whispered.
She took a deep draw on the wine and walked out of the kitchen, her pace picking up when she reached the living room. She punched a button on the stereo, and the condo was filled with the pulse of a driving dance beat. It was the music to which she’d been practicing her aerobics routine.
Her strip aerobics routine.
She took another drink of wine. I hope you’re there, Trey. Because I’m going to be.
She marched to the bathroom to apply the finishing touches for her performance.
—
When she left the bathroom at a minute before eleven o’clock she was still nervous, but excited by her daring plan as well. A half glass of wine and the music had fortified her.
She went to the living room and started the music again at the beginning. The dance beat throbbed in her head . . . seemingly in her very blood. She inhaled for strength and started down the hallway. Her hair had been brushed and fluffed, and she’d reapplied her makeup. She’d spritzed her perfume on her neck, even though Trey would never know what she smelled like from his penthouse in the high-rise next door. She’d applied the perfume after another remembered tip from Caddy: “Every detail about your presentation when you go out, including your perfume, should be for your pleasure, and yours alone. If you think you’re beautiful and sexy, so will everyone else.”
She definitely felt sexy at the moment. If Trey Riordan didn’t think so, it was his damn problem.
Right.
She ignored the sarcastic voice in her head. The music goaded her on.
She’d made some wardrobe alterations. Her jacket was gone, leaving her chest, arms and shoulders bare above the snug suede lace-up bodice. Instead of the dark brown thigh-highs, she now wore a pair of sheer white ones. She’d practiced in them before, and knew they’d stay put during her dance routine. Plus, Trey would be in the high-rise next door to her building. The paler hose on her legs would project across the distance better than a dark pair. She’d replaced the boots with a sexy pair of suede pumps that included ankle straps. She thought of them as her dancing shoes, because they definitely put her in the right mood for strip aerobics.
It was just one of the many eye-opening discoveries she’d made after inheriting Caddy’s Gold Coast condominium and everything in it following her death. She’d found several of Caddy’s workout routines cued up on her television in her workout room. As kids, their mother had herded Caddy and Eleanor into dance lessons. She and her sister occasionally took a dance exercise class together at the gym or worked out with a dance aerobics video. But Eleanor had never done these workouts with Caddy.
At first, Eleanor had just watched the strip aerobics routines in fascination. It wasn’t long before she was giving it a try, examining her progress closely in the mirrored wall beneath the television screen. She’d practiced her dance every night for a month now . . . ever since she’d heard from Jimmy down at the museum that Trey Riordan had signed up for the book event. That had been when she’d first hatched her plan.
Opening night had finally arrived.
Her heart in her throat, she entered the guest room and switched on the light, then dimmed it to an intimate glow. When Caddy had been alive, she’d stayed in the master suite, a spacious, beautiful room that faced Lake Michigan. Eleanor slept in that room now. But this room, the second bedroom, had been Eleanor’s when she’d house-sat or spent the night over at Caddy’s. This is the room where she’d first glimpsed Trey Riordan and where she’d watched him, even before she knew his name.
The high-rises along Lake Shore Drive crowded close. Trey’s building was only about twenty-five feet or so from the guest bedroom window. His was one of those modernistic, smooth, steel and plate-glass buildings that had typified Chicago architecture in the forties and fifties. His unit was the penthouse on the top two floors. It was because of the prominence of his unit that Eleanor had been able to get his name from Harry, the doorman, who was buddies with the doorman at Trey’s building. Caddy’s tower was thirty-six stories high, but Caddy’s unit was on the nineteenth floor. From the guest bedroom, there was a straight line of sight into the intimate, exciting territory of Trey’s bedroom.
Caddy had never stayed in the guest room and seemed entirely unaware of the forbidden displays Trey himself, or Trey and his lovers, put on in that penthouse. Eleanor only stayed at Caddy’s two or three nights a month, on average. Therefore, Caddy’s guest bedroom was usually dark and seemingly unoccupied. Eleanor figured the lack of light and movement in the adjacent condo had never alerted Trey for vigilance about privacy. And in truth, his drapes were more often than not closed in his bedroom, much to Eleanor’s disappointment. He wasn’t an exhibitionist. He was just a man, and therefore often careless or too preoccupied to care about details. Such as whether or not the curtains were drawn completely when he walke
d naked out of the bathroom from his shower, for instance. Or what was happening outside the window when he laid a woman down on his bed and proceeded to own not only her, but Eleanor in the building next door as she looked on in anguished longing and lust.
Presently, she walked boldly around the bed, but her glance out the window was anxiously skittish.
Shit. Trey’s bedroom was dark. He’d refused her invitation. She could see her reflection in the window. Her face looked pale and disappointed.
But wait . . . the room wasn’t entirely black, was it?