Her Dirty Builders (Men at Work #10) - Mika Lane Page 0,2

get this zipper up?” she asked, rotating in the dressing room of her mom’s very exclusive and very expensive clothing boutique, called To Die For.

I wrestled the zipper of the silver sequin creation Charli had fallen head over heels in love with.

“Is that a dress or a top?” I stepped back, trying to decide.

She twirled a little, admiring herself. “Oh, it’s a dress. For sure. Don’t you love it?” she squealed.

“Char, I don’t know where you could wear a dress like that unless it’s to the gynecologist’s office, because your vag is practically hanging out.”

She bent to look at her crotch and the back of the dress rode up until her ass cheeks were exposed. “You have a point. It is pretty short.” She looked at herself in the mirror, defeated.

“If only it were a couple inches longer,” she said, tugging on its hem.

“That thing needs to be five or six inches longer before it’s remotely decent.”

She put her hands on her hips and tilted her head. “Hey. Why aren’t you trying anything on?”

What was the point? I couldn’t afford the clothes there. Charli couldn’t either, for that matter. We just used the place for after-hours entertainment. With her mom’s blessing of course.

A girl could dream.

I also frequently shopped online at stores like Saks and Neiman’s, filling up my cart with gorgeous things and then never checking out.

Charli wouldn’t join me in this. She didn’t see the point.

I picked up the clothes she’d dropped on the floor and started hanging them back up.

“I don’t feel like trying stuff on. Nothing fits anyway. I’ve been eating too many Oreos, stressing about sending back all the wedding presents, which sounds like a total pain in the ass. On top of that, I need to figure out what to do with the house.”

She wriggled out of the sequin number and took a seat in the dressing room chair. “What are you going to do about the house?”

That was the question weighing me down. As if it weren’t bad enough that Eddie had fucked me over on our wedding day, he’d also left me with an albatross of a house.

Which he’d conveniently never gotten around to moving into. I’d been staying there, alone, since we closed on the house, waiting for him to find the time to bring his shit over.

A further suggestion that his bailing on the wedding was premeditated.

I buried my face in my hands. “I don’t know. My dad says he’ll help me get it fixed up, but I don’t think he has any idea how much work the place needs. He already gave me my share of the down payment and is now out of all that money he spent on the wedding.”

Thank god that when Eddie and I started planning things, I’d talked him into having his family pay for part of the wedding. I got a petty satisfaction knowing how pissed they must be at him.

I continued. “No, I’m not taking any more money from Dad. That would just be shitty, even though he says if the house gets fixed up, it could be sold at a profit.”

“That’s why you guys bought it to begin with, right? So you could flip it?”

“Yes, that’s what Eddie wanted to do. But now he’s backed out, and I don’t have the money for everything that needs to be done. Well, I got a little money for my wedding, but I’m supposed to send it back, remember.”

Charli and I returned all the beautiful and expensive things she’d tried to their hangers and then wandered through the store, fingering soft cashmere sweaters and silk blouses. Her mom, Francesca, had married well several times. With the proceeds from her latest divorce she walked away with enough money to embark on a ‘hobby job,’ opening To Die For, a lovely little shop despite its cheesy name. And lucky for her, it didn’t really matter if she made money. The store gave her something to do with her days.

I sighed. “You won’t believe this, but Dad called McKinney Construction to get them to look at the house.”

Charli stopped folding and unfolding lacy thong panties. “McKinney? Isn’t that the company owned by that guy, Case? Who we went to high school with?”

It was.

And as if my life weren’t messed up enough, Dad had called the one company in town run by a guy I hated.

Disgusted, I nodded. “Yeah. That asshole Case. Yuck. Can’t stand him.”

She tapped her forehead with a finger. “Is that the guy who…?”

She didn’t