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Janice, who must be her sister, leveled Carol with a look of irritable pity. “I told you to stop micromanaging the other residents. I didn’t buy this building and let you head the HOA so you could bully the other residents into leaving bad reviews on the property management group.”
“I’m enforcing your rules.”
“Well then, just fine them both. I don’t understand why everything has to be so dramatic with you. Can’t you even handle the simplest of things here yourself? I don’t know why you make me attend these silly HOA meetings.” Janice’s finger swiped over her phone screen.
“I was waiting until I caught him with the monstrosity. I haven’t seen the dog’s legal owner in weeks.”
“Just fine him then,” Janice spoke the words slowly and more loudly than necessary, as if she doubted Carol understood them. “And kick out the monstrosity. If you can’t handle little things like this, I’m just going to have to fire you again. Doing our parents a favor isn’t worth these headaches.”
“The monstrosity’s name is Gus.” Dylan squared his shoulders to Carol. “And technically he’s not illegal.”
Janice narrowed her eyes at Dylan and then evaluated the dog. “He’s here, and he’s clearly a Great Dane mix, and the HOA rules clearly spell out—”
“That a banned breed cannot stay in a single unit for longer than twenty-four hours.”
Carol cut in before Janice could say more. “Exactly, and that dog—”
“Will be switching off between my uncle’s unit and Derek’s. Of course, no more than twenty-four hours at either. As long as he needs to.” Dylan reached a hand behind him. “To the letter of the rules.”
Warm fingers interlaced his. Dylan couldn’t help the broad smile on his mouth at the look of utter horror on Carol’s face.
Janice seemed to be rethinking her initial assessment of Dylan as an opponent. After a bored shrug at her sister, she nodded. “Fine. Whatever. Just let them keep the animal here.”
Janice’s heels clacked on the sidewalk as she walked away with Carol arguing with her every step of the way.
“Hard to believe Carol could have a worse sister.” Dylan led Derek down the stairs to the door to his unit with Gus following behind.
When they got to the bottom, Derek stopped and shook his head. “I should’ve told her I wanted my key back.”
Dylan smirked. “To be honest, I think you’d be better off changing your locks. Karen probably made a copy of that shit so she can sneak in at night and pretend to haunt you or something. Or sic her parakeets on you. Or smother you with one of her Mary Kay makeup bags.”
“Death by MLM Karen,” Derek said in a dark, ominous voice. “Not the way I want to go.” A noise like something being knocked over came from inside the apartment. “What was that?” The apartment was super dark.
“Oh…” Dylan grimaced. “Yeah, so.…”
“What’s going…”
“Surprise!”
Chapter 47
Back pats and shoulder squeezes came from all sides as Derek’s eyes adjusted to the brightness.
Felicity ushered him in with a hug. “What do you think?”
He’d been holding off on hiring someone for the final finishing work until after he paid off his next credit card bill. But it was all done. It looked better than it had before the incident. So many of the tiny imperfections all over the apartment were fixed. When Felicity called him a few days ago and said that they needed to turn off the water again and asked if he wouldn’t mind staying in Dylan’s apartment for a few nights… he just accepted it.
Dylan trailed them as Felicity showed him where she’d fixed the tilework in his bathroom and everything that the others had done.
Derek looked at Dylan “How did you—”
“I didn’t know anything about it until I got back.” Dylan smiled. “They finished Uncle Sean’s unit too. Everything’s done.” He ruffled his hair nervously. “My dad brought some of his guys over yesterday. He was up there when I got back from the airport.” Emotion swelled behind his eyes. “Said he couldn’t have done the rest of the job better than I’d already done it, but that he wanted it to be done so you and I could focus on other things.”
Felicity ran a finger over the grouting as if checking for an invisible imperfection. “Dylan said you were thinking about selling at some point, so we figured you’d need to get the other stuff fixed. Surprised?”
Derek bent to squeeze the tiny ginger into a warm embrace. “Thank you. Seriously, this doesn’t seem possible.” As he took it all in, he felt taller. Like a fraction of gravity had disappeared. He felt dizzy. Almost giddy.
A large grocery store sheet cake was out on the kitchen table. Pink and purple flowers decorated the edge and yellow elegant cursive reading Glad we could fix your shit. A blocky print parenthetical below said NO MORE PICKLES.