Page 9 of The Billionaire in Her Bed

Chapter Three

“All right, everyone. Take a seat.” Brooke raised her voice a notch so Mr. Feingold, who was notorious for forgetting to wear his hearing aids, could hear her at the back of the room. “I call this meeting of the Candy Court Tenants’ Association to order.”

“I don’t understand why we’re still meeting if we’re not going to be living here much longer,” protested Charise, the hairdresser who lived across the hall with her infant son. Little Jaden must be with his grandmother, since he wasn’t where he usually was during their meetings—strapped to his mother’s chest.

“We don’t know how long it will take the building to sell,” Brooke explained. “Or what the new owner will do. Until then, it’s business as usual.”

“What’s going to happen to our community garden?” asked David. The concert pianist lived downstairs from Brooke with his partner, Chris, a professional ballet dancer—the two hottest guys in a ten-mile radius, with the exception of a certain sexy, scotch-drinking stranger.

Her encounter, for lack of a better word, with Eli had been a blip on the radar screen of her sex life. A hell of a pleasurable blip. She’d lived in a sort of sensual stupor for days afterward. Now it was back to normal. Which for her meant work, work, more work, and wrangling the Candy Court residents for their monthly meeting.

“We’ll get to the garden.” She held up a sheet of paper. “It’s number two on the agenda. First, I’d like to hear about any maintenance issues you’re having.”

“Looks like chicken scratch to me,” Mr. Feingold grumbled, causing his wife, sitting next to him on the repurposed sofa Brooke had rescued from the curb and restored, to jab him in the ribs. He glared at her and rubbed his side. “Ouch.”

Brooke flipped the paper over so she could read it. Not chicken scratch, thank you very much. Her most recent artwork for the graphic novel she’d been perfecting for the better part of the last six months. With any luck, her agent would give this latest round of edits a thumbs-up and start sending it out to publishers. Brooke exchanged it for the computer-generated agenda on her drafting table. “Sorry. Wrong one.”

“What’s the point of listing our grievances?” Chris set a plate of spring rolls on the counter that separated the kitchen and dining area from the living area, next to the chips, dip, and salsa from the other tenants. He and David always brought the best food. And booze, she thought as David added a growler of craft beer from the brewery around the corner. “Who’s going to fix anything? We’ve got no super.”

True. Floyd had been lucky enough to find a new gig and new housing within weeks of theFor Salesign going up in front of Candy Court, moving on along with a bunch of the other tenants. That left only four apartments occupied—her and Charise on the third floor, Chris and David and the Feingolds on the second. Even the retail space on the first floor was vacant.

Brooke’s stomach growled, a casualty of not eating since the half a cinnamon raisin bagel she’d had for breakfast at six. David plucked a spring roll from the plate his partner had set down, placed it on a cocktail napkin, and handed it to her. She nodded her thanks. “It couldn’t hurt to present a list of demands to the landlord.”

“Couldn’t help much, either,” Mr. Feingold grumbled again, earning him another elbow jab.

“Our kitchen sink is leaking,” his wife offered. “And there’s a loose tile in the shower.”

“My washing machine is acting up again,” Charise added, snagging one of the spring rolls.

“The pilot light on our gas stove keeps going out,” Chris called from the counter, where he was pouring himself a beer.

“Slow down, slow down.” Brooke put the agenda aside and grabbed a clipboard and pen. “Kitchen sink, shower tile, washing machine, pilot light. And the screen in my bedroom window is torn. Anything else?”

Her question was met with silence.

“Good,” David said after a few beats. “Now can we talk about the garden?”

“Okay.” Brooke tapped the clipboard with her pen. “Moving on to agenda item number two. Before the first frost, we managed to get all our planter boxes set up on the roof. Special thanks to the Feingolds for getting the lumber donated.”

“Happy to do it,” said Mrs. Feingold.

“Do what?” her husband asked, his already wrinkled brow wrinkling further. “What did you do now?”

“Not me, us,” his wife corrected. “Let this be a lesson. Maybe next time you’ll remember your hearing aids so you’ll know what people are saying about you.”

Mr. Feingold muttered something about not wanting to hear ninety percent of what people had to say, anyway. Brooke swallowed a laugh and pressed on. “Our next order of business is to decide what we’re going to grow and how much.”

“Again, I don’t understand why we’re bothering to talk about this,” Charise mumbled through a mouthful of spring roll. “Odds are whoever buys this place is going to tear it down. And even if by some miracle he doesn’t, the garden’s a goner for sure. Then all our hard work will be for nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” Brooke insisted, relieved to see the others nodding in agreement. “Until someone tells us otherwise, this is still our home. We can’t stop living because the building is on the market. Life is filled with uncertainty. We can’t let it control us.”

“Hear, hear.” Chris raised his glass in a silent toast then drank.

“Well said,” David agreed, scooping guacamole onto a paper plate with a tortilla chip.

“What did she sa—ouch.” Mr. Feingold narrowed his eyes at his wife, who had apparently jabbed him again. “I’m warning you, woman. One more jab, and I’ll…”

“So,” Brooke interrupted, her forced cheer making her sound like Carol Brady on helium. “Now that we’ve decided to move forward, what are we going to plant?”