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that.”
    “ You’re not waiting for
anything. You gave the keys to your chastity belt to the man
upstairs.” I, on the other hand, had been freely expressing my
sexuality whenever and with whomever I liked for almost forty
years. That wasn’t something you could just turn off. And nothing
about Penny turned me off, either. When I was twenty-two, if I’d
been asked on a date by a fifty-three year old woman, I would have
been… Well, I might have tried it out, just because I was curious,
so that was a bad example. But there was no reason Penny should
want to go out with me, let alone a second time.
    Echoing my inner turmoil, Danny sighed
heavily and said, “I don’t know, Uncle Ian. She’s definitely into
you. Maybe she’s got bad eyesight. Or a daddy fetish.”
    That hadn’t occurred to me. And I didn’t
like it now that I’d heard it. What if she really did have a
“daddy” thing? If that were all she saw in me, I would never feel
all right with it. But, for the moment, I wanted to relish the idea
of Penny being interested in me.
    I’d just assume she was attracted to my
classically handsome features and sparkling wit, and deal with the
rest should it come up.

Chapter Four
     
    While I had
spent my Sunday in a dreamy haze of infatuation with Penny, when I
got to work on Monday, everything was still in a state of total
clusterfucktastrophe. Everyone thinks being an architect is sitting
around and designing buildings all day. Sometimes, a very, very
small part of the time, that’s true. But I’m a principal architect
and a partner at Pratchett & Baker, and when your name is on
the sign you don’t want it to show up attached to headlines like
“Office Building Collapses; Dozens Still Missing”, so most of my
job involves supervising other people as they fix all of their cock
ups. By midday, I was exhausted beyond belief. I slumped into my
office and shut the door, then went to my couch and collapsed on
it. I put my arm over my face, because blocking out the light made
it easier to pretend I was dead.
    If I died, people would hopefully stop
asking me for things.
    “ Knock knock,” my partner,
Burt, said in lieu of knocking as he barged right in.
    “ I thought I’d locked that,”
I grumbled.
    “ So, is Ingham back on
track?” he asked. When I didn’t move my feet for him, he leaned on
the corner of my desk.
    Burt Baker looks like a guy from a Cialis
ad. He had shiny white Sears catalogue hair and teeth he’d
purchased from the best dentists in Manhattan. I’d always liked him
as a business partner; he was a better face for clients than my
scowling Scottish mug. Sometimes, he was too Pollyanna for my
tastes, though, and today was one of those days.
    “ Absolutely. If by ‘on
track’ you mean there’s still not a chance in Hell those schematics
are going to clear us any permits.” I hated what I had to say next.
“We have to let Kyle go.”
    Burt cupped his chin and took in a
thoughtful breath through his nose. “Production hasn’t gone
smoothly.”
    “ Well, no shit.” I was
irritated and cranky, and I knew I shouldn’t take it out on Burt,
but he’d made the mistake of coming to my office. “This was his
team, and I don’t have a lot of confidence that he won’t drop the
ball next time, either.”
    “ Ingham has been hell,” Burt
admitted. “You’re burned out.”
    “ Do you think so?” I laughed
bitterly.
    “ Maybe a change of scenery
would do you some good. Somewhere warm and tropical,” he
suggested.
    “ Let me just hop on my magic
carpet and go to Tahiti, then.” I was getting a headache behind my
eyes.
    “ I was
thinking…Nassau.”
    That was oddly specific. I sat up, eyeing
him warily. “Yeah?”
    “ Do you remember Carrie
Glynn?” Burt asked. I should have known better than to think he’d
just come in for small talk. He didn’t talk unless he had something
to say.
    Carrie Glynn. Of course I remembered Carrie
Glynn. “Sure I do. We were interns together at the