Switcheroo by Goldsmith Olivia Read Free Book Online Page A

receding hairline, his paunch, and his questionable taste in clothes. Yet he saw himself as Ohio’s answer to Brad Pitt. This was a guy who would order a hamburger at lunch and, when the waitress asked how he wanted it, would leer and insist her question was a double entendre. “How do I want it?” he’d repeat, nudging Bob, who’d squirm with embarrassment while the bored waitress stared out over the parking lot. Invariably, after the girl left, Phil would begin his excited whisper. “ You heard her. It’s not like I started it. How do I want it ? Why doesn’t she just give me the key to her place? I tell you, they can’t leave me alone.”
    The woman was looking at the sticker price of a sedan. She was squinting in the sun. Phil looked over at her. “Did you see that?” he asked Bob.
    “What?”
    “The way she stared at me, checking out my package,” Phil cried hoarsely. Sam Granger snorted. Bob rolled his eyes. Phil was a danger to himself and others. Rosalie the Horrific might have been a witch, but she’d certainly had her hands full with Phil.
    “Phil, behave,” Bob warned. “Take it easy or I’ll tell your father on you.”
    “Hey! She better take it easy. The laws against sexual harassment cut both ways, ya know.”
    “Control yourself, Phil. Try to sell a car.” Bob’s cellular rang and he pulled it out. He moved away from Sam Granger and put the phone to his ear. “Hello. Bob Schiffer. Oh,” he said. He lowered his voice. “Hi, Cookie Face. I can’t talk now. No. Really. I can’t.” Bob looked around. Phil was leaning up against the sedan, talking to the poor female prospect while Sam had disappeared into the front seat of a model a row away. “Come on, honey. You know this isn’t a good place for me to talk,” Bob murmured into the phone. He laughed out loud. “Sing? If I can’t talk, how can I sing ?” She always made him laugh, but after four months he still wasn’t sure if it was intentional or accidental. That was part of her charm. Now he listened to her request. “But you called me . The song makes no sense if I sing. No. Of course I do. All right, but then I have to go.” Bob began to hum into the phone, then tried for a Stevie Wonder voice. “I just called to say I love you…I just called to—”
    When he was tapped on the shoulder, Bob must have jumped eight inches straight off the ground. John Spencer, Bob and Sylvie’s best friend, was standing behind him. “Gotta go…,” Bob hissed into the phone. “No. Not now. And be sure to get the crane there by one o’clock,” he added in his normal authoritative tone, then flipped the phone closed and slipped it into his pocket. He turned to John as casually as he could and gave him a big bear hug. “Hey. How ya doing?”
    John wasn’t buying it. “Why, you sneaky, slimy bastard. Bob the Saint…”
    Bob opened his eyes wide and tried to make a blank face. He wasn’t sure it was working and when John raised his brows upward Bob felt his stomach tug downward. “What? It was Sylvie,” he protested.
    John shook his head. “Maybe I’m just a general practitioner, but I’m not stupid. You, Bob? Come on. You’re no player. What the hell is going on?”
    “Nothing,” Bob said and sounded to himself like one of the twins when they were eight years old. He looked at John’s doubting face. “Okay,” he admitted. “Something. But nothing important.” He bit his lip. “I don’t want to hurt Sylvie. You don’t either, do you?”
    John looked him in the eyes. “I won’t tell, if that’s what you’re asking, but I won’t he. She’s my friend too. She was my girlfriend before she even met you.”
    “I know. I know. You remind me of that all the time. But this is…just a temporary thing.”
    “So? Temporary but indefensible.”
    Bob, trapped, knew he had no defense. “Well, Phil did it,” he said, sounding like one of the twins when they were ten.
    “Great response,” John snorted. “Let’s not