“Stands to reason,” she said. “I mean, if you run the numbers, that adds up.”
“So we should probably kiss some more, right?”
“We should. Definitely.”
“Definitely, she says. I like a definite woman.” He reached for her again but she stepped back, suddenly awkward again. She couldn’t get over thinking that this was Ruthie’s dad. Ruthie’s insanely sexy dad. Why did Ruthie have such a sexy dad? Work was going to be weird as heck next week.
“Let me show you around the house first,” she said. “You know, since you’re supposed to be my boyfriend, you should probably know where the bathroom is.”
“For a lot of reasons.”
She showed him the living room and he admired the layout and the finish on her bamboo floors. In the kitchen he admired her box window. She would have showed him the deck but it was already pitch-black out and raining. That could wait until tomorrow. He liked the bathroom for the paint color and the nice fixtures. He actually said that—“nice fixtures.”
“No one has complimented my fixtures before,” she said. “This is new.”
“I like a lady who knows how to pick a faucet.”
“Chrome is so dated,” she said. “Copper is classic.”
“You are speaking my language. What’s upstairs?” he asked. His question sounded so innocent but something in his eyes looked quite devilish. She liked devilish.
“Oh, another bathroom. Guest room. My bedroom.”
“You have copper fixtures upstairs, too?” he asked.
“Of course. I designed the whole place myself.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing the upstairs. You know, for the fixtures,” he said.
“Right. The fixtures.”
Clover took him up the steps—which he also admired for the fine grain of the cedar—and showed him her bathroom. He approved. She showed him the guest room. He also approved of that.
“And here’s my room,” she said. “Kind of a small bed. Hope that’s okay. I can sleep in the guest—”
Erick had walked to the bed while she was chatting away nervously and before she could get any more words out he’d turned around and fallen onto the bed on his back.
Her full-size bed suddenly looked like a twin with Erick on it. He wallowed a little on the quilt, rolled left and rolled right, bounced once or twice, then sat up on his elbows and looked at her. She liked the look he gave her.
“Comfy,” he said.
“Good. As I was saying...you’re sort of, you know, big—”
“Who have you been talking to?”
“Stop. You know what I mean. You are tall and this is a small bed.”
“I like small beds. You can’t hide from me in this bed.”
She tucked a strand of hair that didn’t actually exist behind her ear.
“What makes you think I want to hide from you?”
“You’re wearing a bathrobe over a nightgown that’s got so much material to it I could make a schooner sail out of it. And you’re doing that grandma thing where you’re holding the lapels of your robe together like you’re afraid I’ll see your neck or some other unmentionable part of your body. It’s very cute, this shyness.”
“I really want to be sexy and flirty with you, but if I ever knew how to do that, I’ve forgotten how.”
“You are sexy.”