I pretended not to hear. “Okay,” I said. “That sounds doable.” I hoped so, anyway. Malones everywhere. I suppressed a shiver. Could anyone be ready for that?
“A little enthusiasm would be nice, you know.” He drained the rest of his bottle of water and left it on the counter.
“I know,” I said. “I know. You’re a catch.” I reached for the empty bottle so I could throw it in the recycling, bringing me in close proximity to that chest I’d been ogling outside.
“I am.” He didn’t move, he just stared down at me, almost in a challenge, while I swallowed hard and forced myself to meet his eyes. Don’t show fear. Or anything else that might be heating up this room.
“Thanks for helping with the deck,” I finally said, my voice throatier than usual. “This would have been a pain in the ass on my own.”
“Sure.” He hadn’t moved and neither had I, and somehow in these few moments our breaths had syncopated while our gazes locked. His chest rose and fell in time with mine, and good God, how did eyes come in a blue that vivid?
“How soon are you, uh . . .” His voice was hushed, hesitant. “Moving?”
Moving. Right. That was an excellent idea. I stepped back from him. “Not till the fall, at least.” I took our bottles to the recycling bin on the other side of the kitchen. “Caitlin’s graduating from high school and all, and of course she’s volunteering for the Renaissance Faire—”
“She better,” he interrupted. “She’s a veteran.” The way his voice warmed when talking about my kid made a flutter kick up in my heart.
“I know. She looks forward to it every summer. And I don’t want to disrupt any of that. I thought I’d get all this stuff done over the summer and put the house on the market in the fall, after she’s gone.”
“College, yeah?” He nodded, the pleased look draining from his face, replaced with concern. “Gonna be weird for her though, not being able to come home during breaks.”
Irritation crawled up my spine. This wasn’t any of his business. He was here to help me with a project, not critique my parenting style. “I’ll have a guest room in my new place. I’m not abandoning my kid. We’ll figure it out.” My tone was snappish, more than I wanted it to be.
“Sure, yeah.” He waved a placating hand. “You’re right. Of course you will.” There was a slightly awkward silence until I cleared my throat, trying to salvage something from this conversation.
“At least I’m only asking you to help me with the deck. I still have a shitload of stuff to do on this house before it’s ready to sell.”
“Like what?” He looked around the kitchen. “Your place is great. A hell of a lot better than mine.”
“Paint, for one thing,” I said. “Most of the walls in this house.”
“What?” He wandered into the living room and I followed, watching him peer around, a frown on his face. “What’s wrong with the walls?”
“Wrong color. Everything has to be neutral in order to sell.” We’d painted this room a deep blue, the color of a twilight sky, when we’d first moved in. Caitlin had picked the color; she’d been six at the time, and not very well versed in the ins and outs of home decor. But I’d bought the paint anyway, because this house was ours, and we could paint the living room any goddamn color we pleased. Now, some twelve years later, I barely noticed it.
But the real estate agent had. When she’d done a walk-through of the house, that was the first thing she’d said. Paint the living room walls. Neutral colors only. I loved that blue. Covering it up with beige felt like a sacrilege.
Apparently Mitch felt the same way I did. “Neutral.” His face twisted in contempt.
“I couldn’t agree more.” I turned to the hallway, heading back toward the bedrooms. “Come on. I can show you the rest.”
Four
Mitch had spent a lot of time at my house last year. For a few months, my dining room table had been command central for planning both that summer’s Renaissance Faire and my sister’s wedding. I’d dug out my giant casserole dishes—the ones that didn’t get much use when it was just Caitlin and me—and made tons of baked ziti or some other casserole while half-heartedly bitching about all these people in my house. The dining room had buzzed with life and conversation, and Caitlin and I had spent those evenings with our friends around our big table that had never before seen big dinners.
I’d breathed a sigh of relief when the summer came and those planning nights came to an end, glad to get my quiet house back. Yet sometimes over the winter I’d found myself wanting to make a giant shepherd’s pie to be devoured by a group in a half hour. I missed the sight of Mitch coming through my front door, balancing a ludicrous number of pizzas in his arms when it was his turn to “cook.”
But for all the times he’d been over last year, all Mitch had ever seen of my house was the path from the front door to the dining room table, with occasional stops in the kitchen. So this impromptu tour had seemed like a great idea until we got to my bedroom.
I’d never brought a man into this bedroom. Unless you counted the guys who delivered my king-size four-poster bed, and I didn’t count them at all. As I stepped over the threshold I had a mental image of that night in Jackson’s, when Mitch had looked up at me through his lashes and my stomach had gone all swimmy. For a second my breath left my body, and I wanted to turn around and push Mitch out of the room. Back into the kitchen where it was safer. But I rallied. Cut it out, Parker, I told myself. He’s not here for that.
“So then this is my room.” I tried to sound as casual as possible, which meant I sounded like a nervous wreck. God, I was too old to be this flustered around a boy. Especially a boy who had no interest in me and was almost a decade younger besides. It was fine for older men to date younger women, but it never went the other way around.
I shook my head hard. Dating? Where was my mind going? I coughed into my fist. “I don’t think it needs a whole lot of work.” There. Good. Back on topic.
Mitch shook his head, his gaze roaming over the walls. “You like blue,” he said.
“I do?” I looked around the room with new eyes. I hadn’t thought about it, but he was right. The living room was blue, and so was my bedroom. In here the soft blue was calming. When I went to sleep at night I felt like I was drifting off in a blue sky, cushioned by clouds.
“Yeah.” I sighed. “I guess it’s all gotta go, huh?”
“Probably.” He nodded absently as he stepped farther into the room, and I took a panicked look around. But everything was where it should be: no bras lying out on the bed, dirty laundry in the hamper in the closet where it belonged. I wasn’t a neat freak by any means, but I was relatively tidy. Which was coming in handy right about now.
“You’ll definitely want to paint in here,” he said, “but you can probably get away with the carpet the way it is.”
“You think? Because that would be nice.”
He shrugged. “I mean, I’m not a real estate agent. But I think of it like this: If I’m going to trade in my truck, I’d probably get it detailed, maybe fix up the brakes or something like that. But I’m not going to replace the transmission or put a new stereo system in something I’m about to get rid of anyway. I mean, you might get a slightly better price, but would it be worth what you spent to fix it up?”