Dad blinks down at Mom. “Maureen, the door’s—”
Mom yanks Dad down by the collar and kisses him so suddenly, he grunts in surprise. But then whatever hesitation he felt dissolves as his hands wrap around her waist, drawing her close.
“Ew. You two.” I shudder, shooing them with my hands. “Go do that somewhere else.”
Mom pulls away from their kiss and flashes me a smile that’s so like Jules’s, it’s startling. “I’d say the same for you and the laundry. Try Christopher’s.”
“Christopher’s? Mom, I can’t just—”
“Excuse me, Kate,” Mom says, eyes back on Dad as he leans in for another kiss. “Your father and I will be back in just a minute.”
“A minute?” Dad says, huskily. “That’s all I get?”
Mom laughs as she walks him back from the doorway until they’re out of sight.
I sigh, turning back to the washer. Puck slinks into the mudroom and meows, twining around my legs. I start to pull out my sopping-wet clothes from the washer and load them into the zip-up hamper that I brought them in. “I know, Puck. It’s gross. Parents aren’t supposed to act horny like that.”
Meow, he says.
“Well, fair point,” I tell him, reaching inside the washer for the wet clothes plastered to its sides. “I can appreciate that their horniness precipitated my existence, but as far as I’m concerned, that was twenty-eight years ago, and that should have been the end of it.”
A throat clear makes me jump and slam my head against the washer. Swearing under my breath, I stand and feel my heart flutter ridiculously in my chest.
Christopher stands, leaning against the threshold, hands in his pockets, watching me.
“It’s not polite to eavesdrop,” I tell him sourly, rubbing the back of my head.
He pushes off the threshold and closes the distance between us, gently brushing my hand aside, feeling the back of my head, satisfied when he doesn’t find any serious damage.
“Washer’s busted, Maureen said.”
I sigh, glancing over my shoulder at the traitorous washing machine. “Apparently.”
Christopher’s quiet, inspecting my sopping clothes sitting piled in the hamper. He seems to be deliberating something, his brow furrowed. Then he steps past me and picks up my laundry bag, using the shoulder strap to hike it onto his back. “I’ll do it for you.”
I give him a look. “You are not doing my laundry. However, if you wanted to invite me to your house for the rest of the evening so I could do my own laundry, that would be a different matter.”
Christopher’s jaw clenches. He stares down at me, clutching the hamper. “Kate—”
Taking a page out of my mother’s book, I press up on my toes and silence his mouth with a kiss. He’s breathless when I pull away.
“Let’s settle this like we do all serious matters, Petruchio.” I reach behind me for the doorknob, then turn it. “Race ya.”
Christopher swears viciously as I sprint down the stairs and across the yard. I glance over my shoulder just once, shocked to see how fast he’s moving for carrying a sopping wet, heavy bag of laundry on his shoulder.
I leap up the stairs to his back porch two at a time and come to a halt at his door. Above the handle, there’s a code-based lock, a half-moon of numbers.
“Kate!” Christopher yells, making it to the bottom of the steps, scrambling up them.
I don’t know why I do it, if I’m daring fate, if I’m wishing it into existence, but I enter my birthday.
The door unlocks.
I gape and glance over my shoulder.
“Dammit,” he rasps, pushing me inside, slamming the door behind him.
I laugh, equally shocked and thrilled. “Why is my birthday your lock code?”
He drops my laundry off his shoulder with a wet thud and rakes a hand through his hair. He doesn’t answer me.
“Christopher,” I press, my heart pounding with a dawning, earth-tipping hope that’s my most closely guarded, deepest-buried dream. “Why is my birthday your lock code?”
He stares at me, something so fierce and raw in his expression, my breath catches in my lungs.
My throat feels thick as I take a step toward him. “Tell me,” I whisper.
“Tell you what?” he snaps.
Closing the distance between us, he grabs me by the waist and hoists me onto the counter, which hasn’t changed in twenty years, in a kitchen frozen in time. Curious as I am about why his home seems unchanged since I was last here as a little girl, I don’t focus on my surroundings. I focus on Christopher, who’s breathing hard, staring me down.