Page 30 of The Match

“You’re being weird.”

“Says the uninvited woman standing in my bedroom after going through my side table.”

“Right. Well . . . I guess I like that you make your bed.”

He chuckles, deep and full, and I’m pretty sure that if my hand were on his chest, I would feel the rumble of it all the way up my arm. “I knew that’s what you’d like most. I wanted to see if I was right. And I was.”

I narrow my eyes. “No you did not! How could you possibly have known that?”

He shrugs again. “I guess because I picture your place being messy.” He’s pictured my place?

“Should I take offense to that?”

“Not at all. I just mean that you . . . you’re not uptight. Life moves too fast for you to take time to put your things away. It’s refreshing.”

Oh good. The claw of heat is creeping up my neck again, and I’m about to be full-on strawberry. “I haven’t confirmed that my place is messy.”

He looks down at me and lifts a brow. “Is it?”

My shoulders slump. “Yes. But I want to make my bed from now on like you make yours. This looks nice.” I touch his bedspread one more time.

He smiles, and those shoulders of mine are perking right back up. I need to get out of here. He’s being strange, and I like it way too much. It makes me wonder if maybe his house is so clean because he needs someone else to help him and Sam live in it a little more. Someone like me. And maybe I need someone like him to help me keep my things in order.

“I need to see what Joanna is doing here.” I move past him, and this time I don’t avoid touching him. In fact, my arm brushes over his as I pass, and I could swear I feel his fingers extend to lightly fan against mine as I do.

CHAPTER 14

Jake

After Evie leaves my room, I give her a few minutes alone with her boss before I join them. Okay, fine, it was me who needed a few minutes alone to process. Evie was in my bedroom. And she looked perfect there. Too perfect. This room had never felt so bright before.

I watched her from the doorway for a minute before she noticed me, and I felt desperate to know what was going through her head. Did she like this space I’ve set up for myself? Or did she think it was dull?

She touched my bedspread. And thanks to how much I’ve read of Twilight, I can recognize longing when I see it. I mean, it’s been a while since I’ve been around a woman who wasn’t my wife, but I’m thinking that snooping through a man’s room and staring at his bedspread can only mean one thing: she’s attracted to me.

What the hell am I supposed to do with that thought?

Friendship was fine when there was only a small probability that a woman like her could be attracted to me—a single dad with so much baggage that I have to rent a U-Haul to hitch to the back of my truck—but after seeing her smile when her fingers landed on my bed, that complicated things.

I don’t know what else to do, so after peeking down the hallway to make sure no one is around, I shut my bedroom door and pull out my phone to dial the one person I know can tell me what to do. “June! I need to talk to you,” I say when my baby sister picks up.

“What’s wrong? You sound weird.”

“I feel weird,” I say, scraping my hand through my hair. “I think she likes me.”

“No way! Did she steal your baseball cap at recess?”

“Shut up. I’m serious. And I’m freaking out.”

June chuckles a minute, then I hear her shuffling some baking pans around. “Okay, hang on. Let me go outside so I can talk to you and not have Stacy listening in. YES, I see you tilting your ear toward me, Stacy! Mind your own biscuits.” June and her best friend, Stacy, co-own her trendy donut shop. The storefront looks like something right off a Pinterest page. Everything is white with pops of bright color, and each of their original-flavored donuts have names like Just Peachy for their peach-flavored donut, and Slow as Molasses for their cinnamon-molasses donut, and then my personal favorite, Kiss My Grits for their newest savory-grits-inspired donut.

“Okay, I’m ready. Spill.”

I sigh and go into my bathroom and shut the door just in case anyone is in the hallway and can hear me. “Do you remember the woman, Evie Jones, I was telling you about the other day?”

“The hot toddy who works for the service dog company?”

“I never once called her a hot toddy.”

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