Page 23 of Welker

Moira shrugged. Technically, she guessed he was right. She did have all those weird highlights that were fairly undetectable when she wrapped the whole mess up tightly.

“It’s hair, Welker,” she corrected, dismissing his silliness. She took a few steps toward the coffee machine. “May I...?”

“Oh. Yeah. Of course,” he spluttered. “I was just making eggs,” he added, unnecessarily. He fidgeted, then looked down at her legs again, and another choking noise emerged from his mouth. “You…paint your toes? Pink?”

Moira frowned. It was the one girlie thing she did for herself, knowing nobody would ever see, because she didn’t do public barefooted-ness.

Leave it to Welker to call her on it.

“Sometimes red,” she corrected sourly.

“I…like it,” Welker swallowed so that his Adam’s Apple bobbed.

It occurred to Moira that the man might be confused and tongue-tied because the stuff he was seeing didn’t add up to the sheriff he knew. But still, even having been blindsided, he wasn’t holding back in his appreciation.

“Uh, thanks?” Moira rejoindered, heading for the coffee machine and pouring the life-giving black liquid into a large mug that was waiting. She breathed it in, deeply, barely able to hold back a groan before she turned back to Welker, catching him staring at her ass. She chose to ignore his perusal. It was typical male behavior, Moira told herself, and had nothing to do with her in specific.

“You going to clean up that egg?” she asked.

“Oh. Oh! Yeah. I am.” He turned and fumbled with some paper towels on the counter, bringing the roll to the floor with him before tearing off a large strip as he hit his knees and sopped things around.

“It’s an egg, Vestore,” she told him, holding in her amusement. “You need a cleaning fluid to get the slime up.”

He held the eggy towel aloft, dripping goo, and Moira almost chuckled. The man looked…addled.

“Here. Let me,” she offered, putting him out of his misery. She placed her coffee on the dividing bar, went directly to the cabinet below his kitchen sink, opened the door and immediately found a lemon cleaner that would cut the sludge. She also extracted the small trash bin, walking it over to him where she urged him silently to deposit his spent towel inside.

Once he complied, she dropped to her haunches beside him, squirted the floor, extracted far fewer towels than he had, and handily took care of the mess.

“See? Easy,” she said, blinking over at him, realizing with a shiver that their heads had somehow moved so they were less than a foot apart, and was that…interest in his nearly black irises?

No. She had to be reading things wrong. There was no way Welker…

At that moment, his eyes dropped to her mouth, and he moved an almost imperceptible inch toward her.

Moira’s tongue inadvertently came out and touched her lower lip.

The pulse in Welker’s neck went nuts, and her own heartbeat sped up.

Would he…?

Could this…?

The doorbell rang and they both jumped, Welker’s elbow struck her in the chest, her hand grabbed onto his hard thigh so she wouldn’t fall backward.

“I’m sorry,” he yelped at the same time she spouted, “Shit!”

But seeing the look of absolute horror on the normally confident man’s face, Moira lost it.

She cracked up, her laughter ringing out loudly, filling the kitchen and reverberating off the walls.

Welker looked shocked.

“Wow.” He stared at her in a way she’d never seen before. “You’re laughing…”

She managed, between chortles, to calm herself down enough to speak. “Welk, I?—”

The doorbell rang again, and Moira giggled. Actually giggled.

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