Page 9 of Boats, Moats, & Root Beer Floats

She stopped—everything. Fighting, talking.

Breathing.

She definitely stopped breathing.

“Did you just call me gorgeous?”

I swept hair off her face with my free hand. “Yeah. Like this? You’re perfect.” Her fine skin dimpled beneath my touch. A shiver wracked her body as she stared back at me. Those lush lips parted as I drew her close enough to?—

“What the hell, Dustman. I need coffee before we do this shit.” She shoved at my chest.

The action achieved her absolutely nothing.

I stared at her, the corner of my mouth quirking. “You call me Dustman?”

“Yes,” she huffed, wriggling torturously against me. “Because of your books. And the brown suit. And the tower—” She froze as a groan ripped free of my throat.

“Stop moving, Lindy,” I rasped, clamping a hand to her lower back. “Or get off the bed. Alright?” I softened my voice, not wanting to scare her, but damn the girl couldwriggle. That and the fact I must have ten years on her thirty something… I swallowed hard as she stared down at me and gave an experimental wiggle. Just to shit me, I swore. “Lindy…” I warned.

“Yes, Covin?” She shifted again, more sinuously this time.

I groaned. “You’re going to be my limit this holiday aren’t you?”

“Probably,” she agreed, and slipped off the bed.

“What?” I stared as she pranced to the entrance of my room—the one with the door not the hole in our walls. “What just happened? Weren’t you scared?”

She shot me a look over her shoulder, all dimples and come-hither eyes and bed mussed hair I wanted to tangle my fingers in and kiss her stupid.

Why didn’t I kiss her?

Answer: because I met her yesterday and we spent the whole time arguing.

Then she sucked the wind right out of my sails and followed up with a bitch slap for the hell of it.

“Because I know what the monster in the bed sound was, silly.” She laughed at me, all tinkling and not so innocent. “It was you.”

I’d been caught in the middle of my favorite fantasy about the artist in the bed next door and it turned out she was a goddamn brat.

That was okay. I could work with that.

I found Lindy in the kitchen with a fresh pail of milk a while later. She pottered about, cleaning and banging for no other reason, it seemed, than to make noise for herself. I leaned against the stonework watching her do her thing.

Finally, she raised her eyes and gave me a wave with her little finger.

“I found eggs. They seem to be safe.” She demonstrated, dropping them into water where they sank to the bottom, not an inkling of our previous encounter on her face. “You want omelets?”

That lack of reaction was a gut-punch. I cleared my throat to disguise my discomfort. “If you’re cooking. Got bread?”

“I found rolls. They’re a bit crispy. As in, they have bouncebackability factor.”

“That’s a word?”

“It’s a word,” she confirmed.

“I can work with that.” I nudged her shoulder. “Are you okay after last night?”

And this morning.

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