Page 25 of So Close

“Your shirt costs, what—?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Matters tome,” she said. All the warmth had vanished from her voice. Which was for the best. Her soft look when she’d first seen him doing dishes had caused an answering softening somewhere in the center of his chest, which he didn’t like. She stepped across the kitchen and rummaged in a drawer.

She was wearing a sundress and an apron of her own. The apron had cupcakes on it, each topped with a cherry. The cupcakes looked a lot like tits, a fact that had distracted him mightily at breakfast. Unfortunately, it hadn’t kept him from noticing the way her eyes lingered on his mouth.

She’d just been watching him eat, that was all.

He was craving another one of those buttered biscuits. Holy shit, that thing was lethally good. This was why he avoided carbs. Once you went down that path …

She emerged from her search of the drawer and handed him a Beachcrest apron with a cartoon picture of a plate of bacon and eggs on the front, watched him with an amused expression while he put it on, and turned away to begin loading one of the industrial dish trays.

He plunged his hands back into the suds and set to work.

Work—that was what he was good at.

“More dish soap?” he asked.

“Under the sink.”

He knelt to get it, and— “Shit—you’ve got a leak.”

“Yeah. That’s been going on a while. It’s slow. Not a big deal.”

“You should fix it.” He knew himself well enough to know that he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it until he’d found a toolbox and repaired it himself. It was his greatest strength and biggest weakness as a business owner—a streak of perfectionism he couldn’t shake.

She heaved a sigh. “Carl was going to fix it, and then— He’ll get to it when he gets back.”

“You know, it’s that kind of thinking that makes Beachcrest look the way it looks.”

“And how exactly isthat?” Auburn asked, crossing her arms over her chest. His eyes kept being drawn to the gap where her pink lace bra barely managed to restrain the creamy curve of her breast.

“Shabby. Like someone will ‘get to it’ in a few days or a few weeks.”

Pink heated her face, and her eyes flashed. “Look, asshole, we don’t have an infinite amount of money! We have to triage. If you cared so much about the upkeep of Beachcrest, you could have showed up at any point and contributed to repairs.”

“I tried to give Carl money for upkeep,” he said with a shrug. “He wouldn’t let me. He didn’t want me any more invested than I was.”

Her mouth opened. “Oh. I guess that makes sense.” She bit her lip. “Sorry I, um, called you an asshole. About that, anyway.”

He waved a hand. “I’ve heard it before.”

After a moment, she said, “Shabby, huh? You really hate this place?” She didn’t sound angry anymore. Justcurious.

“I don’t hate it. I just—don’t see what you see in it. To me, it’s just … plain Jane.”

A bemused expression passed over her face. “Which is part of what I love about it. It’s comfy. Cozy. Like a good friend. You say shabby, I say comforting. Besides, what’s wrong with plain Jane?I’mplain Jane.”

He raised an eyebrow. It was true she wasn’t model beautiful. She wasn’t expensively dressed, or buffed and coiffed, smoothed and polished, by trained professionals. She wouldn’t stand out in a crowd, except maybe for her hair.

And yet, he’d picked her out from a bar full of women, and the last few days had done nothing to mute his interest. Those goddamn cherries looked more and more like nipples to him as the morning wore on, and he had to keep shutting down his brain as it trundled off to imagine what hers looked like …

She tilted her head. “I suppose whatever you and your buddy are planning to build on this lot will be top of the line, state of the art, and definitely not shabby?”

He wrenched his brain back to this zip code and the reality of their situation, where there was no possibility he’d ever see her nipples. “Hang on. I’ll go get the plans.”

“Don’t bother.”

---