Page 30 of Lucky Star

Chapter Eleven

Sarah

Ipadded out of my bedroom on bare feet, expecting to find Cameron in the kitchen, but the house was silent and still. Propped against the coffee maker—the pot full—Cameron had scrawled out a barely-legible note in haphazard penmanship telling me to enjoy my coffee. I poured myself a cup, but then winced when I took a sip. He and I had vastly different opinions about what constituted a good cup of coffee.

Dumping the vile brew down the drain, I served myself a glass of orange juice and made my way into the living room. Curling up on the couch with my feet tucked up under me, I allotted thirty more minutes of relaxation before I’d start getting ready for our engagement party later that afternoon. When Duke trotted scrambled up onto the sofa beside me, I heard the sound of Cameron’s truck rumbling up my driveway.

A few minutes later, he came through the door carrying three large duffle bags like a Sherpa and rolling a beaten-down suitcase behind him. I didn’t think the contents of those four bags was everything he owned, but it probably came damn close.

“Oh good, you’re up,” he said, lugging everything toward my bedroom.

Our bedroom, I reminded myself.

“Just give me a couple of minutes,” he hollered from across the house as I listened to him open and close several drawers and doors, looking for somewhere to put his stuff.

I laughed into my glass of OJ. Best of luck with that, buddy.

A one thousand square foot cottage built in the 1920s, my place was adorable but had a serious lack of storage. Over the years I’d added as much as I could, but there were only so many places you could stick things before someone staged an intervention for hoarding. Not that I was a pack rat or anything, but my paints and other art supplies took up a lot of room.

A couple of minutes later, Cameron emerged from the bedroom shaking his head and muttering under his breath about closet space. Pouring himself a mug of coffee, he flopped down onto the couch next to me. “So umm … I moved in.”

“I can see that.”

Last night when he’d asked me whether I should move into his place, or he should move into mine, I’d laughed and told him there was no way in hell I was moving into his apartment. I hadn’t realized the discussion had been settled.

“Are you mad? You look mad.”

“No, I’m not mad,” I said, setting my glass on the table in front of us. “Just surprised is all. I didn’t realize last night you’d planned on moving in today.”

He blew out a breath and then laughed. “I’m terrible at this, aren’t I?”

I laughed. “You might be a tad impulsive. But like I said, I’m not mad.” I looked around my already packed-to-the-gills home. “I just don’t know where we’ll put everything.”

“I don’t need a lot of space.”

“What about décor or furniture?”

He raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “You have seen my furniture, haven’t you? And do you really want what passes for art in that shit hole coming within a fifty-foot radius of here?”

He had a point. Except for a beautiful leather chesterfield sofa he’d picked up an estate sale last year, most of his stuff had either come with the apartment, been picked up at yard sales, or were hand-me-downs from friends who’d gotten married. We weren’t even going to talk about the velvet painting of dogs playing poker, a leftover from when Mike had lived there.

“The chesterfield should definitely come,” I said, bouncing on the cushions of my sofa. It was elegant and beautiful, but not the most practical for lounging around on the weekends. “We can replace this one.”

“Thank god,” he said, grinning. He hated this sofa.

“I’ll empty out a dresser too, so you can put your things away. And I think I can make room in the armoire for your shoes. How many pairs do you have?”

He winced guiltily. “Twenty.”

I twisted to face him. “You’re seriously telling me you have twenty pairs of shoes?”

“Yup.”

“ I don’t have twenty pairs of shoes, and I’m a chick.”

“That’s because you live in flip-flops and Converse.”

“You don’t have some secret foot fetish, do you?” I joked.

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