Page 18 of Lovingly Restored

“I tackled the cupboards and pantry this week. There were a lot of items going bad.”

“Makes sense,” he sighs. “Do you need to get in here?”

There’s more than enough room for us both, but this is a healthy distance. The last time we were too close in his truck I’d done idiotic things like blush and offer my phone number without prompting. The knowledge that I was so unappealing to him that he couldn’t even send a text makes me cringe. I’ve tried to forget it, but the memory is as fresh as an unopened box of cereal.

“I’m only here for a snack. I ate supper with your grandmother at five.” I glance towards the clock behind him that reads ten o’clock.

“Five? That’s not supper time.”

“It is for your grandmother,” I snap.

He’d know that if he’d been around the past month. If I had a dollar for every elderly person I’d cared for whose family barely visited, I’d have a whole damn acreage for my flowers.

I tighten the tie around my waist and fold my arms across my chest. Isaac is wearing the same clothes as earlier but is now filthy. If he tries putting his feet on the table again, I’ll hit him with my slipper, European grandma style. I bet Mrs. Lauri has tips. His snug jeans are dusty on the knees and ass, his shirt wrinkled, and the musk of a hard-working man reaches me as he moves. He rubs at the scruff on his jaw before drawing his phone out of his pocket.

Would you look at that? He still has it. I bet he deleted my number.

“In that case, I’m gonna order pizza. What do you like?” He walks to the fridge and reads the number off a faded, pizza-shaped magnet.

We aren’t going to have some late-night, roommate-bonding pizza party. If he called me up a few days after our meeting, yeah, I’d have grabbed food with him. But a month has gone by, and he isn’t some mysterious guy who saved my ass, he’s the grandson of my patient. There are some definite personal/professional violations going on here. I open a cupboard thatwasthe picture of organization before Isaac attacked it. My spine tingles as I stand on my tiptoes for the box of granola bars I placed up there after my last grocery shop. My hand meets the bare shelf. Craning my neck, I can make out the bottom of the tipped over box, just out of my reach.

Shoot.

“You like olives? Pineapple?”

“Neither.” I lie, continuing to reach while the arches of my feet cramp from my efforts.

I want a snack. Is that too much to ask?

“Okay, plain pepperoni?”

My fingers graze the edge of the box, so close, and then it slips back from my fingers. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Isaac.” His name comes out in a sharp burst, frustration over his arrival and my elusive granola bars compounding to make my voice edgy.

My calves give out, and I lower myself back onto flat feet, sighing in resignation.

“Pizza is always a good idea.” His deep voice is right behind me, his shadow sweeping across the butcher block counter to merge with mine. He reaches into the cupboard and snags the box, bringing it down to my level.

“Coconut or peanut?” he asks, offering me the open package.

His arms are around me, his biceps grazing my upper arms.

I grit my teeth, “Why are there only two left?”

“Sorry. I was hungry earlier…I didn’t know they were yours.”

I snatch the last two bars, fully aware that pizza would taste a whole lot better.

“Don’t make this awkward. We can still enjoy each other’s company, right?”

“The only company I need is your grandmother.”

It sounds silly, even to me. Obviously a twenty-six-year-old woman needs more than that.

“Let’s keep it professional,” I say.

Rich laughter catches me off guard, loud in the confines of the closed concept kitchen. Isaac tips his head back, long throat exposed, Adam’s apple bobbing. I hate the way that sound affects me.

“It’s just pizza, Ashlyn, I wasn’t asking you to go steady.”

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