Page 8 of Just Screwing Around

I ran a hand over my face. This was going to be a thing. It was hard enough to separate reality from fiction when she was waving her panties around, now I’d have mom asking about her constantly.

“She is single, and she is a business owner. She is my roommate and that’s all.”

“Can’t help but notice you didn’t confirm or deny theattractivepart.” Mom took a sip of her coffee, her eyes gleaming over the cup.

******

I spent the rest of the day on site with the guys before finally calling it quits around six o’clock.

I had pulled the contact info for everyone who had worked seasonally for me since my business started. My plan was to email, text or call every one of them. If any of them wanted to work for me again, even for a day, between now and August, I wanted them. I also planned to put an ad in every newspaper and website I could think of to advertise that I was hiring.

It was going to take forever. No reason to be starving and uncomfortable in the office when I could come home and work in my sweats. By the time I got what I needed and drove home, it was almost seven and the house was quiet.

Charlotte was either holed up in her room or already in bed. I wasn’t even sure if I was disappointed by that or not.

There was a pink bakery box on the counter with a note written on the top.

Experimented with some new recipes today, thought you and your guys might like them

—-C

Huh. That was really thoughtful. And it saved me a stop in the morning to get donuts for the hooligans who worked for me. I’d discovered early on that bringing sugar or caffeine to the work site had everyone moving a little faster. I’d half expected Derek to have convinced her to be the roommate from hell once he found out the situation. I should have known she had a better head on her shoulders than that. I grabbed a cookie from the box and a scone for good measure and threw some leftovers in the microwave.

I sank down onto the couch and started working through my list, but my mind kept wandering to my new roommate. She had been respectful of my house when she’d moved in. Hadn’t taken over the main living spaces with a bunch of frou frou stuff.

I had noticed an extra lamp behind the couch, but it came in handy on a night like tonight when I was working on paperwork. There were new dish cloths in the kitchen that didn’t have holes in them like mine had. Fair. Point goes to Charlotte. There was a thick mat in front of the sink that was heaven to stand on compared to the tile after a day of working on my feet.

She’d also added a throw blanket to the couch. My arms brushed against the soft fabric every time I moved and I had no complaints about that. When I leaned back to stretch, I buried my face in it and was hit by the sweet smell that was half vanilla, half chocolate and all Charlotte. I understood that she worked in a bakery, so the fact that she smelled good enough to eat made sense in theory. Still, how did she manage to hold on to that smell away from work?

By the time I’d gone through the first twenty guys on my list, it was well past time I went to sleep. I put my dishes in the dishwasher, but on my way to my bedroom, I paused as I went past the bathroom. Glancing in, I could see that Charlotte had done some unpacking.

The towels hanging on the rack were a muted sea green and, okay, wow, they were way softer than mine. Might have to steal one of those. There were candles and a vase of fake flowers in one corner of the vanity top. A bathmat had appeared that was also softer than anything I owned.

Clearly, my house had been lacking a woman’s touch.

The fact that the bathroom also had Charlotte’s sweet smell had me starting to snoop. Did she scrub herself with brown sugar in the shower or something? The visual was too tempting.

The shower curtain was closed, but my curiosity got the best of me so I pulled the edge back and peaked my head in. It was surprisingly sparse compared to what I was expecting. There were four bottles lining the edges of the tub of various sizes and colors. I picked up the closest one and cracked it open. A blob of pearly white body wash popped from the top of the bottle and landed on my hand. The smell of vanilla hit my nose.

Great. Hopefully, Charlotte wouldn’t smell her soap on me and know I was snooping. I quickly put the bottle back and wiped the soap off my skin.

A white loofah hung from the shower head and a single razor sat on the shelf. I moved to leave, despite the soft bath mat under my feet, when my eyes caught on a splash of bright purple against the white walls of the shower.

My heart faltered.

May have stopped entirely, actually.

I didn’t claim to understand every beauty product that women used. I’d been a single guy most of my life. I didn’t know how those pinchy things they use to curl their eyelashes didn’t hurt. I didn’t know why they needed seven moisturizers when I could buy one that doubled as sunscreen and worked to lube a squeaky door hinge in a pinch. But I knew a vibrator when I saw one.

Fucking hell. Charlotte was trying to kill me.

That was the only reasonable explanation.

Images flooded my mind of slippery soap bubbles against naked skin while she guided the little buzzing toy between her thighs. I groaned loud enough to pull myself out of my own head, then quickly dropped the curtain. Guess I had another date with my hand tonight. My new roommate was going to give me carpal tunnel.

Chapter Five

Charlotte

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