Page 12 of Treat

“Why? Are you messy?”

She kept her eyes on her eggs. “No.”

“Play loud music in the middle of the night? Throw drunken parties?”

“Of course not.”

“Clip your toenails while you eat?”

She reared back to stare at him in horror. “Ew, no!”

“Then I doubt you’ll bother me,” he said with a shrug.

Yes, but you’ll bother me.She reached for the salt shaker. “You don’t know that.”

“We can leap off that bridge when it’s on fire.”

She blinked. “Isn’t the phrase ‘we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it’?”

He shrugged. “Potato, tomato. If you don’t want to stay here, that’s fine. I’ll book you a hotel room.”

She wanted to say she didn’t feel right about him paying for a hotel room, but that would’ve been for show—she felt just fine about him paying for a hotel, or any other damn thing he wanted to pay for. And taking him up on the offer would be the professional, logical thing to do.

But she didn’t want to.

“I cleaned out the guest room last night,” he said, then frowned. “Well, I cleared all the boxes off the bed, anyway. And I ordered a dresser.”

She blinked. “You did?”

“It’s being delivered this afternoon. Along with bedding,” he continued, rising from his stool, plate and fork in hand. “And new pillows.”

She watched him take his dishes to the sink and tried to think of something to say. Not a single thing came to mind.

“I need to go through the boxes and stuff, figure out what to keep and what to donate. I think most of it is old hockey equipment.”

“It is,” she said faintly. She was the one who’d packed it all up in Grand Rapids. She’d tried to convince him to donate it all then, but he hadn’t been ready.

“Oh, and I need you to do something for me today,” he said, his back to her as he stood at the sink.

“Okay,” she said and tried to pay attention to what he was saying and not to the way his back muscles flexed.

“Find a cleaning service.”

Her cheeks heated immediately. “I can keep doing it,” she said, pleased that her voice didn’t reflect the knee-jerk shame she was trying not to feel. “It’s no problem.”

“No,” he said and slapped on the water. “You can’t.”

He sounded pissed off again, and it put her back up. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I didn’t say there was.” He turned the water off and turned to look at her, the sharp look in his eyes giving way to curiosity. “Do you want to keep doing it?”

She almost said yes, just to be contrary, but she wasn’t that foolish. “No.”

“Would you have done it if you hadn’t needed the extra money?”

“That’s why people work, Jude,” she said, trying not to snap. “Because they need money.”

He just stared at her, waiting patiently, and she sighed. “No.”

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