Page 87 of The Difference Between

With a huff, I do it myself.

“Okay.” The king-sized bed has a log frame and the walls are, no surprise, log. There’s so much wood in here it’s giving me a headache. “Where should we start?”

“Start?” Gavin parrots. “We can’t go through his things.”

“You take that nightstand.”

I shuffle through one and find the usual culprits: condoms, fingernail clippers, a remote control. Lame.

Gavin hasn’t moved. “This doesn’t feel right,” he says. “Going through his house for a company study?”

I should come clean. Gavin wants kids—hell, this young buck is already thinking of grandkids—he’ll get it.

And yet, I can’t. And it’s for no other reason than me not wanting him to know that the real reason I’m in Fontain is because my boss forced me out and I’m having a baby by a sperm donor because I don’t make time for relationships.

I’m not an idiot; I see the way he looks at me. I know if I said I wanted him, he’d let me have him, just like my sisters said. It’s twisted, but I like it. I like him wanting me even though we aren’t right for each other and he can never have me.

And it’s still none of his business.

I breeze past him to the other nightstand; it’s empty except a baby bib that says Big Boy. Weird.

“It’s not wrong,” I explain as I open a few dresser drawers and dig through T-shirts and underwear. “It’s what he signed up for. He should have read the fine print.”

There’s nothing under the bed. Next stop: the walk-in closet.

“If there’s nothing in here,” I call to Gavin, who startles me by filling the doorway of the closet. With a lower voice, I say, “Then I’ll call him good.”

Gavin lets out a heavy sigh. “Fine.”

Clothes hang in a U shape around us. Everything appears normal as I rifle through the hangers. Maybe Theo is good. My pulse once again picks up at the implication: This man might father my child.

I kneel down to open and close the lids of a few shoe boxes then pause at a black plastic tub shoved in the back. Voices get louder—people are close.

“Shut the door,” I whisper.

Gavin’s jaw drops and his blue eyes widen. “What?”

“Shut the door,” I repeat, waving my hand in a door-shutting motion. “Get in here and shut the door.”

He looks toward the voices. “No.”

The voices are closer. Something about the whole house looking so big from up here.

“You can’t tell me no,” I whisper-snap.

Gavin folds his arms over his chest. “Just did.”

My eyes widen. “Gavin!” He doesn’t budge. “I’ll do anything. Please. Shut the door.”

He leans in the doorway—leans—as the voices get closer. “What could you possibly do that will make going through another man’s closet appeal to me?”

Damn this man.

I crawl across the closet to shut it myself, but he takes a step to block me.

A muted “Love how the logs are consistent throughout” drifts toward us as my heart pounds; I’m running out of time.

“I’ll go out with you,” I blurt.