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“What is it?”
When we surface again, I can tell that Lizzie is pondering. She’s staring at the ceiling with a twisted mouth that adds wrinkles to her nose.
I yawn and feel a rumble in my belly. Maybe Lizzie had had a point about breakfast first. I glance at the clock. Well, lunch now.
“I’m thinking about the house.”
“The what?” I frown.
“The house. The Jessop house. I’m trying to imagine how to lay out the furniture.”
I pause. “You were thinking about home decor while we were—?”
“I’m a fabulous multi-tasker.”
Okay, not sure what to make of that. But given the heat of the room and the very approving noises she had been making a moment ago, my ego isn’t too dented.
“Alright. But I think you’re a little premature on the decorating front. The house needs a full workover first. Walls, floors. Especially the floors. You’re going to need a whole boatload of sanding, stain, varnish and polish on those boards. Some will need to be replaced. The building’s not safe or entirely closed off from the elements yet. Don’t want your ballgowns getting damp.”
Lizzie rolls toward me, one arm folded on my chest, her head on her hand. She assesses me with a frown.
“Do I look like the kind of girl who wears ball gowns?”
“Right now?”
No. Right now, she looks like a woman who had spent the last twenty-four hours doing all manner of things that a princess would never do.
But she had a more serious point, too.
I’d judged Lizzie when she’d first arrived in East River Forge. I had branded her a New York socialite who preferred heels over hard work and spent her day bouncing between brunches and charity galas. Given the amount of money she seemed to have, I couldn’t discount the galas out entirely, but in the last few weeks Lizzie had more than proven the rest of my judgments wrong.
She spent more of her time in a mechanic’s outfit than anything else and, while beautiful, didn’t seem to much care what others thought of her appearance. She took care of herself so that she might respect her own reflection but I’d never seen her deliberately curry favor or attention.
I reach out, take one of her long blonde curls in hand, and twist it around my finger. It slides against my skin, silky soft and catching just a little on the small callus on the edge of one of my knuckles.
“Right now, you look like someone who could do with some food. I think I remember a promise of bacon. Then, how about we head over to the house and start on some work? The sooner we get it done, the sooner you can bring in that furniture.”
“Really?”
I’d just suggested we go to a wreck of a house and start the brutal work of sanding floorboards for who knows how many rooms, but Lizzie looks as if I just said we’re going to Disneyland.
“You don’t mind? Working on a Saturday, I mean?”
I frown and decide to mimic her words.
“Do I look like someone who has fun things to do on a weekend?”
She looks down at our entangled, naked bodies.
“Right now?”
Laughing, we get up and go in search of food.
Despite the loss of all her glorious, naked curves against me, I find myself an eager party by the time we’re kitted up and in the truck. The sooner the work begins on the house, the sooner I get paid. And the deadline for Kenwood Homes is drawing closer.
As weird as it is to take money from the woman I’ve just started sleeping with, I can’t deny that the cash is urgently needed.
Perhaps if I can get that hassle off my chest, I think, pulling the truck out onto the road, my life would be just a little less complicated. That way I could spend more time on mornings like today, and things that actually make me smile.
