An hour later, Abby meets me in the space between our rooms, wearing tiny jean shorts, her tanned thighs fully exposed. Her purple tank top hugs her breasts, her torso, more tanned skin exposed—shoulders, arms, neck, spaces that haven’t had my mouth on them in too long. It takes every ounce of self-control not to stick my hand in her back pocket and steal a kiss from her.
She dons her sunglasses, smiling up at me. “All right, show-off. Let’s go see where you work,” she says.
The ride is about half an hour, following the coastline. Abby’s face is glued to the window, pointing at everything with the kind of wonder that new, beautiful places tend to induce.
Eventually, a row of expensive houses comes into view, all in different phases of build. Some finished, some just started. The exterior of Doug’s house is finished besides the landscaping, the white house with peach shutters standing out between two half-finished houses given the near-finished state of it.
“Holy shit,” she says as I help her out of the truck.
The house is two stories and wide given the four-car garage. The delivered cabinets are in front of the garage, waiting to be put inside.
The outside of the house isn’t landscaped yet; that won’t happen until next month. I’ve got my landscapers chomping at the bit, especially since they were supposed to do this work a couple of weeks ago, and now they’re going to have to wait even longer.
“How much is it costing him to build this?” she asks.
“I can’t believe you’re asking that before you’ve even seen the inside.”
“I just wanna know what I’m getting into.”
“A couple million.”
She turns to me with her jaw slack, eyes wide. “Imagine having that kind of money,” she says, half to herself.
“Yeah, imagine,” I say.
“Oh, god. I sometimes forget you played for the NHL. You probably have all kinds of money. Why do you work?” she asks as we walk up to the front door.
“Because I would get bored dicking around all day.”
“I’m sure you could find something to do with your life of leisure,” she says.
I open the door for her, and the immediate gasp that leaves her mouth is satisfying. It makes me feel like a kid whose teacher just said, “Good job!”
“Holy shit, it’s so big.”
“Heard that one before,” I say, and when Abby glares at me, I wink at her. She rolls her eyes good-naturedly.
“Those ceilings go on forever,” she says. She hasn’t moved much past the door, as if she got stuck, overwhelmed by the vast space of the house.
Right in front of the entryway is a staircase leading up to a landing on the second floor that overlooks the whole bottom level. The first floor is very open: a living room with no demarcated walls flows into the kitchen, which flows into a dining space, which flows right back to the entry, and then around to the living room again. The living room has floor-to-ceiling windows, and around each side of the front door are large rectangular windows. It’s bright and feels about twice the size it actually is.
The walls are white, the floor a light wood hardwood, although right now it’s covered in plastic sheets and drop cloths, so it’s hard to see fully.
I let her lead the way, and she walks us through the kitchen.
“I’m still waiting on the marble countertops, and the repainted cabinets are here and I need to bring them in, but you get the idea. Actually, feel free to walk around here and the upstairs while I bring in the cabinets.”
I head toward where the garage connects to the kitchen, but Abby starts to follow.
“Oh, do you want help?”
“No, because then I’d have to pay you for labor costs and I don’t want to do the paperwork.”
I spin to face her, walking backwards.
“You could pay me in other ways,” she says.
I stop walking. She’s got her hands clasped behind her back, pushing her chest out, looking up at me through her eyelashes. She’s teasing me, and I know it, but god—if I thought she was serious, I would not hesitate to take her up on the offer. I bite my bottom lip, thinking about all the places in this house I could take her. On the stairs, against the wall, in one of the bedrooms upstairs, on the balcony outside, in the pool…
