Page 51 of The Sound of Harmony

“Good thing I’m here to help,” Mitch continued. “I’m usually working weekends, you know. Real estate is all about the work. But I don’t mind coming here to do this instead of showing houses today. Not at all. I don’t mind.”

Emma looked like she was waiting for him to take a breath. When he finally did, she moved her clipboard a bit higher and said, “Thank you.”

“My pleasure. I’m all about this kind of thing.”

Emma turned to Kendrick and gave him a professionally appropriate, stiff-armed handshake. “I’m glad you could be here.”

He held her hand as long as he could. “Me too.”

Emma introduced them to tall Dave, who would be manning the door, and short Dave, who would be running the till. Emma, Kendrick, and Mitch would be floaters—answering questions, helping people carry things to their cars, and watching for shoplifters.

“People shoplift at estate sales?” Kendrick asked.

“All the time,” tall Dave said.

Small, valuable items like jewelry were on a single table where short Dave could keep an eye on them. Larger valuables were also displayed in the front rooms. Kendrick walked through the kitchen, where every dish, pot, and pan was for sale, and upstairs, where they were using a bedroom to display sheets, towels, and books, along with DVDs, luggage, craft supplies, and Christmas decorations. Clothes and shoes were on racks in the driveway.

Kendrick thought he’d be overwhelmed with grief, or filled with nostalgia for the grandmother he’d barely known. But with everything out of its storage space and strewn across tables, the window treatments down, and the rugs rolled up, it didn’t seem like the same house. Without personal possessions, the rest was just generic stuff that he didn’t remember his grandmother owning. His main emotion at the moment was worry. Would they really unload all of this in one day?

Emma found him standing in the empty second bedroom, looking out the front window at the crowd on the lawn. “Hey,” she said softly. “They’re going to open the door in about five minutes.”

“Excellent. That gives me five minutes alone with you.” He slid his arms around her waist and held her close. She felt better in the flesh than she had in his imagination, and with her body against his, he was instantly hard, wishing they could be skin-to-skin.

“What we did together, on the phone, that was real, wasn’t it?” he asked. “I didn’t imagine the whole thing? Because part of me still thinks it was a dream.”

“It happened.” Emma smiled. “And before you ask, yes, it was good.”

“I’d like to do it again. But this time, I’d like to be in the same room with you. I want to feel you in my arms, just like this. Smell the scent of your hair, feel your body heat, taste your lips.”

He kissed her—softly at first, then more insistently. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world, like they’d done this before, many times, and knew how their lips and bodies would fit together. And yet, it was all new, and better than Kendrick had thought it could be. Her hands wandered from his shoulders to his back and everything felt delicious.

When they finally parted, Emma’s eyes fluttered open. “Never kissed a flute player before,” she said. “And I must say, you really do know what to do with your lips.”

“Told you.” Kendrick put his forehead to hers, loving how easy that was to do. All of his previous girlfriends had been short, some extremely so. It made kissing a literal pain in the neck. Not so with Emma.

He leaned in for another kiss but she stopped him with a hand to his chest. “They need me downstairs.”

“In five minutes, you said.”

“I don’t want anyone to catch us. It’s a bad look.”

“You can close your eyes.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” She took a step away from him.

He held his arms wide. “How can you resist this? I’m sleep-deprived and rumpled from riding the bus. I have coffee breath and a monster headache and I might fall down at any moment. I mean come on, I’m such a catch.”

“Those are some irresistible qualities all right.”

“So don’t resist.”

Emma bit her lip, turning toward the door. “At least for today, in public, we need to keep things professional.”

He dropped his arms. She was setting a boundary, and he had to respect it. “As difficult as it will be, I won’t make any moves on you today. I’ll distract myself with work.”

“Work is what we need. More work.” Emma backed toward the door. “I’ll be so busy selling the contents of this house, you will disappear from my thoughts.”

“Me too,” Kendrick lied. As if he wouldn’t be thinking about that kiss all day. He touched his ear. “Emma, you say? Emma who?”