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“So?”
“So I’m doing it tonight, instead.” He stopped. “Unless you have someone coming over to soak in that tub with you…?”
“Of course not!” She felt her entire body turning red at the thought. She was pregnant, for God’s sake.
And with his child, no less.
“Then I’d best get started,” he said.
“But—”
“I know I’m probably not going to do things exactly as you’re used to.” He sprayed some furniture polish on a rag and headed into the living room.
Phyllis followed him.
“But you don’t have to worry,” he continued as he carefully removed everything from her coffee table. “I don’t like dirt, and since I live alone, I’ve learned how to handle a pretty mean rag.”
As he spoke, he wiped not only the top of the coffee table, but the legs and sides, then returned everything to its original place. If the man ever lost his job at the university, he could open a cleaning service.
Because she was practically speechless—and because she enjoyed watching him efficiently and thoroughly move his gorgeous body around her living room—Phyllis just stood there for the next few minutes. He polished all the furniture, including the sofa legs. And the picture frames on the mantel.
“I can dust,” she finally said when he’d almost finished the room. She figured she should do something. It was her house, after all.
“We agreed—”
“That you’d help me,” she said, finding the will to assert herself. “Not that you’d turn me into an invalid. I’ll dust, you vacuum and we can be done with this by the time the lasagna’s done.”
“You dust, I’ll vacuum and scrub the bathrooms—”
“While I do the kitchen sink and countertops.”
He looked at her for a moment. “Agreed,” he eventually said, “on the condition that you leave mopping the kitchen floor to me and that you stop as soon as you start to feel tired.”
Phyllis grinned. “I’m pregnant, Sheffield, not old.”
She wasn’t positive, because he was turning away to get to work, but Phyllis thought he grinned back at her.
AFTER CHANGING into a pair of jeans that weren’t too tight yet, Phyllis did a quick check of her bathroom to make sure there wasn’t anything too personal or embarrassing lying out. Everything was in its proper drawer or cupboard.
Matt vacuumed the living room while she dusted the bedroom. She took care of the towel racks, toiletries and knickknacks in both bathrooms while he vacuumed her bedroom.
Odd, having a man in her bedroom after so many years. Odder still having him in there cleaning.
She moved on to the spare bedroom—imagining the nursery it was soon to become, the baby who’d be living there—while he did the bathrooms. And then she moved on to the kitchen.
She was still working on the counters when he came in to do the floors. She wiped, he swept. The smell of the cooking lasagna filled the room. She actually felt hungry.
“I’ve hardly ever met a man comfortable enough with himself to do ‘women’s work’ so unselfconsciously.” Phyllis hadn’t really meant to speak her thoughts aloud.
Matt shrugged and then bent to position the dust-pan. Holding the brush easily between fingers and thumb, he swept up the crumbs that had been on the floor. “That’s the beauty of being alone. I’ve got no one to impress, so no reason to be self-conscious.”
“Most people spend a lot of their time trying to impress themselves.” She finished wiping and leaned against the counter, watching him fill a bucket with water. He splashed in just the right amount of pine-scented disinfectant, wrung out the mop as he’d done this countless times before and methodically set to work on the floor.
“I already know what I’m made of,” he said after a few swipes. “No point trying to kid myself now.”
“You’re secure with who you are,” she said. It impressed her—and he didn’t seem to be trying.
He mopped.
