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She sucked in some air and took a step away from him. “Don’t start that.”
“You don’t like my touch?” He leaned against the doorframe and watched her take in the narrow space from baseboards up to the water-stained white ceiling. There’d been a leak in the roof during a hurricane, and he hadn’t had a chance to repaint. He hadn’t seen the point of he was going to end up hiring out for construction, anyway.
“It’s not an issue of like or dislike. I don’t want to get distracted.”
“Sometimes distraction is good for us. I think you’re like me and you work too hard. There’s nothing wrong with doing what you can to get a little relief.”
She let out a soft, forceful exhalation and set her laptop bag on top of a small sliver of counter. It took some effort to fit it there. She had to move the coffeemaker and pull the bag’s straps up so they didn’t dangle into the sink. “If you want things, you have to work for them, right?”
“What are you working for? What’s distracting you so much from enjoying simple pleasures?”
“There’s nothingsimpleabout pleasure, Tim.” She hooked her thumbs into her empty belt loops and shifted her weight. “So. What do you want me to do? I could set the table.”
He didn’t even call her out on the abrupt subject change. She was probably used to doing that at work when the contractors weren’t staying on task. He certainly did the same whenever the crew started getting too personal and they had quotas to meet. He couldn’t fault her for her brusqueness, but he’d definitely have to think differently about how he interacted with her. If he wanted to get her to do anything, he’d have to go about encouraging it in a roundabout way.
Or…he could let his inner dom out and steamroll her, but the evening was early yet, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go there.
Tim pushed off the doorway, pressed his hand to the small of her back, and guided her toward the table in the sunroom. There’d never been enough room in the kitchen for a table, and he and Heidi had both agreed that eating in the dining room felt pretentious. They’d turned it into an office and did most of their eating out on the glassed-in porch.
“Have a seat. I’ll take care of everything.”
“Hmm. It’s been a very long time since I’ve heard that come out of a man’s mouth. I like it.”
He pulled out a chair for her and bade her to sit. “Well, if you like that, you’ll have a lot more of it coming to you.”
“I bet you like being the one in charge.”
He stepped up the single stair into the kitchen and grabbed a couple of plates from the cupboard. “That’s a reasonable judgment. I like for things to be orderly, or as much as they can be, anyway. I crave predictability.”
If Heidi’s coming-out hadn’t been the death knell for their marriage, they’d probably been heading down the path to dissolution, anyway. She was a loose cannon, and though he’d known that when he’d proposed at age twenty, he’d expected she’d mellow a bit as she got older.
That hadn’t turned out to be the case.
“What about you?” he asked. “Do you mind so much if someone else does the steering?”
“If I trust that he knows where he’s going?” She gave a half shrug. “No. I don’t mind. It’s comforting to have someone who you know is going to do things right and take care of you. Otherwise? No way. My sister says that I’m OCD. I’m not, though. I can let things go. Perhaps I do have what some people would consider an unhealthy obsession with perfection. But, I’m an architect. I have to be concerned with perfection or else things won’t fit together. When you’re dealing with time and money, it’s important that things fit together the first time.”
“This boat builder agrees with you.” He scooped out a square of lasagna for each of them, put some salad on both plates along with some thick chunks of reheated garlic bread, and carried the food into the sunroom. “I’ll get your wine. I think red is what you’re supposed to have with dishes that have tomato sauce, but I always drink whatever I’m in the mood for.”
She picked up her fork and scrunched her nose. “Ugh. Can I pass on the wine tonight? Something in the red gives me awful heartburn, and I drink white so quickly that I end up tipsy without trying.”
“Beer?”
“Got any?”
“Of course.” He preferred beer over wine and spirits, anyway. If he had his druthers, he’d serve Miller or Coors or something equally proletariat, but he didn’t want her to think he was completely classless. At heart, he was a country boy who cleaned up well. Sometimes, he, Clay, and Heidi hung out on the back porch at the old Dowd place with a case of cheap beer between them. They’d put their feet up on the railing, drink, and stare at the fields. No talking necessary.
It’d been a long time since he’d wondered if another woman could fit as well as they did on that porch.
Following his gut, he put back the dark lagers he’d grabbed from the fridge door and pulled a couple of cans of cheap shit out of the box, just to see what would happen.
He popped the top on hers and set it in front of her.
“Thank you.” She pulled it nearer and, upon closer inspection, rolled her eyes at it.
Well, I guess I know something about you now.
“There was this really obnoxious guy in college who drank this stuff,” she said, bringing it to her lips. “He literally reeked of it. I think he was sweating beer through every one of his pores. He was always hitting on me, and he was so gross about it.” She took a sip of the beer and sighed. “Every time I see this brand at the grocery store, I shudder because I think of him.”
