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“Josh.” He closed the distance between them, offering her a handshake. “Nice to meet you.”
When their hands came together, she inspected his fingernails as a bellwether for his personal hygiene habits. Neat and trim. Thank goodness.
After five seconds, Josh raised an eyebrow and Clara released his hand with a sheepish smile.
Despite his impressive height and the fact that his shoulders had filled most of the door frame, she didn’t find him intimidating. His rumpled clothes and the mop of overgrown blond curls suggested he’d just rolled out of bed. Striking dark brows should have cast him as surly, but the rest of his face resisted brooding.
He was cute but not quite handsome. Not like Everett, whose mere presence still made her speech falter after all these years. Clara accepted this small form of mercy from the universe. She’d always found it impossible to talk to handsome men.
“Nice to meet you,” she echoed, adding, “Please don’t murder or molest me,” as an afterthought.
“You got it.” He raised both hands in a helpless gesture. “So . . . I guess that means we’ll be living together?”
“For the time being.” At least long enough for her to develop a contingency plan.
Josh peered into the open door of the bathroom. “Where’s Everett? He didn’t stick around to get you settled?”
Clara’s shoulders crept toward her ears. “The band needed to get on the road right away.”
“Pretty crazy, huh? Them getting invited to tour last minute?”
“Yeah.” She fought to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Wild.”
“Worked out for me, though. I couldn’t believe the lowball rent Everett asked for on a place this nice.”
Clara decided not to mention that Everett had inherited the house, free and clear, from his grandfather and likely only charged enough to cover the taxes. She massaged her temples, trying to ward off a monstrous headache. Whether it came from stress, jet lag, or dying dreams, she couldn’t say.
The longer she stood in this house, the more real the nightmare became. She sat back down on the couch when her vision swam.
“Hey, are you okay?” Her new roommate came to kneel in front of her, the way adults do when they want to speak to a small child. Clara glanced away from where his thighs strained the seams of his jeans.
He had a spattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. She focused on the one at the very center and spoke to it. “I’m fine. Just reckoning with the consequences of a multigenerational family curse. Pretend I’m not here.”
/> You’d think decades of old money and carefully monitored good breeding would weed out the Wheatons’ notorious inclination toward destructive behavior, but if the recent arrest of her brother, Oliver, was anything to go by, the longer their lineage grew, the grimmer the consequences of their behavioral missteps.
Comparatively, she’d gotten off easy with an old house and a broken heart.
Josh wrinkled his forehead. “Um, if you say so. Oh, hey, wait here a minute.”
As if she had anywhere else to go.
“I think I’ve got something that might help.” He strode into the kitchen and returned a moment later to press a cold can of beer into her hands. “Sorry I don’t have anything stronger.”
Clara wasn’t much of a beer drinker. But at this point, it couldn’t hurt. She popped the top and took a deep slug. “Blech.” Why did men insist on pretending IPAs tasted good? She dropped her head between her knees and employed a deep-breathing technique she’d observed once when accompanying her cousin to Lamaze class.
“Hey . . . uh . . . you’re not gonna toss your cookies, right?”
Bile rose in the back of her throat at the suggestion. This guy was about as helpful as every other man she knew. “Perhaps you could say something reassuring?”
After a few seconds, he blew out a breath. “Your body destroys and replaces all of its cells every seven years.”
Clara sat up slowly. “Okay, well”—she pursed her lips—“you tried. Thanks,” she said with dismissal.
“I read that in a magazine at the dentist’s office.” He shot her a weak smile. “Thought it was kinda nice. I figure it means no matter how bad we mess up, eventually we get a clean slate.”
“So you’re telling me in seven years, I’ll forget the fact that I uprooted my entire life and moved across the country because a guy who’s not even my boyfriend encouraged me to, and I quote, ‘follow my bliss’?”
“Right. Scientifically speaking, yes.”
