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“I only have a small iguana named Ferdinand. He doesn’t eat much.”
“No pets.”
No sense of humor.
“No inviting your strip-club friends over.”
She groaned. He’d read the coupon and she deserved that.
“No smoking, no drugs. No possessions left all over the place. No mess in the kitchen. No parties, no loud music, no coming and going all times of the day and night. No loud sex. No sex anywhere but in the bedroom. No sleepover partn
ers. Thinking about it, my preference is that you live like a cloistered nun who has taken a lifelong vow of silence.”
“Why didn’t you cut to the chase and say no fun?”
He looked at the ceiling. “Have I made myself clear?”
Clear that he was a sad individual. She stuck out her hand and his eyes went down to her hand, then up to her face, hand, face, hand, face. “Perfectly. When can I move in?”
He put his hands in his pants pockets. “You’re not moving in.”
She waved hers between them. “Come on, Tom. You’ve got a spare room, I’ve got a small problem. Neither of us are secret bomb-building psychopaths. I don’t bite, scratch or smell bad. I don’t have a partner. I am a sexless desert. I have to give up all my friends anyway, because they’ll all promise to visit, but we know how that goes. I can get a head start on being lonely by living with you. I’ll eat out. I won’t mess up the living space. I’ll wear headphones and a blindfold at all times I’m on the premises. I’ll leave early and come home late, stay out on weekends. Once I resign next week, Cassidy Strauss is going to squeeze every ounce of blood they can get from me before I go. You’ll hardly know I’m there and I’ll be gone before you can wish you were nicer to me.”
“You’re not moving in.”
“I so am.”
“Sheer force of will does not make it so.”
But it goes a heck of a long way. Her motto in life; she’d had it inked on her ribs. “You just don’t realize how much you need me, Tom.”
“I need you about as much as I need a discount lap dance or a pet iguana called Ferdinand.”
She laughed. A lap dance might loosen him up. “Well, fancy that, you do have a sense of humor. There’s hope for you yet.”
He gave a resigned sigh and looked at his feet. “Why do they call these mixers happy hours? No one here is happy.”
“Jack and Derelie are.” They were headed for the door hand in hand. She waved and Jack stopped, spoke to Derelie and detoured toward them.
Tom’s eyes were still on his mirror-shined shoes. “See, now you’ve gone and made it worse by reminding me you chased Jack away.”
“What if I could bring him back so you could have your huddle? You’d rent me your room then?”
He slapped his hands on his thighs and leaned toward her. “No chance.”
“Good to see you two worked it out,” Jack said.
Flick grinned at Tom, daring him to wriggle out of this now. “He’s my hero.”
“Tom, you wanted a word earlier?” Jack said.
And that’s how Flick saved her money and her back and Tom O’Connell got himself a private audience with Haley and a roommate he didn’t want.
There ought to be a coupon for that.
Chapter Three
Flick Dalgetty played dirty pool. Of course, if Tom had spent more than half a second thinking about her, he’d have known that. He could’ve said no to her moving in. Instead he wrote his address on the back of the strip-club discount coupon and figured he’d grit his teeth and get through it because it was a fiscally sensible thing to do.
