Rob had thought he had a good idea of what Kari’s legs might look like. Turns out, jeans—even skinny jeans—were far too concealing for any real idea. Rob hadn’t ever thought of himself as a leg, ass, or breast man. Kari’s legs might have him rethinking that policy, though.
Though her ass in that ratty old cotton looked pretty good to him too. And—
Shut. It. Down. His forehead was damp. It was just warm in here. That was all. Which meant he had to work quickly so they could start to roll the walls before the cut-in edge dried too much. Just a few more feet and he could get to the rolling. And get the hell out of here. Away from temptation.
Back to rattling around in his own house. Mere yards away. Where he would probably be plagued with calls or texts from Mia asking why he wasn’t dating the perfectly nice single lady next door.
Who, he reminded himself, had made it clear in the car that she didn’t want anything more than friendship. So. That should be the end of it.
He completed his part of the cutting-in and looked to see where Kari was with her part of the task. She was only a short way behind him, just a few feet to go. He got down from the ladder and looked at what she had done. It was nice, even work. Unsurprising, considering the good job she’d made of the motif in the living room.
“Did you study as an artist?” he asked.
She looked up from her crouch at the baseboard. “Why do you ask?”
“Your sketching. The nice job you did in the living room. You seem to have a gift and you handle paint well.”
Her mouth tightened as she dipped her brush and swiped color along the wall. “Thanks. I took as much art as I could while I was in school. I’ve enjoyed it as a hobby ever since.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s what?” She didn’t look up from where she was connecting the line of paint at the baseboard.
“You’ve never done more with it?”
“How should I?” Rising to her feet she waved her free hand down her legs. “Voila. No housemaid’s knee.”
Rob’s jaw tightened at her calling attention to her legs. “I mean…like I said. You’re gifted. You have an eye and…I don’t know.”
“That’s sweet.” She picked up her paint pot. “Rolling now?”
“I’m sorry. Did I offend you?”
“No.” The tightness in her face told a different story.
“I think I did. But—”
She held up a hand. “I’m not offended, but can we not do the whole, ‘Oh, that is really nice, you could make so much money from doing that artistic thing’ conversation? Because the economics don’t work. I’ve done the math.”
With effort, Rob swallowed the spurt of defensive irritation that had swelled up when she lifted her hand. “What do you mean?”
“Sorry if you meant something else, but when people find out you can knit or draw or do…basically anything creative, they immediately want to know why you don’t do it for a living. And it’s usually not practical. Like, at all. The economics are totally skewed.”
Almost in spite of himself, Rob was intrigued. “What do you mean?”
“Just one example? Say I knit someone a pair of socks. I use a thick yarn, which means they knit up fast. Maybe I can do them in a weekend if that’s pretty much all I do. The skein I knit them from costs twenty dollars. Which is cheap, if you want good yarn.”
“Twenty dollars for a pair of socks?” Rob’s mind reeled. He bought his socks in a five-pack at Costco for ten dollars.
Kari nodded. “You’re not even factoring in my work. One sock? Maybe six hours of work. Two socks? Congratulations. Your handmade socks are now over a hundred dollars at just minimum wage. Even if you use the cheapest yarn possible, the labor costs mean that everyone’s cute comment about how you could quit your job and do this for a living are totally bananas.” Her hand sliced down in a gesture of finality. “I’m a good office manager and I make okay money. I do that for a living. I craft and do art for love.”
She was right. He hadn’t thought it through. He wondered what it might feel like to be on the receiving end of Kari’s art created for love. He’d be willing to bet it felt fantastic.
“Can we roll the walls now?” Kari asked with forced brightness. She had forgotten how exhausting this conversation was. The whole, Oh! You can do this creative thing! Followed by an immediate demand that you abandon your actual career in pursuit of some artistic pipe dream.
“Sure.”
Rob’s instant capitulation made Kari tilt her head. “That was easy.”
He shrugged. “Mia wants to be in publishing. I’ve heard her stories. And she doesn’t even want to be on the writer’s end of the industry. Getting into the editorial side can be hard enough.”
Kari reflected on the flood of applications they got at work for every rare editorial opening. “True. Sorry if I sounded defensive.”
“No, I get it. Let’s get that color up.” Rob poured paint into two roller pans and showed her how to load the roller and get started by painting a big W, then filling in with easy strokes until the coverage was nice and even. Kari moved to the opposite wall and started rolling. It was incredibly satisfying, seeing the soft green blossom across the wall’s surface. And the repetitive motion was soothing.
The wet sound of the thick paint reminded her of sex, though. It had been such a long time. So long since she had given up on the idea of dating or relationships, just let that part of her life fall away as her friends paired off and she…didn’t. And with no relationships, no sex. Just a ménage with Buzz and Vibe, her favorite vibrators she kept in her nightstand drawer.
The last lover she’d had was…good lord. Had five years just passed like that? She and Max had had a nice relationship. It was casual, they enjoyed each other’s company. The sex was nice. Not mind-blowing, but he had been considerate and attentive and knew where the clitoris was. Then he got a new job in Seattle and that was that.
Slick, slick, slick. Her roller ran across the wall, rhythmic and lascivious. She glanced over her shoulder at Rob, his back to her, seeming to be completely focused on his task. Her gaze dropped to his ass and she swallowed and turned around again, bending to load more paint on her roller.
She had no business thinking about his ass or any other of his body parts. But damn, it was a nice ass. His old, faded jeans rode a little low on his hips. No high-waisted “dad jeans” for dad-jokey Rob Fox.
Great, now she was completely worked up and flustered from the sound of paint and the sight of a nice ass. At least she had managed to get to the nightstand where Buzz and Vibe lived before Rob did. That would have been just perfect, having the drawer slide open and dump them on the floor, silicone bouncing off the hardwood. The perfect metaphor for her nonexistent love life and the way she seemed to slide from one awkward moment to the next with this man.
She reached the end of the wall she was working on and realized Rob had started painting the last wall. “Wow. That went fast.”
“Small room. You can start pulling the tape up if you want.”
Glad for something to do that didn’t involve watching Rob’s backside, she bent and pulled at the edge of the tape. It came up in a long, satisfying strip, the sloppy bits of paint that had dripped magically peeled away from the baseboard.
“Wow. This is great.” Kari balled up the tape between her hands and bent to get the next strip. “It looks fantastic.”
Rob made a funny sound in his throat.
Great idea, genius. Ask her to do something that requires her to bend over a lot. He tried to keep his eyes rigidly fixed on the wall in front of him, but he ran out of wall to paint before she ran out of tape to take up. Swallowing hard, he poured the excess paint back in the can and stripped the roller covers into a trash bag.
“I’ll just take these to rinse in your utility sink,” he told her and then fled to the basement where he got the roller pans and brushes cleaner than they had any right to be. Mia’s words floated through his head as he rinsed a brush. You’re impulsive, Dad. I’d be willing to bet that ninety-nine percent of your dating issues were you rushed in too fast.
Could she have had a point? Granted, when he was dating he had been juggling fatherhood and his job. The relationships had had a weird rhythm to them—intense for a week when Mia was at her mom’s, then on hold the next week when his daughter was with him. Had that exacerbated whatever issues he had with picking women? Had it given them the wrong impression? What kind of impression was he giving Kari?
He was pensive as he went back up the stairs and rejoined Kari in her bedroom. It looked fresh and more personal, somehow. “What now?” she asked.
“Well, you can either watch paint dry or I can take you out to lunch. Can’t move the furniture back in until the paint has cured.”
Her brows pinched together. “Does that mean I can’t sleep in here tonight?”
“You might not want to. It will probably still smell like paint.”
“Ugh.” Kari’s nose wrinkled. “I hadn’t thought about that. I guess it’s the couch for me.”
That’s right. She doesn’t have a bed in her guest room. “Would you get any sleep at all? I mean, you’re almost as tall as I am.”
“One of my few extravagances was getting a couch long enough for me to stretch out on,” she said. “Naps. Naps are important.”
“Still not the best way to sleep for a whole night,” he said, an idea that was either wonderful or terrible taking shape in his mind.
She waved a hand. “I’ll be fine. But let me take you out for lunch.”
“Let’s get everything tidied up, at least.”
“You know, if I hadn’t seen your office last week, I would find your commitment to keeping my home improvement projects neat very impressive.”
“And…since you have?”
“I just find it very confusing.”
“I’m a deep and complex individual,” he said, taking two corners of the tarp while she did the same at the other end of the bed.
She glanced at him as they started to fold the big sheet of plastic. “Oh. Really?”
“No. Shallow and inconsistent. Ask my daughter if you don’t believe me.”
“I doubt she would say anything of the kind.”
“Maybe not. She did tell me I was impulsive, though.” Which, he realized, stung coming from his daughter. He’d tried so hard to give her stability. Had he failed somehow?
“Are you?”
“I guess I was. For a long time. Not sure if I am now. The circumstances haven’t come up for many years.”
“What do you mean?” She took the folded tarp from him and held it against her chest.
“Dating. Women.”
“Ah.” She looked pensive. Suddenly, he realized it was possible that there was someone in her life. She had never mentioned anyone, but he also hadn’t asked.
“What about you?” he asked.
Her eyes flicked up, then down. “I’m definitely not impulsive.”
He gritted his teeth. “I meant dating, but that’s probably none of my business.”
“Oh, no. Haven’t for years.” She stooped to pick up the paint can and he stared at her.
“Really?”
“Why’s that so surprising? You just said the same thing about yourself.”
“Yeah, but somehow…I don’t know.” He waved a hand at her. “You’re…”
“Too tall.”
I was going to say sexy. “Too tall for who?”
“For most men. They seem to like women who are about Mia’s size, even if they’re taller than I am. And if they’re shorter…”
“You’re not into them?”
“No, that’s not it at all. Usually they’re not into me. And sometimes they’re too into the height—kind of a fetish thing.” She stuck her tongue out. “Guys who are into ‘Amazons.’ It’s kind of gross.”
“How so?” God, he hoped his appreciation for her height wasn’t gross.
“They do things like tell you that they’re into being dominated after you’ve exchanged about five words.”
Rob spluttered a surprised laugh. “Really?”
She nodded, a cynical look on her face. “Yeah. It’s like, dude, I’m okay with being able to see the top of your head. But you can keep your sexual preferences to yourself until we’ve known each other for five minutes, okay?”
“Guys really do that?” Rob’s mouth dropped open and he shook his head.
Kari nodded, remembering. “Oh, yes. And I have friends’ stories from the online dating world that would probably curl your hair. Another reason I don’t date is because I can’t cope with the idea of what kinds of messages I might get in response to putting that I was almost six feet tall in my profile. ‘Amazon’ would be the least of it, I’m sure.”
“It’s unoriginal, too. I would have said Viking Shield Maiden,” Rob said. But at least it was clear from the set of his eyebrows and the tilt of his mouth that he was joking.
“Yup. That’s me. Totally scary.”
“Put a broadsword in your hand and leather armor—never mind,” he said as she started to laugh. “Now I’m just as bad as those other guys.”
“But see, you managed to know me for a week or so before you busted out your leather armor fantasies. That’s a little…less unacceptable?”
“Oof.” Rob reprised his stabbed-in-the-gut act. The funny little gesture warmed her, reminiscent as it was of his routine with Mia.
“Let me get this stuff put away before this thing slices my fingers clean through,” she said. The wire handle on the paint can was digging into her hand.
“Let me get that,” he said, taking the can from her. “Ow,” he said, cradling her hand and raising his eyebrows at the thin, angry red line that striped her fingers.
“It’ll fade,” she said, pulling back her hand and curling and uncurling her fingers, uncomfortably aware of the zing his touch had sent through her. “I’m starving. Let’s get something to eat, huh?”
“Sure.” He cleared his throat and they finished getting the painting things put away in silence, the awkwardness stretching between them like something elastic and sticky.
“Any idea of where you want to go for lunch?” If Kari hoped her words might magically re-set them back to the moment she had pulled her hand away, the hope died a swift death at his solemn gaze.
“I’m not picky. And Mia would probably say I’m ten minutes from going from merely hungry to what she calls ‘hangry’ and not responsible for my actions. There’s a diner downtown that does good basic stuff if you’re into that.”
She shrugged and stuffed her fists in the pockets of her shorts. “Anything you like. It’s on me, so if you want to go crazy, now’s your chance.” The weak joke also fell flat. God, her feelings were getting out of control.
He nodded. “Diner it is. I’ll drive.”
They headed for the front door where Kari paused and turned to him. “I still have your projector. Did you need it back?”
“Do you want to use it for something else?” He eyed her warily. She wondered if he thought she was trying to sever ties with him by giving it back.
“I’d love to. I was thinking about doing some other stuff in the kitchen. But doesn’t it belong to your company?”
A tiny smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “Don’t worry about it. We have three of them in our inventory and I don’t think we’ve ever had more than one in use at a time. Keep it as long as you want.”
“As long as I’m not going to get you in trouble.”
He leaned toward her as if to whisper secrets in her ear. “It’s okay. I’m the boss.”
“Ooh.” She laid a hand on her breastbone, feigning being impressed.
“Not gonna lie. It’s good to be I.T. king.”
She laughed outright at that. “I’m imagining you with a crown made of circuit boards.”
And just like that, they were back to their easy companionship.