“You text?” My eyebrows practically shoot up to my hairline. I’ve never seen her on the Kitchen Krew Bulletin Board.
“I’ll ignore the insulting surprise in your tone, young lady. Isabella has been giving me lessons on the internets.” Oh, that should end well.
“That’s great!” I say gamely.
“Kindly try to get her home a little earlier next time, you hooligan, or I’ll have a word with my great-niece and she’ll put you straight.” That last bit is addressed to Blake. “She had us all worried sick.”
Next time? There won’t be one. That thought is a sharp pin-jab to my happiness balloon.
“My apologies, ma’am,” he says gravely. “It won’t happen again.”
The three of us troop into the elevator together in uncomfortable silence. When we reach Edna’s floor, she pauses in the doorway and gives Blake a warning look. “You see her to her door and make sure she gets inside safely, and then you take yourself on home. Back in my day, I wouldn’t have even had to ask, but these days young men think they can get away with anything.”
He does a little formal bow. “I will do that, ma’am.”
Blake and I ride the elevator two more floors to my apartment. I’m terribly aware of the sound of my own breathing. Can he hear my heart thundering in my chest?
We get to my door before Blake says, “Back in her day, the women wore chastity belts while the men rode off to fight the Hundred Years War.”
I stifle a laugh. “Now, now. She’s just looking out for my virtue, is all. As she frequently asks me, who’d buy a cow when they can get the milk for free?”
“She does not say that. Nobody says that!”
“Scout’s honor. She’s freaking obsessed with my bovine value.”
I pull my keys out of my purse, open all three locks, and fling the door open. “Honey, I’m home!” I sing out.
Blake’s eyes turn the color of a summer storm, and he looks like he just swallowed a bug. Is he jealous?
I burst out laughing. “You know I’m single, right? You seem to know everything else about me. In a not-at-all-creepy way.”
Without waiting for an answer, I step into the apartment. He follows me in. “Anyway, Isabella’s working an overnight tonight, so the only honey I’d be talking to would be Xena.” Why am I telling him that we have the apartment to ourselves?
You know why, a chiding inner voice taunts me.
Xena is curled up on her dog bed in the corner of the living room. She’s useless as a guard dog; she’s still snoring, her chest heaving and her lips fluttering dramatically.
He spares her a brief glance, then turns away quickly. There’s a strange, guarded defensiveness on his face.
Odd. He had the same look on his face when he saw me doing my dog-walking gig. “Did you get bitten by a dog when you were a child?”
He shakes his head. “No. We never had dogs when I was a kid. My parents were too busy and they were very house-proud. They wouldn’t have wanted the smell, or the shedding.” He says it with a kind of heavy finality, and walks into the middle of the living room, hands in his pockets.
A spark of sadness lights inside me and burns me in tender places. I grew up with dogs, and they’ve always been part of my life. I’m going to have to find a new home for Xena soon because of our landlord’s no-pet policy, but someday I’ll find a place where I can have all the dogs I want, and that number is going to be at least several. That’s non-negotiable.
Then again, this is Blake Hudson. Why am I even worrying about it? If anything ever were to happen between us, it would be a one-off. It’s not like he’s going to be in that future home full of dogs.
“Well. You’ve seen me safely home. Thank you for a lovely evening.”
“Can we just hang out a bit? I’m not ready to go home yet.” He lets out a sigh. “Alice and Tamara are gone. Whenever they visit, it feels like there’s all this noise and bustle and clamor filling every corner of the house, and then… For a couple of weeks afterwards, I’m kind of halfway expecting them to be there every time I sit down for breakfast.”
He looks so lost and sad when he says that. They went home, and he misses them. I’d be a terrible person to send him home to a big, empty house. Right? I’m not just rationalizing because I want him to stay and…chat.
“Sure, if you want. What about your driver, though?”
“I paid him for the whole night, which he loves, because he gets double overtime pay. I’ll tell him to go park the car until I call him.” He pulls out his cell phone and texts his driver, then turns the volume off.
Blake and me. Me and Blake. Under the same roof, and Isabella won’t be here for hours. Blake wants to spend time, alone, with me.
My throat is suddenly desert-dry. “I’m thirsty,” I croak, like a socially awkward frog. I clear my throat. “Ah-hem. Hem. Yes. Thirsty. Can I get you something to drink? We have bottled water.”
“Sure, that would be nice.”
We walk into the kitchen, which is the size of one of the smaller dressing rooms at Hudson’s. I get two bottles of water from the fridge, then open the gaily painted cabinet to fetch us two glasses. He’s looking around the apartment, checking it out the way anyone would when they go to a person’s house for the first time. As I pour us each a glass of water, I try to imagine it the way he must be seeing it.
Our cozy little space shrinks until it feels as if the walls are pressing right up against me. It’s so tiny. We live in a gerbil Habitrail. Isabella and I painted everything in colors that suddenly look gaudy, not bright and summery. The potted plastic palm tree with the Christmas lights in the corner isn’t clever and kitschy, it’s straight out of Trailer Trash Magazine.
And I wanted Blake in my bedroom, with my whimsical headboard made from a discarded section of picket fence and painted with daisies? I use wooden orange crates for bookshelves, for God’s sakes. Hudson’s madly chic bedding department flashes through my mind, with the five-thousand-dollar comforters and the beautiful staging. That’s what Blake’s used to. What was I thinking?
“It’s probably time for you to go home,” I mutter, my gaze falling to the floor.
“Don’t,” he says.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t be embarrassed about your apartment. It’s beautifully decorated. You have a great eye.”
I want to protest that I’m not embarrassed, but Blake’s piercing eyes would see right through me. “It’s all handmade.” I shrug apologetically.
“So are a lot of the items we sell. You know that. You piece things together perfectly.”
“It’s just got to be so different from what you grew up with.”
“You’d be surprised.” His mouth quirks up in a wry smile.
“Come on, Blake. You don’t have to lie to make me feel better about…” I wave my arm. “All this. I know what your life is like. I did some internet research on you after I got hired.”
His eyes twinkle with amusement. “You don’t say.” It did sound rather stalkerish.
A flush of embarrassment burns my cheeks. “You know what they say. Know thine enemy. You live in a gilded-era mansion in Lenox Hill, custom-built by your great-grandfather on your mother’s side. A ten-thousand-square-foot house, in Manhattan. I’m not hating on you for being rich, I’m just saying…when you pretend you’re like me, it comes off as patronizing.”