I wanted to be the cool man of mystery who swept her off her feet for a surprise day of fun and bonding, but the reality was that she didn’t trust me, and I had a suspicion that she and I weren’t on the same page with a lot of things. So instead of forcing my way in and insisting she get dressed, I laid my cards on the table.
“I volunteer at an animal shelter on weekends when I’m at home. I’m heading in today, and thought you might like to join me. You get unlimited puppy cuddles and can hand feed the bunnies. There’s a cat called Garfield who is the embodiment of the cartoon. He has a death stare that scares the dogs from twenty yards away.”
Her eyes searched mine, fingers still gripping her door hard. What could I do to convince her? Perhaps that was the problem. I couldn’t make the decision for her, and trying to push seemed to make her leave faster.
I tucked my hands into my pockets and let her look. No secrets here, just someone who really wanted to spend the day with this uber defensive, but surprisingly interesting person.
A curl dropped over her eye, and she blew it away, raking her hand through her hair for good measure.
“Give me a couple of minutes to get dressed, and we’ll go.”
She slammed the door, only to open it a second later.
“You’d better wait in here. Just in case my mother does show up and we have to jump out the window.”
“We’re on the third floor.”
“You underestimate my desire to avoid my family.”
I chuckled at what I really hoped was a joke and stepped inside, closing the door behind me while she ran for her bedroom.
Little had changed since I was last in the space, but with our schedule, and the hours I knew she pulled, it wasn’t unexpected. There was a small collection of cups and glasses on her coffee table and a pile of clothing over the back of a dining chair.
The kitchen was relatively clean, though there were a couple of takeout containers by the trash can. I wondered what she would think of my obsessively neat space.
Wandering to the entry and back, I checked the door I assumed was Blair’s bedroom.
Still closed.
I strolled a circle of her living room, smiling at the picture from her hockey days and ended up back in the kitchen. Back to the coffee table, though this time I loaded up on the glasses and brought them with me back to the sink. Next time around, I retrieved the coffee mugs.
When Blair reappeared a little while later, I was elbow deep in dish soap, scrubbing dried queso off a plate.
“What are you doing?”
I whipped around and tried for a casual lean, cursing as I drenched my shirt.
“Ready to go?”
I could play this off, even if the pile of unfolded laundry haunted me for the rest of the day.
Grabbing the nearest dishtowel, I dried my hands and took in her outfit. A cute little T-shirt with a turtle print and “this is how I roll” stretched across her chest in a way I wasn’t at all noticing. There was a pink blush to her cheeks and lips that could have been makeup, and best of all, she was wearing my favorite jeans. The ones that cupped her ass perfectly.
I’d never considered myself an ass guy, but that seemed to be changing in Blair’s presence.
“You washed my dishes,” she said, ignoring my encouragement to get going.
“I have a short attention span. Idle hands and all that. Come on, my truck’s outside.”
She stared at me a moment longer before reluctantly allowing me to steer her out the front door.
“It’s weird to wash someone else’s dishes. You get that, right?” she asked as we belted in, and I started the engine.
“I do it at Oscar and Mia’s place all the time.”
She shook her head, staring out the window as we pulled away from the curb.
“It’s not far from here. The shelter, that is.”
