Good Girl(45)

LYDIA



Rhys disappears into his home office almost as soon as we return to the hotel. Besides his bedroom and the room he's using as an office there's a spare bedroom, but Rhys places my suitcase in his room and tells me to unpack. So I do. I line up my shampoo and conditioner next to his in the shower. I hang my clothes next to his in the closet and I pretend this is all normal and that he likes me. Likes me a girlfriend amount, not a hooker amount, which is ridiculous because no one moves their girlfriend in after one date.

I check the fridge and find it empty save for bottled water, craft private-label beer from Hennigan's, orange juice, a carton of eggs and a bottle of mustard. There's a basket of fresh fruit on the counter so I help myself to a pear and then stare at the view of the Vegas Strip while I eat it.

After that I've officially run out of things to do and I think it's been all of half an hour since I got here so I doubt Rhys is emerging from his office anytime soon. So I resort to my normal Sunday afternoon activity: pajamas and home renovation shows on cable. I'm in my favorite pair of sheet pajama pants and a tank top, sprawled out on Rhys's couch waiting to find out which house a couple from Downers Grove, Illinois chooses on their house hunt, when the front door opens and Canon walks in.

"Oh, hey, I didn't realize you were here," he says, spotting me halfway to the bedroom Rhys has his office set up in. I'm slumped on the couch with my feet on the coffee table and my phone in my hand playing a word game while I wait to find out if location trumps yard space for the Illinois couple. "Have you moved in?" Canon asks with a wide grin, eyeing the way I'm sprawled on the sofa in pajamas.

"Basically," I say, shrugging my shoulder as if I've got no idea how this happened either. Mostly I avert my gaze because he just saw me yesterday wearing a sheer nightie auctioning my virginity and that is super-embarrassing.

"Wow. This is so much better than I anticipated," he says, laughing to himself as he continues down the hall to find Rhys.

The Illinois couple picks the house with the good yard and the outdated kitchen. I score thirty-four points spelling the word ‘jeed.’ I don't even know what that word means. I mostly just move the letters around until I get a word worth a decent number of points and then I hit play.

Rhys and Canon emerge from the office, Canon telling us to have a good night, and then he's gone. Rhys flips the safety deadbolt as the door closes, walks over to where I'm sitting and stops.

"Dinner?"

Oh.

"You want me to get dressed?" I toss the blanket off of myself and place my feet on the floor and stand. Getting redressed on a Sunday is so not my idea of a good time.

"No, we'll eat here."

"Eat what? You don't have any food." I drop back onto the sofa with my blanket, relieved I don't have to get dressed.

"We'll order from the kitchen. What do you want?"

"Do you order all your meals from the kitchen?"

"Pretty much," he says like this isn't a weird thing. I wonder how I'm going to make it without Del Taco. I bet I can get Payton to bring me an iced java coffee on her way to work. "What do you want?" He's walked over to the kitchen and picked up some kind of smart screen device that I saw earlier on a charging dock next to the stove. The stove that still had the instruction manual inside of it.

"I don't know. What do they have? Do you have a menu?"

"They have whatever you want."

"Whatever I want?"

"Yes."

"So I could order…" I search my brain for something really outlandish and come up totally blank. Surely they can make a cheeseburger or a pepperoni pizza or a chicken salad or a turkey sandwich. "I could order lemon pie for dinner and they'd bring it?"

"I have no idea how long it would take but yes, they'd bring it. Did you want lemon pie?" He's tapping on the screen and I hope he's not just ordered me a lemon pie because I don't actually like lemon pie. It was just the wildest thing I could come up with on short notice, which is really really lame.

"What are you having?"

"Grilled chicken, a baked potato and broccoli."

"Oh! I know what I want." I'm sort of excited now because this is my favorite thing ever, but making it myself requires buying so many ingredients that it's really not cost-effective. He raises his brow in question so I continue. "I'd like a salad with shredded chicken, corn, black beans, avocado, tomatoes, cheese and cilantro lime dressing on the side."

Rhys taps in my order. "No pie?"

"Err, no. I was joking about the pie." I say it super-casually, like a girl who would never order pie. But the idea of a magical kitchen where I can order anything is too much temptation. "Do they have birthday-cake-flavored ice cream?"

"Isn't that just vanilla?"

"No! No, it's not just vanilla." I huff and shake my head. "You're really sheltered, Rhys. You've been alive twelve whole years longer than I have yet there's so much you still don't know."

Rhys stares at me over the tablet without speaking then shakes his head as if he's snapping himself out of his thoughts.

"If they don't someone will run out and get it," he says as he finishes tapping our order in before tossing the device onto the sofa.