Good Girl(47)

"So, um, how are we doing this with work?" I ask him during the next commercial break.

"What do you mean?" He forks a piece of chicken into his mouth. I know this is a little crazy but he's a very sexy chewer.

"I'm sorta living here."

"For a month."

"Or until you get bored with me."

He turns his head and glances at me when I say that, a flicker of something crossing his expression before he turns back to the television.

"I know that Sutton Travel has a fairly liberal fraternization policy," I say, referring to the parent company that owns the Windsor, and trying to guide the conversation back to the issue at hand, "but people are going to see me here, like Mitchell just did. Or see me coming and going or using the executive elevator to get to work in the morning. They're going to assume that I'm your girlfriend, unless you want me to sneak in and out? I could take the elevator down to the parking garage and then walk over to the employee entrance and take that elevator to the fourth floor. That would work." I hold my breath and wonder if this is the moment he realizes he only liked me in a one-night way, not in a month-long way, and tells me to go.

I really like him in a month-long way.

At least.

Maybe even in a several-months way.

I know my liking seems a little presumptuous, a little naive, but you know how some men have that thing? A presence? That thing that sucks the air out of the room when they walk in, when your eyes gravitate towards them even before you should know they're there? That pull isn't normal—it cannot be, because I've met lots and lots of men during my lifetime and I've only ever felt it with Rhys.

I don't know how long that thing lasts. Obviously this is my first time experiencing that thing, but it can't possibly just flip off or extinguish in a month. It's already been a month since the first time I felt it, that first night in the bar when he was with his drunk British friend (who I've since pieced together is the CEO of Sutton Travel and Rhys' cousin, so I should probably stop referring to him as the drunk British friend in case I ever meet him) and the thing is not diminishing. The thing has only gotten stronger. And now I have feelings for him as a person in addition to the thing, which is clearly some kind of voodoo sexual pull.

But maybe this is the moment that Rhys realizes he's not feeling the thing. Maybe at all, or maybe not enough to want me here. Maybe he had his fill of me and that's that. There must be a reason he doesn't have a girlfriend, right? A reason he prefers dancers, strippers, whatever his normal preference is. Maybe he likes the variety.

"No, I don't want you to sneak anywhere. Come and go as you please. I'll take care of the office in the morning."

I poke at a piece of shredded chicken in my salad, which is delicious, way better than when I have to make it myself, and contemplate what ‘taking care of it’ means. I want to ask questions about that, but he's turned his attention back to the television and his expression didn't really bode well for questioning. Plus I trust him when he says he'll take care of it. The questions are really just for my own nosy interest so I decide to let it drop until tomorrow.

We watch the rest of the episode in silence. The kitchen wall comes down, but it does require a thirty-five-hundred-dollar support beam to make their dream kitchen a reality. Then they get hit with an unexpected roof leak and the contingency budget is blown. It all ends well though, when they find tile for the renovated master bath on clearance and call in a friend to help them lay it themselves in order to stay on budget. The renovation finishes on time and seven thousand dollars over their original eighty-thousand-dollar budget.

"What did you think?" I ask him when the episode ends.

"Hmm," he replies, as if he needs to mull it over. We've finished our dinners and somehow—I really could not explain how it happened—sometime in the last ten minutes of the episode I ended up with my head on Rhys' chest, both of us reclined on the sofa. "What is it about it that appeals to you?" He's running his fingers through the strand of my ponytail and it feels just as good as the mini-foot massage I got earlier. I decide Rhys is good at the touching too. It's very comforting, reassuring in a wordless way. Also, there might be a thirty percent chance I'm falling for him.

"I love seeing what's possible. At first glance that house was so dated and dark. But it was a hidden gem, you know? It just needed the right person to come along and uncover its potential. With just a little bit of effort, relocating the laundry room and renovating the kitchen meant suddenly the house was a bright spacious home the way it was always meant to be."

"A lot of effort is more like it."

"Sometimes the effort is worth it." I say it softly, a bit more to myself than to him. I'm playing with the loop on the waistband of his jeans, running the material between my finger and thumb, my eyes on the television.

"They could have just bought a move-in-ready house and skipped the hassle."

"Maybe. But maybe they really wanted that particular home and none of the move-in-ready homes turned them on." He stills beneath me, his hand pausing in my hair. "Maybe they had a real-estate fetish for that lot or something. Never mind," I finish in a rush. I think my real-estate analogies might be too revealing, yet I can't stop. "Plus every episode has a happily-ever-after."