Match Me If You Can (Chicago Stars #6)(83)

She banged her shin against the dishwasher door. “Ouch! You want to stay here tonight?”

He looked up from the ice cream carton with a slightly puzzled expression, as if he didn’t understand her question. “I haven’t slept in two days. Is it a problem? I promise I’m too tired to jump you if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Of course I’m not worried.” She occupied herself pulling the trash can out from under the sink. “I suppose it’s okay. But Nana’s old bedroom faces the alley, and tomorrow’s garbage day.”

“I’ll survive.”

Seeing how tired he was, she really couldn’t understand why he hadn’t waited until tomorrow and called with the news about Keri. Unless he didn’t want to be alone tonight. Maybe his feelings for Keri went deeper than he was letting on. Some of the air leaked out of her happiness bubble.

“I’ll carry that out.” He stuck the ice cream back in the freezer and took the trash bag she’d just bundled up.

It was all too domestic. The late night, the cozy kitchen, shared chores. She in her pajamas with no bra. The mood-swing roller coaster she’d been riding for weeks took another dip.

When he returned from trash detail, he locked the door behind him and nodded toward the backyard. “That car…Let me guess. Nana’s?”

“Sherman’s more a personality than a car.”

“You actually drive that thing where people can see you?”

“Some of us can’t afford a BMW.”

He shook his head. “I guess if this matchmaking gig doesn’t work out, you could paint it yellow and stick a meter on the dashboard.”

“I’m sure you amuse yourself.”

He smiled and headed for the front of the house. “How about showing me my bedroom, Tinker Bell?”

This was too weird. She flipped off the light, determined to keep it laid-back. “If you happen to be one of those people who doesn’t like mice, pull the sheet over your head. That generally keeps them away.”

“I apologize for making fun of your car.”

“Apology accepted.”

He grabbed his suitcase and climbed the steps to the small, square upstairs hallway, which was cut up with a series of doors.

“You can take Nana’s old bedroom,” she said. “Bathroom next to it. That’s the living room. It was my mother’s bedroom when she was a kid. I sleep on the third floor.”

He set down his suitcase and went over to stand in the living room doorway. The outdated gray-and-mauve decorating scheme looked hopelessly shabby. A section of yesterday’s newspaper had fallen to the sculpted tweed carpet, and the book she’d been reading lay open on the gray sofa. A pickled oak armoire holding a television occupied the space between two rattly double-hung windows, which were topped with poofy valances in faded gray and mauve stripes. In front of the windows, a matching pair of white metal stands with curly legs held more of Nana’s African violet collection.

“This is nice,” he said. “I like your house.”

At first she thought he was kidding, but then she realized he was sincere. “I’ll trade you,” she said.

He gazed toward the open door in the hallway. “You sleep in the attic?”

“It’s where I stayed when I was a kid, and I kind of got used to it.” “Tinker Bell’s lair. This I have to see.” He headed for the narrow attic stairs.

“I thought you were so tired,” she called out.

“Making this the perfect time for me to see your bedroom. I’m harmless.”

She didn’t believe that for a moment.

The attic with its twin dormers and sloping ceilings had become the repository for all of Nana’s discarded antiques: a cherry four-poster bed, an oak bureau, a dressing table with a gilded mirror, even an old dressmaker’s mannequin from the days when Nana had kept herself busy by sewing instead of matchmaking. One dormer held a cozy armchair and ottoman, the other a small walnut desk and an ugly, but efficient, window air conditioner. Annabelle had recently added blue-and-white toile curtains to the dormer windows, a matching toile bedspread, and some French prints to complement the miscellaneous landscapes that had drifted up here.

She was glad she’d tidied up earlier, although she wished she hadn’t overlooked the pink bra lying on the bed. His eyes wandered to it, then drifted to the mannequin, currently outfitted in an old lace tablecloth and a Cubs hat. “Nana?”

“She was a fan.”

“So I see.” He gazed up at the sloping ceiling. “All this needs is a couple of skylights, and it’d be perfect.”

“Maybe you should concentrate on decorating your own place.”

“I guess.”

“Honestly, Heath, if I had that gorgeous house and your money, I’d turn it into a showplace.”

“What do you mean?”

“Big furniture, stone tables, great lighting, contemporary art on the wall—huge canvases. How can you stand living in such an amazing house and not doing anything with it?”

He looked at her so strangely that she grew uncomfortable and turned away. “Nana’s bedroom has a temperamental window shade. I’ll go fix it and get you some towels.”

She hurried downstairs. The faint scent of Avon’s To a Wild Rose still clung to Nana’s room. She turned on the small china dresser lamp, put away the extra blanket she’d left at the foot of the bed, and fixed the shade. In the bathroom, she stowed the Tampax box from last week and draped a clean set of towels over the old chrome rod.