What a Bachelor Needs (Bachelor Auction Book 4)(12)
She bit her lip and looked around, looked at the floorboards and all the flotsam that he hadn’t yet swept away.
“I don’t like the cherry-wood colors or the yellows,” she murmured. “I don’t like the color it is now.” She shifted closer and glanced at the color chart on his phone.
“It’s a big room. You could go darker, cooler, with the floor,” he said. “To this day my mother still chooses dark floor coloring. Something about five sons and dirt magnets.”
“Makes sense. Would you price the walnut colored stain for me? It seems a shame to waste your saintly mother’s advice.”
“She’s not really a saint,” he pointed out helpfully. “Trust me, when we do something stupid, she’s a tyrant.”
“Does she consider skiing off the side of a mountain with a parachute strapped to your back an act of stupidity?”
“That one’s close to the top of her list, yeah. That and trying to befriend bear cubs. My brother Mac led that one. There were two of us, two of them. We thought they’d been abandoned. We were going to have our very own pet grizzlies.”
“I remember that about you,” she murmured. “A story for every occasion.”
“I’m taking that as a compliment.”
“Of course you are.” Her voice was dry, very dry, and he grinned.
“My brothers are going to love you. They’re forever trying to cut me down to size, too. I like to think it’s because I loom large and magnificent in their imaginations.”
The smile in her eyes gave way to a frown and then awkward silence.
“You loom pretty large in mine,” she said finally. “And you’re right – I did just snipe at you as a way of making you seem less impressive. I’m sorry. I’m going to stop that now and get on with being a grown up.”
“No. Hey, uh…” One minute she was warming to him and the next she was apologizing? For what? “Don’t sweat it. I’m usually the one inviting the pile on. I like it.”
“Why would you want to invite someone to mock you?”
Maybe because when he came home from this or that championship event, win or lose, he needed a way for his family to connect with him again, without all the awkwardness that came of him having gone places and experienced things they hadn’t. Likewise, they needed a way to touch base with him, a way back in to him. “Sometimes it’s about finding my way home,” he offered. “Staying in balance. Sometimes I need a reminder not to believe my own press. I need to remember that, more often than not, the life I lead is ridiculous.”
He could see the confusion in her face, the desire to understand. “The point is you didn’t offend me. You’re not going to offend me if occasionally I invite mockery and you deliver it. We’re coming at this from different places.”
“Yes.” But she was still wearing a frown. “Yes, we are. If someone tries to cut me down I take it as meant. Not a touch base. Not rebalancing. Criticism. And I don’t want to criticize you in order to make me feel…big.”
“Then I guess we’re going to have to find some other way of dealing with each other,” he offered after a moment’s pause. “Bear with me. I’m changing the habits of a lifetime here.”
“How about you just do what you do and say what you say, fanfare or otherwise, and I’ll try and reply honestly?”
“Can there be flirting?” He really needed to know. “Because if you tell me there can’t be flirting I’m likely to be struck speechless.” Her baby had started blowing bubbles at him and humming something that was definitely not the American anthem. Jett eyed the baby warily. “Is that normal?”
“Perfectly. She wants you to notice her.”
“Oh, baby flirting. Well, then. Hey, munchkin.”
Mardie smiled, and there was the sweet spot he wanted to be in when it came to this woman.
But then she looked at her feet, or maybe at the floor again, dark lashes sweeping down over those burnt-toffee colored eyes and he thought that maybe, just maybe, he could leave the automatic flirting with anything sentient at her front door in favor of actually figuring out how she might like to be treated instead.
“Yeah, so I’ll be away about an hour,” he muttered. “I’ll dump the carpet; get what I need from the mercantile. It’s going to get dusty once I get back and start sanding so I’ll shut the door and try and keep it contained to the one room. There’s a broom in the truck but I’m going to need a bucket and a mop. I might get a stain on by the end of the day, I might not. If not today, it’ll happen tomorrow.”
“Either way, I’m grateful.”
He tried to respond not with flirting but with the manners his mother had taught him. “You’re welcome.”
They stood there in silence while a wisp of something dark and sticky coiled in the air between them. He wanted to banter and flirt and be able to touch freely – he’d never been any different, and damned if he didn’t have a problem with the step back to polite formality. He didn’t do polite formality and distance. Did he?
He certainly didn’t do it easily.
“I’ll see you later, then,” she said awkwardly.
“Yep.” While her little girl blew bubbles in his direction and batted her eyelashes, and he tried to resist the attention.