I looked up at the rafters again, trying to calculate the distance between where the stepladder would put me and where the garland actually needed to go. The math was not encouraging.
“Maybe we could ask Mr. Bennett to bring a taller ladder tomorrow?” I suggested without much hope.
“Or,” Declan said, “I could lift you up.”
The casual way he said it, like offering to boost me up to hang Christmas decorations, was a perfectly normal morning activity, made something flutter in my stomach that had nothing to do with festival planning.
“Lift me up?” I repeated, trying to sound like this was a practical suggestion rather than something that would involve Declan’s hands on my body in ways that were definitely not covered in Mrs. Peterson’s planning manual.
His eyes heated up in ways I hadn’t seen for a while before he squashed it, making me think it was a figment of my overactive imagination. “I’m six-two, you’re what, five-four? If I lift you up, you should be able to reach the rafters easily.” He gestured at the offending ceiling as if this were a simple mathematical problem rather than a scenario that would require us to be in very close physical contact.
“Five-three,” I corrected, and then immediately felt ridiculous for caring about the distinction when the real issue was that being lifted by Declan would involve his hands on mywaist and my hands on his shoulders, my pussy in his face and probably a level of trust and physical awareness that our relationship definitely didn’t need.
“Even better,” he said with a smile that suggested he hadn’t noticed my internal panic about the logistics of being lifted. “So what do you say? Ready to get creative with our problem-solving?”
The reasonable response would have been to suggest we wait for proper equipment. The sensible response would have been to scale back our decoration ambitions to things that could be accomplished with the available stepladder.
“I’ll flatten you.”
He blinked a couple of times as if he had misheard me. “I’m stronger than I look,” he retorts.
Now, I felt bad. Did I just insult him by insulting myself? I eye him up critically. “Do you work out?” I asked, my voice slightly higher pitched than normal.
“Five times a week. Usually.”
“Usually?”
“Back home.”
Back home. New York. Six hours away, where he has his fancy life and probably a fancy girlfriend.
I wanted to refuse, but instead, I heard myself saying, “Okay, but if you drop me, I’m blaming you in the incident report.”
“Fair enough,” Declan said, moving to stand beneath the section of rafter where we needed to hang the first strand of garland. “Though I should probably mention that my track record for not dropping people is actually pretty good.”
“Pretty good?” I climbed onto the stepladder, which made me taller than Declan, but still nowhere near the ceiling. “That’s not exactly a confidence-inspiring endorsement.”
“Fine. My track record for not dropping people is perfect,” he amended. “I’ve never dropped anyone I was lifting for decoration purposes.”
“How many people have you lifted for decoration purposes?”
“You’ll be the first,” he admitted with a grin that was entirely too charming. “But I’m confident in my technique.”
“Your technique,” I repeated, trying not to think about what his technique might involve in terms of hand placement and body contact. “Right. Okay. How do we do this?”
“Here,” Declan said, positioning himself directly in front of the stepladder, “put your hands on my shoulders for balance, and I’ll lift you from your waist.”
Simple instructions that somehow sounded like the most complicated thing I’d ever been asked to do.
I reached out tentatively, placing my hands on his shoulders through the soft wool of his sweater, and immediately understood why this had been a terrible idea. Declan definitely worked out. He was solid and warm and close enough that I could smell his cologne—something clean and masculine that made me want to lean closer and sniff him rather than focus on hanging Christmas decorations.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready,” I managed, though I was definitely not ready for the way his hands settled at my waist, large and warm and confident, or the way my entire body seemed to come alive at the contact.
“On three,” Declan said. “One, two...”
He lifted me smoothly, easily, like I weighed nothing at all, and suddenly I was high enough to reach the rafters but completely incapable of focusing on the garland because every nerve ending in my body was concentrated on the places where Declan was touching me and where his fucking face was. I heard him breathe in deeply, and I was morti-fucking-fied.
