He slid me a sidelong look. “You think I’m exaggerating, don’t you?”
“Not necessarily.” I fiddled with a box of lightbulbs. “What I think that you might have is a bias influencing your perception of what’s happening in an old house that is likely to have decrepit fixtures, and interpreting that as being a personal vendetta against you, due to the fact that you are stressed over the amount of work to be done, and thus are looking for outside forces to blame for any potential failure.”
“You really took away a lot from those psychology classes, didn’t you?” he said, climbing down from the chair and going over to where an electrical panel darkened the wall between the kitchen and the pantry. He flipped a switch. The light fixture made a humming noise, then popped, and the light went out.
Alden sighed.
“Sorry,” I said, holding out the box of lights. “Try again?”
He shook his head. “It won’t do any good. The house doesn’t want to be fixed. What are you doing here?”
“I assume you mean here in the kitchen when I should be out working?”
“Yes.”
“I’m on my lunch break.”
He set down his tools and stretched, wiggling his shoulders around in a manner that warned they were feeling tight and uncomfortable. “I could use a break, too.”
“Good. We can have lunch together, although all I was going to make was a grilled cheese sandwich.”
“That sounds fine to me.”
I got off the counter and went into the still faintly smoky-smelling pantry to get the necessary ingredients. While I assembled the sandwiches and got them onto a small skillet to cook, Alden put away his tools, andtidied up the bits of broken glass that came from a bulb he said had been stuck in the fixture.
“What are you going to do next?” I asked when we sat down to our sandwiches, a bowl of grapes, and corn chips. “More fixing things, or renovation work?”
“I can’t renovate anything until I get some supplies,” he answered around a mouthful of sandwich. “I may try to do that later today.”
“I have an idea,” I said, popping a grape into my mouth.
“Oh?” He shot me a look that was partly wary, and partly steamy. “Does it involve touching my leg again? Or any other part of me?”
“Actually, it does.” I wiped my fingers, and smiled at him. “I thought you might like to try the melee shindig this afternoon. Vandal is taking walk-ins for the afternoon class, and I figured it would be a good way for you to work off some stress.”
“Pretending to be a medieval knight?” Alden said, and shook his head. “I’m not one for playacting.”
“I meant the combat part of it. I watched a bit of it earlier—guys put on all sorts of armor, and learn how to beat the tar out of each other without actually killing the other man. Or hurting him seriously. It’s pretty awesome-looking.”
Alden pulled a face. “That’s not my idea of the best way to spend an afternoon.”
“OK. It was just a suggestion.” I finished my lunch, gathered up my plate, and gave it a quick wash. “Have fun fixing up stuff.”
“Thank you. I suspect it will be a nonstop laugh-fest.”
I paused as I was leaving the kitchen, glancing back to where Alden sat alone at the table. He looked a littleforlorn, sitting in the big empty kitchen all by his lonesome, tempting me into offering to teach him archery, but I reminded myself that although I was trying to show him he didn’t have to be awkward around me, that didn’t mean I could pressure him into doing things that I thought he’d enjoy.
“Which is just a shame,” I said aloud, then glanced at my watch before trotting down the hall toward the back of the house. “Because I bet he’d be sexy as hell as a knight.”
Chapter 8
Dear Mercy.
Alden consulted the slim volume of obscure Edwardian poetry he found propping up a coal scuttle in what used to be a maid’s room on the uppermost floor of the house.I saw this, and thought of you.
I sit and watch the shadows pass,
Grey shadows on a grey water.
