“What?”Knox frowned.“Why?”
“Because you’re still too pissed off.”Stomping the snow off his work boots, Jesse lifted his hand to the door, then paused.“Is that an alligator?”
“I think so,” Knox said, studying the brass door knocker.“Trust Lou.”
“I like it,” Jesse decided, then lifted the alligator’s tail to bang it against the door.“It’s heavy.Solid brass.”
Knox grunted, intrigued in spite of himself, then forced himself back to the matter at hand.“You don’t have to do the talking.”
“Yes, I do.I’m not taking a punch in the face for you tonight,” Jesse said, then smiled his most charming smile when the door opened.“Hello, Lou.”
The woman was a short and curvy sloe-eyed beauty.She had a heart shaped face, a lush mouth, and skin the color of rich, smooth cream.She had a smattering of freckles across her pert nose, a mass of curly red hair currently tied back in a black bandana, and was wearing a faded Tulane University sweatshirt and gray leggings spattered with paint.The sweatshirt’s wide neck had slipped off one round, freckled shoulder, and when she planted her hands on her hips, it stretched tight across her very pregnant belly.
“Jesse Colson, why are you smiling at me like that?”she demanded in her slow, Southern drawl, her native Louisiana thick in every syllable.
“Like how?”Jesse asked, still smiling.
“Like a fuckboy,” she replied.
Jesse just grinned wider.“Because you’re hot, Lou.”
“What I am,” she drawled, shifting to rub a hand over her belly, “is round.”
“And it’s hot.”Jesse reached out a hand, let it hover over the baby bump.“Can I?”
Her lips twitched into a smile.“Thank you for askin’.Y’all would not believe the number of people who think that just because I’m gestating, they’re entitled to just walk up and put their hands on me.”
“A notion of which I’m sure you disabuse them,” Knox said, and she turned those dark eyes on him.
“I do indeed.”Her smile turned just a little wicked.“And how are you tonight, sugar?You look a little…agitated.”
Recognizing the poke, Knox just nodded.“That I am, Lou.That I am.”
Humor danced in her eyes, flirted at the corners of that lush mouth.“Well, why don’t y’all come on in then, and we’ll talk about it.”She looked at Jesse, who had crouched down and had both hands and one cheek pressed to her belly.“Jesse.Get up, now, before junior here kicks you in the ear.”
“Huh?Oh.”He stood, joy and wonder in his expression.“That was so cool.I could feel it moving!”
“Yeah, me too,” Lou said with considerably less wonder.With a wave, she beckoned them into the house.“Y’all wipe your feet.Just because the floors are old doesn’t mean I want you tracking in mud and snow.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they said in unison and followed her inside.
The living room was, like the rest of the house, a work in progress.The walls were the original plaster, and showed patches of repair here and there.The fireplace brick had been repointed, and Knox could find no flaw in the work.The floors were indeed old, the original oak scuffed and scarred.They would be refinished, but that was the last project on a list of many.
They dried their feet on the thick mat inside the front door, then followed Lou through the open doorway to what had originally been the dining room.It was to be a study of sorts, and the cherry wood built-ins meant to display the family’s finest china would instead house books.The French doors that normally lived there had been removed, lest they get damaged, and were safely ensconced in the attic until the first floor reno was complete.The walls here had been sanded and prepped for paint, and there was a trio of color swatches on the interior wall.
Lou stopped to point at them.“Which one?”
Knox looked.There was a deep orange, a soft, mossy green, and a grayish blue that made him think of stormy skies and turbulent seas.
“I think the green,” Jesse began.
“Not you,” Lou interrupted and pointed at Knox.“Which one?”
Knowing she was needling him on purpose didn’t keep his back from going up.“It’s your room, Lou.”
“What, you can’t give a friend a professional opinion?”she asked, putting the faintest emphasis onfriend.
“Fine,” he bit out.“Blue.”
