She realized belatedly how very much like an innuendo it had sounded, when he went stock-still.
He tipped his head and considered her.
“Oh, sure. I’d introduce you. But MissPiggy is the jealous type. One look at you...” The look he settled upon her here was somehow both soft and molten enough to dissolve steel. “...one look at you and she might...”
And with that silence he was like a sentry waiting for her to deliver the password into flirtation land.
She knew that password. Once upon a time she could have given J. T. a run for his money when it came to flirtation. But she wasn’t going to say it. She wasn’t going to say it.
“Flail?” she heard herself say faintly, anyway. “Would she flail when she saw me?”
His eyes gleamed a sort of wicked mischief.
“She might just angrily flail,” he confirmed solemnly, with feigned regret.
It might be the first time in history anyone had flirted using the Muppets, but she wouldn’t put anything past the human race.
They stared at each other in absurd, mute delight.
It occurred to her that she could probably toss any awkward, clunky observation to this man, and like Rumpelstiltskin, he’d spin it into flirtation gold.
“Well, then, I guess I’ll have to settle for your autograph,” she said finally, into the crackling silence. “On the lease to this lovely house!”
He dismissed this with a single sardonic flick of one eyebrow. “How about you, Britt? Do you sing?”
“Do I sing?” she was astonished. “Let’s put it this way. The first time I met my next-door neighbor, it was because she’d called the police to tell them someone was being murdered in my house. Turns out I was just singing in my shower.”
There was a beat of silence.
“Seriously?” He actually sounded hopeful.
“Seriously.”
“Wow.” He was thoroughly pleased. “What were you singing?”
“‘Whole Lotta Love.’ Led Zeppelin.”
He mulled. “There is kind of a lot of wailing in that one,” he conceded.
“Yeah.”
“Great song, though.”
“Heck, yeah.”
“We should do duet at the Misty Cat on Open Mic Night. You, me, ‘Whole Lotta Love.’ We’d kill it. Or kill the audience,” he said.
Her heart stopped. Was he... was he asking her out?
She stared at him blankly.
He stared at her expectantly.
Her phone dinged a reminder of her next appointment—a maintenance inspection of a cabin rented by a sweet elderly couple.
She lunged for it like a thrown life preserver, pivoted abruptly and headed for the kitchen and put the counter between the two of them, her heart thumping like John Bonham’s kick drum.
She looked up to see him watching her with a puzzled furrow between his brows.
