“I bet women might be more tolerant of them if they did. Though I swear a wind chime on the porch of the Angel’s Nest tried to kill me.”
She smiled at him, basking in his delight as if it were the first day of spring. “Yeah, it’s a minefield of wind chimes over there. You have to watch your step, especially if you’re tall. I mean, I can understand why you’d want to move out of there immediately... into this place.”
He just gave her a “nice try” eye roll. “It’s not just the wind chimes. It’s all the purple, and the frills, and dear God, the potpourri, and did you know the soap is shaped like angels there, too? I can’t bring myself to rub an angel in my armpits. And it’s noisy. I’m next to the honeymoon suite. I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night thanks to Cherisse and Kevin.”
“Oh, you met your neighbors?”
“Not formally. They kept name checking each other. ‘Oh, Cherisse. Oh, Kevin.’ And their headboard. BAM. BAM. BAM. All. Night. Long.”
“Their head...”
She trailed off when she realized what he meant.
She froze.
“Can’t remember the last time I did that to a headboard,” he said thoughtfully. Pinning her with his blue gaze.
And her every cell briefly surged with electricity.
And boom, or rather, BAM, like that, her breath was gone again.
She didn’t know if she was wildly aroused or panicked. Both, probably.
They stared at each other.
She did know that was her cue to say, “Neither can I.” Or, “I can offer up a refresher.” Or “I bet this carpet is pretty comfortable. Didn’t they have a lot of orgies in the seventies?” “Or surely you have a lot of opportunities to do it.”
Because she used to have “game,” as Kayla called it. She knew this particular dance from way back in the day, before she’d married Jeff. This exchange was the sort of coded language that men and women laid down to test sexual interest and intent. No one just flung off their clothes and leaped upon another. Well, hardly anyone just leaped upon another.
But she stood there like a deer in the headlights of his fixed gaze.
“Me, neither,” she said finally. It was practically a whisper.
And instead of sexy or clever, it sounded pathetic.
And scared.
His expression subtly shifted. “I always wondered why angels wore dresses,” he mused. “Those long robes? Seems they’d get their feet tangled up in them when they flew. Wouldn’t it be more convenient to fly in a unitard?”
She was both grateful and a little alarmed at how skillfully he’d given her a way out of that flirtation corner.
She exhaled. “Like... Superman?”
That made him laugh. “But do angels actually fly?” he wondered. “I mean, do they need to, to get wherever they’re going?”
“Good point. I think they can materialize wherever they please.”
“Then why do they even need wings?”
She considered this. “Because wings are pretty?”
He smiled slowly. “That must be it, Britt Langley. It’s important for things to be pretty.”
He was teasing her. She wondered if she’d ever be able to talk to him without blushing.
She exhaled. “If it helps any... Rosemary?—you know, the lady who runs the Angel’s Nest with her husband?—well, she was raised in Coyote Creek and that is one scary place—it’s a settlement, kind of an annex of Hellcat Canyon, up there deep in the hills.” Britt waved an arm up toward where the trees were thickest. “They say most people usually leave there in a cop car or a casket. Her life was pretty austere when she was growing up, and she and her husband really wanted a family but it didn’t happen for them. And then they tried to adopt, but I guess it hasn’t worked out, maybe because they’re getting up in years now and they don’t have a big income. Anyway, I always thought that maybe she went overboard with the fluff and the angels and the pillows and whatnot because of all of that. Wanted it to be soft and pretty so people would feel loved and protected in there in a way she never felt.”
She began to feel like she was babbling.
