Also: trusting someone to get work done was undeniably hot.
Which kind of made it, in some ways, one of the most erotically charged weeks she’d ever had. A veritablytantricweek. And as she worked alone in a room, or with some guy he’d assigned to help her, Mac’s non-presence was as potent as his presence.
She wondered if this was his plan all along.
Or if he, too, had seen the wisdom in distance from her.
About four in the afternoon on Friday of that week Mac stopped in to check out the ballroom they’d just finished painting. She’d had some help today from a guy named Doug who didn’t talk but tunelessly whistled between his teeth until she’d wanted to paint his mouth closed with the chosen color, which was called Pismo, and was sort of a rich, pale sand moving toward mocha. She didn’t, though. Together they’d gotten it done.
Mac patrolled the perimeter of the room. She was actually holding her breath as if she was waiting to hear her SAT scores.
He was disheveled and paint-spattered himself. He looked utterly relaxed.
“You have a great eye, Avalon. I’ll hand it to you. The colors you chose are fantastic. This looks like a completely different room from the one my mother used to passive-aggressively sing in.”
She smiled at that. “So... I know it’s not on the schedule, Mac, and it’s sort of a divergence from the original plan, but how awesome would it be if we could get the blinds cut for the windows in these two rooms today? I would just love to see how they look in here.”
“Soawesome,” he teased her in Valley-girlesque cadence. “But you know, Icanget it done. You choose. We can do a mix and match with today’s schedule. I’ll tear up the linoleum in the small upstairs bathroom or I’ll cut the blinds.”
“Wow. I’ll need to consult my eight ba...”
She trailed off.
Because she’d suddenly become aware that Mac’s hand was parked lightly, companionably on her butt.
Instantly she could feel him go as tense and motionless as if they were playing Red Light, Green Light. Which was how she knew he’d realized it, too.
There passed a nonplussed moment.
“Mac... are you... sort of resting your hand on my ass?”
His hand dropped away so fast you would have thought she’d severed it. “God! Ava, I’m sorry. I swear to God, it was a reflex. I wasn’t... It was just... it seemed...”
He stopped.
They didn’t look at each other. Not head-on. But her face was hot and when she slipped him a glance she was pretty sure there was high color in his cheeks.
Hehadbeen trying to give her distance. He wasn’t actually making a pass.
Thing was, she knew precisely how he’d meant to end that sentence. Because it was indeed a reflexive, companionable ass-cupping, born of a collegial moment. It had somehow felt perfectly natural, which was why it had taken both of them a moment to realize it was even happening.
Anyone strolling past the doorway would have thought them in thrall to the ugly blinds, because they were determinedly looking at them.
But there were no voices. Because they were, for the first time in a week, utterly alone.
And then Ava heard herself say, in a voice so hoarse she inadvertently sounded as sultry as Bacall:
“I didn’t say you had to take it off.”
His head did a rapid 180-degree turn and his gaze collided with hers.
Gasoline, meet match.
He slowly looked away again toward the blinds, and so did she.
And after a suspenseful second’s worth of hesitation, he stretched his hand out behind her and cautiously, gingerly, delicately arranged it right back on her left cheek. As if it were an antique lace doily on a side table.
And yet the moment was at once absolutely ridiculous and deadly earnest.
