She pinched at my arm then glided her pinkie along the seams of the muscles winding down my bicep and forearm. Her lightest, most simple touch could still trickle through me and chase away the fears and hurts and worries I didn’t even know I’d been carrying. She might have liked to consider herself rough around the edges, but she was the most gentle, soothing spirit I’d ever been around.
“Okay, I get you want to help. I get you need to help,” she said, wrapping her fingers around my wrist. “But I’ve been thinking, and I’m confident I need to lay some additional ground rules.”
“Additional ground rules?” I sighed; there’d been additions to the additions already. “What kind of additional ground rules?”
Her hand went to her hip as the other, still wound around my wrist, tightened. “Ground rules that include you not trying to strap my watch on in the middle of us making love so you can make sure my heart rate isn’t nearing the danger zone.”
I shifted the groceries in my hands. “That wasn’t what happened . . .”
“No, because I grabbed the thing and threw it across the room before your fingers could curl around it.” She moved closer, an evil smile twisting into place. “Then I did that one thing that makes your forget your name, let alone some stupid watch reading my heart rate.”
I felt a stupid smile creep into place as I remembered last night. “That’s a ground rule I can accept, but I might need a repeat just to make sure I can resist the temptation. Practice makes perfect, right?”
Rowen’s gaze lowered to the bags, the skin between her eyebrows just barely creasing. “You’ve had no shortage of practice, that’s for sure.”
When she bit her lip, that’s when the first alert in my mind went off.
“What’s going on?” I asked, lowering my head so I could look into her eyes. She was far better than I was at hiding her emotions, but if I could get a good solid look in those eyes of hers, I could usually catch a hint at what was wrong. If had only taken me a few years to start to figure it out . . .
“Jesse,” she said, the slightest of warnings in her tone.
“Rowen.” I gave it right back to her, but she was already heading up the stairs.
“If we keep bickering out here, the yogurt’s going to go bad,” she called back at me, pulling her keys out of her purse.
“The threat of yogurt going bad isn’t going to make me drop this.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Delay, if you will,” I said, bounding up the stairs after her, “but I’m only giving you a few minutes. Five max.”
She had the key in the lock and was shoving the door open when I leapt up the last couple of stairs. “Good thing I’m a pro at distracting you and rendering your brain into mush. Your intentions become putty in my hands when I turn on my feminine prowess and beguile you with my wanton passion.”
I gave her a peculiar look. “You’ve been reading those books Lily sent you, haven’t you? The ones with the swoopy fonts, and oiled up men, and women looking ravished in their arms?”
“The bodice-rippers?” She shut the door and followed me into the kitchen, which wasn’t far since our condo was about a coat closet larger than my attic bedroom at Willow Springs. “No, I could barely stomach the first page of the first one I picked up. What she sees in them, I don’t know, but I guess romance is kind of like everything else—everyone has a different cup of tea.”
“And what’s your cup of tea?” I dropped the bags onto the kitchen counter and turned to face her.
“You.” She pinched the brim of my hat and tugged it lower on my forehead. “You’re my cup of tea.”
A grin worked into place on my face. When she saw it, she slid the bill of my hat down farther so it covered my eyes.
“That might be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me,” I said as I readjusted my hat back into place. Then I noticed the look on her face and recognized my poor choice of words. “I mean . . . that was the most edgy, spunky, rough-around-the-edges thing you’ve ever said to me.”
She chuckled as she shook her head. “That’s two, Walker. One more, and you’re out.”
“Out of what?”
As she started sorting through the grocery bags, I slid up beside her to help. She seemed to be looking for something in them more than actually being concerned with putting the food away though.
“Out of luck for getting laid tonight,” she said, pillaging through the next bag.
“Ouch. My lips are sealed with that threat on the table. Consider me mute from now until we tumble into bed just in case I make another slip.”
“Such a man,” she mumbled, tearing through the second bag.
“Hey, let me help you before that vein in your forehead ruptures.”
Her face was screwed tight with concentration. I reached into the third bag, which she hadn’t gotten to yet. The first thing my fingers curled around, I pulled out of the bag. I had to lift it up in front of my face and read what was written on the box three times before it processed.
Beside me, a curse slipped past Rowen’s lips. “You found it. Thanks.”
My eyes narrowed as I studied the rectangular box for a few more seconds, as if I was expecting the words to read something different the next time. “What’s this for?”
Rowen’s shoulders fell as she shoved the grocery bags farther down the counter like they’d betrayed her. “I’m doing this new art show with fertility as the theme. Totally cutting edge. Avant-garde all the way. I thought using pregnancy tests as a medium would score me some creativity points in the ironic department.”