Louise Bentley is a feisty, wild, 'let's-go-to-Capri-for-the-weekend-yeah?' kind of girl. She spends her days working at a party-planning company. Oh, and she never wants kids. Ever.
Ben Langford is a studious, quiet, 'I'm-busy-reading' sort of man...
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Everything was changing.
And not for the better.
Louise slammed down a cardboard box, panting. She'd lived with some trying people over the years; there had been the Polish flatmate that insisted on hanging salt-cured meat in their pantry. An American flatmate that blasted music. Flatmates that stole her toothpaste, ran blenders before dawn, and never took the bin out.
But Ben was something else.
She watched as he taped paper to their fridge. Piles of boxes littered the kitchen, and she could hear scraping noises upstairs. Probably Vienna, angrily moving furniture around. She wasn't pleased to be sharing a room with Hugh. Louise knew this, because she'd howled about it at breakfast and then thrown her toast at the wall.
"There." Ben smacked the paper. "Done."
Louse frowned. "What is it?"
"It's a chore wheel."
"A what?"
"Chores," Ben repeated. "You know what those are, don't you, Bentley?"
She tilted her head, studying the fridge. The colorful wheel was straight out of her most hellish imaginations; their names were at the heart of it, surrounded by tasks such as "sort laundry," "school run," and "make dinner."
Louise tapped the first chore. "Laundry? Really?"
He shrugged. "What's wrong with laundry?"
"You're just looking for an excuse to steal my knickers."
"And do what with them?" Ben asked incredulously, and then held up a hand as Louise opened her mouth. "No, wait. I don't want to know what you're about to say." He picked up a heavy-looking cardboard box, depositing it onto the counter with a frustrating amount of ease. "Right. Which bedroom do you want?"
Louise's eyes narrowed. This had to be a trap. She had — well, had once had, Louise thought, her throat tightening — two older siblings. She knew how these things worked; it was all about reverse psychology.
"I want the smaller one," she said.
Ben paused. "You do?"
"Yup."
"Not the master bedroom?"
"You're taller." Louise shrugged, crossing to the cupboard. "It makes sense that you get the bigger bed."
Ben went back to digging through the box. "What if I want the smaller one?"
"Well, do you?" Louise poured a lethal amount of chocolate Shreddies into the bowl, followed by milk. Her one percent milk; Ben only drank skimmed milk, apparently. Because he was deranged. "I'm willing to negotiate."
Ben put a set of serving spoons away. "You should really have the bigger bedroom."
