I've Got Summer

T W E N T Y

S U M M E R

Chris moved closer, his hands were in the pockets of his dark jeans and his muscles bulged from the sleeves of his plaid shirt. It was blue. Somehow, my mind interpreted that he wore blue and came to Bailey's, where he knows there's a chance I'll be, because blue was my favorite color. I'd never told him, but he probably knew. It wasn't hard to figure out.

Heat pooled in my stomach as he inched closer, his intense brown eyes never leaving mine. It was like he was moving in slow motion, tightening the tension between us with each heavy step. It felt like an eternity had passed, in the best possible way, when he stopped right in front of the counter—in front of me—and said, "Windows, insulation and wall panels."

His voice was darker than usual. I licked my lips, noted it down on my blue post-it note, and looked up again to ask, "What kind?"

Something had changed. There was no doubt in my mind that something was completely different between us. Was it me? Him? Both of us? I had no idea, but I wasn't going to dig into it. I'd rather just enjoy it.

Because I was enjoying it. A lot.

"I want my interior designer to choose," he replied, his lips tilting up on one side, "I hear she's got an eye for that kind of stuff."

He picked a folded piece of paper up from his pocket and placed it on the counter next to my hands, slowly opening it up. When I looked at it, I saw he'd already decided on some small things, along with giving me the measurements I'd need. Two of the windows looked like they were going to be huge, and I lifted my gaze to meet his. "This is big," I said, "are you sure—"

"It'll fit." He cut me off, and his eyes glinted with confidence and mischief, making me think again about his words, and what they could mean. Was that intentional? It had to be. This side of him was very new, and it quickly dismissed every thought I'd had that this grump wasn't interested at all.

A man who wasn't interested wouldn't use obvious innuendos like that.

"I'll hold you to that," I managed to say. I tried to challenge him with my eyes, to tell him I wanted to know if it would fit, and I let my gaze flicker down to his crotch for a long second before I moved back to find some magazines and item numbers to order for him.

He kept quiet, but his heavy stare was on me while I flipped through pages and found six normal-sized windows for him, two smaller ones, and scribbled a note to request the two big ones as well. I felt his eyes on me while my thumbs moved across my phone, composing a polite email to the company in the city we'd worked with before on windows, and then I looked up at him and asked, "Do you want to paint the panels yourself, or do you want pre-painted ones?"

He cleared his throat and moved his hands from his pockets to his upper arms. I wasn't sure if he was uncomfortable, or tried to show off his flexing muscles. Either way, I enjoyed the show. "I thought you and I could paint." His voice was lower, seductive.

"Good idea," I said, holding back my smile as I put in an order with another company for the square meters he'd measured out he'd need. "And for the bathroom?"

"You said you imagined black tiles?" He arched a brow my way, before letting his eyes slip down to where my top had gone down a bit.

I didn't move it back up. I felt way too appreciated to do that. If anything, I wanted him to look—to see what he'd been missing all the weeks since we met. I only nodded and sent a third email with a request for a large shipment for black tiles, for both walls and floors.