A blip of something—no, of pain—in her eyes. “No, I . . . um . . . wear contacts at work.” A shrug. “After the game last night—” She shook her head, stopped talking, and he waited a few moments for her to finish the thought. When she didn’t, he pushed away from the door, took her hand.
“What happened after the game last night?” he asked, drawing her down the hall.
“Nothing,” she said, dropping her chin to her chest and studying the woodgrain of the floor. “I fell asleep with my contacts in. That’s bad, and my eyes hurt this morning, so I wore my glasses today.”
He studied her face, the tendrils of pain clinging to the edges of her expression. “No,” he said. “No, that’s not it.”
Her brows raised. Her hand slipped from his.
He amended. “Or, at least, that’s not only it.”
“I thought we were getting to know each other over food shopping,” she said, turning back, her eyes drifting over the pictures again before she reached the opening to his kitchen. “This isn’t the grocery store. Your bags in here?”
“No.”
She spun to face him, lifted a brow.
“Want to elaborate?” he asked. “A pregame to the getting-to-know-you grocery talk?”
Her throat worked, panic in the depths of her amber and russet eyes.
“Or how about I just grab the bags?”
There.
He saw the exact moment she relaxed, her shoulders settling, her lips curving just the slightest bit. “You snoop,” he told her, “I’ll go out back and grab the bags.”
“Out back . . .” he heard her say, but the words disappeared off into space when he slipped through the back door. His garage was detached and abutted the yard. Having been built later than the original house, it was plunked into the back corner of the lot. He didn’t mind the short walk most days, though it sucked hauling shit into the house in the rain.
Luckily, this was California, and rain wasn’t a common problem.
Still, at that moment, he quickly strolled across the yard, certain that she wouldn’t just abandon him and his apparent foot fetish.
Why, one might ask?
He grinned.
Because he held her purse in his hand. Which conveniently held her car keys.
Another muahaha.
He strode to his car, grabbed the reusable bags from the trunk, and strolled back in time to peek through the back windows and witness Dani snooping, or maybe not something quite so obvious. Rather, she seemed to be slowly studying each corner of the space, as though it were an art exhibit and she needed to take in every inch.
He waited for her to make a circle, to return to facing the back door, and her reaction when she completed that turn, when she was staring at him through the glass, did not disappoint. Her lips parted, and he’d bet this cute little house that her cheeks would be hot. Behind those turquoise frames, her eyes widened, and she clamped a hand over her chest.
Ethan tugged open the door. “Whatcha doing?”
To her credit, she got over her surprise in a flash. Shrugging, her tone completely even and without a hint of embarrassment, she said, “Snooping.”
“That usually involves opening and closing things,” he said, moving to a bank of drawers and tugging out the top one. “Like that.” He nodded at it. “This exhibit is my junk drawer, and there are many interesting things in here that tell you about the various parts of my psyche.”
Her lips twitched, probably because he sounded like a dumbass.
But whatever, she wasn’t running from the house, so that was a win in his book.
“Like what?” she asked, peering down into the drawer.
Okay, that he wasn’t really sure of. It was his junk drawer, a place to dump his receipts, old keys, etc. His gaze drifted down, and also apparently a place to dump several candy bars and a manual for his car. He reached in, picked up one of the bars. “I like Snickers?” he asked.
More twitching of those lips. “That is not on Rebecca’s meal plan.”
Probably why they were shoved in the drawer in the first place. “How about receipts?” He snagged one at random. “Look, this says I spent twenty-two dollars and ninety-six cents on gas.”
She giggled. “That is actually more telling than you probably suspect.”
“Why’s that?”
She snagged it, pointed at the total. “It means you’re one of them.”
“What do you mean by them?”
“Them being,” she said, lips twitching, “one of those weirdos who fills up their car when it’s only halfway empty.”
He tilted his head to the side, and he studied her closely. “As opposed to what?”
She set the receipt down, closed the drawer. “As opposed to us normal folks who drive until we’re on fumes and then begrudgingly hit up the gas station.”
“That sounds stressful.”
Amusement in those amber eyes. “I like to live dangerously.” She laughed. “Okay, not so much. The truth is that I hate going to gas stations.”
“Why?”
A shrug. “It just always seems like such a waste of time. The cheap places always have long lines, and then it takes forever to fill up your tank, but not long enough to be able to do anything productive like reading.”
“Bookworm,” he teased.
“Takes one to know one.”
He laughed. “Also, not sure if you’re aware, but you’re obsessed with this concept of wasting.”
She smiled up at him. “I like to be as frugal with my time as possible, is all.”
Curiosity threaded through him like fibers weaving into a basket, coiling, wrapping around each, pulling taut. “And what does being frugal with your time consist of?”
Her gaze drifted to the ceiling as she considered the question. Then she glanced back down, her eyes meeting his, and it was as though he’d been struck by a cattle prod. Electricity flowed through his nerves, his muscles tightening, his body going stiff—okay, maybe that was just his cock.
“Keystrokes are the most important frugal
