Нора Робертс - The Last Boyfriend

“I didn’t unlock the door because it wasn’t locked . She did it.”

“Red?”

“No, not Avery. Elizabeth. Then she laughed.”

“Avery?”

“No!” Close to tearing out his hair, Owen paced between stacks of boxes. “Elizabeth. After Avery got pissed and left, I heard her laughing.”

“Avery got pissed because you kissed her?” Beckett asked.

“No. Maybe. How the hell do I know what pisses a woman off?” Frustration rippled over him in waves. “Nobody knows because it can be any damn thing. It’s an unsolved mystery. And the next day, that any damn thing is fine, and it’s some other damn thing. No man knows,” Owen said darkly.

“He ain’t wrong,” Ryder commented. “So. Back up.” Ryder hooked his thumbs in his pockets. “Did she kiss you back? Men know that one, pal.”

“Yeah, she kissed me back.”

“Like reflex, or bring it on?”

“She was in it,” Owen muttered. “It wasn’t some friendly peck.”

“Tongues?”

“Jesus, Ry.”

“You’re not the only one who appreciates details.” Ryder nodded at Beckett. “Definitely tongues involved.”

“I said she was in it, didn’t I? Then Beck’s banging on the door, and it’s all surreal. She didn’t want it to be weird, you know? So I said okay. She said she was going to go give Dave a hand, and I said okay.”

“You’re a moron.” In pity, Ryder shook his head. “You’re supposed to be the smart one. You’re the smart one, Beckett’s the nice one, I’m the good-looking one. And you’re a moron. You just fucked the curve, dude.”

“Why? Why am I a moron?”

Beckett raised his hand. “I got this. You kiss a woman till your eyes roll back in your head, and if your information is correct, she’s just as in it as you. Then all you can say when she’s obviously probing for what it meant is ‘okay’? You’re a moron.”

“She didn’t want it to be weird. I was trying not to make it weird.”

“You get a shove from a dead woman and end up tangling tongues with an old girlfriend and the ghost blocks the exit? That’s fucking weird,” Ryder concluded.

“She’s not an old girlfriend. She was five!”

Companionably now, Ryder laid a hand on Owen’s shoulder. “Women never forget. You don’t want it to be weirder than it is now, you have to talk to her about it. You poor bastard.”

“Avery was right,” Beckett speculated. “Lizzy’s a romantic. The first time I kissed Clare was in this building—and after, I figured Lizzy maneuvered it. At least some of it.”

“Then you talk to her,” Owen insisted. “Tell her to back off.”

“Kissing Red must’ve killed off some of your brain cells,” Ryder decided. “You can tell a woman what to do—if you play it right—and maybe, maybe half the time she’d do it, or something close to it. That’s a live woman. A dead one? I figure that’s closer to zero.”

“Crap.”

“Better talk to Avery,” Beckett advised. “And do it soon, do it right.”

“Crap.”

“So, now that we’ve had our heart-to-heart, ladies, let’s get the hell back to work.” Ryder walked to the door, opened it. “We’ve got an inn to finish.”

He couldn’t avoid her—not that he wanted to. Exactly. But he couldn’t, not between punch-out, load-in, cleaning, food breaks. In the normal course of things, he saw Avery at least once a week. Since work began on the inn, it was pretty much daily. And now with that work coming down the stretch, they tended to cross paths multiple times a day.

But—because he wasn’t a moron—none of those times included the sort of privacy he knew the conversation they needed to have required.

Even if he could find a spot where a half a dozen people weren’t moving through, by, or around, he got interrupted every ten minutes.

So he did what he decided was the next best thing. He acted as if nothing had happened. He talked to her, carted boxes for her, ordered food from her, just like normal over the next couple of days.

Since she behaved exactly the same way, he figured: problem solved.

For his last chore of the day—hopefully of the week, he thought—he carried a box of lightbulbs into Nick and Nora. He intended to work his way through the finished rooms, assembling lamps, screwing in the correct bulbs.

He hesitated only a moment when he saw Avery hanging glass drops on a floor lamp.

She glanced his way. “Some assembly required,” she said.

“Looks good.”

“I’m hanging these my way. I like it better than the way they have it in the diagram. Justine said she did, too.”

“Works for me.” He noted that the stacked glass ball lamps beside the panel bed had already been assembled.

“I’m Lamp Girl this evening,” she told him.

He started to make a joke about being Lightbulb Boy, but thought better of it.

Damn it. It was weird.

“I’m the man with the bulbs, so let there be light.” He took a bulb out of the box. “Listen, Avery—”

“Look!” Hope dashed in, still wearing her coat and scarf. “Isn’t this fabulous?”

She carried a Deco-style statue of a man and woman.

“It’s great! It’s Nick and Nora Charles.” Avery shifted to admire it.

“The amazing people at Bast gave it to us.”

“Aww. Now I love it even more.”

“It’s just perfect!” After a moment’s scan, Hope set it on the corner of the carved heater cover Owen had built. “Just perfect. I love that floor lamp. A little glimmer, a lot of glamour and style. Oh, when you’re done there, Avery, maybe you can give us an opinion out in J&R. Owen, we’re trying to decide on your grandmother’s crocheted pieces, the ones your mother had matted and framed. They’re so beautiful. She was an artist.”

“If she’d had enough thread, she could’ve crocheted the Taj Mahal.”

“I believe it. We’ve narrowed it down to two spots. We need another eye, Avery.”

“You can have mine. That’s the last drop. Thank God.” She stepped back, nodded. “Excellent.”

“Come on down then. We have to decide, then that’s it for tonight.”

“Good, because I need to run over, take care of a couple of things.”

“After you do, come to my place,” Hope told her. “Clare’s parents have the kids tonight, and Beckett’s got a dinner meeting with a client. We’ll have some wine, and I’ll cook something.”

“I’m in. Two minutes here.”

As Hope went out, Avery crouched to gather up the packaging from the lamp. “They’re even prettier lit,” she commented when Owen tested the lamps.

“Yeah. So, Avery . . . are we okay?”

After a humming beat of silence, she flicked him a glance. “There’s that word again.”

“Come on, Avery.”

Still crouched, she gave him a long, steady stare from under her arched eyebrows. “I’m okay. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, it’s just—”

“Sounds like we’re okay. It wasn’t my first kiss, Owen.”

“No, but—”

“Not even my first with you.”

He shifted the box of bulbs to his other hip. “That was—”

“So, no problem here.”

“No problem,” he agreed, but thought it felt like one. “I’ll get that stuff. We’ve got a load to take out anyway.”

“Good enough.” She started out. “Oh, if you have time, maybe you can hang the mirror, that starburst deal there. Hope marked the spot on the wall.”

“Sure.”

“Have a good weekend if I don’t see you.”

“Yeah, you, too.”

He frowned at the cardboard, frowned at the mirror, frowned at the empty doorway.

“Shit,” he muttered, and went out for his drill.