Desire by Design - By Paula Altenburg Page 0,25
wish she’d thought her words through. “Would you mind letting yourself out when you’re finished?”
“With the coffee or the shower?” he asked.
Eve didn’t dignify that with a response. She turned and raced for the stairs, taking them two at a time, then skidded to a stop at her open bedroom door.
Her wardrobe was back in its proper place and her clothes were all neatly folded and stacked in piles on her bed.
Including her underwear.
She felt her whole body blush, right from the soles of her feet to the roots of her hair. He’d put his time to even better use than she’d thought.
Her black dress was draped across the foot of her bed, and her breath caught. The dress had been with her coveralls, and in her coveralls was her divorce decree. She scrambled around until she found the coveralls, then searched the pockets for the document. She found it, then took it and tossed it in the trash. She had her own copy in a security box at her bank.
Maybe Matt hadn’t seen it.
Her lips trembled. The last thing she wanted was to answer questions about Claude, especially from a man who was critical of his own mother’s poor judgment in men.
She grabbed clean clothes, fled to the bathroom, locked the door, stripped, and hurled herself into the shower. Hot water streamed over her as she rested her aching forehead against the glass enclosure. Her brief marriage was a mistake she thought she’d put behind her, but circumstances were suddenly making it impossible for her to keep it there.
When she was scrubbed and freshly dressed in skinny jeans and a clean T-shirt, she pattered slowly downstairs to see if Matt had taken her not-so-subtle hint and gone back to his hotel.
He hadn’t. He was reading the newspaper at her kitchen table, his large fingers scrunching its edges into fan-like wrinkles. She steeled herself for a lot of questions she didn’t want to answer as he pushed the pizza box across the table toward her.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“Starved.”
She eyed the box greedily, trying to remember when she’d last eaten, then took a slice of pizza and bit off a mouthful before pouring herself a cup of coffee with hands that still shook a little. Matt knew her bedroom had been trashed, that she wore multi-colored Brazilian boy-brief underwear, and there was the possibility he knew about Claude, too. She and the architect were certainly becoming well acquainted.
Matt folded the newspaper and set it aside carefully. “Did you know that my hotel room costs three hundred dollars a night?”
The ice maker on the refrigerator gurgled, and Eve frowned, confused, her train of thought interrupted. Whatever she’d expected him to say, that wasn’t it.
“If you’re worried about money, a room with your uncle would be free,” she pointed out cautiously, scarcely able to believe her good luck. If he wasn’t going to mention the mess he’d cleaned up in her bedroom, then neither was she.
“I’m not worried about the money because I’m not paying for it. You are.” Matt drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “It’s coming out of the budget for City Hall.”
“Bob is spending three hundred municipal dollars a night on a hotel room rather than put you up himself?” Eve was so outraged she forgot about everything else. “I don’t care if he is your uncle. The man’s a moron.”
“I’m still not convinced moron is the right word,” Matt mused. “Besides, a hotel room is always in my contract. I like my privacy. I need the space to work in and to be able to keep in touch with my own offices.”
She played with the crust of the partially eaten slice of pizza in front of her. “Bob’s house is huge. You could have all the privacy you wanted.”
Matt raised an eyebrow. “Would you want to stay with him if you had any alternative?”
“Good point,” she conceded, and reached for her cup.
“If you want to save budget money, maybe you’d consider renting me a room instead,” he suggested.
And Eve, already on edge, upset her coffee all over the newspaper.
Chapter Six
Matt grabbed a handful of paper towels off the roller beside the sink and mopped up the puddle of coffee.
Eve’s baffled brain tried to process his suggestion. Rent a room to Matt Brison? Bob Anderson’s nephew?
She could think of a dozen reasons why she wasn’t going to do it. She’d grown up with three older brothers and a father, and she’d spent two immeasurably long weeks living with an unstable husband.