Desire by Design - By Paula Altenburg Page 0,26

She worked with men every day. Under no circumstances did she want them infiltrating her private space. Her home was where she got away from it all.

But then she remembered her home was no longer a haven, and that ticked her off, which was good. She’d rather be angry than scared.

“Renting me a room makes a lot of sense,” Matt was saying. He began to list off his own reasons. “You have a home office already set up. You use the same computer-aided drafting program I do. We’ll be working closely together anyway. And,” he added after a brief, meaningful pause, “it might not hurt for you to have a roommate around here for a while.”

If that was an opening for her to talk about the neatly folded underwear in her bedroom, Eve wasn’t taking it.

“My house isn’t very big,” she said.

“I won’t take up much room. I’ll stay out of your way,” Matt promised. “Besides, I’ll be traveling back and forth to Toronto. You’ll never even know I’m around.”

Eve felt the first flutters of panic. “I don’t cook.”

“Believe me, I’ve already noticed.” He lifted the pizza box and wiped up the coffee that had seeped under it. “I don’t mind doing the cooking. I’m quite good at it when I have something to work with.”

He tossed the soggy paper towels into the proper recycling bin under the counter, earning himself a few roommate points for environmental responsibility.

She already knew what her mother would think if she let him move in, and that shifted the score into a negative range. She shuddered inside. And after Bob had found them trampling his bushes, she had a good idea what he’d think, too.

And then there was Claude.

That scored Matt the winning goal. Maybe he was right. Maybe it would be a good idea for her to have a roommate for a while.

Eve tried to ignore the knot of nervous tension building at the nape of her neck. His reasons for moving in made more sense than hers for keeping him out. It would be a temporary situation. She’d save budget money. She’d have someone around in case Claude came back. She might even get a decent meal or two out of it, without having to use speed dial.

And she might be able to convince Matt not to design some awful steel monstrosity that would get Sullivan Construction in trouble with the zealous public action groups determined to preserve the historic integrity of the city.

Relief evaporated her tension. Those were all good reasons for letting him stay. They’d be roommates. It was no big deal.

She had a mental flash of how he might look coming out of her shower, dressed in nothing but a towel.

“Okay,” she said. “But we need to set some house rules.”

…

House rules, Eve discovered, could only cover so much.

Even after a few days of trying to get used to Matt, she still wasn’t comfortable sharing her space. She used any excuse she could find to spend even less time at home than she had before he moved in.

The other volunteers at the youth center’s Internet café had trickled out around suppertime, but Eve had wanted to finish this one last coat of paint so she could start cutting trim for the large, street-front windows.

Fumes from the thinner stung her nose as she stirred a can of ecru paint beneath the bright glare of a bare, 100-watt bulb in the soon-to-be main meeting area. She poured the paint into a tray and dipped her roller, ignoring the prickling sensations between her shoulder blades. She’d done this dozens of times in the past, but it was getting late, and it wasn’t the greatest neighborhood for catching a cab. She’d gotten a ride here with one of the other volunteers and hadn’t planned on staying after everyone else left, but she didn’t want to go home too early, either.

She ran the roller as far up the wall as she could reach, tiny paint drops splattering her coveralls. She couldn’t deny it felt good having someone else in the house with her at night. She wasn’t always listening for every little noise, and so far Matt was an exemplary roommate. He was tidy, unobtrusive, and fed himself.

That meant the problem had to be her. She felt awkward around him, not so much uneasy as a bit too aware of his presence. She wasn’t sure why. He’d done nothing wrong.

Maybe that was it. He was a little too perfect, and she was waiting for