The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate #2) - Rosie Danan Page 0,9
door behind him.
Sometime earlier this week, he’d convinced himself that the way her beauty had hooked him behind the navel and yanked was a fluke. A trick of the conference center lighting. Or a consequence of an empty stomach.
No such luck.
She frowned at him now, brows drawn together over her nose. Her obvious displeasure did nothing to dampen the fact that there was something brilliant about her. Like she was painted in brighter colors than everyone else. He found himself a little breathless, drinking in the sight of her in the dim corridor like oxygen.
The word “Wow” escaped his lips. He shook his head immediately, heat rushing up his neck. “I mean, hi.”
A ripple of something passed across the surface of her scowl, and for the first time since he’d met her, Ethan could imagine how devastating it must be when she smiled.
“I think I prefer ‘wow,’” she said, studying him without apology.
A wave of self-consciousness rushed over him. Last time she’d seen him, the time she’d called him hot, he hadn’t been wearing his kippah. The ritual head covering should hardly make a difference, but maybe it did. Maybe when she looked at him now, she saw baggage and responsibility.
It was probably for the best. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to concentrate if she looked at him now the way she had at the convention center. Like he was something to be devoured.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you again.” If ever there was a woman who had better things to do than speak to him, it was Naomi Grant.
“Am I interrupting?” She gave a nod toward the room behind him.
Morey was now blatantly watching them through the interior window.
“Don’t mind me,” he shouted through the plexiglass, straightening to his full five feet, five inches. “I was just on my way out.” He exited the room and escaped down the hall as quickly as Ethan had ever seen him move.
Once he was gone, Naomi pinned Ethan in her gaze. “Do you still want to hire me?”
“Uh,” he said, thrown. “I mean, yeah. Yes.” Just having her in the building seemed to make the faded space come to life. “I do.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Then pitch me.”
“I’m sorry?” Maybe if he looked at her from an angle instead of straight on, it would be easier to concentrate.
“This is a business proposition, right?” She folded her arms. “You outlined the basics at the convention, and now I’m willing to consider your offer, but in order for me to come to a decision, we need to go over the details.”
While Naomi seemed slightly less hostile tonight than she had at the convention center, the hallway’s dim bulbs couldn’t hide the way her flame-colored hair flashed, threatening to send their immediate vicinity up in smoke.
Ethan said the first thing that came to mind. “I’m not trying to trick you.”
Her eyes lingered on the exit behind him. “That’s what they all say.”
Right. It was on him to show her that she was safe here, that she was welcome.
“Why don’t we go outside? There’s a bench out back we can use.”
She might feel less caged outside the synagogue walls.
“I’m not usually skittish,” Naomi said as she followed him to the door, as if worried he’d bring up the way everything in her body language threatened to run.
They got to the old bench Sal Stein had dedicated to his departed wife. Ethan said a quick prayer as he touched the plaque, his thumb brushing absently over the inscription, lingering for a moment in borrowed memory.
As they took their seats at opposite ends, silence and the early-spring evening stretched out between them, everything fragile and new.
She’d asked for a pitch, he reminded himself, and cleared his throat.
“So, the synagogue supports a variety of cultural and educational programming—”
“I don’t get it,” Naomi interrupted him.
“Don’t get what?” He didn’t mind the immediate interjection. Lots of people got defensive when they were uncomfortable.
“You said you were a physics teacher. Back at the conference center.”
Ethan sat up straighter, surprised she remembered.
“I was. At Greenbrier in Santa Monica.” The fancy prep school catered to the offspring of the rich and famous.
“But now you’re a rabbi?” The set of her shoulders was intensely defiant. “Isn’t there inherent contradiction between science and religion?”
Ethan exhaled. His call to become a rabbi had occurred as a messy combination of grief and yearning. It was easier to distill the origin of his belief system to a single book, though it wasn’t any book people expected.