mine. I don’t really want to invade your space but, yeah… we’re kind of stuck, now.”
I took a deep breath and let it go. Yeah. Stuck. With her gorgeous face and her sexy body walking around my house… Jesus. My thought processes were completely clouded by sexual deprivation, apparently.
My jaw tightened. “I have rules, then.”
She raised a brow. “Why am I not surprised? You always have rules.”
“Enough with the snarky remarks.”
She blinked a few times as if unable to believe her ears. “Do you even know me? And… and is that a rule? Because, I can tell you right now—”
I held up a hand to stop her. “It’s not one of the rules, no. First rule is that we’ll sleep in separate bedrooms, of course. We both agree to be fully clothed while in the common areas of the home. The kitchen, the living room, and all the rest.”
She nodded. “Okay, easy enough to do. Lucky for you I’m not a nudist. We had nudist neighbors growing up, and that shit was all sorts of crazy. They were not young and, well lots of things sag. And, you know, Vancouver winters are not warm.” She faux-shuddered. “And gardening, that was a whole other kettle of fish. I’m not even a little tempted to do the nudist thing.”
Thank god. Not that I wouldn’t love to see her naked, of course, but even imagining it wasn’t good for the level of sexual frustration I’d been suffering from lately. And having sex with my hand was only succeeding in taking the edge off. But I anticipated things were only going to get worse with her under my roof.
“Okay so no getting naked except in the shower or in our own rooms.” She nodded decisively, as if I’d been giving her instructions for work. “Fine... what else?”
I gulped, then stiffened. “Pick up your messes.”
She scowled. “I’m not that bad.”
“You’re the queen of clutter. If your room at home looks anything like your work desk, then you better keep that shit contained in your bedroom at my house. With the door closed at all times.”
She frowned. “It’s just organized chaos. I know where everything is.”
“And as I’ve told you before—”
“’Chaos on the outside reflects the state of mind.’ Yes, I’ve heard that about eleventy dozen times. Fine, I will endeavor not to trigger your anal retentive OCD neat freak tendencies with my clutter.”
Instead of rolling my eyes, I cocked my head at her and stared her down. Our gazes clashed, and she jutted her chin out at me defiantly. Then she raised her auburn brows at me, as if to ask me, Is that all you’ve got?
Oh dear Ms. Ellis, you just have no idea, do you?
My mind was drawing a blank now. The main condition had been the naked one. That one was really the most important regulation I could think of, anyway. I grasped for anything. “Take the trash out when it’s full.”
She just rolled her eyes. “I’m not uncivilized.”
I sighed. “You do come from the land of Tundra, hosers and ice-hut dwellers.”
She rewarded me with a scowl. So I decided to poke at her some more. It was a pastime of mine. “It’s okay, Cranberry. One day Canada will rule the world and then everyone else will be sorry.” I made sure to give that “sorry” a marked Canadian pronunciation.
In truth, I actually liked her Canadian accent. It was subtle. Almost unrecognizable from the typical west coast American accent—except for slight differences on some words that you only heard if you spent time around her.
On those words, the vowels were softer, more clipped. And there was a slightly different cadence to some of them. But just those tiny giveaways on words like sorry that for her, rhymed with story. And other words like about, house, out, which sounded way less harsh than their American counterparts. Those tiny clues were enough to reveal that she wasn’t yet another pretty California girl.
Nope, she was an absolutely stunning Canadian girl.
An absolutely stunning and exasperating, Canadian girl.
Her eyes narrowed. “At least I come from a country that knows that beer isn’t supposed to taste like cow piss.”
“Beer and poutine. The staples of all fine haute cuisine.”
She shrugged, putting her hand on the doorknob. “You forgot moose steaks. And elk hoof soup.”
Elk hoof soup? I scoffed. “Is that really a thing?”
She blew out a breath, shaking her head as she yanked the door open. “Of course you would ask me that.”