Rosie grinned as she stepped into the shower. She had a plan, and oh, boy, it was going to be fun.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE WALKED INTO the kitchen with his toothbrush sticking out of her mouth.
In the process of shaking out a large plastic garbage bag, Ethan froze. Rosie’s hair was still wet, pushed straight back from her forehead and hanging in long twisted ropes down her back. Over his housecoat.
Which was now the only thing she wore.
Ethan knew that because she leaned into the laundry room and pitched his shirt onto the pile of dirty clothes, then turned and stuck her folded panties into her purse, which was on the counter. With foamy toothpaste dripping down her chin, she headed back for the bathroom.
It took Ethan a moment to get his eyelids to work so he could blink. When he did, he couldn’t help but notice that her behind, without benefit of underwear, jiggled just a little more beneath the terry-cloth robe. He jerked around, grumbling and too warm and feeling somewhat hunted. “Damn irritant.” He shoved an old pizza box into the garbage bag.
Five minutes later Rosie emerged again. She gave him a big toothy smile and said, “I used your toothbrush.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” He would not keep staring at her.
“You don’t mind, do you?”
He started to say, Of course not; after all, they’d been friends a long time, shared drinks, once even an ice-cream cone. He wasn’t worried about her germs.
But she didn’t give him a chance. “I figured after last night, it wouldn’t be any big deal.”
Ethan went rigid. “Nothing happened last night.”
“Did you put my stuff in the wash?” Apparently unconcerned with his emotional turmoil, Rosie pushed in a kitchen chair, closed a cabinet.
Shaking his head to clear it, Ethan said, “Yeah, they should be ready for the dryer in about ten more minutes.” He continued to stuff empty food containers and soup cans, plastic cups, newspapers and junk mail into the bag. He shouldn’t have felt so awkward with Rosie. He never had before—but then, he’d never slept with her before, either.
He glared when he realized that she intended to help him clean. Not only that, but she’d accomplished more in two minutes than he had in ten. Women, he decided, just had a knack for being efficient with housework.
“Leave that stuff. I’ll get it.” He glanced around at the remaining mess and for some stupid reason, felt compelled to explain. “I’ve been on a night shift all week. Had two nasty calls, one right before the banquet. Had to use the Jaws of Life on a guy who got caught in his car. Damn thing was on fire...” At her look of horror, his voice trailed off. He shook his head. “I got behind on stuff, but I planned to clean today anyway, since I have the next four days off.”
“You’re okay?”
Damn it, she didn’t have to sound so anxious. She was a friend, not his keeper, not his sibling, not his wife. “I’m fine.”
For a long moment she didn’t look convinced, then she shrugged. “I don’t mind helping.” She wrung out a dishrag and wiped off the stove. “I’ve got nothing else to do until my clothes are done, then I have to head into the office. I have a house to show today.”
As a real estate agent, her hours varied.
“I don’t want you to help.”
She blinked up at him with fresh-faced provocation. “Why?”
Damn, she looked cute straight from the shower. Rosie had never, in his opinion, needed much makeup. Her skin was fair, framed by silky brown hair that didn’t contain a single hint of red. Her brows were dark, finely arched, her lashes long. Though her eyes were blue, they weren’t an ordinary blue. They looked softer than ordinary blue, sort of smoky and smoldering, and when she got annoyed or excited, they turned stormy gray.
Would they turn gray when she was sexually aroused?
Ethan’s scowl intensified. “Women always think they have certain rights after cleaning a guy’s place.”
“Wow, no kidding?” Her brows rose higher. “That’s like...really profound. Your grasp on womankind is nothing short of astounding.”
She was baiting him, maybe even poking fun at him. “My grasp is astute enough to know you can’t be trusted, that you wait for a reason to screw a guy over or to confuse him so that he screws himself over or—”
Rosie stuck her fingers in her ears and said, “La, la, la, lalalal—”
“Stop that!”
She struck an arrogant, annoyed pose, her hands on her hips. “Then stop spouting nonsense.”
Ethan shook his head at the gesture, until he realized that her stance made the robe gap just a little above and below the belt. It showed a length of her legs—which he’d seen a gazillion times, for crying out loud—and her cleavage, which he knew she had but he hadn’t seen much before now.
Everything male within him went on alert, and he mumbled, “It is not nonsense.”
“Are you talking to me or my boobs?”
Flabbergasted, Ethan jerked his gaze up to her face, saw her smile and wanted to shout with frustration. Ruthlessly he beat his male instincts into submission. “You.”
“Huh. And here I was certain my ears were on my head, not my chest.”
In a ridiculous show of temper, he threw the garbage bag down on the floor. “Damn it, Rosie, what is wrong with you? What are you up to?”
She shrugged, then groaned dramatically. “I need some aspirin.”
Dismissing him, she turned to the cabinet and began riffling around until Ethan said, “Here, I keep them over the stove.” He shook out two white pills and handed them to her. A new thought occurred to him. “You hungover, too?”
She lifted the aspirin off his palm, tossed them into her mouth and bent her head into the sink to grab a drink of water straight from the tap. When she’d finished, she shook her head. “No, of course not.”
He hadn’t thought so. Rosie was never much of a drinker. Come to that, he wasn’t, either, and he was thoroughly disgusted with himself for overindulging last night. “If you’re not suffering from too much drink, then what’s your problem?”
“I just have a headache from lack of sleep, actually.” She sent him a calculated look. “We didn’t get to bed till late.”
His chest constricted. Why hadn’t she gotten enough sleep? She’d been dead-out when he’d awakened.
The washer buzzed and Rosie stepped into the small laundry room off the kitchen to put her clothes in the dryer, giving Ethan a moment to think.
There had to be any number of reasons why she’d been in his bed, other than the most distressing one. Why she didn’t want to tell him, he couldn’t say. Sometimes Rosie could be difficult for no apparent reason.
But he’d get the truth out of her, one way or another.
“Hey, Ethan?”
He stayed in the kitchen, unwilling to test his resolve by getting near her again. “Yeah?”
“Did you mean that I couldn’t be trusted, or women in general?”
Oh, hell, he didn’t want to have this discussion with her. He jammed a carton of sour milk into the bag with more force than was necessary. Just getting the garbage off the countertops and off the floor made his place look much cleaner. Normally it didn’t get so bad, but on top of the lousy week, he’d really