"Right here is fine."
So she wanted to boot him out. Not a chance. With only a couple of weeks remaining until he left, he needed to make the most of every minute. "This sucker's heavy, Lori. I don't want to pick it up again. Just tell me where it's supposed to go, and I'll carry it the rest of the way."
She hesitated, then gestured for him to follow her. He dedicated his best effort not to watch her walk, instead focusing on her apartment, safer and wiser terrain.
The place unfolded before him exactly as he would have expected—elegant, eclectic, coordinated, but not a matched set to be found. Gleaming, heavy antiques and bold-patterned cushions were lightened by mismatched pottery and doilies.
A few new pieces had been added over the year. But that sofa. Yeah, he remembered her overstuffed striped couch well.
He did not need to be thinking about that sofa and the memories it held.
Lori shoved open a door to an airy room with ten-foot ceilings. "This will be hers. You can set the box in that corner."
She leaned back, gripping the doorknob. Their eyes collided as Gray slid past. He propped the box against a wall beside French doors opening to a balcony. Already he could imagine Magda soaking up all that light. "Is here okay?"
"Perfect. Thanks." Her brows pulled together as she studied the glassed doors. "Oh, I'll need to buy safety latches for those."
More shopping. Gray rubbed a thumb over his throbbing temple and tried to ignore the sleigh bed between Lori and him. She inched inside. The door creaked, moved, swung slowly closed. The small click echoed like a hatch slamming shut.
Lori flinched. "Old houses lean."
"Uh-huh." More likely the house was in league with Bronco to lock him up with Lori.
"Thanks for coming along." She swung two bags of clothes onto the bed.
"No problem."
"You were a great help." Hands moving in nervous activity, she folded the clothes into a little pile on the white lace spread.
"I can haul packages with the best of them." He couldn't drag his eyes from her as she performed the simple domestic chore. The bed loomed between them, threatening his control and his peace of mind, but Gray couldn't seem to shove one foot in front of the other while Lori smoothed a wrinkle from a tiny T-shirt.
"No, really." She slid the pink overalls onto a miniature hanger and hung them in an antique wardrobe. "Your advice over the Capri pants was invaluable."
Then why hadn't she taken it? He bit back the urge to argue.
Lori pivoted to face him. The mischievous gleam in her eyes set off klaxon warnings in his throbbing brain. Come to think of it, that same glimmer reminded him of when she'd asked him whether Magda would prefer sandals or clogs. Like he knew the difference.
Realization kicked him like the sucker he'd been all evening. She'd played him. "So were you testing me or trying to run me off?"
Lori's grin turned downright wicked. "What do you mean?"
"Clogs and Capri pants."
"Took you long enough to catch on."
"That's what I get for trying to be patient."
Her smile softened to something bittersweet. "I just don't understand what you're doing here, Gray. What do you hope to accomplish with this attentive boyfriend act?"
Most of the time he appreciated Lori's straightforward honesty. Today he suspected she might well have him pinned to the wall, and not in any way he would enjoy. He dodged the question as much as he could, unwilling to fess up to his motives. What would she say if she knew he was plotting to give her the family he hadn't been able to? "We may not be a couple, but we can be friends."
"I'm not so sure."
Disappointment dogged Gray with a force that surprised him. He shouldn't care this much, and that left his feet itching to run. "Why not?"
Her eyes widened incredulously. "Because … because … because of…" Her hands flailed the air as if she might find the words there. Finally she made a sweeping gesture across the bed. "Because of that."
The mattress seemed to double in size, large and inviting. But they stood on opposite sides—of the bed and so much more.
"Lori, let me share something I've discovered this past year. That," he said, jabbing a finger toward the bed, "is going to be there whether we're in the same room with it or not. That is going to be there even if you and I aren't in the same room. That is just something we're going to have to live with." He pulled a tight grin. "Or rather, live without."
She twirled a lock of hair. The regret in her eyes tempted him, echoing a regret within him he understood too well. "Meanwhile, we're old friends. You need help. I want to give it. Now let's put together Barbie's dream house."
"God, you're stubborn." Lori twisted the lock of hair faster, before flicking it aside. "But you're also right."
About being friends or wanting each other regardless of time and miles? Of course, in two weeks there would be three thousand miles between them when he transferred cross country to McChord AFB in Washington. He didn't plan to go through a repeat of the past year dodging memories of Lori. The only way he could see to avoid it was to ignore how damn much he wanted her.
Gray tapped the dollhouse box with his boot. "What'll it be? Do you want help with the seven thousand pieces rattling around in this box or not?"
Hands clenched by his sides, he waited for her answer, watched that answer shift back and forth in her eyes—for him, against, and back again. His fingers unfurled.
"Okay, let's put this thing together." Lori glanced at the bed. "But maybe we ought to assemble it in the living room."
"I always knew you were a smart woman." And he sure didn't intend to let such a smart woman know he would be thinking of that every time he looked at her striped couch.
Lori placed a tray of sandwiches, chips and sweet tea on the antique tea cart beside Gray. He sprawled on the floor beside the fully assembled Barbie house, placing stickers on a Big Wheel. His voice filled the room with low, rumbling intensity as he sang along with her Billie Holiday CD. Grayson and the blues. A potent combination.
Intense concentration puckered his brow as he centered a racing stripe. His singing dwindled until he'd pressed the edges of the decal in place.
He really had been a great help, patient even when she'd done her best to rile him with inane Capri pants and clogs in hopes he would spill his real agenda. Maybe there wasn't one. Maybe he'd meant exactly what he'd said. He wanted them to be friends. She'd learned quickly that Gray made friends with ease.
Perhaps that was the problem. Building friendships had always been tougher for her, never having had the time to hone the skill on any one person. Friendships were rare and special for her. She wasn't sure she wanted to grant Gray that much importance in her life.
After the past couple of days, she wasn't sure he would leave her any choice.
She could take a page from Gray's book, couldn't she? A light friendship would ease a loneliness in her life that work couldn't quite fill. She would certainly need a friend a month from now when Magda went to her permanent home. Could she dare hope Gray might still be there for her, not as a lover, but as a friend?
If she even wanted to entertain the thought, she needed to learn some of those friendship skills from Gray. Lori snagged an oversize tapestry pillow from the sofa and dropped it on the floor beside him.
"Here you go, friend." Lori passed Gray a plate stacked with two sandwiches.
His gaze jerked from the sofa to her. He smoothed down a cartoon speedometer before taking the dish. "Thanks."
The light brush, tingle, heat of their fingers had nothing to do with friendship. Lori resolved to ignore it.
"The least I can do is feed you a sandwich after all your help." She sat cross-legged beside him, reaching for the bowl of chips to place between them. Not as big a barrier as the bed earlier, but certainly less provocative.
Her hand glided along the restored gleam of the tea cart, like rubbing a talisman. She'd found it at an estate auction a couple of months past. She loved to think about the history of the piece, even if the roots belonged to someone else. "I really do appreciate your help. I would have been up all night just reading the instructions."
"This was a cake walk compared to assembling toys for seven nieces and nephews last Christmas."
So he'd spent Christmas with his family. She'd wondered. Her parents had flown into Charleston, their hometown, for the holidays. She'd spent the whole week thinking about how Gray had once suggested they take a Christmas cruise together.
Lori bit into her turkey sandwich. Or was it ham? It tasted like paste. She swallowed the dry lump. "You probably think I'm crazy to buy all this for a kid who'll only be with me a few weeks. But I didn't have more than a few toys on hand, and those were just for babies stopping through for a few hours."
"Every kid deserves toys."
"And friends. I need to find other children for her to enjoy these toys with. They're not half as much fun if she plays with them alone."
"Of course." He ate a quarter of his sandwich in one bite and chewed while he peeled, then placed a sticker on the bike's handlebars. Long fingers so adept at flying and healing applied stickers as if they were of mammoth importance.
To Magda they would be, and his care touched Lori—too much.
"I just don't want her to have to wait, you know? She's lost so much already. She can take all this with her when she leaves."
"Sure she can. If you rent a trailer." Gray tore off another quarter of his sandwich, applied the last sticker and crumpled the backing paper. "Done."
With a fluid toss, he pitched it into the empty box and leaned against a chair to finish his sandwich. One muscular leg stretched out in front of him, his injured leg crooked at the knee. Long, lean, and so sexy her eyes ached.
Lori set aside her plate and reached for the basket of dollhouse furniture. Slowly she arranged the kitchen table and chairs. "I have to confess, this was a purely selfish purchase."
"How so?"
Gray crunched a chip and chased it with a swallow of tea—so at ease, when she felt like an overwound kid's toy. Lori gulped her tea.
"It would have been more practical for me to buy Magda smaller toys, things easily packed and transported. But I always wanted one of these, a huge dollhouse that wouldn't fit in the trunk with the luggage."
"You moved around that much? I thought your parents just traveled frequently but that you grew up in Charleston."
How could he not have known? Had they really spoken so little to each other they didn't know even basic family history? What a sad testimony to their short but intense time together.
"Charleston was our home base, sure, a place to rest when we stopped in to recoup and repack. If the mood struck, they hung out for a month or two to paint." She arranged a tiny sofa and chair around the miniature television, then sifted through the basket for yard furniture. "We usually spent about nine months out of the year traveling. There were gallery showings, guest lecturer stints, artists in residence for a semester at this college or that one. We were on the road a lot."
"What about school?"
He put aside his glass and focused on her, wrist propped on his crooked knee. His complete focus was heady stuff.
She wondered why she wanted to tell him now, needed to share a part of herself when she should be feeling more defensive than ever. Funny how a day of shopping and Gray's undivided attention could mellow a woman.
"Sometimes we relocated long enough for me to enroll for at least part of the year, other times the nanny home schooled me. I didn't lag behind." She placed the lawn furniture around a pool and little swing set. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. They loved me and made sure I had what I needed. They could have dumped me off on a relative, but they never did. It couldn't have been easy carting a kid and a nanny along. And it really was an educational way to grow up. I saw more, experienced more, lived more by ten than most folks do in a lifetime."