Her Naughty Holiday. Tiffany Reisz

into the shower. That morning she’d washed her hair so she didn’t do that again but she managed to soap up and shave her legs in a record time of seven minutes. Wearing only her towel, she brushed her hair again and pulled it into a neat ponytail. She put on a fresh coat of mascara and lip gloss and found her nicest pair of normal underwear—white cotton boy shorts—and put those on. The question was, what to wear over them. Put on her jeans again? She had some cute Christmas pajamas somewhere—shorts and a tank top—but it wasn’t even Thanksgiving yet. And those did show a lot of skin. She didn’t want Erick to think she was trying to seduce him. She wasn’t. Was she? No, of course not. They’d already talked about it. No sex tonight. Just a sleepover. Of course then he’d joked about buying condoms and she’d told him about her latex allergy, which sort of kind of maybe made it sound like she did want to have sex with him. Or maybe—

      “Stop it, Clover. You’re thirty, not fifteen.” Truth. But she felt nervous as a teenager for some reason. She knew the reason. She hadn’t told Erick the reason but she would. Or maybe not. She’d simply tell him she was out of practice.

      “Now you are acting like a kid,” she told herself. “Grow up.”

      Clover pulled a nightgown from off a hanger in the back of her closet. This was what she wore on the coldest nights, ankle-length with full sleeves. A very pretty nightgown if somewhat old-fashioned. Maybe too old-fashioned? The doorbell rang. Too late to change. Clover threw on her pale yellow bathrobe and walked down the steps to the front door. Erick stood on her front porch with a black gym duffel bag over his shoulder and a smile on his face.

      “Nice house,” he said as she let him in. “Didn’t know you lived on Lost Lake. You like it out here?

      “Love it,” she said. “Did you have trouble finding it? The roads can be a little winding.”

      “A little?” He dropped his duffel on the floor by the door and started untying the laces on his work boots. “I swear David Bowie wearing a giant codpiece gave me directions, that’s how winding they are.”

      “Never figured you for a Labyrinth fan. Isn’t that kind of a girl movie?” she teased.

      “It’s a Ruthie movie, which means I’ve seen it approximately...” He yanked one boot off. “One million...” He yanked the second boot off. “One hundred thousand...” He pulled his coat off. “Times.”

      He hung his coat on the coatrack and turned to look her in the face. Not knowing what else to do she just stood there with her hands in her robe pockets trying to look casual when she felt anything but.

      “Did you really get lost finding the house?” she asked, feeling bad she hadn’t given him better directions.

      “Nah. I was just out here last month putting cedar siding on one of the new Lost Lake rental houses. I know these roads pretty well.”

      “That cedar cabin down the road?” she asked.

      “That’s the one. Chris Steffensen hired me to do the job. Although I think I did too good of a job. He and his girlfriend are living in it now. They were supposed to rent it out.”

      “It did turn out great. I came this close to offering to buy it from him.”

      “Why? This place is great.”

      “Feels too big, I guess,” she said. “You know, since I live alone and...”

      “Hold still,” he said.

      “Why?”

      “I’m going to kiss you before we get weird and awkward around each other. You good with that?” he asked. She was already feeling both weird and awkward so she was glad he mentioned it.

      “Oh. Okay. Good idea.”

      “Also I’m going to kiss you because I want to kiss you.”

      “Even better idea.”

      He put his hands on her waist and she placed hers on his shoulders. She imagined they looked like models on a How to Kiss Like Reasonable Adults public service poster. This was easily the strangest fake relationship she’d ever been in.

      But.

      Strange as it was, as soon as Erick’s lips met hers and she relaxed enough to enjoy the kiss, well...she enjoyed the kiss. He tasted like toothpaste, which made her smile against his mouth. She’d brushed her teeth, too, in anticipation of more and deeper kissing. And the more and deeper he kissed, the more and deeper she wanted him to kiss her. Erick knew how to kiss. He could teach classes on it. She hoped she was making the grade. When he stepped closer and slid his hands from her waist to the back of her neck and the curve of her hip, she had a feeling she was at least passing this test.

      “Well...” he said against her lips. “What do you think? Still weird and awkward?”

      “Yes,” she admitted. “But less weird and awkward now.”

      “Hmm...a little kissing made it a little less weird. You think a lot of kissing will make it a lot less weird?”

      “Stands to reason,” she said. “I mean, if you run the numbers, that adds up.”

      “So we should probably kiss some more, right?”

      “We should. Definitely.”

      “Definitely, she says. I like a definite woman.” He reached for her again but she stepped back, suddenly awkward again. She couldn’t get over thinking that this was Ruthie’s dad. Ruthie’s insanely sexy dad. Why did Ruthie have such a sexy dad? Work was going to be weird as heck next week.

      “Let me show you around the house first,” she said. “You know, since you’re supposed to be my boyfriend, you should probably know where the bathroom is.”

      “For a lot of reasons.”

      She showed him the living room and he admired the layout and the finish on her bamboo floors. In the kitchen he admired her box window. She would have showed him the deck but it was already pitch-black out and raining. That could wait until tomorrow. He liked the bathroom for the paint color and the nice fixtures. He actually said that—“nice fixtures.”

      “No one has complimented my fixtures before,” she said. “This is new.”

      “I like a lady who knows how to pick a faucet.”

      “Chrome is so dated,” she said. “Copper is classic.”

      “You are speaking my language. What’s upstairs?” he asked. His question sounded so innocent but something in his eyes looked quite devilish. She liked devilish.

      “Oh, another bathroom. Guest room. My bedroom.”

      “You have copper fixtures upstairs, too?” he asked.

      “Of course. I designed the whole place myself.”

      “I wouldn’t mind seeing the upstairs. You know, for the fixtures,” he said.

      “Right. The fixtures.”

      Clover took him up the steps—which he also admired for the fine grain of the cedar—and showed him her bathroom. He approved. She showed him the guest room. He also approved of that.

      “And here’s my room,” she said. “Kind of a small bed. Hope that’s okay. I can sleep in the guest—”

      Erick had walked to the bed while she was chatting away nervously and before she could get any more words out he’d turned around and fallen onto the bed on his back.

      Her full-size bed suddenly looked like a twin with Erick on it. He wallowed a little on the quilt, rolled left and rolled right, bounced once or twice, then sat up on his elbows and looked at her. She liked the look he gave her.

      “Comfy,” he said.

      “Good. As I was saying...you’re sort of, you know, big—”

      “Who have you been talking to?”