He takes his arm off and jerks his head back, an incredulous look on his face. “You think this is me putting the moves on you? Oh, sweetheart, you haven’t seen anything yet. My moves make you hot, sweaty and breathless, moaning my name. They don’t have you cracking jokes.”
I don’t dare admit that there is something breathless about our proximity to each other. “They would have me coming up with a motto though, right?”
He grins broadly and I notice that crooked tooth on the bottom, which adds a rugged charm to his already too perfect face. “Wham, bam, thank you Bram is a good one.”
I shake my head. “You’re too much.”
“I am too much,” he says and he somehow manages to get to his feet. “But I have faith you can handle me.” He holds out his hands for me and when I place mine in his, admiring how small and delicate they look compared to him, he pulls me up.
“Thanks,” I tell him, adjusting myself after the mini couch nearly held us captive. “By the way, you’re always so tan. Is that fake or do you just get to go to nice hot places all the time?”
He seems a bit too pleased at my question. “Why, Nicola, I’m flattered that you’ve noticed my skin tone. First it was my socks, now the color of my skin. I’m starting to think that perhaps you’re interested in more than my landlording skills.” I cross my arms, one leg askance and give him the “are you kidding me?” look. He continues. “I have a few favorite spots where the sun shines even when it doesn’t in this grey city.” He pauses and his gaze is steady. “And I’d be more than happy to take you and Ava sometime.”
Whoa. I look at him, used to his generosity and all but a trip together seems to say something else entirely. “What about Linden and Steph?” I ask cautiously.
He lazily lifts a shoulder. “They can come too. It kind of interferes with my whole seducing thing though.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Seducing thing?”
He flicks his finger at me. “Just you wait for it.” But then he strolls over to the kiosk nearby and gets a card and one of those small pencils and writes down the product information of the couch and where to find it in the warehouse. He waves the card at me. “I got all the details of your horrid little couch.”
“Thank you,” I tell him and we continue on our way, even though Bram keeps looking over his shoulder at a nice futon. I nudge him playfully. “I’ve made up my mind, I can’t afford the futon and the yellow couch is cute. And cheap.”
“It’s going to be a real shit to assemble.”
“I’m an old pro,” I reassure him. “And I’ve got a neighbor who seems to know how to wield a tool.” I glance at his smug face and quickly add, “Not that Allen keys are all that complicated.”
When we head toward the bathrooms, Bram grabs my hand and quickly pulls me aside. “I have a dare for you.”
“A dare?” I repeat. I know that Steph and Linden had their first real kiss because of a dare but I’m not sure what Bram has in mind. Dares are dangerous, usually embarrassing and, well, kind of immature. I think I was eleven years old when I last had a dare and it involved trying to tip over a cow in the middle of the night.
“Yes,” he says, looking far more excited than he should. “You go into the bathroom over there and sit on the toilet, pretending to read a magazine. When someone comes into the bathroom, you yell at them to get out and that you need your bloody privacy.”
“What?” I exclaim, looking to where he’s pointing. “It’s a fake bathroom. I’m not doing that.”
“You don’t even have to pull down your pants,” he says, almost giggling. “The person will be in such shock they won’t even notice.”
“Ew, no,” I tell him, ripping out of his grasp and walking away.
“You really are no fun,” he says, coming up after me.
I stop, whirling around and point my finger in his face. A wave of anger swarms up from my chest. “You know, you said that to me once and it’s stuck in my head ever since. I am fun, I’m just not stupid. I know how to have fun, but I’m also not a whore. I —”
He raises his palms at me, eyes wide. “Whoa, easy. That is most definitely not what I was saying. You’re not a whore and you’re certainly not stupid, okay? It was just a joke. I poke fun at you, you poke fun at me. See…there’s fun there.”
My breathing is heavy but I take in a deep inhale and gain the rhythm back. I don’t know why I overreacted like that.
“Hey,” he says gently, putting his fingers at the bottom of my chin and tilting my head up so I have to meet his eyes. The last time he looked at me like this was on the wedding night. Fragments of feelings come wafting back and it feels like I’m there and in the fluorescent glow of IKEA all at the same time. “I can be insensitive sometimes, I know this. It’s nothing personal. You are fun.” I try to look away but he holds my face in place. “You are fun, Nicola. You’re fun to be around, whether you think so or not. And I think you might be the cutest thing I’ve ever seen, picking out the tiniest, cheapest little shitpiece couches for your apartment. If that’s not called fun, I don’t know what is.”
Now he’s being too nice, the compliments making me uneasy. He seems to believe them too much. “I think I like it better when you’re a jerk.”
“All right,” he says. “I can work with that too. You know what your real problem is, sweetheart?”
“What?” I ask, wanting to know and scared of the answer.
“You’re totally underfucked,” he says, his voice dropping a register. He leans in closer. “And I’m the one who can tip the scales in the other direction.”
I blink, swallow hard. I don’t have a comeback for that because I know it’s true. I just don’t want him to know it’s true.
I give him a wry look, trying to shrug his innuendo off. “There you go thinking so highly of yourself. Can’t you keep your ego in check?”
He shakes his head slightly, his eyes focused so intently on mine. “I have ego for a reason. And one of these days, you’ll find out just why that is.”
Heat flushes me from my core to my scalp. I look away and he drops his fingers from my face. I feel entirely breathless, almost shaky, like I’d been trapped in some kind of hypnotic force field in the middle of Swedish furnishings.
“In your dreams,” I tell him but it comes out as nothing more than a squeak.
He just smiles at that.
“Sorry,” I mumble, trying to change the subject. “About overacting. I’ve obviously got some issues there.”
“Don’t we all?” he asks. He grabs my hand and leads me along the hall. “Let’s go rescue your daughter from the cootie pit.”
He doesn’t let go until we get there.
CHAPTER TEN
Nicola
The rest of the IKEA outing is pretty uneventful and by that I mean all the sexual innuendo stops, thankfully, once we get Ava. Not that what Bram was spouting off could possibly be called innuendo. There was nothing indirect about it.
By the time we get back to my apartment, I feel all twisted up in knots. I think I need a moment to be alone with my thoughts, to gather my strength and my wits. As much fun as I had today, it challenged me. Bram challenged me. And it feels like the more I hang around my handsome neighbor, the more my resolve will dissolve.
But what a way to go.
“Well,” I say to him after he’s brought the heavy boxes of couch inside and once again I make a point not to ogle him while he lifts and lowers, like some impossibly rugged cave man. “Thank you so much for taking us there.”
“Anything for my two favorite girls,” he says, looking at Ava. She giggles and then as if she’s struck by a case of the bashfuls, she runs off into her room. “And I mean it,” he adds, eyes on me now. “Are you sure you don’t need help with your crappy couches?”