you.
DON’T PANIC, CLOVER told herself. Then she told herself that again. It wasn’t working. She was panicking.
She stood in the middle of her living room and glanced around at her house. No denying, she had a cute house. Not big. Perfect size for a woman who lived alone. Living room, office and kitchen downstairs. Master bedroom and guest bedroom upstairs. Half bath by the kitchen. Full bath by the master. Bamboo floors covered in woven rugs. Walls painted a rustic red downstairs and a pretty lake blue upstairs. Plants were everywhere, of course—ferns, ficus and flowers. She hoped Erick wasn’t allergic to flowers. This slumber party would be over before it started if he was. Ruthie had worked for her nearly a year and Erick picked his daughter up all the time. Had she ever seen him sneeze around the plants? Not that she recalled, but then again that would be a really bizarre thing to remember. She was freaking out and she knew it.
“Calm down, Clover,” she told herself.
“I am calm,” she said but she knew she wasn’t. She hadn’t been expecting company tonight. Certainly not tall, handsome, male company. She was torn between excitement and panic.
“Priorities, Clover. First things first. Man coming over...spending the night. What do I do? Clean stuff. What stuff? All the stuff.”
She’d fallen asleep on the sofa last night reading and the throw pillows and blankets were still a mess. She straightened the pillows and folded the blanket neatly. But it was a throw blanket and didn’t look right in a neat rectangle so she tossed it over the back instead. It ended up looking nearly identical to how it looked before but at least it was purposefully messy and not accidentally messy.
All the dishes in the kitchen sink she crammed into the dishwasher and started it running. She put the basket of her yet-to-be-folded socks and underwear in the laundry room, draping a clean towel over the piles of panties on top. She dug through the linen closet upstairs for clean sheets. Currently on her bed was red and blue flannel. She liked a cold house to sleep in at night with warm blankets piled high. Sometimes she even slept with the window cracked to let in the cold night air. She lived near Lost Lake and the air was as clean and fresh as anyone could ever want, and it seemed a shame to not have some of that crisp clean air in her house. If she remembered correctly, men tended to be warmer than women. Maybe no flannel sheets, then. She found her summer sheets, plain blue cotton, and stripped the white-and-blue-checkered quilt off her bed. She replaced the sheets and fluffed the pillows. Then she had to decide—did she want to remake the bed? Hadn’t she already told Erick she had to change the sheets? Would he think she was some kind of freak if she made the bed all of an hour before unmaking it to sleep? Was she overthinking this? Yes, she was overthinking this.
“You’re overthinking this, Clover. Stop it.”
She stopped it and just made the bed, anyway. She liked made beds. The room looked more inviting when the bed was made. On the bedside table was a little milk glass lamp that she switched on, flooding the room with low gentle light. Clover stepped back and took in the effect. Nice. Her small bedroom looked almost...romantic? Like a room at a cozy inn. Rustic but pretty.
What else? Bathroom. Oh, yeah, she better clean the bathroom. Erick had said with Ruthie gone he looked forward to using a clean bathroom all week. Clover wiped down the sink and the tile counter, wiped the toothpaste spots off the mirror, opened the drawer and slid into it everything from the counter. When that was done she heaved a sigh of relief. Then she saw herself in the mirror.
While frantically cleaning, she’d gotten a little sweaty and her hair was matted down on her forehead and what little of her makeup she’d still been wearing when she’d arrived home half an hour ago was now gone. She undressed fast and hopped 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
