Page 27 of The Fireman and the Flirt

“It’s nice.”

I wouldn’t be getting much more from him, and that was okay.

“On a scale from No Way to Dream House, where are you?”

“Somewhere in the middle.” He cracked a smile as he opened the fridge. Even the food inside had been organized. “Huh.”

“What?”

“They drink a lot of Diet Coke.” He pointed to the two boxes of Diet Coke cans stacked in the fridge. “Diet soda is terrible for you. You’re better off drinking regular.”

“That’s a matter for their dentist, not you.”

“If they don’t care about their bodily health, do they care about their house’s health?”

“Derek.”

His face split with a smile that stretched up to his crinkly eyes. “I’m kidding.”

The look of unabashed joy on his face sent a warm spark through me.

I cleared my throat. “The appliances are all stainless steel and less than five years old.”

“Good to know.” He leaned over the open fridge door, his biceps tightening against his shirt. “What was in your letter?”

“Huh?” I clutched my tablet to my chest.

“In your letter from high school.”

“What made you think of that?”

He shrugged his shoulders, which belied a whole ocean of questions.

“I was flipping through the South Rock yearbook. You look mostly the same,” he said.

“I doubt that, but thank you.” Was that a good thing?

“I was rolling my eyes at my senior quote. I thought I was being profound.”

“I’m sure it was great, whatever it was.” The truth was I knew the exact quote. All of it.You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t takewas Derek’s senior quote, and yes, teenage Cary found it deeply fucking profound.

“It’s a bit cliché. But don’t sidetrack us. What was in the letter?”

“I told you. I was sticking up for Cal.”

“Okay.” A glint in his eye warned me that my story was on shaky ground. Before he could grill me any further, and before I could let his steely gaze trigger more flirting from me, I shut the fridge.

“You don’t want all their Diet Coke to go bad.” I spun on my heel and headed to the bedrooms. Because we hadn’t yet seen the bedrooms. Not because I was thinking about thebedroombedroom.

“Let’s go,” I said over my shoulder. “Plenty more house to see!”

Derek followed behind. We walked to the first door on the right.

“This is the first of three bedrooms. And I know you don’t need three, but one can be an office or a guest room.”

A very large bed with a red, fluffy comforter took up nearly the entire square footage of the room. It had to be a California king at least. It reminded me of stories of sketchy nightclubs in the late 1970s that had rooms filled with only mattresses.

“That’s quite a bed,” Derek said. He squeezed past me to the window, which had a nice view of the street. But the only thing either of us could look at was this enormous bed swallowing up this tiny room.

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