Page 22 of Heating Up (Nugget)
“Griffin must be happy about the house you sold. Jeez, the homes on both sides of my sister’s place are vacant.”
“I’m working on that,” she said, seeming to perk up now that they were talking about real estate. Aidan couldn’t help but notice that her nipples had also perked up from the air-conditioning. “Little by little we’re getting more interest, especially since prices in Tahoe, Truckee, and Glory Junction have gone through the roof. So what’s going on with your condo?”
“Unfortunately, not a damn thing.”
“Maybe you’re asking too much.”
Aidan had already slashed the price twice. “According to my agent, we’re good.”
“Is it an undesirable neighborhood?”
“It’s a great neighborhood. But the place is only one-bedroom.”
“Ah,” Dana said. “One-bedrooms can be a tough sell.”
Yeah, that was what Sue had said when he’d bought the place. At the time, he’d been planning to live there alone. Upon deciding to go back to school to become a teacher, she’d asked to move in to save money.
“Someone will buy it eventually. If not, I’ll rent it out,” he said.
She told him which turn to take and a short time later they pulled up in front of the hardware store. It looked small from the outside, but inside the shop was crammed full of merchandise. Aidan thought it had as much stuff as a Home Depot. A clerk told them where to find the window air-conditioners.
“There’s been a real run on ’em,” he said, and Aidan hung back to talk to the old guy for a while. As long as he was new to the area, he wanted to get to know people.
Dana left them to their conversation, which started with the weather and took a quick detour to the best places in the region to fish. Aidan needed to get a license and thought about going to Lake Davis over the weekend. Brady had taken him there when he’d visited in February and he’d fallen in love with the lake in the woods.
Eventually, he broke away to explore the store. He found Dana in the storage aisle, eyeing a closet organizer. No shock there. In a short time, he’d figured out that she liked everything in its place. It was part of that anal retentive thing she had going.
“You getting that?”
“I was thinking about it. It seems like it would be pretty useful.”
The thing, with its various shelves and hanger rods, seemed stupid to him, like it would wind up giving her less space than just leaving the closet the way it was. But he kept his mouth shut.
“I don’t know what the measurements of the closet are, though.” She stood there chewing her bottom lip, reading the information on the box over and over again.
“It’s a standard reach-in closet. Eight feet wide, thirty inches deep. It’ll work . . . if you really want it.”
“I definitely want it. Are you sure, though? I mean, how do you know the closet is standard?”
“I’m a firefighter. We know stuff like that.”
She looked at him to see if he was joking. He wasn’t; firefighters really did know stuff like that. They practically lived and breathed blueprints. It was not only crucial to know how a building was laid out for fighting a fire but paramount in a rescue situation.
“I’ll get a cart,” he said.
By the time he returned, she’d dragged the box off the shelf. He hefted it onto the flat cart and they headed to the air-conditioner aisle. They had a couple of different models.
“I suppose you know the size of our windows too?”
“Yep.” He chose the ones that said they would cool up to a 250-square-foot room and loaded three onto the cart. “This should do us.”
On the way to the cash register a big display of rafts and other water toys caught his eye. Aidan was pretty taken with the River Run, a fancy inner tube that had armrests, a headrest, and compartments to hold his beer. He grabbed one and threw it on the cart. Dana hitched her brows.
“What? You want one too? I’ll get it for you.” He reached for a second box, but Dana put her hand on his arm.
“No thanks.”
Then he remembered about her brother and felt like an imbecile. “Ah, hell, Dana, I’m sorry.”
