Mr. Imperfect

chapter 17



Stepping out the Cannons’ front door and into the morning sun, Rori took a deep breath as she surveyed her surroundings. To call the neighborhood picturesque would be outright flattery, and yet there was a charm to the area. The neighborhood had clearly been built in a day before developers bought entire subdivisions and dictated the homes that could and would be built. On this street simple ramblers, like Luke’s, were built side-by-side with more elaborate, multi-level homes, like the Cannons’. The paint jobs were dull and dated, but what each house had in common were neatly trimmed lawns, colorful flower beds, and sturdy climbing trees. Each house in this neighborhood was a home.

Since it was a Saturday morning, the residential street was alive with neighborhood kids taking advantage of the sunny, spring weather. Kids on bikes and scooters rode up and down the street, while others squatted on sidewalks creating chalk drawings or playing with toys.

This was a place where families lived, where kids could be kids. It was also a place Rori could easily spend a day sketching.

She scanned the street, looking for signs of another adult besides herself and finding none. People trusted each other here, and the children played in groups while older kids seemed to look on from a distance. Rori guessed that was one of the perks of larger families. At a certain point the kids could watch after each other, leaving the parents free to do what needed to be done on a weekend.

This was how Luke had grown up. Playing on safe streets, surrounded by children his own age. She could almost imagine Luke and Mike as children, riding bikes and jumping on the tramp, then as teens, shooting baskets in the hoop in the Cannon’s driveway or sitting on the wall behind the hoop pretending they were better than everyone else. It didn’t even take any imagination in a place like this, where the younger kids watched the older kids and mimicked them, generation after generation.

Rori could live in the suburbs. She could have carefree children, who didn’t go to boarding schools or attend polite gatherings where they were trained to be silent. In a world like this, children grew up to be guileless, like Luke. Confident, like Kris. And muscular, like Mike.

Making her way to Luke’s doorstep, Rori rang the bell, unsure of whether she should just walk in. Were front doors left open in neighborhoods like this? Could people just walk right in?

When no one answered, she rang again and this time heard the thump of feet coming up some stairs.

“Coming!” Luke called, before opening the door shirtless with his hair poking straight up.

Now this is the kind of body I like, she thought, looking Luke over. Slim, but muscled. Lived in, but not obsessed over. That’s how a man should look. The bed head was optional.

“Hey there, beautiful,” Luke said, his eyes squinting against the sun.

“Morning,” she said, going up on her toes for a kiss. He met her with a quick, closed-mouth peck.

“Haven’t brushed yet,” he explained.

“Of course,” she said, stepping in. “Did you sleep at all?”

“Maybe,” he yawned. “Not sure. I think I faded a bit after Mike left for work. So a little after 5:00?”

“In the morning?” she asked.

“Yeah. Had breakfast already?”

“At the Cannon’s,” she said. “They practically force fed me.”

He nodded, smiling. “They’ll do that to you if you happen to be in the vicinity during meal time.”

“It’s a marvel they’re all so thin.” Or freakishly fit, she added to herself.

“Ah,” he said with one of his quirky smiles. “It’s because they feed everyone else that they’re thin. Watch them next time. They’ll make you eat three plates while they eat half of one.”

“I see. Well, either way, I am to invite you to breakfast. Mrs. Cannon saved some for you.”

“I need a shower first,” he said, sniffing himself. “And you might as well start calling her Rachel. ‘Mrs. Cannon’ isn’t going to fly with her, no matter how you were raised.”

“I couldn’t,” Rori said quickly. “It’s far too informal.”

Luke shrugged. “I’m just sayin’. You can believe me, or you can let ‘Mrs. Cannon’ turn you into a believer. And want me to give you a hint? She’ll win.”

Rori frowned her disagreement.

“We’re on my turf now, Rori. I have home court advantage, so either follow my lead or be schooled by the natives, like I was in Thailand. It’s your call.”

He had a point. She didn’t like it, but he did.

“The TV’s downstairs if you want to watch something while I wash up,” he said, heading down the stairs.

Rori watched his tall, lanky frame move down the stairs and said the only thing that seemed reasonable. “Want me to join you?”

Luke actually stumbled, catching his weight on the handrail before he fell down the stairs.

“I…” he stuttered. “Man, warn a guy before you toss things like that around, will you?”

“Is that a yes?” she asked, stepping toward the banister.

“But… I mean, you’ve already showered and fixed your hair. You’d have to re-do all that if we, well…” He stopped talking and licked his lips.

So his answer was both yes and no, but he seemed to be leaning towards no.

“Maybe next time?” she offered. Surprised when he let out a sigh of relief.

“Yeah. Like I said, TV’s down here. You can hang wherever, though. Check the place out, rummage through my stuff. Whatever.”

“I like the sound of that,” she said, giving him a playful smile.

“Yeah?” he flirted back. “Let me know if you find anything interesting.”

“Maybe,” she teased, then watched him disappear the rest of the way down the stairs, even though she knew there was a shower on the main level of the house. Did he just like the other bathroom better?

Not worrying too much about it, Rori set out to explore the house. It was clean, she’d give him that. Although, come to think of it, Mike was the one who took care of the house. Muscular bad boy he might be, but he knew how to dust. In typical guy fashion, framed movie posters took the place of actual art on the walls and furniture was utilitarian. There were no small flourishes that spoke of a woman’s touch. Tables were bare and without centerpieces while the windows had blinds with no curtains. It was all clean, but no one would ever accuse a woman of living in the house.

Moving down the hall of the main floor, Rori saw four doors. The first on the right was a bathroom—with a shower—and the second on the left was the room she had woken up in the day before. Mike’s room. That left the other two doors. One of the two remaining doors should be Luke’s room. When she reached the first one on the left, she pushed the door open and saw a home office. A high-end Mac sat on a glass desk and the walls had been turned into giant white boards listing clients, projects, and progress.

It appeared that Mr. Perfect was also perfectly organized.

For a moment Rori studied his tidy handwriting and the little lists Mike had made for himself. He’d even scheduled out the day for himself. He had met the bride at her home to film her waking up for her wedding day and was following the bride’s every move until the luncheon ended at 2:00 and the photographer took over. Mike was then going to return home to edit the video together for a reception that started at 6:00 p.m. The edited video of the wedding would then be played for reception guests while Mike filmed until the bride and groom drove away. Then Mike would return home again, edit the new material in, and call it a day.

Rori didn’t want to respect him for having work ethic, but apparently he did. Based on his calendar, she wouldn’t be seeing much of him during her brief stay. He certainly didn’t have a hole big enough in his schedule to model for her. Luke had called it when he’d marked Mike as a workaholic.

Skipping Mike’s bedroom, Rori moved to the last door in the hallway. The door didn’t open right away when she turned the knob, so she gave it an extra push and blinked at what she saw when it swung open. It wasn’t Luke’s room, that was for sure. Compared to the rest of the house, it was dark and a little bit musty. The carpet looked like it was from a different era, as did the bedroom furniture and the quilt on the California king bed in the center of the room. What confused her the most, however, was the yellow crime scene tape wrapped around the bed, roping it off. This was clearly the master bedroom, so why would anyone wrap the bed in yellow police tape?

Then Rori remembered she was dealing with Luke and she started to laugh. Then she laughed harder until tears filled her eyes and she shut the door.

Luke had said that this was his parents’ house and he’d bought it from them. That was their bed—she’d bet money on it. And Luke wasn’t exactly the kind of guy who could just move his parents’ furniture out and take their place. He didn’t talk much about his parents, but based on the crime scene tape, she had an idea about how he felt about them.

It was nice to know that she wasn’t the only one with an uncomfortable dynamic when it came to parents. But still, she would have to get the story on that one. Was he just traumatized that his parents were physical, or had he walked in on them a time or two? Maybe on a sunny day after he and Mike had played basketball for a while. Maybe he had barged into their room, wanting to ask permission for a popsicle or something, and shazam! Coitus interruptus.

Traumatized for life.

She definitely had to get that story.

In the meantime, she still needed to find his room and there was really only one more place for it to be: downstairs.

Following Luke’s steps from a few minutes before, Rori walked down the steps and knew immediately that she had crossed the threshold into Luke’s lair. Yes, it had been recently vacuumed and dusted, but in less than twenty-four hours the clutter had already started to accumulate. Luke’s shoes from the day before had been kicked off near the couch and empty cans of Mountain Dew were scattered across the coffee table. Apparently he’d ordered pizza in at some point as well, because the box lay open and half eaten among the cans and an empty bag of Twizzlers.

Kris had called that one.

Down here, the decoration was all about video games, but mostly the walls were bare in the large family-type room. Around the corner she found a small kitchenette that seemed to be dedicated to housing junk food and soda. Any real food was obviously kept upstairs.

She followed the sound of the shower down the hall, finding a well-equipped home gym, a storage room, and two bedrooms where the dividing wall had been ripped out to create one massive bedroom. Luke’s room.

It was a lot to process, from the massive water bed to the bookcase devoted entirely to Marvel figurines. In their new home, Luke would definitely need his own man cave. And the bed was going. Luke was insane if he thought there was any way she was going to sleep with him on that.

Not. A. Chance. She’d rather rip the crime scene tape of his parents’ bed and use that, dust and all.

Luke seemed obsessed with things called Halo and Call of Duty. Rori assumed these were video games, based on the art. Computer generated with 3-D animation. It was a skill set she really should invest some time in. Yes, the mediums she chose to work with were more traditional, but Rori didn’t believe in inhibiting the expression of art just because it wasn’t time-tested. It would be fun to learn the software and see how classical methods and technology could be married together.

Still, she had to draw the line at decorating her walls with drawings of men in alien-looking body suits. That wouldn’t be happening. It was also a good thing they would have a maid, or she might take bigger issue with Luke being such a slob. Mike obviously didn’t clean this room as often, and it showed.

Just then the shower turned off and Rori heard Luke step out and slide a towel from the rack. She moved to the bathroom door and this time she didn’t knock before entering. She just stepped into the steamy room right as Luke wrapped a towel around his waist.

“So why do you live downstairs when it’s your house?” she asked, appreciating the graceful slope of his chest into his flat abs. To his credit, he didn’t seem as skittish as he’d been before the shower.

“Hey, there,” he said, wiping the mirror off with a hand towel. “You noticed that, huh?”

“It’s kind of hard not to,” she teased, letting him see that she was looking him over. He was attractive. And since he was a little shy, it seemed only fair that she let him know that she liked looking at him. It might help… expedite things between them.

“Upstairs is for guests,” he said with a shrug. “Mike keeps it clean and presentable and I get my privacy down here. I get to be a slob and no one gets to give me a hairy eyeball, because if they do, I’ll just send them back upstairs to Mike’s turf and they can bug him about how the place needs a woman’s touch.”

That made Rori smile. “Would these be women in his family, or women offering to be the woman’s touch?”

“Both,” Luke said, raking his hair away from his face with his fingers. “He gets the free rent in exchange for doing all the chores, paying the utilities, and dealing with the headaches.”

“Sounds fair,” she said, wondering if he dared to lose the towel in front of her yet. Something had him skittish. She only wished she knew what so she knew whether to back off or push forward.

“So what do you want to do today?” he asked, switching subjects. “The day is ours and the options are endless. Inside? Outside? What sounds good?”

Finally, something Kris wasn’t right about. Rori had definitely not heard the words Zelda or alphabet in that sentence.

“Outside, definitely,” she said, thinking of the kids she’d watched on her way over. “A hike, maybe? Or a visit to some place you like? I don’t know anything about your hometown, so I’ll put myself at your mercy.”

Luke actually wiggled his eyebrows at her. “Well, that sounds like something I can work with.”

“Yeah?” she flirted.

“Definitely,” he said moving past her toward his room. “I know just the place. Give me five minutes and we’ll be out the door.”

“Sounds good,” she said, just as he pulled off the towel and gave her an eyeful of his excellent back side. Rori never would have guessed it, but Luke Foster was a tease. And she liked him better for it.