“If I didn’t see it for myself, mamita, I’d ask if you got any paint on the wall,” he said right before his hand left my hair and his index finger slid across my cheek and down the side of my mouth. I knew he was tracing a paint mark, just one of many.
I ignored what his soft touch did to my body and got up on an elbow, one hand pulling the hair away from my face and getting stuck in the paint-clogged tangles.
“Painting’s kind of messy,” I informed him.
His eyes gave me a hair, face and torso scan. “It’s not that messy.”
I grinned and pushed all the way up, going behind him, and got to my feet. I leaned in, grabbed his hand, pulled him up and said, “Come look.”
I dragged him from the north room to the south room and we stood in the middle.
I was thrilled with the results. The dusky gray went great with the dusky gray-blue of the other room. There were all sorts of ways to tie the rooms together, toss pillows, throws, pictures, the mind boggled with the options (at least mine did). It was perfect.
I dropped his hand and pointed to the bottom of the walls.
“You said don’t worry about the skirting boards, you were going to put wood ones in. Look!” I cried happily. “Matt helped by yanking off the old ones. He threw them in a pile in the backyard.”
Hector wasn’t looking at where the skirting boards used to be, he was looking at me.
“Matt was here to watch you, not help renovate the room,” Hector told me.
I waved my hand in between us. “I know, that’s okay. Duke came by and helped him, they never left me alone. Promise.” Then I looked around. “Where’s Matt anyway?”
“I let him go. I’m on duty now.”
“Oh! Okay!” I chirped and then put my hand to his shoulder and turned him toward the fireplace. “While they were doing that, since we couldn’t paint, Roxie, Ava, Stella, Ralphie and I stripped the wood on the fireplace. Isn’t that wood fantastic? Who in their right minds would paint wood like that?” I asked and didn’t wait for an answer. “As you can see, we couldn’t get in some of the grooves but Duke said there’s some goo you can brush on to loosen it up and scrape it out. He’s going to bring some by tomorrow.”
Hector was looking at the fireplace but his arm slid along my shoulders and he pulled me to his side.
“I’ve got the ‘goo’,” he said to the fireplace but I saw his lips twitching. “It’s in the kitchen.”
“Fantastic!” I cried, clapping my hands then I threw out an arm. “We all painted, we did the ceiling white, like you did in the other room. Ava did the edging because she’s an artist and she has a steady hand. It didn’t take any time at all with the five of us and we even did two coats. I think it looks fab. Don’t you?” I tilted my head to look up at him, he was watching me, eyes amused and he nodded. I smiled and went on, “Duke says we got the order wrong, we should have painted before we sanded the floors. Now I have to sand the paint splodges off.”
Hector curled me into his front and looked down at me. “We didn’t get the order wrong. You didn’t ask to paint. You asked to sand the floors.”
I blinked at him as I slid my arms loosely around his waist. “Oh. You should have said.”
“You seemed all fired up to sand. I didn’t want to disappoint you,” he explained.
My belly went into melt mode (yes, over Hector letting me sand his floors!).
How bizarre was that?
I shook it off, too excited by the news I had to impart on him, I couldn’t think about my melted belly.
“Anyway, Duke’s coming over tomorrow to stain the floors and he’s going to show me how!” I announced like Duke promised a one-day, comprehensive course in the intricacies of neurosurgery.
Hector grinned but said, “Not to put a damper on your good time, mamita, and as much as I appreciate Duke’s help, I wanna walk on my floors, not Duke’s.”
Oh. Wow.
He wanted to refinish his own floors.
That got a belly melt too!
Seriously, I was so weird!
“No worries,” I told Hector, again ignoring the belly melt. “I’ll break it to Duke.”
He bent his head and touched his mouth briefly to mine. “We get your business done, this weekend, we’ll finish the floors. Then we’ll have somewhere to sit other than the bed.”
I leaned further into him, liking that idea. Liking it loads.
It was not a surprise that got a belly melt too.
“Okay,” I said softly.
His eyes went over my face and hair again then he informed me, “Takin’ you out to dinner, get showered.”
“Okay,” I repeated, smiled at him, pulled away and headed to the stairs.
I was up three steps when Hector called, “We’re goin’ to Lincoln’s.” I stopped, looked at him and he went on, “It’s a roadhouse, you wear your designer armor, we’re likely to get ejected.”
I didn’t answer, he was grinning at me and I knew he was teasing. I just shook my head in a non-verbal “whatever”, trying to suppress my own grin (and failing) and headed upstairs.
I took a shower, scrubbed off the paint and thought about my day.