“No thanks needed if it means I get a hot shower. The surprise cold shower was better than nothing, but I’m still holding out for a hot one.” He grinned at her, showing her a whole different version of the man she’d first seen in the holding cell. That smile could make a girl’s knees melt right out from under her.
Some other girl, not her. She believed in destiny, and she knew for certain that she wasn’t destined to meet her soulmate in a jail cell.
“You’re at the head of the line,” she promised. “It’s not quite ready yet, but I’ll knock on your door as soon as it is. I might have a tiny bit of cleanup to do first.”
Since the floor was covered in a good inch of water, that was an understatement.
“Need a hand with that?”
She stared at him, trying to make out if he was serious or not. Mopping a floor wasn’t something most people were eager to volunteer for. “You’re a paying guest. Absolutely not.”
“Technically, I’m not. Maya Badger gave me a voucher.”
“Did she? You must be a VIP. She’s been saving that forever. I keep hoping she’ll use it for a hot date. I don’t suppose…?” She eyed him speculatively, remembering how Maya had treated him with such respect. With Maya, respect would have to come first—on both sides.
“I’m engaged,” he said quickly. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“Really?” Strange—she hadn’t picked up any hint of a romantic attachment in her intuitive survey. Well, she’d never claimed one hundred percent accuracy.
“That’s odd.”
“Really, is it so odd?” he asked dryly. “Even jailbirds can find love.”
“Of course. It’s not that…” She shook her head impatiently and waded through the water to the wastepaper basket, which fortunately got emptied every day. She took out the liner to use the basket as a scoop. “It’s nothing.”
“What then?”
“Nothing. Really. It’s nothing that you’d be interested in.”
“See, that’s the thing about me. I’m interested in a lot of things. Comes with the job.”
“The private investigator job?”
Now it was his turn to look surprised. “Maya filled you in?”
“No, I have my own sources.” When he narrowed his eyes at her, she just widened hers. Sergeant Hollister had sworn her to secrecy and she never betrayed a confidence. She filled the plastic basket with water and dumped it into the claw-foot bathtub.
Ethan disappeared, then returned carrying the trash basket from his room. He was barefoot and had rolled up his pant legs, revealing muscular calves and a long scar running up his right leg.
“The quicker we get this done, the quicker I get my shower, right?”
“Correct.”
As if they were bailing out a boat, they both set to work scooping water from the floor into the tub.
“Still curious why you think it’s so odd that I’m engaged,” he said after they’d lowered the level of the water by about a quarter inch. “You don’t even know me.”
“You’re right. It’s completely not my business. Forget that I said anything, please.” His feet were distracting her. They were very well-shaped. Not that she judged people by their feet. She was more into forearms. Forearms were definitely her jam. She stole a quick glance at Ethan’s forearms, visible because he’d stripped down to a t-shirt when he’d come back into the bathroom.
Oh yes, he also had excellent forearms, well-muscled but not excessively so, with just the lightest scattering of hair.
“I’m here bailing out your bathroom after you water-hosed me. Don’t you owe me?”
She couldn’t deny that. “Fine. But you already think I’m a flake, and now you’re going to think even worse of me.”
“I haven’t yet come to any kind of conclusion about you except that you bake a damned good scone and you have a way with a wrench.”
She didn’t believe that for a second. “I’m very good at reading people. I’m quite intuitive and I can pick up a lot about someone without them telling me. It’s like an extra sense. You can laugh if you want, but even Maya agrees that I can sense certain things. For instance, I know perfectly well that you’ve formed a judgment about me. You don’t take me seriously.”
He looked up at her as he filled his container with water. “That was before I knew that my hot shower depended on you.”
“Bow down to the plumbing queen,” she quipped.
He went along with her joke, and ducked his head. Her irritation with him began to fade, since he was being such a good sport.
“I said it was odd because I didn’t pick up any hint of you being engaged. Normally it’s the kind of thing I can sense. There you go. You can laugh now.”
He dumped his bucket of water into the tub with a shrug. “Well, it’s pretty new. Maybe my aura hasn’t caught up yet.”
She gritted her teeth and sloshed her way over to the sink, where the big sponges were stored. “I see your mockery and raise you an ‘I knew you’d react this way.’ You know the funny thing? Everyone has the ability to be intuitive, but most people just ignore it. Haven’t you ever done anything just because some sixth sense was telling you that you should?”
He straightened up as a smile slid across his face. “Yup. I got engaged.”
Every time he referred to his engagement she got a strange sensation, like trying to swallow a moldy bit of cheese. It just felt wrong to her. But she could hardly tell a total stranger that she didn’t have high hopes for his impending marriage.
“Congratulations.” She sopped up water with the biggest sponge she’d been able to find and squeezed it into the bathtub. “And good luck to you.”
He must have picked up on the doubt in her voice. “Won’t need it. I don’t believe in luck. I like to use my common sense, not count on good fortune.”
What kind of person didn’t believe in luck? Her opinion of Ethan James was once again dropping fast. Too bad he had such nice feet and forearms. And voice. She really liked his voice, which had an undercurrent of laughter to it that gave her the shivers. “So you got engaged by using common sense?”
“Exactly. Marriage is much too serious for anything else. You’re talking about the rest of your life.”
“Which is exactly my point. You can’t rely on something as limited as common sense for such a big decision. When I meet my soul mate, I’ll know because I’ll be using all my senses to identify him.”
She’d imagined it so many times—the way her intuition would light up like a sky full of fireworks.
“Oh, here we go. The whole ‘soul mate’ argument. I think we can skip right to the part where we agree to disagree.”
“But I don’t agree to disagree.” She shot him a sunny smile. “I’d prefer to talk you out of your mundane view of life. I’d prefer to make you acknowledge that not everything can be explained away with so-called common sense. That’s where intuition comes in.”
A funny expression crossed his face; maybe she’d touched a nerve. If so, it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about, because he tucked the wastepaper basket under his arm and checked his wrist watch. “Sorry, I’m going to stick with mundane. That’s what works for me. I have some homework to do before my meeting with Maya. Unless you can telepathically tell me what’s in her notes, I’d better get to it.”