Fitz turned the corner into the hall and saw it was covered with soaked towels. Since there was still no Belinda in sight, he walked over the towels so he could see into the bedroom.
She was in there, mopping up more water. She must have run out of towels because there was still pooled water on the hardwood floor.
Fitz took in the details quickly before his eyes lingered on Belinda’s body. Her back was to him, and she was leaning over. She wore a short bathrobe in some sort of thin, soft material that clung to her body. Her legs were bare—long and toned and gorgeous. Her ass was tight and rounded deliciously, all of it displayed through the thin fabric. Her long dark brown hair was loose and wavy. She normally pulled it back, so it was strangely stunning as it hung down over her shoulders.
Fitz’s whole body came alive as he experienced the most intense wave of pure want he could remember.
She turned around just then. Of course she did. Right when he was stunned. Frozen. Pulsing with feeling. And staring like a teenage boy.
“Why did they send you?” she asked, rolling her eyes in that way she always did around him.
He opened his mouth to answer but couldn’t get a word out immediately. He was never like this, even back in his old life when he used to care about the impression he made on other people. He’d never had the wind knocked out of him by the sight of a woman before, even as disheveled and half-dressed as Belinda was right now.
But now that she’d turned around, he could see that something was different about her. Something that didn’t look quite right. Her skin was polished. Her cheeks were pink. Her eyelids were shadowed. And her dark eyelashes were much longer than normal. The makeup wasn’t overdone in that fake way he’d sometimes seen, but Belinda didn’t normally wear it.
She looked beautiful but not quite like herself.
“Well?” she demanded, still holding the wet mop as she stepped into the hallway where he was standing. “Are you planning to just stand there all day, or are you going to actually help?”
Of course he was going to help her. He’d do anything he could to help her fix this mess. He tried to tell her that in a way that was light and natural and wouldn’t provoke a negative reaction. He remembered what Ria had said. Belinda didn’t look upset right now. She looked tired and vaguely annoyed. But Ria wouldn’t have told him that unless it was true.
Instead of what he intended, Fitz asked, “What’s all this?”
“What the hell do you think all this is? The water heater—”
“Oh, I know. I meant all this.” He gestured in the general vicinity of her face before he realized what he was saying.
Fuck it all. He couldn’t have said anything worse if he’d been trying.
And that time, he hadn’t been trying.
“What do you think it is?” Belinda snapped with a scowl. “It’s makeup. Women have been known to wear it on occasion, you know.”
“I know, but you usually don’t.” He needed to fix this quick. Her shoulders had stiffened in the way they did when she was more than annoyed by him. “Sorry. I was just surprised. You always look fine.”
“Well, believe it or not, I might occasionally want to look better than fine. Maybe once in a while I want to look a little bit pretty. Sorry it comes as such a shock to you.”
One thing was clear, he’d distracted her from the mess in the hallway. Her dark eyes were shooting sparks at him, and her tone was dripping with bitterness.
“But you always look pretty!” he burst out. “You’re always beautiful.”
Okay. That was definitely not what he should have said. It might have been true, but she’d never want to hear it from him.
Her cheeks were suddenly pinker. She dropped her hair so the long fall of dark hair on either side of her face momentarily hid her expression. “What?” She sounded utterly bewildered.
“You always look fine, is all I mean,” he said hurriedly, retreating to his initial adjective since it had been far safer. “You don’t need all that stuff on your face.”
All. That. Stuff. On. Your. Face.
He’d actually used those words.
He knew exactly how she’d respond. Her head snapped up, and her eyes narrowed. “I don’t think anyone asked you. Believe it or not, I don’t dress for your approval. Now, are you planning to help, or did you just come here to make me feel worse?”
“I’m here to help,” he said after a quick, inner lecture about getting control of his riotous response—both physical and emotional. “I’m sorry I’m being a jerk. Just tell me what you need me to do.”
That evidently surprised her and mollified her. Her shoulders relaxed, and she let out a long sigh. “I ran out of towels. These are all the ones I have in the house. Madeline and Skye went to get more from Madeline’s house, so they should be back soon, but in the meantime, could you help me try to save the hardwood floor? The water is all into my bedroom. The floors are original, and I don’t know how they’re going to stand up to this much water.” Her voice wobbled slightly at the end.
Fitz checked her face quickly, but she’d looked away from him—probably on purpose. He thought quickly, searching for a solution that would make her feel better. “What about blankets? Not the good quilts on the bed but something replaceable. Did I see some throw blankets in the living room? They won’t work like towels, but they might sop up some of the water until Madeline and Skye get back.”
“Yes. Of course.” Belinda was already striding past him into the living room. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“You were kind of distracted by everything else.” He reached out to take the stack of three neatly folded throw blankets she handed him. They were made of a soft, velvety material. Not great for water absorption but better than nothing. “We’ll try these.”
They both went back into the bedroom and spread out the blankets on the pools of water that were expanding halfway into the room. Even under the bed.
“How much water did the ridiculous thing hold?” he muttered on his hands and knees on the floor. He finally reached the end of the moisture with the edge of a blanket and tried to sop it up and push it out from under the bed.
“I don’t know!” Belinda wailed, having wrung out her mop and returned to catch escaping rivulets. “It’s like it multiplied ten times over. And I don’t even know when it happened. We were all in the living room, and no one was paying attention. It could have been hours and hours of all that water flooding my poor floors.”
The blankets were all soaked now, so Fitz pushed them together into a pile to pick up. If he left them, the water would seep back out onto the floors. “Well, it couldn’t have been hours, could it?” he asked her as he worked. “What time did the others get here?”
“I don’t know. Around nine.”
“And it’s just after eleven now. Did anyone go to the bathroom?”
“Yeah. Shortly after they got here.” Belinda clung to the mop with both hands. “They would have seen the water if it had happened before then.”
“Right. So an hour is basically tops. And it probably only flooded about fifteen minutes before you caught it. I think the floors look okay.”