Finding Mr. Right Next Door

by Sarah Ballance

  He snort-laughed in response. “Not over at my house, you’re not. In fact, I’m not sure you’re allowed in my kitchen.” He swallowed a small oof when she jabbed him lightly in the gut. “But on that note, why exactly are you refusing all the food everyone has offered? If you started freezing casseroles you wouldn’t have to touch the kitchen for ages. The whole town would be safer.” He glanced toward the kitchen. “If the mayor didn’t throw a parade for you, the neighbors might.”

  She gave him a dirty look that killed what was left of the tension, but it quickly dissolved into a rueful smile. “You might have a point,” she conceded, “but honestly, I just want normalcy, and that’s some takeout and a sofa, not an aluminum pan full of Mrs. Kurtz’s funeral potatoes. Are you in?”

  He happened to be a big fan of Mrs. Kurtz’s funeral potatoes, but now didn’t seem the time to say as much. Instead, he said, “I’m definitely in. What do you want to take next door? I’ll help you carry your stuff.”

  She looked past him toward the kitchen and her face fell. “I guess the tart pan is a goner,” she said.

  In Matt’s non-expert opinion, she sounded terribly upset about something that was so far out of her wheelhouse he couldn’t believe she possessed it. “We’ll get another one,” he said. “My treat, if you promise not to try to bake anything in it.”

  “Adorable,” she said, “but you’ve missed the point. That is your grandmother’s dish, and to hear her tell it, she got it from her grandmother, who had it handed to her personally by Napoleon himself.”

  Well, that was one he hadn’t heard before. “If—and it’s a big if—any of my grandmothers ever met Napoleon, why would he have handed her a tart pan? Did he make a point of carrying those around?”

  “I don’t know,” Lexi said, sounding dangerously on the verge of tears, “but that’s Elsie’s story and it’s not my place to tell her porcelain doesn’t keep well on the back of a horse.”

  He almost laughed. Almost. But he saw her face and stopped himself. “Elsie cares a lot more about you than she does that dish she probably found at a flea market nowhere near France. Now, shall I dig through your underwear drawer or—?”

  She grimaced. “Yeah, no, I can do that, assuming you’re indicating I need to change clothes.” Then, with a gleam in her eye, she added, “If you’re looking to borrow something for yourself, however…”

  “Nah, I’m good.” Good, but slightly regretting his choice of distractions, because while she seemed to have moved on from worrying about the dish, his thoughts were now in her underwear drawer, which was unfortunate. His ability to keep all things Lexi platonically pigeonholed was a thing born of necessity. He couldn’t remember a time in his life that didn’t have her in it. Back when he lost his parents to a car accident, Elsie hadn’t hesitated to take custody of him, but she’d had a flare-up of rheumatoid arthritis that didn’t pair well with a rambunctious toddler. Lexi’s mother—his grandmother’s neighbor at the time—had immediately stepped in. For Elsie’s part, she’d responded remarkably well over the years to advances in treatment; for Matt’s, he had a best friend and extended family that were more than any one person could hope for.

  Which made his sudden consideration of Lexi’s lingerie the world’s worst idea. As was the timing of such consideration. It wasn’t like he hadn’t noticed her before, and certainly didn’t think of her as a sister, but she had to be off-limits.

  So why had she been on his mind so much over the past few months? She’d always been so much of everything to him, but in this situation, that was a con. He dated a lot, though—enough to realize that what he really appreciated about Lexi was what he never seemed to find anywhere else. An even bigger con, as far as he was concerned, because after years of valiant effort—something Lexi, with the barest of accuracy, referred to as pursuing any woman with a pulse—he already knew he’d never find anyone else like her, and he wouldn’t risk that for anything.

  And that was that.

  He turned his back on the hallway down which she had disappeared and headed to the kitchen, taking care to match his steps to the rags that had been spaced on the floor. The tart pan was still on the stove, its contents burned to an innocuous black lump that looked more like volcanic remnants than anything that had ever been edible. Of course, knowing Lexi, it probably hadn’t.

  The faint squeal of her bedroom door hinge echoed through the stale air. He assumed she was coming back toward the kitchen, so he dumped out the liquid that had collected in the burned pits and valleys onto the stovetop and slid the dish on top of the laundry cabinet.

  When he met her in the living room, she held a duffel bag and carried a box of toiletries. “Is that it?” he asked.

  “I think it’ll get me through the night,” she said drily, tossing the bag his way. It hit him with enough force for him to realize she’d stashed more in there than he expected. A fancy lace bra hung out of the top, and he didn’t believe for a second it had been unintentional.

  “This shameless flirting has to stop,” he said. “What kind of man would I be to take advantage of you in such a time of tragedy?”

  “Funny,” she told him, a sweet smile accompanying her words. “But that’s not for you.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Oh? Who’s the lucky guy?”

  He fully, completely expected her to laugh it off, say no one, whatever. And she probably would have, but then he noticed her face, and how very, very red it had turned, and how those shades of embarrassment deepened before his eyes. “Okay, then,” he muttered under his breath. He didn’t actually care who saw her underwear—that was between her and someone else—but her reaction hit him square in the gut. As far as he knew, she’d never kept anything major from him, and he’d never known her to react in such a way over anything silly, which left him in uncharted territory. Namely, trying not to notice her bra or the upper thigh his sweatshirt caressed or the fact that she felt the need to take frilly underwear to his house for someone else’s perusal.

  Something he still attempted an hour later, when she emerged from his guest room in a warm cloud of lingering shower humidity and fruit-scented shampoo. But none of that got to him.

  It was that stupid sweatshirt, property of the Dry Rock Fire Department, now over a tiny pair of shorts that showed off mile-long legs and painted toenails. He wondered if she wore that lacy bra—or any, for that matter—and immediately wanted to kick himself—not just for his thoughts in that moment, but for ever thinking living together would be a good idea. He swore under his breath and ripped his attention toward a stack of takeout menus. “What’s your pleasure?” he asked.

  “Chinese? The usual?”

  “Sure.” He called the order in and dropped onto the opposite end of the sofa, catching the faint whiff of smoke. “Why are you still wearing that shirt?” She’d put it on after the fire, but the odor had a way of lingering, and the fabric carried it.

  She tucked her legs under her and pointed the remote at the television, scrolling through the menu without really looking at him. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “Does it bother you?”

  Waffles, their shared two-hundred-pound mastiff, had lumbered over and Matt absently scratched the top of the dog’s enormous head. “No,” he said to Lexi. But he did mind, because the whole oversize sweatshirt thing was undeniably sexy, and he wasn’t entirely sure when he’d decided it was okay to look at Lexi and notice, but he needed to decide otherwise, stat.

  Noise from the television caught his attention, and he nearly groaned out loud. She’d chosen one of those movies where one of the romantic leads was dying, and the other decided that was somehow the right time to make a declaration of love. Talk about throwing down some low stakes when it came to forever. Not that he had room to talk. He’d sure as hell never been tempted. Never even thought about it.

  But for some inexplicable reason he found himself wondering once again about Lexi
’s lingerie, and how some bastard would take one look and fall in love, and what that would mean for Matt and Lexi. Everything would change.

  He hated that guy already.

  …

  Lexi wanted normal back.

  She hadn’t gotten it.

  Pigging out on the sofa, maybe. But then crawling between Matt’s guestroom sheets? Totally new territory. It wasn’t like she’d never heard his shower run before, but while she was stretched out in bed in his house? It just felt odd.

  Far more so than the knowledge that she’d just burned down her kitchen.

  And a light-year beyond that when she considered her own timing because, after months of indecision, in the last week she’d finally joined a dating site. It was probably the only secret she had from Matt—notwithstanding her plan to surprise him with his grandmother’s tart—and now she was going to have to figure out how to sneak off on this date without getting the third degree from her well-meaning bestie.

  As for why she wanted to keep it from him? She wasn’t entirely sure, and that bothered her. Probably—justifiably—because she’d never hear the end of it, but having just gifted him the shell of her burned out kitchen for ammo for his teasing game, there was at least hope that her dating life wouldn’t make the headlines. Still, Lexi hadn’t dated much. She tended to hang out with firemen, and she could only assume they made for an intimidating presence, especially once they got around to that “hurt her and I’ll hurt you” slapstick spiel typically reserved for little sisters. But honestly, maybe that wasn’t it. At least not all of it.

  She and Matt were incredibly close, and she loved that, but she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life as his sidekick. He managed to have a robust dating life, but she wasn’t exactly the robust type. She preferred intimacy, and the last place she’d find that was attached to his hip. She understood why he was so overprotective—why he put that smile in front of a subtle unspoken threat to any guy who dared to strike up a conversation in a bookstore—but she needed the chance to get to know someone without Matt there, and the only way to keep him completely out of it was not to tell him.

  Hence the dating site she’d joined.

  She flipped open her laptop and leaned back against a surprisingly comfortable bank of pillows. A few keystrokes and the website popped up. Simultaneously, there was a soft knock on the door.

  She jumped a mile.

  “It’s open,” she called.

  Matt leaned in, sending her an odd look when he caught the tail end of her scramble to close the laptop. “You need anything?”

  She pasted on a smile. “Dignity? A concoction to make the entire Dry Rock FD forget this day happened?”

  He raised his brow and shot a quick glance at her hastily discarded computer. “If you’re trying to find a recipe for said concoction, I forbid you to attempt it in my kitchen.”

  “Funny. And I’m fine, thanks.”

  He stared a moment, then apparently decided he believed her. “Okay, but Lexi?”

  “What?”

  “Stay out of the kitchen. I’m serious.”

  If the pillows weren’t so comfortable, she would have thrown one. Instead, she glared until the door shut, then opened her computer again. She’d stay out of his kitchen if he’d stay out of her life.

  Fat chance of both.

  Creating a profile hadn’t seemed like a big deal—not worth mentioning, really—but she also hadn’t expected she’d meet someone so quickly. Once she had, the topic of having joined a dating site seemed ten times more awkward than had she been able to causally mention it, no date attached.

  Things were a touch more awkward now—a touch less easy—but she’d done the hard part. She’d summoned the courage to take the first step. She’d made a connection, and she wasn’t going to let a minor setback derail her.

  Neither Matt nor her burned-out kitchen were going to keep her from finding love.

  Chapter Three

  Matt worked a twenty-four-hour shift the day after the fire and Lexi didn’t go in on weekends, but they’d texted, and she’d seemed okay. Of course, that was easy enough to pull off in print. He realized a bit belatedly that he wasn’t sure what to expect across the breakfast table Monday morning.

  Certainly not a stirring of interest when she walked past, trailed by the berry-melon scent of her shampoo. This was far from the first time he’d noticed how her hair smelled, but it was the first time he’d been so distracted by it that he’d almost burned the pancakes. Hastily, he scooped the food from the pan and piled it on a plate that he slid across the table. “I haven’t hit them with the fire extinguisher yet,” he quipped.

  “Thanks,” she said, eyeing the dark one on top. He should have put that side down, like that would have kept her from noticing. “I’m good with just the butter and syrup, though.”

  He grinned, and for a moment they had their routine back.

  Breakfast harkened back to the morning after they’d closed on their homes, with their identical, mirrored floorplans on adjacent lots. Even then he’d known the world would be a safer place if he handled the cooking, and it had been kind of fitting that they’d start that new chapter together. They’d been sharing chapters for as long as he could remember.

  In return, Lexi did his laundry, and seeing as how she left most of his stuff looking like it had been professionally cleaned and he was only a passably decent short-order cook, he probably came out on top of that deal.

  Waffles wandered in, sniffed at Lexi’s plate, then walked past to his own bowl. Matt stifled a laugh. The mutt wouldn’t eat anything from Lexi—not even dry dog food poured straight from the bag. A person had to be pretty bad at food prep when word even had gotten through the animal kingdom.

  “How are you feeling today?” he asked.

  She gave a small smile over a forkful of butter, syrup, and pancake that threatened to dive off her fork at the slightest provocation. “Like I’m going to steal your pillows when I go back home.”

  “That good, huh? I might need to remember that.”

  She shot him a dirty look, though her eyes gave away her amusement. “No need. As previously stated, they’re going home with me.”

  He grinned. “Your Airbnb guest rating is tanking, FYI.”

  “Noted.” Her phone dinged, and his gaze automatically diverted to the screen. He didn’t see anything before she flipped it over—to be honest, he hadn’t really looked so much as glanced in the direction of the noise—but he couldn’t miss the troubled haze that filled her eyes.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Good.”

  Well, add that to the list of awkward moments. Was she really okay? She was normally pretty straightforward, so he should have believed her, but for whatever reason he didn’t, and that just worried him more. But he didn’t want to push her, so he changed the subject.

  “The guys were talking about hitting the diner tomorrow night,” he mentioned. “You in?”

  She responded by stabbing her fork into about fifteen pieces of cut pancake, then not so much popping as lodging the pile into her mouth. After chewing for approximately two years, she swallowed and met his eyes. “I have a date tomorrow night.”

  He stared, waiting for the punch line, but it didn’t come. “On a Tuesday?” he finally sputtered. “How?”

  She polished off another bite with a flourish he appreciated. Over the course of his many first dates, he had gathered that women thought eating must be some kind of turnoff, because most ate very little. Lexi was not one of those women. She was, however, stalling. He was sure of it.

  “What do you mean, how?” She asked, fully back in morning form, piercing him with a look that suggested he should keep her away from pointy objects. And justifiably. He cringed as he realized how his question had sounded.

  “I meant…where did
you meet him? Anyone I know?” His recovery sucked.

  So did her news.

  “I joined a dating site,” she said.

  “You what?” He didn’t bother to hide his surprise. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She met his gaze without flinching. “Why would I tell you?”

  “Because serial killers are on those things.” His immediate response didn’t answer her question, but he had no answer. His thoughts trailed back to the fancy lace bra dangling out of her duffel—the one she’d said hadn’t been put there for Matt—and suddenly it made sense.

  Terrible sense.

  She frowned, the implication clear that she had gotten past any angst she’d entertained over her confession. “Serial killers do not provide all their personal information to a website so they can be tracked. Ted Bundy wasn’t on a website.”

  He watched her pulse flutter at her throat and realized she wasn’t as comfortable as she wanted him to think. Did she think she needed his permission? Did she want it? “Ted Bundy never had the internet. Had that been a thing then, he probably would have created his own app,” he said. “And tell that to the guy who went on that dating show in the seventies. National television, Lexi. Had been killing people for a decade, and he puts on a really bad suit and wins the date.”

  “I don’t actually want to know why you know that,” she said, the bluest eyes he’d ever seen meeting his in a defiant stare. “And surely you don’t background check everyone you go out with. You could be buying beer for serial killers left and right.”

  “I doubt it. Statistically speaking, most are men.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “Your dates?”

  “No. Serial killers.” He sighed. “I just want you to be careful.” That much was true.

  She wordlessly swept her last bite of pancake through a puddle of syrup on her plate, popped the dripping mess into her mouth, then carried her plate over to the sink and started rinsing dishes. Somehow she didn’t soak the front of her shirt like he always seemed to do, and he wasn’t sure if he found that annoying or intriguing. Either way, it wasn’t the time to ask for tips.