"Okay, let's put this thing together." Lori glanced at the bed. "But maybe we ought to assemble it in the living room."
"I always knew you were a smart woman." And he sure didn't intend to let such a smart woman know he would be thinking of that every time he looked at her striped couch.
* * *
Lori placed a tray of sandwiches, chips and sweet tea on the antique tea cart beside Gray. He sprawled on the floor beside the fully assembled Barbie house, placing stickers on a Big Wheel. His voice filled the room with low, rumbling intensity as he sang along with her Billie Holiday CD. Grayson and the blues. A potent combination.
Intense concentration puckered his brow as he centered a racing stripe. His singing dwindled until he'd pressed the edges of the decal in place.
He really had been a great help, patient even when she'd done her best to rile him with inane Capri pants and clogs in hopes he would spill his real agenda. Maybe there wasn't one. Maybe he'd meant exactly what he'd said. He wanted them to be friends. She'd learned quickly that Gray made friends with ease.
Perhaps that was the problem. Building friendships had always been tougher for her, never having had the time to hone the skill on any one person. Friendships were rare and special for her. She wasn't sure she wanted to grant Gray that much importance in her life.
After the past couple of days, she wasn't sure he would leave her any choice.
She could take a page from Gray's book, couldn't she? A light friendship would ease a loneliness in her life that work couldn't quite fill. She would certainly need a friend a month from now when Magda went to her permanent home. Could she dare hope Gray might still be there for her, not as a lover, but as a friend?
If she even wanted to entertain the thought, she needed to learn some of those friendship skills from Gray. Lori snagged an oversize tapestry pillow from the sofa and dropped it on the floor beside him.
"Here you go, friend." Lori passed Gray a plate stacked with two sandwiches.
His gaze jerked from the sofa to her. He smoothed down a cartoon speedometer before taking the dish. "Thanks."
The light brush, tingle, heat of their fingers had nothing to do with friendship. Lori resolved to ignore it.
"The least I can do is feed you a sandwich after all your help." She sat cross-legged beside him, reaching for the bowl of chips to place between them. Not as big a barrier as the bed earlier, but certainly less provocative.
Her hand glided along the restored gleam of the tea cart, like rubbing a talisman. She'd found it at an estate auction a couple of months past. She loved to think about the history of the piece, even if the roots belonged to someone else. "I really do appreciate your help. I would have been up all night just reading the instructions."
"This was a cake walk compared to assembling toys for seven nieces and nephews last Christmas."
So he'd spent Christmas with his family. She'd wondered. Her parents had flown into Charleston, their hometown, for the holidays. She'd spent the whole week thinking about how Gray had once suggested they take a Christmas cruise together.
Lori bit into her turkey sandwich. Or was it ham? It tasted like paste. She swallowed the dry lump. "You probably think I'm crazy to buy all this for a kid who'll only be with me a few weeks. But I didn't have more than a few toys on hand, and those were just for babies stopping through for a few hours."
"Every kid deserves toys."
"And friends. I need to find other children for her to enjoy these toys with. They're not half as much fun if she plays with them alone."
"Of course." He ate a quarter of his sandwich in one bite and chewed while he peeled, then placed a sticker on the bike's handlebars. Long fingers so adept at flying and healing applied stickers as if they were of mammoth importance.
To Magda they would be, and his care touched Lori—too much.
"I just don't want her to have to wait, you know? She's lost so much already. She can take all this with her when she leaves."
"Sure she can. If you rent a trailer." Gray tore off another quarter of his sandwich, applied the last sticker and crumpled the backing paper. "Done."
With a fluid toss, he pitched it into the empty box and leaned against a chair to finish his sandwich. One muscular leg stretched out in front of him, his injured leg crooked at the knee. Long, lean, and so sexy her eyes ached.
Lori set aside her plate and reached for the basket of dollhouse furniture. Slowly she arranged the kitchen table and chairs. "I have to confess, this was a purely selfish purchase."
"How so?"
Gray crunched a chip and chased it with a swallow of tea—so at ease, when she felt like an overwound kid's toy. Lori gulped her tea.
"It would have been more practical for me to buy Magda smaller toys, things easily packed and transported. But I always wanted one of these, a huge dollhouse that wouldn't fit in the trunk with the luggage."
"You moved around that much? I thought your parents just traveled frequently but that you grew up in Charleston."