“Very funny,” she said dryly.
“I thought so,” he said cheekily. “Seth warned me that you looked like a schoolgirl. But then, I’ve seen you this way before. He never saw you at Mountain View.” His eyes arrested hers and held them. For a moment, they stared at each other over the space that separated them, each remembering happier days and one moonlit night beside the rapidly flowing river.
To save herself from drowning in those memories, Kathleen tore her eyes away. “No, he never did.”
Knowing that the mood was broken, Erik said, “Come in.”
She walked past him into the living room. All the furniture they had bought had been delivered. Only the windows remained bare. The room still had the unmistakable sterility of a bachelor’s house, but it had improved since the last time she had seen it. There was a cheerful fire burning in the grate, and only one lamp was lit.
“It looks nice,” Kathleen commented, thinking that she needed to say something. “You placed the furniture exactly according to my sketch.”
“Yeah,” Erik said ruefully as he thrust his hands in the back pockets of his tight jeans and surveyed the room with skeptical eyes. “It still needs something.”
“A woman’s touch,” Kathleen said spontaneously, then wished she had weighed that thought before saying it.
If Erik were any kind of gentleman he would ignore the statement. However, he had once told her that he was honorable, not stupid, and apparently that was still his creed. His grin was wolfish as he drawled, “Well, you’re a woman. So touch something.”
She turned away quickly and slid out of her coat. It was suddenly unbearably hot in the room. “Where is the wall hanging?”
“Right over here. I have it spread out on the floor.” She looked on the far side of the sofa where he pointed. “It’s really beautiful, Kathleen. I like it even more than when I first saw it. I want to thank you again.”
“And Seth,” she said quickly. Too quickly. She looked up to catch the pained expression that crossed his face, which was shadowed in the firelight.
“Yes, of course, I meant to include him.”
There was an uncomfortable silence as both of them looked at the wall hanging at their feet with the concentration of mystics trying to instill life into an inanimate object. Finally, Kathleen said, “The top of it is here.” She knelt down and felt along the rod to which the yarn was attached. “Yes, there are four hooks on the backside of the rod. All we have to do is hammer some nails into the wall.” She stood up and brushed off her hands. “Do you have some nails? And a hammer?”
“Out in the van.” He was gone only a few seconds when he came back. “I thought you might need this, too,” he said, handing her a yardstick.
“How did this suddenly become my project?”
“Because you seem to know what you’re doing.” He smiled. “What can I do?”
“Bring in a ladder.”
“Ladder! You don’t ask for much, do you?”
She put her hands on her hips, a gesture made provocative by the way it tightened the cloth over her breasts. “Don’t tell me you don’t have one. How are we supposed to reach up there?” she asked, pointing to the redwood wall that reached a peak in the cathedral ceiling above.
“I see it’s back to ‘we.’ ” Erik squinted his eyes as he looked at the wall. “How about a chair? Would that give you enough height to reach the right place?”
She sighed. “I guess so.” He went to the kitchen and returned carrying a hardwood chair. “That’s nice. Where did you get it?” she asked.
“At the unfinished-furniture store. All I had to do was put a sealer on the chairs and table. They turned out pretty well.” He sat the chair down against the wall, then faced her. “Now what?”
She threw him a disparaging look and knelt down with the yardstick to measure the distance between each hook. “Six and three-quarters inches,” she murmured. She slipped off her shoes; then, placing her hand on the back of the chair, she gingerly stepped onto it. “Would you say that this seam in the wood marks the center of the wall?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Okaaay.” She drew out the word as she did some mental figuring. She lifted the yardstick over her head until it touched the ceiling and then marked the wall with her fingernail along its side. “That ought to be right,” she said. “Hand me the nails and the hammer.”
When he had complied, she stuck the nails in her mouth as she drove in the first one. When all were done, she asked, “How are we going to lift it?”
“I’ll go get another chair.” Erik came back with the chair and, easing his bare feet out of well-worn tennis shoes, lifted the wall hanging as he stepped onto the extra chair.
When all the hooks were secured on the nails, Kathleen said, “Now get down and see if it’s straight.” Erik obliged and stepped away from her. “How is it?” she asked as she surveyed the artwork.
“It’s perfect.”