King of Her Desire

7

I was using this old-fashioned hand pump to splash work dust out of my hair when I opened my eyes a tiny bit and saw these bare feet—very well cared for—in the sand right in front of me.

You know who it was.

So, I threw my hair back and laughed when Elliott squeaked and jumped back out of the way. Whatever they'd done for her in LA had made her a lot more steady on her legs for sure.

Looked good, too. In this real short, kinda loose dress that might've slid right on down around her ankles if one of those spaghetti straps slipped. Those legs let her down sometimes, but they were killin' it in that dress...

And she gave me that snarky smile of hers and said, "I thought us old people were the only ones who didn't check their phones."

I leaned over to grab and wring my hair out a little bit.

"It'd get smashed if I kept it with me when I'm working."

"Serious manual labor, huh? I'm impressed."

"We tore out all these walls today."

She ran those eyes over me and said, "Well, it looks good on you. All that hard work."

"You're lookin' pretty good, too. Good trip?"

The wind lifted up all that hair of hers. And kind of got into that little dress, too, but it just rustled a lot. No big "reveal."

"It was interesting," she said. "I had a brainstorm I'd like to run past you. In the middle of a particularly contentious conversation."

"Me?"

She hugged herself and said, "It's...I was soundly chastised into agreeing to do something I really don't want to do."

"Then don't."

She laughed and said, "Well, it may be a little more complicated than I thought, actually. Given the very hot young thing we saw in the Jeep with you when we were heading back from the airport."

I was genuinely stunned. And I must've looked like it because she laughed again, and said, "Very small world, this. Are you going to invite me in?"

I chuckled and shrugged and said, "Sure!"

And as I was holding the door for her she looked around and said, "Takes me back..."

"In a good way?"

She stopped to touch the wall just inside the door. They'd been freshly painted this adobe red color for now, but they were just plain, still. No tiles, no pictures or anything yet. They were going to get all into that sort of thing later. The "décor" and whatnot.

But I liked the bare walls. Made it feel bigger. And having all that space just to myself was heaven, after sleeping three or more to a bed or all jammed together on the floor or even on the ground for most of my childhood.

I loved coming home to a place where I didn't have to step over dirty laundry and garbage or shift all kinds of junk or kids or animals off the chairs to sit down. If I saw a bug or ant or something I'd go into some sort of PTSD episode. I'm pretty OCD about all that.

Elliott smiled and said, "This might work, kiddo. The renovation thing."

"Hope so."

"Will you be on site here, to make sure?"