It was simple but intimate. His concern for Billie mingled with concern for me wrapped around a familiar kind of question a father asks a mother, a husband asks a wife.

I liked it. The simplicity and intimacy of it was beautiful and it was more beautiful coming from a handsome man, a good man, a nice man who was sitting in his awesome sectional in his gorgeous living room with his eyes warm on me.

I thought all this.

But I said, “Yeah.”

Then, tired, worried, suddenly alone with Mitch, feeling weird about where I was, what I was doing and how quickly all of it happened, not to mention what Mitch had said to me that morning, I considered my options of what was next. And this was where I should sit on his sectional.

I decided the safest bet was as far away from him as possible so that was where I went. He was in the middle of one side of the sofa. I sat close to the armrest on the opposite side.

He watched me do this and his lips twitched but he didn’t move.

It wasn’t lost on me that the last time we had a moment of alone time in a living room while a baseball game was on TV, we’d ended up in a clinch. And I was tired but it was still early-ish. And lastly, going to bed meant going to his bed.

So I had to kill time and do it not ending up in a clinch.

To accomplish that, I blurted the first thing that came to mind, “You have good taste.”

“What?”

As I spoke my eyes were on the ottoman while I shifted to curl my bare feet under me and leaned against the armrest but when he asked his question, I looked at him.

“You have good taste,” I repeated and his brows went up in question so I haltingly explained, now feeling weirder, “You, um…dress really nice and your, uh…apartment is really nice too. I mean, uh…you have really nice furniture.”

To that comment he asked strangely, “You know Design Fusion?”

I tipped my head to the side and asked back, “The store in Cherry Creek North?”

“Yep,” he answered.

“Yes,” I answered.

“My sister, Penny, owns that store.”

Uh…wow.

I’d been to that store. The furniture in that store was unbelievable and the price tags on it were even more so.

“Wow,” I whispered and he grinned then flicked a hand out.

“This is her shit,” he told me.

“Pardon?”

“She furnished this place for me wholesale.”

At that, I blinked. “Your sister furnished your apartment?”

“Yep. She’s a nut. She decorates everything. The inside of her fridge is decorated.”

I blinked again. “The inside of her fridge is decorated?”

Mitch nodded, grinning.

“How do you decorate the inside of a fridge?” I asked, intrigued by this concept.

“She’s got decals on the sides of the fridge and fancy bowls she puts fancy shit in that isn’t food that sits on the shelves. Sometimes she even puts small vases with flowers in there.”

I didn’t know if that was weird or cool. I also didn’t share this indecision with Mitch.

Luckily, he kept talking. “When she redecorated her kids rooms three times in a year, her husband had enough, talked her into opening her own store so she could decorate other people’s houses and make money doin’ it instead of spendin’ all theirs doin’ it. So, when I moved in here, she took over and I let her because if I didn’t, she would anyway and if I fought it, it wouldn’t be pretty.”

“So you had no say?” I asked, surprised, seeing as Mitch seemed like a man in command of everything and definitely his surroundings.

Mitch shook his head. “I told her it had to be comfortable and it had to look like a guy lived here and not a g*y guy. She succeeded on the first; the second is up for debate.”

He stopped talking but his eyes didn’t leave me and I got the feeling he expected me to chime in with my opinion.

So I chimed in with my opinion and stated, “It’s, uh…not totally g*y.”

He threw his head back and burst out laughing. I bit my lip. His laughter became chuckles, his chin dipped back down and he caught my eyes.

“That’s good, I guess,” he muttered through a smile, his eyes very warm making my chest very, very warm.

Instead of belatedly intelligently keeping my mouth shut and absorbing myself in the baseball game, I stupidly decided to clarify, “It looks really nice, Mitch. It suits you since you always look really nice too.”

“So you’re sayin’ that the way I dress is nice and not totally g*y?” he teased and my back straightened a bit because I knew he was teasing but I didn’t want him to think I was insulting him, not even a little bit.

And furthermore, the way he dressed was totally nice and not nice in the way g*y guys always looked nice.

“No, I’m saying you always look nice as in, um…nice and, uh…that’s it. You just always look really, really nice.”

When I was finished speaking, his face changed as did his eyes. Both got warmer but the latter got dark in a way that made my warm chest even warmer and other parts of me got warm too. Then suddenly his eyes moved over my body curled into the armrest of his not totally g*y but definitely comfy and cool sofa.

Then equally suddenly he got to his feet.

Then I watched as he moved into the kitchen then back into the living room and I noticed he was carrying candle jars. Then I watched as he set them in his wall unit and lit them. Then I watched as he turned out a lamp which meant only one was illuminated so the glow of the room changed from functional to something else entirely. Then I watched as he moved to the ottoman, nabbed the remote, pointed it at the TV and it went blank. Then I watched as he tossed the remote back on the ottoman, tagged another one, pointed it back at the wall unit and suddenly Journey’s “Still They Ride” was playing softly from his stereo.

Great song.

And the candles were good ones; the calming scent of fresh cotton was already filling the room.

Candlelight, romantic room illumination and soft music.

Uh-oh!

Frozen, I stared as he dropped that remote on the ottoman, came to me, put his hands right into my armpits and lifted me straight up.

“Mitch,” I whispered as my hands curled into his shoulders. One of his arms slid down over my bottom and he leaned into me then it hooked behind my knees. The other one curled around my upper back, he lifted me up and maneuvered between the ottoman and the couch, taking me with him. Then he shifted, sat with me in his lap, twisted, leaned back so he was reclining and I was reclining mostly on top of him then he rolled so we were both still reclining but now he was reclining mostly on top of me.