Picking tiles was the easy part. My cart was piled with a few boxes of crisp, clean, cream-colored porcelain tile Avi promised he could install in a day. I was somewhat dubious he’d be able to pull it off that quickly, but I wasn’t in any rush.

The problems arose when we got to picking paint. Since I’d made such a bold choice with my orange living room, I thought I should go subtle in the kitchen. Avi reminded me he didn’t do subtle.

We stood side by side in front of the paint swatches, arms crossed over our chests, staring.

I started to reach toward a nice, neutral beige, but Avi grabbed my hand.

“Don’t,” he said firmly.

“Don’t be bossy,” I shot back.

He glanced down at me. “I’m helping you. That is a boring color.”

“I don’t want my house to end up looking like a circus tent!”

“Don’t you trust me?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Maybe.”

He picked up a paint swatch. A dark paint swatch. “This is the one.”

“I think it’s too dark. My kitchen’s going to look like a goth teenager!”

He scoffed. “It won’t. Trust me.”

“You keep bringing up this ‘trust’ thing, but I’m not sure you’ve earned it.”

He looked affronted. “You don’t trust me?”

“I trust that you won’t murder me in my sleep or take off with my belongings. Everything else is up in the air.”

Of course I was joking. From the short time I’d known him, I was completely sure Avi was a stand-up guy. He wasn’t a liar or a sneak. He wasn’t careless. He was up front with his thoughts, and although it had been jarring at first, I liked that he said what he meant. He reminded me of Frannie in that way.

Avi walked away from me, going farther down the paint aisle. Perplexed, I followed him.

“Are we done looking at paint?” I asked from behind him.

“You pick the one you want,” he said. He was looking at paint brushes as if they were the most interesting things he’d ever seen.

Laying a hand on his arm, I asked, “Why the sudden change? A second ago you were being all bossy. Now I have to choose my own paint color?”

“I’m sorry I have not earned your trust. I know I messed up with you last night. I won’t do it again if you don’t want it.”

My head jerked back. “We’re talking about us kissing in the paint aisle of Home Depot?”

“Is this the wrong aisle? Should we move to lumber?”

“Is that a better aisle for two people to talk about a kiss that never should have happened?”

His shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry.”

Stepping closer, I laid my hands on his chest. “Don’t be sorry. I wanted to kiss you. I still do. But you’re not what I’m looking for right now.”

“The only thing I heard was you still want to kiss me.”

Laughing, I gripped his shirt and yanked him closer. “I want to do a lot of things with you, Avi. But none of them are smart, for either of us.” Dropping his shirt, I moved a step back.

He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Let’s paint then. Pick the gray.”

“You promise my kitchen isn’t going to wind up listening to emo music and wearing black latex?”

He let out a low chuckle. “I’m not sure what that means, but I’ll promise anyway.”

Walking back to the paint swatches, I picked up the charcoal gray Avi had chosen. It was darker than I ever imagined going, but maybe with my white cabinets it would look decent. And as a hairstylist, Avi knew more about color and what looked good together than I did.

I pointed the swatch at him. “Okay, I’m going with the gray. But if this looks terrible, you’re repainting the entire thing yourself.”

He bowed his head. “Of course, lovely Laurel.”

“No, no, no! Don’t be charming.”

He held his hands up. “I wouldn’t dream of being charming.”

I huffed playfully. “You’re being charming!”

“I won’t speak anymore.” He mimed zipping his lips and throwing away the key, making me giggle. We headed for the checkout, me pushing the cart and Avi walking next to me with his hand resting on the small of my back. I should have shrugged him off, but it felt too good to be touched by him, so I didn’t.

This whole thing was a mess. I hadn’t had a crush like this since college. I was a thirty-year-old woman with hearts in my eyes for exactly the wrong guy. And maybe that’s why I liked him. He was emotionally unavailable, so there was no danger of this actually going anywhere.

But I wanted a relationship that went somewhere...didn’t I?

So Avi wasn’t for me. And I probably shouldn’t have checked out his ass while he loaded the tiles into his car. And I definitely shouldn’t have leaned closer to him in the car to sniff him—he smelled delicious by the way, like the air right before it snows mixed with a hint of spice.

Before he put the car into reverse, he asked, “Did you sniff me?”

“Yep.”

“How do I smell?”

“Pretty damn great,” I said.

He started driving, keeping quiet while I fiddled with the radio.

After a minute, he said, “You smell like cookies. All the time I’m around you, I’m hungry.”

I cringed. “Oh god, that’s like the least sexy smell I can think of. I’m like a grandma or something.”

“My Bubbe smelled like peppermint. You smell edible. And that is a good thing.”

I preened internally. And then I wondered what Mara smelled like. Probably something exotic, like cardamom and raw honey.

How could I be jealous of a woman I didn’t know for potentially smelling better than me? I was going over the edge, channeling Katharine Hepburn’s role of Countess Aurelia in The Madwoman of Chaillot. Not that I had ever seen the movie. But I was certainly acting like a madwoman.

At home, Avi unloaded the tiles while I got the paint set up. I halfheartedly started taping the edges, knowing he’d take over as soon as he came into the room.

“Let me do it,” he said.

I smirked. “No, no, I’ve got it.”

“That wasn’t very convincing.”

I looked up at him from my spot on the floor. “I wasn’t really trying.”

He held his hand out, and I gave him the blue tape. As he got to work, much faster than I could have with my T-rex arms, he asked, “If I hadn’t moved in, what do you think you would have done with the house?”

I hopped up on the counter, having momentary déjà vu of the night before. “Truthfully? I might’ve unpacked a few boxes. I very highly doubt I would have gotten motivated enough to paint yet. You’ve kicked my ass into gear.”

I draped a tarp over the parts of the counter my bum wasn’t covering, then poured the shockingly dark charcoal paint into the pan. “Are you sure about this color?”

He nodded. “Very sure. I know my shit, Laurel.”

“I didn’t realize being a soldier turned hairstylist qualified you as a decorator too.”

“It does.”

I snorted. “Well, okay then!”

I painted in the small space between the counter and cabinets while Avi tackled the higher spots. My kitchen wasn’t big, and there were a lot of cabinets filling the wall space, so painting the room didn’t take nearly as long as the living room had. The color still scared me, but I was becoming more convinced seeing it against the white cabinets and pale gray countertops.

“What do you miss most about living in Israel?” I asked.

Avi paused rolling on paint to look at me. He chewed on the corner of his lip, his eyes taking on a faraway gleam.

“I miss...well, other than my family and the beauty and the weather, I miss the way Israeli people say what they’re thinking. Here, people are so concerned with being polite, they never really say anything. In Israel, we ask questions. We say our feelings. We call our friends on their bullshit.” He smiled to himself. “I used to go into this shop. A little corner store in my neighborhood in Tel Aviv. The owners knew me, and each time I went in, they’d comment on my clothes, tell me if I looked like shit, or say I needed some sun. But they always asked about my parents. They always wanted to know if I was well. They’d set aside my favorite snack or a magazine they knew I liked. And they didn’t do it just for me. They took care of all their customers. That is the thing I miss most about Israel.”

“The people?”

“Yes. People who understand me. I want to say what I think and not worry who I might offend. I am kind, but I am always honest.”

“I’ve noticed that about you.”

He gave me a crooked smile. “And do you like it?”

I tilted my head, considering him. “At first, it was jarring. When you told me I’d look hideous with brown hair, I was pissed.”

“It’s true, though. You’re beautiful as a blonde. Why would you want to look plain?”

I waved my paint brush at him. “Hey! I wouldn’t be plain as a brunette!”

“You’re right. You’d be just as beautiful with no hair. Although, I prefer you keep your hair.”

I couldn’t look at him anymore, not with him calling me beautiful like that. Like it was just a throwaway comment that didn’t mean anything. Because it did mean something to me. I hated that it did. If he was some dude on the street yelling it, I would have either ignored him or flipped him off. If he was a guy in a bar trying to pick me up, I would have either rolled my eyes or given him a fake number. But he wasn’t those things. This was Avi, a man I had begun to realize was truly someone special.

Maybe him calling me beautiful didn’t mean a lot to him. But for me, it was a shot directly to my heart.

So, instead of going all swoony, I said, “I’ll shave my head if I want to!”

Yep, that’ll show him.

Bemused, he said, “Okay. I would never stop you from doing what you want with your hair. But I also wouldn’t be the one to hold the clippers.”

“Why are we talking about my hair?”

He lazily lifted a shoulder. “You brought it up. And I could probably talk about hair for many days.”

“Let’s talk about your hair. I didn’t realize it was curly.” Normally, Avi’s hair was slicked with product, combed smooth, but today, he looked like he’d just gotten out of bed, his hair wildly dancing around his head. It suited him. It also brought to mind images of that wild head of hair between my legs.

Jesus, what was my deal lately? I was like some lecherous old man acting like a horndog over the hot young thing who lived with me.

Avi ran a hand over his hair. “It is. I haven’t had it this long since I was a kid.”

“I like it like that.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

Going back to my painting, I murmured, “Mmmhmm.”

“Laurel, look at me.”

I didn’t want to. Looking at him had gotten me into this mess. Well, that and listening to his voice. And smelling him.

I forced myself to look, and when our eyes met, my stomach dipped, like I’d missed the last step on the stairs.

“What?”

He dropped his roller in the tray and went to the fridge where our ground rules were hanging. He grabbed it and slowly ripped part of it off, all while keeping his eyes on mine. Then he sauntered over to me and dropped the scrap of paper in my lap. I didn’t need to look. I knew what it said.

I looked anyway. Avi had handed me the “no sex” rule, and then he hung the paper back on the fridge with only two rules left.

With my heart in my throat, I asked, “What are you doing?”

He came back to stand in front of me, caging me in on my spot on the counter with his arms. His eyes raked over my face, drinking me in. I could have leaned in and kissed him. I wouldn’t have had to go far. But he was giving me that look again. The one that said he was going to eat me alive. And I knew then I’d let him, consequences be damned.

“I never should have agreed to that rule.” His voice was low, sending vibrations through the air, hitting me directly between the legs. I shifted, pressing my thighs together.

“Why not?” My voice came out breathy, barely a whisper.

“You want me to be blunt? Or polite?”

“I don’t need polite.”

He pushed my legs apart, moving between them, and then he wrapped his wide hand around the back of my neck, forcing my face up. “I shouldn’t have agreed to it because from the second I saw you, I wanted to pick you up, press you against the nearest wall, and fuck you until we both hurt. So, this ‘no sex’ rule doesn’t work for me.”

His tone was casual, his words anything but. His thumb pressed into the tender space where my jaw met my neck, and there was something about it that made my shoulders relax and my lips part. Maybe it was some magic pressure point he’d learned to subdue his enemies. More likely, he could touch me anywhere and have the same effect. Something inside me, a part of me I wasn’t really familiar with, responded to Avi. And by responded, I meant it threw a dance party with a banner that said, “This Man Is Mine.”

He wasn’t mine. I knew that. But at that moment, enveloped in his winter spice scent and caged in by his long arms, that didn’t matter.

I bit my lower lip, then slowly released it. “It doesn’t work for me either. Not even a little bit.”

Right before he took my mouth, he whispered, “I told you I would kiss you today.”

I didn’t have time to respond to the smugness on his face before his lips met mine and I melted into him.