I set my paintbrush down with disgust, glaring at the buckling paper and the hard water line that was appearing between the two stripes of color on the sunset I’d been trying to reproduce for Austin. Shaking my head, I decided to quit for the day. Both of the problems were fixable, but they would have to wait until tomorrow.

By the time I’d made it all the way down to the first floor, I glanced at the time and was disappointed to realize it was only two in the afternoon. With Austin working at the foundation today, I had time to kill before he'd be home. Looking around, I decided to clean house—not that it appeared to need it. But after hours of frustration, I needed to burn off energy. Besides, wasn't cleaning part of our original deal?

It took me a few minutes to find the closet where Austin stored the cleaning supplies. I smiled at the perfectly organized space, not even a little bit surprised to see that the cleaning materials were clean. After a moment’s hesitation, I grabbed the feather duster and decided to go on a hunt for dust particles.

After taking a moment to pop in some earbuds and pick a playlist on my phone, I got to work. I started in the white living room, carefully picking up and dusting every little figurine on the big glass shelves. After I decided the room was as dust free as it had been when I’d arrived, I moved on to the next room. And the next. And the one after that.

When I'd run out of rooms, I went into Austin's office. While I dusted the bookshelves, I couldn't resist pulling a few titles off the shelf to peruse, making a mental note to come back for them as I put them back on the shelf before I got distracted and forgot what I was doing.

I was running the duster over the mini blinds, shaking my butt as I danced to Journey's Don't Stop Believin', when I spun around and nearly had a heart attack. Austin was leaning against the doorway, watching me with an amused grin.

I held a hand to my heart as I popped out my earbuds. "Sweet Mary, mother of God! You scared the fucking bejeezus out of me, Austin! Damn, warn a guy, won't you?"

Austin threw his head back with a laugh. "That was a nice mix of words there, Owen. Hey, I called out several times, but you couldn't hear me over your music." He looked around the room. "Why are you cleaning? I mean, thank you, but you know you don't really have to, right? You're seven months pregnant, Owen. It's okay to take a break."

"Hey now, we had that whole no charity deal, remember? Yeah, I'm pregnant—get over it, I have. Besides, we had an arrangement and a clearly written prenuptial agreement to back it up. I get insurance and you get a pretty hubby on paper who cleans and doesn’t molest you in your sleep, remember?"

"Yeah, I seem to remember something about that." Austin chuckled as he walked into the room, pausing in front of his bookcase and frowning for a moment. My breath caught in my throat as I watched him run his finger over the books before pausing to remove and reshelve the ones I’d looked at earlier. How the hell had he even noticed that they were out of place? I knew that he was a little on the OCD side, but come on. That was just some psychic voodoo shit or something right there.

"I hope it's okay that I looked at those. I'm sorry if I wasn't supposed to touch them," I said after a moment’s hesitation.

"No, books are meant to be read. They were just out of order, so I fixed them. No harm done. Feel free to help yourself anytime." He smiled easily and wandered out of the room while I went back to dusting.

After I’d decided that I'd chased enough imaginary dust for one afternoon, I went and put the feather duster away before going in search of Austin. I finally found him in the living room, fastidiously turning and moving his figurines that were apparently a few scant millimeters out of place.

I watched him for a minute, then cleared my throat to let him know I was present. "I see I've apparently screwed up again. Should I just not touch your stuff at all?"

Austin stepped away from the shelves. He looked uncomfortable as if he wasn't sure what to say for a moment. "No… it's just…" He dropped his chin to his chest and his shoulders sagged a bit as he huffed out a sigh before looking back up at me with a nervous look in his eyes. "I've gotten used to things being a certain way, I suppose. Please don't let it drive you crazy, I’ll try to keep it low-key as much as I can. It's a hazard of living alone too long, I guess you could say."

I thought about that for a moment. It was interesting how fastidious and cautious he was with his belongings, yet when children were around, he totally relaxed and let them have the run of the place. That alone was the only reason I wasn't getting irritated. His heart was in the right place, he just had a few… quirks.

And we all have our own little quirks, now don't we? That’s why we have to be patient with each other, Josh's voice said in my head.

Austin glanced back at me and sighed. "As long as we’re on the subject, can I show you another thing that drives me nuts?"

"Sure, let’s do it. If we're going to coexist, it would be good for me to know what your hot button issues are," I said easily as I let him lead me into the kitchen.

"Okay, let's start here." Austin opened the fridge and demonstrated the condiments on the door's inner shelves, waving his arm like a game show model. "I keep everything here in alphabetical order with the labels facing out. If a bottle gets dirty, it needs to be wiped down before being put away. There’s never a good reason to put dirty containers into a clean refrigerator." He paused to swap the positioning of the ketchup and mustard before showing me the rest of his organizational system for the refrigerator.

"Wow," I said kindly when he finally closed the door. "Now I know why crisper drawers exist. Who knew?" I held up a hand when he started to open his mouth. "Don't answer that, obviously you did. Was there anything else? We might as well get it all out in the open right now, don't you think?"

Relief shone from Austin's eyes when he saw that I wasn't offended. "There's the pantry; I have an organization system in place there as well. I have things arranged by expiration date and content," Austin explained as he crossed the kitchen to open the pantry door, then did a facepalm and immediately closed it again.

"I was looking for crackers earlier." I winced, shifting from foot to foot like a naughty child, embarrassed by the way I'd left everything tossed around willy-nilly.

Austin opened the door again, staring at it in dismay for a moment before taking a deep breath and nodding. "How about this… if you’ll try to work on putting things back in the general vicinity of where you found them, I'll try to loosen up a little. Now that I'm not living alone, maybe it's time to take a walk on the wild side and let my rice and canned foods live on the same shelf. It won't hurt, right?"

When I realized that he was actually asking that and waiting for an answer, I did the only thing I could. I walked over and threw my arms around his neck, pulling him down for a quick hug, then darted back a little when I realized I'd crossed a line. "If you need me to fix it, I will," I said quietly. "I can learn your system, as long as you don't mind explaining it to me. I don’t want either of us to be quietly frustrated."

Austin shook his head. "No, this is just a prime example of why my brothers called me the tin man. It won't hurt me to loosen up and relax my systems a little bit, especially when it comes to food storage. Maybe just try to bear with me?"

He looked so vulnerable standing there with his head hanging as he bit his lip that I couldn't help but hug him again.