Pops cleared his throat, and I ignored the pointed look in his eyes, heat crawling along the back of my neck. So what if I was staring? Staring wasn’t illegal. Not at veiny hands like that.
“I can unpack those,” Pops said.
“I’m almost done with this box. Then it’s just dresser stuff.” I hung the last of the hangers and shifted the cumbersome box out of my way. “Don’t worry, I’ll let you do your own underwear.”
Gavin shouted for Pops from the other room.
“What?” Pops shouted back.
“You’ve already got a bird at your feeder! It’s one of those cute gray ones with the orange on it.”
Pops pushed up from the bed. “A tufted titmouse? Don’t scare him off, little bug, I want to see.”
Archer and I traded an amused look as he left the room, and the heat from my neck climbed just a little bit higher.
“We get very excited about birds around here,” I said.
“I do love a good titmouse.”
I rolled my eyes, which made him laugh. God, what a laugh it was too. It wasn’t loud or boisterous or meant to draw attention. It was quiet. Amused. Low enough that I had to strain to hear it. Deep enough that it sent a shiver down my spine.
Fortunately for me, he didn’t notice, already looking for something else to do.
As I worked on the chunk of clothes, I watched from the corner of my eye as the edge of Archer’s mouth lifted in a tiny smile. The box at his feet was pulled open, and a framed collage of pictures, just me and Pops, sat above a few others.
I set the burgundy sweater on top of a black one, allowing him a moment to look without interruption.
“When was this?” he asked.
Archer angled the frame so I could see it better, his pointer finger tapping at the bottom corner. I smiled. Pops had his arm around me, both of us younger and skinnier than we were now, and we were standing in front of the maroon Cadillac he used to drive. In my hand was a set of keys, the picture taken while I was mid-laugh. Pops was about to burst into tears.
“That was the summer I got my driver’s license.” I brushed a speck of dust off the glass. “He taught me how to drive in a church parking lot down the road from the house where we lived at the time. He was more stressed out for my driver’s test than when I had to do testing at school.”
“Why?”
“Because he had to drive me everywhere, and he kept talking about how he was so ready to hang up his chauffeur hat.” I smiled softly. “And the day I got my license, he couldn’t stop crying.”
“How come?”
Even if lingering eye contact was a terrible idea in such close proximity, my eyes found his all the same. “Because we lost time together. Hours in the car every week, where he’d hear about my day. What I was stressed about. What made me happy. Until I got the keys, he didn’t realize how precious all that time really was.”
Archer tilted his head back, a small humming sound coming from the back of his throat. “I’ve never thought about it that way. But my mom was long gone back then, and my father never would’ve taken the time to talk about anything other than football, even if he did sit in the car with me.”
There were deep-blue streaks in his eyes that I’d never noticed.
“How did you get around if it wasn’t him?”
“I had a driver,” he said, having the good sense to look slightly abashed.
“Of course you did,” I murmured.
His face creased with a grin—a deeply, unfairly attractive grin—and while I tried to settle the burst of deeply, unfairly strong nerves at what that grin did to me, Archer shifted the slightest bit closer, his bicep brushing against my bare shoulder.
The air changed with that movement, small though it was. The simple addition of his skin on mine, no matter how innocent, made my mouth go dry.
“How old were you when your mom left?” I asked.
This was why I was single, ladies and gentlemen. A moment of ripe sexual tension and my first response was to ask about his childhood wound. Like a fuckingpro.