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entertain me. You told Cilla you would.”
    “Not strictly true,” Rose said. “It was more of a recommendation.”
    “Yes, but if you don’t provide a distraction, I could do something detrimental to my health.”
    She eyed him, as if seeking the truth of that.
    “My weight room is calling to me,” he said.
    “I saw you doing bicep curls already today.”
    “Just received the doctor’s approval. But what I wouldn’t give for a full chest and back workout.”
    She turned away from him to swipe again at the sink with the sponge. “Do some leg lifts. Lunges. Squats. You can have twenty minutes on the stationary bike.”
    “Who’s been reading my exercise directions?”
    “Part of the job,” she said.
    Maybe that’s what was making him antsy. He had a virtual stranger working in his home. Perhaps he’d be more comfortable if he was more comfortable with her.
    “Want to play a game?” he asked.
    On a sigh, she turned around. “I am not at all athletic. Terrible hand-eye coordination.”
    He tilted his head and considered her tight little body. “How do you stay in such good shape?”
    Her color went high again, then she moved her arms up and down. “Walk, run, hike. I have my own light weights routine.”
    “We should do that sometime—walk, run. We could go to the beach.”
    Those gray eyes of hers narrowed. “You are bored.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “I’m not your usual type of companion.” Both her hands waved, making a silhouette of a well-endowed woman with hips as curvy as her tits.
    “I don’t have a usual type.”
    She laughed. “Right.”
    He refused to take insult. “You don’t know a lot about me, just what you surmise. That’s why you should want to play my game.”
    “Yeah?” She still looked skeptical.
    “It’s called Questions. We’ll have three categories. Family, Future, and…another to be determined later.” Favorite Sex Acts, he thought, but he wouldn’t spring that on her right away.
    He gestured toward the kitchen table. “Sit down. We’ll trade off. I’ll ask a question and then you can.”
    With a sigh, she tossed the sponge into the sink and dried her hands on a towel. “Well, you’ll have to help me out while we play.”
    Imagine his surprise when she fetched a tote bag and took out of it a hunk of yarn. “I need to wind this into a ball,” she said. “You stretch it out between your hands while I do that.”
    When they were seated and he had the stringy stuff linked around his wrists, he watched her begin to wind the free end. “You knit?”
    “Nope,” she answered cheerfully. “But maybe it’s my passion. I’ll find out.”
    “Your passion?”
    “It’s my turn for a question next,” she said.
    He frowned. “But—” he began, then shrugged a shoulder. “Go ahead.”
    “On the subject of family, what’s going on with everyone from the compound?”
    Stretching out his legs, he watched her small fingers move. Her nails were short, unpolished, but her hands were still pretty. “The Velvet Lemons themselves are on a world tour. They’ve got another year or so of it to go. As for everyone else…we’ve started to bond.” In childhood they hadn’t been close, though Payne was never entirely sure why. “Ren and Cilla got engaged and decided to draw us back together as a unit. Now Cilla’s brother Bing is embarrassing us all by exchanging PDA with his bride-to-be, Alexa. Reed’s wrapped around his woman, Cleo, just as often. The rest of us, Walsh, Brody, Cami, Beck, and I are still sane and single.”
    “So—”
    “Nuh-uh-uh. My turn. Didn’t you go off with your dad after your parents’ divorce?”
    Rose kept her attention on the yarn, her head down so her long, sweeping bangs obscured her expression. “Mm. Went to college in Washington state and then joined my father’s accounting firm in Seattle. Now I’m back here, living with Lily and her husband and their baby boy.”
    “I heard about that new addition. Pass along