Page 15 of Center of Gravity

“Nope. I’d do a neutral gray.”

“Neutral gray,” I echoed dully, then bent to stir my hand through the chips. I had grays somewhere.

Alex crossed the room, all business, to pull back the heavy curtains. “These have to go, by the way. It’s killing the view.” Afternoon light plummeted into the room like a wave toppling, reaching every corner in brilliant white-gold sheets.

Returning to the chip pile, Alex picked through them, shuffling them around until he had a handful of grays, then sorting through those until only three were left in his hand that he took across the room to plug into the window casing where it met the wall.

“White’s great if you don’t really know what you’re doing and you just need to set a blank stage or not push a buyer away with something too personal or godawful like magenta, but if you’re willing to give it some thought and look at other factors, you can make a space that evokes a feeling. Or at least punches up the surroundings.”

The grays he put up next to the window were subtle in difference, but I saw what he was talking about. They were soft and inviting against the view of the lawn, the street, and horizon line of ocean and sky beyond. I glanced back at the swatches of white, which now appeared too sterile. He was right.

“Did you take interior design or something?”

Alex chuckled and gave me a lopsided grin as he pulled one of the grays from the wall and slapped it into my hand. “Color theory 101 and HGTV on constantly at home. Or, well, my parents’ house.” He wrinkled his nose as if that admission embarrassed him.

I considered the paint chip and then the walls. They were currently a faint pink-orange color—as was the hallway—and even I recognized that a color that looked as if it’d come straight from a tuna can wasn’t going to lure a potential buyer. The bedrooms, hallways, and baths were an odd assortment of my mother’s whims: pale purple guest room, sodden wine-stain red master, lime-green explosion in the hall bath. She’d loved color and had applied it without prejudice.

I hated to even ask, thinking about the additional work it tacked on.

“Could you do this for all of the rooms? Color pick, I mean?”

“It’ll cost extra.”

“That’s fine.”

“I’m joking, dude.”

Dude was better than sir or mister, so I gave him a thin smile.

“I can do it if you want me to, no problem.”

“I don’t,” I said. “But it would probably make the house more marketable, right, if the colors were updated?”

“That’s what HGTV says.”

I did the math on how much longer I thought it would take. I could still telecommute to work if needed and I hadn’t specified with my boss the exact day when I’d be back. He’d been lenient, too, considering the circumstances and the fact that I’d been busting my ass for the firm over the last decade.

I nodded slowly. “That’s what we’ll do, then. If you have the time, that is.”

“Oh, I have about as much as you want,” he said and turned away to reorder the paint chips before I could dwell on that.

We spent the next hour going room to room picking colors, any instance of skepticism on my part met with a full demonstration by Alex of why the color was the right choice. He was convincing, damn convincing, and he was in his element, walking about with a fan of paint chips, tacking them up, walking back, squinting, moving forward again and declaring a decisive winner. I could honestly say that I’d never felt the stirring of an erection over paint colors until Alex.

I thought he’d be a great teacher, never mind the dirty fantasies that called up for me, but when I told him so, he wrinkled his nose.

“You’re very good at explaining things in a way that makes sense,” I said. “What’s wrong with teaching? On a collegiate level, there can be a lot of benefits.”

“A lot of grading and desks and offices and paperwork, for one,” he said. “And restraint.”

“In what way?” My brow wrinkled.

“I’d probably want to bang half of my class.”

I gave him a flat expression but could tell he was just trying to get a rise out of me. I was getting an idea that was going to be our thing. He poked, I evaded.

“Are you some kind of sex addict?” I was amused by this turn in conversation.

“I wouldn’t say I’m a sex addict at all, but I do have a very, very healthy sexual appetite.”