Ready to Roll by Melanie Greene Page B

them intertwined. His fingers were twice as long as hers, or twice as warm, or twice as broad. Twice as something. Something that made it make sense for her to feel overwhelmed but also comfortable, the pollywogs settling down at last.
    “It’s great,” she said, but it wasn’t like she was looking at the rooms. It wasn’t like any of the things she was saying had any relevance to any of the things she was living through.
    Five years they’d worked together, and never once held hands.
    Or kissed.
    Or held hands.
    Suddenly Janice’s froglets were hopping again, and she pulled away. “I should clear those up.” She turned and did notice, then, that his living room rug was the same orange as the crushed tulips, and that his whole house was neat as a pin. It was a classic shotgun house, front door opening onto the living area with a galley kitchen beyond. So Janice knew exactly where to go to find a trash can for the mangled bouquet.
    Somehow she was carrying the tulips a little further, though, past the kitchen. The whole deal with shotgun houses was that you could open the front and back doors and fire a shotgun and the bullet would go straight out to the back fence. Though the fact that you could also open both doors for a steady air current in the depths of a Texas summer was more the point, generally.
    And also, if you walked past the kitchen towards the back door, you ended up staring into the bedroom.
    Staring, and thinking brilliant thoughts like, “Miguel has a bed.”
    Lord love a fool, of course the man had a bed. People generally did, if they also had roofs over their heads. Nothing so remarkable about having a bed, or about that bed being neatly made up, or about beige and brown plaid blankets, or about pillows covered in soft white cotton. Janice’s hovering mental mother smacked her upside the head. Miguel hadn’t invited her over to stare at his sheets.
    Flowers. She was trying to get rid of the thrice-cursed flowers.
    Turning back towards the kitchen, she caught Miguel not even trying to pretend he wasn’t laughing at how flustered she was. He did open the cabinet under his sink and gesture to the trash can there with a little flourish. Like she couldn’t have figured that out her own damn self. If his bed hadn’t leapt out and distracted her and all.
    “Sorry, Toots.”
    “Miguel,” he said.
    “Eh?”
    “We’re not at work, Janice. I think you can remember the name of the only other person in the room. Call me Miguel.”
    Oh, he was going to be like that, was he? All soft chiding but firm intent? Well, fine. Janice could fight on those terms as well as any other. She might not take verbal sparring classes like she did kickboxing and Taekwondo, but she knew plenty about mouthing off. Just ask her mama.
    “I call everyone Toots, Toots.” She did. Had for years. It was a lot easier that way, and Janice worked with a preponderance of Texan men. Unchecked, they’d Hon and Sugar and Sweetie her down into some little gal who could be indulged, or not, when she made requests of them. But when she called them Toots, they took her orders.
    “At work you can keep calling me Toots. You can even call me Toots when we’re out at happy hour or burger night. But in my house, Janice,” he emphasized her name, like he had to prove he knew it, which was ridiculous. She knew his name perfectly well. “I want to hear you say Miguel.”
    Pollywogs had grown up and gone on a hopping rampage along her spine. Janice couldn’t swallow past the bullfrog lodged in her throat, and feared her mouth was hanging open as she got lost in visions of Miguel looming over her, taunting her with those firm full lips and those broad long fingers, demanding she call him by name. He’d withhold, refusing to serve up the goods, until she did.
    Jerk.
    If only she didn’t suddenly really want to call him Miguel.

Chapter Two
     
    Miguel held back the triumphant smile he knew would get her fighting again. That was his Janice,