Making Mr. Right. Jamie Denton

some reason, women like to be kept guessing just a tiny bit. You have to at least play a little hard to get.” Shoot, maybe that was why she liked him. He’d kept her guessing and wishing and hoping for years. And how much harder to get could you be than madly, blindly in love with someone else?

      “You can’t be so...so...eager,” she told him. “Lesson one—when Mallory says something, don’t jump as if her tiniest wish is your command.”

      “So you don’t want me to clean out the closet?”

      This time her sigh was frustrated because she couldn’t decide if she wanted to hit him or hug him. “Yes. Clean out the closet. But she doesn’t have to know you did it for her. Shoot, don’t do it for her. Do it for yourself! We’re going to buy you a whole new wardrobe. Maybe you’ll be using some of the space by the time this reunion comes around. Surely in this huge house you have somewhere to keep your old modems and stuff besides your bedroom.” She waved vaguely at the door she’d shut.

      His expression cleared some, but there were still tiny frown lines between his eyebrows. Cindy resisted the urge to smooth it away. “Don’t take everything so literally,” she snapped. “That’s another problem. You take everything anyone says as gospel. People do say one thing and mean something else.”

      The frown deepened. “What do you mean?”

      “I mean...for example, when I said you’d have to clean out the closet, I was talking to you, but I was mostly thinking out loud. In fact, it’s kind of silly to clean it out until you know where all this is going to lead. Mallory may not be interested. Shoot, by the time she gets here, she may be married again.” She wanted to slap the startled look off his face.

      “You think that’s a possibility?”

      “I think,” she measured her response, “you shouldn’t worry. If she’s madly in love with someone else and already married again, do you really want her?”

      She couldn’t bear to see the answer he might have in his eyes and turned away. “Never mind. She would have told me if she was thinking of getting married again.” She changed the subject quickly and promised herself that whatever she felt, she would not make snide remarks about Mallory again. She was her sister. Cindy did love her, even though she didn’t understand her. And she had to admit, she’d always been jealous of Parker’s reaction to Mallory. “It’s your house, and until something changes, you shouldn’t clean out the closet if you want that stuff there.”

      “It is convenient,” he said.

      “Then don’t clean it out.” She shook her head to clear the confusion he created every time she had one of these literal/euphemistic conversations with him. “If it gets to the point where Mallory is considering settling in here, I’m sure she’ll figure out some way to get you to move those things out herself.”

      Cindy pushed past him and looked at the meager number of clothes he had hanging in his own closet. It held maybe ten suits, at least one of them dating back as far as high school—she recognized it from his and Mallory’s graduation. There was a line of white shirts and a hanger with neckties hung haphazardly over it. His clothes took up maybe two feet of the clothing rods that ran at least thirty feet on three sides of the room. The walls were lined with cedar. Built-in drawers and cabinets were interspersed between the rods and shelving of various heights and sizes. Four pairs of sneakers in various stages of disintegration perched neatly on a long low shelf obviously meant for the purpose. He had sweaters and casual knit shirts folded neatly on one stretch of shelves.

      Only two suits survived her scrutiny. “What’s wrong with that one?” Parker asked at one point.

      “Besides the fact that it’s threadbare?” She reclaimed the suit he looked reluctant to part with.

      “That’s my TV suit,” he protested.