“The vet said it will take a while for her to regain all the weight she lost when she was shut in that room.” There was a grim set to his mouth that reminded her that there were limits even to Matt’s patience. And then he smiled. “Have I seen that T-shirt before? The color suits you.”
“What?” Unbalanced by both the smile and the comment, she stared at him.
She didn’t think Matt would ever mock her, which could only mean—
“Do you want something?” She looked him in the eye. “Because you can just ask straight out. You don’t have to do the whole ‘you look nice in that T-shirt’ thing to soften me up. Thanks to you I live in the best apartment in Brooklyn, and on top of that I’ve known you forever so you can pretty much ask anything and I’ll say yes.”
“Another owner’s privilege?” He gently lifted the cat and set her down on the floor. “You probably shouldn’t have told me that. I might choose to invoke that clause in our agreement.”
Was he flirting with her?
Confusion jammed her thought processes.
She always knew where she was with Matt but suddenly she was in unfamili
ar territory.
Of course he wasn’t flirting. They never flirted. She didn’t know how to flirt. Her expertise, honed over a decade, was in putting men off, not in encouraging them.
And anyway, Matt would never be interested in her. She wasn’t sophisticated enough or experienced enough.
She needed to say something light and funny to restore the atmosphere, but her mind was blank.
Matt watched her steadily. “I paid you a compliment, Frankie. You don’t have to strip it down and check it for bugs or incendiary devices. You just say thank you and move on.”
A compliment?
But why? He never paid her compliments. “This T-shirt is five years old. It’s not that special.”
“I didn’t say I liked your T-shirt. I said I liked the way you look in it. I was complimenting you, not what you were wearing specifically. Did you mention wine?” Smoothly he changed the subject and she turned to pick up the bottle, frustrated with herself.
Why did she have to turn it into such a big deal? Was it really so hard to flirt?
Eva would have had the perfect response ready. So would Paige.
She was the only one who had no idea what to say or do. She needed to get a “how to” book. How to flirt. How not to make a fool of yourself around a man.
“Montepulciano. Unless you’d rather a beer?”
“Beer sounds good.”
She stooped and pulled one out of the fridge, forcing herself to relax. She was going to type “how to flirt” into a search engine later. She was going to practice a few responses so this never happened again. If a guy paid her a compliment, she should at least know how to respond instead of treating every comment as if it were an incoming computer virus. “How was your day?”
“I’ve had better.” He snapped the top off the beer. “Too much work, not enough time. Remember that piece of business I won a few months ago?”
“You’ve won loads of business, Matt.”
“Roof terrace on the Upper East Side.”
“Oh yes, I remember.” This conversation was better. Safe. “It was a real coup. Is there a problem with planning?”
“Not planning. That’s all good. What isn’t good is the fact that Victoria left yesterday.”
Frankie had trained with Victoria at the Botanic Gardens and she’d been the one to recommend her to Matt. “Doesn’t she have to give you notice?”
“Technically yes, but her mother’s sick so I told her to forget it and just get herself home.”
That was typical of Matt. He was a man who appreciated the importance of family. His was a tight-knit unit, not a fractured mess like hers. “She’s not likely to be back soon?”