“Later,” Kulti repeated. “Keep your head in it.”
I nodded and offered him a weak smile.
He didn’t smile back. Instead, he let go of my wrist and put his hand on my forehead before shoving me gently away. It wasn’t exactly a hug or a pat on the back, but I’d take it.
Sure enough when I turned around, at least eight sets of eyes were on us.
Great.
Aknockat eight o’clock that night had me setting my latest concoction on the kitchen counter, careful not to let the spoon fall out of the bowl. I’m not sure who else I could have been expecting to show up besides the German, so I wasn’t surprised to find him on the other side of the peephole.
“Come in,” I said, already opening the door wide for him to enter.
Right before shutting the door, I noticed that his Audi was parked behind my Honda, the silhouette of someone in the driver’s seat. All right.
“Don’t mind me,” I explained, walking back to the kitchen where I’d left my face mask.
“You have something on your face,” Kulti stated, standing on the other side of the counter with a curious expression.
I had only managed to cover one cheek before he’d knocked so I’m sure I looked like an orange creamsicle. Picking up the spoon, I applied more of the cool mixture to my cheeks and forehead, watching the German as I did it. “It’s a face mask made with Greek yogurt, turmeric, ground oatmeal and lemon.” I raised my eyebrows as I dabbed some over my upper lip. “You want some?”
He eyed me dubiously. Then, he nodded.
All right, then. “Rinse off your face with hot water, and then you can put it on.”
I blindly finished putting the mixture on my target skin as he went to the kitchen sink and splashed water over his face, dabbing it dry with a paper towel. It wasn’t until Kulti took a seat on the edge of the kitchen counter and tipped his chin down, that I realized he wanted me to put the mask on him.
“Are you serious?”
The German nodded.
“You are really something else, you know that?” I asked, even as I stepped forward and began smoothing the gunk over his nose and across each cheekbone, gentle and slow. The facial hair that had grown in over the day prickled my fingers with each pass over his features.
“Do you do this often?” he asked after I’d covered his chin.
“A couple times a week.” I smiled, noticing his eyes on mine. “Do you?”
“I’ve had a few scrubs before photo shoots,” he admitted.
I nodded, impressed. What a metrosexual. I ran my fingers over the strip of flesh below his nose. “We spend so much time in the sun, you really have to try and take care of your skin. I don’t want to look like an old lady before my time comes.”
He nodded his agreement and let me finish putting the mask on him with watchful eyes. Once we were done, I told him we needed to wait at least twenty minutes before washing it off. “Don’t touch anything either. The turmeric stains everything,” I warned him, but I didn’t really care if I got a stain on my furniture or not.
Grabbing an ice pack from the freezer, I sat on one end of the couch and watched him sit on the other. Propping my leg on the coffee table, I slapped the ice-pack down on it for a good fifteen minutes. My notebook was on the cushion between us, with a whiteboard on the table for my sticky notes, right where I’d left it before I decided to do my first beauty treatment of the week. The reporter’s question earlier about the summer camps reminded me that I needed to plan the lessons for them. I hadn’t finalized a single thing yet.
The German didn’t even hesitate to pick up the notebook, reading over the notes I’d written about the different things that I thought would be beneficial to the kids at their ages.
“What is this?” he asked.
I fought the urge to snatch the notebook away from him. “Plans. I have a few summer camps coming up.”
His eyes flicked up from over the edge of the notebook. “Training camps?”
“For kids,” I explained. “They only last a few hours.”
He glanced back down at the sheet. “For free?”
“Yes. I do it in low-income neighborhoods for kids whose parents don’t have the funds to enroll them in clubs and leagues.”