“Tell you what,” Chelle said, her lips curled into an encouraging grin. “We get all the pics to finish this scavenger hunt, and I’ll buy you a beer after.”

Beer in a dark booth in a dive bar with Chelle, where they had to sit thigh-to-thigh close and there was a good chance he’d get to put his arm on the back of the booth and around her? Yeah, that was definitely a reward.

“Two beers.” He stepped inside the shower stall and almost fit (he could look over the shower curtain bar without trying). “I’m a big guy, and this is a small shower.”

“Deal.” Chelle took a few steps back and held up her phone to get the shot. “Now give me a good face.”

There was no going back now. It would be less embarrassing if it weren’t for the fact that what pushed him over the edge and scrunching down under the non-functioning showerhead in the teeny-tiny stall in the fake bathroom display as people streamed by was that she’d smiled at him.

“My cousins are going to use this as blackmail for the rest of my life.” He’d be lucky if these shots didn’t make it onto the Beckett Cosmetics website or some such shit.

Chelle rolled her eyes and squatted down to take a shot from a low angle. “Cheer up. You might get hit by a bus.”

He laughed loud enough to catch the attention of the harried couple who’d spent the last ten minutes arguing by the bookcase displays. “That’s not a happy thought.”

“True”—she thumbed through the pictures on her phone—“but you laughed anyway.”

“It’s this place,” he grumbled. “IKEA has made me lose my good sense.”

“That’s what it does,” she said as she stepped closer and began closing the shower curtain a bit. “Did you know couples end up breaking up all the time after a trip here?”

“Good thing we’re motivated to stay together,” he said.

He glanced over at the couple that had gone back to arguing about the benefits of Billy versus Kallax bookcases. The woman’s nose had turned red and the guy had crossed his arms and taken the posture of a pissed-off donkey. The urge to exit the shower so he could go mediate the strangers’ disagreement and offer advice about which bookcases to get had him taking a step out of the shower before he even realized it. Really, they needed him. He could help make sure they didn’t let an IKEA argument turn into a failed relationship, which would turn into a life of being lonely because they’d lost that one person who completed them.