Smiling at the idea, she let herself into the house, carefully and quietly locked up behind her. She didn’t exactly tiptoe up the stairs, but it was close.

“Are you just getting in?”

She didn’t scream, but that was close, too. Whirling, Laurel gaped at Parker, then sat down hard on the steps before she tumbled.

“Jesus Christ! Jesus! You’re scarier than a Rottweiler. What are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” Parker waved the carton in her hand. “I went down for a yogurt and I’m going up to my room. What are you doing sneaking up the steps?”

“I wasn’t sneaking. I was walking. Quietly. You have yogurt in the little fridge upstairs.”

“I’m out of blueberry. I wanted blueberry. Do you mind?”

“No, no. God.” Laurel took a ragged breath, patted her heart. “You just scared the crap out of me.”

This time Parker pointed with her spoon. “You have guilty face.”

“I do not.”

“I’m looking at it. I know guilty face when I’m looking at it.”

“I’m not guilty. Why should I be guilty? I don’t have a curfew, do I, Mom?”

“See, guilty.”

“Okay, okay, put away the rubber hose.” Laurel threw up her arms in surrender. “I just went to Del’s to get my shoes.”

“Laurel, I can see that.You’re holding them in your hand.”

“Right. Right. Well, they’re great shoes and I wanted them back.” She stroked one affectionately. “He’d ordered Chinese.There were pot stickers.”

“Ah.” Nodding, Parker walked up to sit beside Laurel.

“I wasn’t going to stay, but I did, so we sat out on the deck and talked about me kissing him, then him kissing me. Which I didn’t actually mention to you. It feels weirder talking to you about it than it does talking to him.”

“Get over it.”

“I’m working on it, aren’t I? Anyway, we had to get to what do we do about it, if anything. He had an outline.”

“Of course.” Parker smiled as she spooned up yogurt.

“You’d expect that because the two of you are from the same mold. I told him if you and I were gay we’d be married.”

Parker nodded again as she ate her yogurt. “I could see that.”

“We talked it over and we agreed we’d see each other and do stuff that people do, except no sex.”

Brows lifting, Parker licked her spoon. “You’re going to date but not have sex?”

“For thirty days. The theory being we’d know by then if we really wanted to have sex, or if it’s just ... hmm. I know it’s reasonable and adult, but we know we want to have sex now.”

“You take a little time first to make sure you’ll still like each other if and when you do.”