“Last night,” she said, her voice testy, her lips pursed as she folded her arms crankily.

Oh, Jesus have mercy, woman. Do not fold your arms like that. Grady forced himself to keep his gaze trained steadily on Suzanne’s face.

“When I was washing out my paints after eleven, there was no water.”

“I had water at nine. It must have gone out after that.” Grady shrugged. “It happens sometimes out here.”

He felt the need to add that because she was glaring at him like the water going out and the subsequent flood at their feet was somehow his fault. They lived in a rural area—services sometimes went on the blink. No biggie.

“Still doesn’t explain why half the water in Colorado is on my cottage floor.”

She sucked in a breath. That was both bad and good. Bad because it emphasized how naked she was under her T-shirt. Like he needed a reminder. Good because it meant she was angry, and he’d rather she looked at him like he was everything wrong with the males of the species than look at him like he was pie.

Pecan pie with puddles of warm butter. Which brought him back to the puddle of water at his feet.

“I’d been trying to fill the sink to wash up. I thought I’d turned off the faucet.”

“Clearly you didn’t.”

“Yes, thank you,” she snapped with a mutinous glow in her eyes. “I can see that.”

Grady shoved his hands on his hips as he glanced around, assessing the situation—anything to keep his mind off a pair of legs he suddenly wanted to feel wrapped around his waist. “Well…there’s no real harm done.”

She blinked. “Are you always this cool in the midst of…disaster?”

“This is a disaster?” In the realm of disasters, he’d take it over a tornado, the bottom falling out of the beef market, or a dose of mad cow disease.

“The cottage is flooded.” She said it kinda slowly, taking care to emphasize each word like maybe she was talking to the village idiot.

Jesus, she was a drama queen. It was hardly Old Testament stuff. Which reminded him it was Sunday and that he should be in church being delivered from temptation. Instead of staring it down.

But he wasn’t much of a churchgoer.

He mentally braced himself to return his attention to her person—her face. Not her legs. Not her no-bra T-shirt. Her face. And that streak of blue paint.

“The floor’s waterproof. It hasn’t reached the walls.” If he was mimicking her slow, village-idiot cadence, it was her own fault. She started it.

“The furniture has wet feet and the rug’s soaked through.”

He shrugged. “They’ll dry.”

“Oh… Well…” She looked around like she didn’t quite believe him. “Okay, then.”

“Why don’t you go and put on some clothes?” Grady held every muscle he owned in hard lock, his fingers biting into his hips as he fought the urge to drop his gaze. His jaw ached from clenching his teeth. “I’ll get the wet vac. It shouldn’t take long.”