He glanced at the clutter on the dresser. “Where’s the trophy?”
“The winery gets to keep it.” She added wistfully, “Not the winemaker.”
That didn’t seem fair. Neither did the way the closet seemed to be taunting him.
The last big picture was of Agnes with Christine and... “Is that your mom?”
“Yep.”
If Christine aged as well as her mother, she’d still be a knockout thirty years from now. Not the train of thought he needed. “I can see you got your height from your father’s side of the family tree.”
There were other photos to check out, but the closet was six feet away. It felt like six inches. It felt like he was so close he could fall backward and... Get a grip.
Christine hadn’t moved away from him. She had no idea how much he wanted to hold on to her to save him from the closet. He thrust a hand through his hair. “You don’t want your own place?”
“Someday. My grandmother is lonely, although I hope she doesn’t start imposing a curfew.” She sent him a sideways look, the kind a woman sends a man when she’s gauging his interest in the conversation. “Truth is, I want my own winery, so any chance I get to save money, I take it.”
He understood goals and moving on. He gestured vaguely toward the corner where she’d stacked her shoes. “How many pairs of shoes are we talking about? Twenty? Thirty?” She could buy a rack for that many.
Christine glanced at the three large cardboard boxes she’d transferred from the closet. The ones guarding his back. “More like a hundred.”
He must have made a manly noise of derision because she playfully punched his shoulder. “Hey, I thought you weren’t the kind to judge.”
“Maybe you need to donate a few pairs.”
She was aghast. “Some of those shoes cost more than a car payment!”
“And now you’re going to park them in a custom-built garage.” One that she’d make herself, because he couldn’t do it. He was 99 percent certain if he tried to so much as measure the closet for shelving, he’d pass out.
He didn’t use the closet in his bedroom. He’d bought an antique wardrobe and hung his clothes in there. His closet doors were firmly closed. Had been for years.
“You don’t want to build shelves for my shoes.” Christine narrowed her eyes. “What do you have against shoes?”
“Nothing.” Closets were his kryptonite.
And right now, he was too close to kryptonite.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“LET ME GET this straight.” Keeping an eye on the bathroom door, Slade shifted sideways away from the closet.
Christine had never seen him look so rattled. Was it her? Her ego whispered yes. Or was it the girls? That was a more logical explanation.
One hand rested on his tobacco-brown designer tie. His other hand kept disturbing his normally perfect black hair. “You have the original box for each pair of shoes, yet you want to build shelves, take each pair out and put them on display, and store the empty boxes somewhere else?”