“Er . . . no.” Clara tugged at her collar, glad, in retrospect, that she’d suffered the indignity of touching up her makeup in the tiny airplane bathroom while one of her fellow passengers pounded on the door. “I’m Clara Wheaton,” she said when silence lingered.

“Josh.” He closed the distance between them, offering her a handshake. “Nice to meet you.”

When their hands came together, she inspected his fingernails as a bellwether for his personal hygiene habits. Neat and trim. Thank goodness.

After five seconds, Josh raised an eyebrow and Clara released his hand with a sheepish smile.

Despite his impressive height and the fact that his shoulders had filled most of the door frame, she didn’t find him intimidating. His rumpled clothes and the mop of overgrown blond curls suggested he’d just rolled out of bed. Striking dark brows should have cast him as surly, but the rest of his face resisted brooding.

He was cute but not quite handsome. Not like Everett, whose mere presence still made her speech falter after all these years. Clara accepted this small form of mercy from the universe. She’d always found it impossible to talk to handsome men.

“Nice to meet you,” she echoed, adding, “Please don’t murder or molest me,” as an afterthought.

“You got it.” He raised both hands in a helpless gesture. “So . . . I guess that means we’ll be living together?”

“For the time being.” At least long enough for her to develop a contingency plan.

Josh peered into the open door of the bathroom. “Where’s Everett? He didn’t stick around to get you settled?”

Clara’s shoulders crept toward her ears. “The band needed to get on the road right away.”

“Pretty crazy, huh? Them getting invited to tour last minute?”

“Yeah.” She fought to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Wild.”

“Worked out for me, though. I couldn’t believe the lowball rent Everett asked for on a place this nice.”

Clara decided not to mention that Everett had inherited the house, free and clear, from his grandfather and likely only charged enough to cover the taxes. She massaged her temples, trying to ward off a monstrous headache. Whether it came from stress, jet lag, or dying dreams, she couldn’t say.

The longer she stood in this house, the more real the nightmare became. She sat back down on the couch when her vision swam.

“Hey, are you okay?” Her new roommate came to kneel in front of her, the way adults do when they want to speak to a small child. Clara glanced away from where his thighs strained the seams of his jeans.

He had a spattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. She focused on the one at the very center and spoke to it. “I’m fine. Just reckoning with the consequences of a multigenerational family curse. Pretend I’m not here.”

You’d think decades of old money and carefully monitored good breeding would weed out the Wheatons’ notorious inclination toward destructive behavior, but if the recent arrest of her brother, Oliver, was anything to go by, the longer their lineage grew, the grimmer the consequences of their behavioral missteps.

Comparatively, she’d gotten off easy with an old house and a broken heart.

Josh wrinkled his forehead. “Um, if you say so. Oh, hey, wait here a minute.”

As if she had anywhere else to go.

“I think I’ve got something that might help.” He strode into the kitchen and returned a moment later to press a cold can of beer into her hands. “Sorry I don’t have anything stronger.”

Clara wasn’t much of a beer drinker. But at this point, it couldn’t hurt. She popped the top and took a deep slug. “Blech.” Why did men insist on pretending IPAs tasted good? She dropped her head between her knees and employed a deep-breathing technique she’d observed once when accompanying her cousin to Lamaze class.

“Hey . . . uh . . . you’re not gonna toss your cookies, right?”

Bile rose in the back of her throat at the suggestion. This guy was about as helpful as every other man she knew. “Perhaps you could say something reassuring?”

After a few seconds, he blew out a breath. “Your body destroys and replaces all of its cells every seven years.”

Clara sat up slowly. “Okay, well”—she pursed her lips—“you tried. Thanks,” she said with dismissal.

“I read that in a magazine at the dentist’s office.” He shot her a weak smile. “Thought it was kinda nice. I figure it means no matter how bad we mess up, eventually we get a clean slate.”

“So you’re telling me in seven years, I’ll forget the fact that I uprooted my entire life and moved across the country because a guy who’s not even my boyfriend encouraged me to, and I quote, ‘follow my bliss’?”

“Right. Scientifically speaking, yes.”

He had nice eyes. Big and brown, but not dull. They looked warm, like they’d spent time simmering over an open flame. Cute but not handsome, she reminded herself.

“Well, okay. I was expecting a banal detail about your job, to be honest. But not bad for off the top of your head.” She wiped her hand across her mouth and handed him back the beer.

“Somehow I don’t think hearing about my job would reassure you.” He took a long sip from her discarded can.

Guess that answered the question of whether Josh was the kind of roommate who would eat her leftovers. “You’re not a mortician, are you?”

He shook his head. “I work in the entertainment industry.”

Figures. Clara immediately lost interest. The last thing she needed was some wannabe filmmaker asking her to read his screenplay.

Josh gave her a blatant once-over. “You’re not what I expected.”

Well, that makes two of us, buddy.

She’d expected to live with Everett. She’d pictured the two of them cooking dinners together, their shoulders touching as they worked side by side. She’d imagined watching action movies deep into the night like they did back when they were thirteen, only this time instead of separate sofas they’d curl up together under a shared blanket with glasses of wine.

This house should have set the scene for their love story. Everett should have written a song in that window seat inspired by their first kiss.

Instead, she got to share a toilet with a stranger.

Clara stood up and shook off her unfulfilled wishes. “What do you mean?”

“I’m surprised a girl like you”—he gestured to her Louis Vuitton luggage—“would slum it with a roommate in a place like this.”

Clara gathered her dark hair over one shoulder and smoothed the tresses. “I received the luggage as a gift from my grandmother.” She lowered her eyes to the carpet. “I took the room because I’m between jobs at the moment.” The lie sat sour on her tongue and she quickly swerved back into truth territory. “I’ve known Everett forever. When I graduated a few weeks ago he offered me his spare room.”

“Oh. A graduate, huh? What were you studying?”

“I recently completed my doctorate in art history,” she said with as much bravado as she could muster. As a kid, she’d dreamed about making work of her own, but eventually, she’d realized art required exposing parts of herself she’d rather keep hidden—her hopes and fears, her passions and yearning. Analysis and curation let her keep art at arm’s length while using school as a way to extend the exit ramp to adulthood.

Josh smirked. “Is that like a special degree they only give out to rich people?”

Clara ground her teeth so hard she thought she heard a pop. “Let’s keep the interpersonal chitchat to a minimum, shall we?”

She grabbed her purse and hunted for her move-in checklist, finding it buried underneath her airplane pillow and first-aid kit. Clara had compiled the six-page document to include all manner of questions and instructions on what to look for to know whether a new home was up to code in Los Angeles. Holding the document made breathing a little easier.

When she looked up, Josh hadn’t left. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but frankly, Everett didn’t tell me he had to go out of town until right now, and no offense, I’m sure you’re probably nice, but this”—she gestured to the space between them—“falls a little outside my comfort zone.”

“Hey, me too.” He put his hand to his heart. “I’ve seen a lot of made-for-TV movies, you know. You’re exactly the kind of pint-sized, tightly wound socialite who goes crazy and paints the walls with chicken blood. How do I know I’m safe from you?”

Clara cocked her hip and stared at the over-six-foot man across from her. His threadbare T-shirt, featuring a vintage picture of Debbie Harry, barely obscured his muscular chest and broad shoulders. “You’re honestly worried about me?”

His eyes sank to the move-in checklist in her hand. “Oh my God. Is that laminated?” He looked positively delighted.

“My mother got me a machine last Christmas,” she told him defensively as he took it from her for further inspection. “It prevents smudging.”

He pitched his head back and laughed. A loud rumble without a trace of mocking in it. “‘Check the water pressure on all taps for inconsistency,’” he read from the sheet. “This is too good. Did you write this yourself?”