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She took a seat on one of the tall stools at the kitchen island while Russ set about making coffee.

"There are times I'm almost nostalgic for that time of my life," he said.

"I'll trade you."

He shook his head. "I wouldn't take the memories from you. It makes success all the sweeter."

She put her elbows on the counter and rested her chin in her palms. "Success. I begin to wonder if I'll ever find it."

"What type of firms did you interview at?"

"I have a master's degree in architecture. I'm trying to find an internship position."

He stared at her. "A master's degree?"

"So you wonder why I'm cleaning houses, don't you?"

"Yes. In a word."

"It was supposed to be temporary." She held up her fingers, counting off: "The money is okay, it takes no training, you don't have to give notice when you quit, I get to see inside a lot of houses and see both bad and good design, I can arrange my schedule to allow for interviews, and the work doesn't take any brain power, so I can save my thinking energy for things I care about."

She dropped her chin back into her hands. "Only the money turns out to be not quite good enough to cover a perfect storm of bills and circumstance."

"Why not take a regular job, if that's what it takes to make ends meet?"

"I'm afraid of getting sidetracked. I'm afraid I'll get lost in some other career, and architecture will become the thing I always wanted to do but didn't. And by the time I try to go back to it, it'll be too late. All my knowledge will be out of date and my ideas won't have evolved with the times. I won't be a wa

"So what are you going to do?" he asked, setting a mug of coffee in front of her. "Cream, sugar?"

"Both, thanks." She stirred her coffee and noticed him giving the same treatment to his own coffee. Heavy on the cream, heavy on the sugar, like a mug of hot coffee ice cream. "I don't know what I'm going to do. Try to get more work, I suppose." She sipped her coffee, thinking about Daphne moving in with Derek. Daphne said that Derek didn't want her to contribute toward his mortgage; that he wanted her there because he loved her, not because he wanted to save a few bucks.

"Do you know what I think sometimes?" Emma mused aloud.

He raised a brow. "No."

"I sometimes think that it would suit me perfectly fine to be a man's mistress."

His brows went up.

"I'm not the only woman to ever think it, you know," she said in mock-seriousness. "And I don't mean mistress in the sense of a married man's lover. I mean that sometimes it seems like it would be a pretty good deal to be a man's kept woman. Have him pay my living expenses in exchange for on-demand sex." She gri

"Could you do that? Emotionally?"

She shrugged, a half smile on her lips. He didn't think she was serious, did he? "Who knows? Maybe. If the situation was right."

Could she really do it? Probably not. Not unless it was someone like Russ, whom she wanted to sleep with anyway. She made a show of tapping her fingertips along her jaw and tilted her head, looking up at the ceiling as if considering. "I'd have to like the guy, or at least respect him. And I'd have to find him physically attractive." She slid a glance toward him and smiled wickedly.

He looked stu

She dropped her hands to the counter. "Oh, I do, but in a few years. Right now, I don't want my life to get swallowed up in a romantic relationship."

"Swallowed up?"