11.3

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Leo pulled the refrigerator out from the wall and began looking for the problem as Piper hovered near.

"You said it makes a noise when it kicks on and off?" he asked, pulling a small flashlight from his pocket.

"Yeah, a clunk or a thud," she replied.

Leo knelt down to get better look.

"Will I be in your way if I work in here too?" Piper asked. "I have to bake a cake for tonight."

Leo smiled at her. "No, not at all."

Piper took a large bowl down from the cabinet. "So you live here in San Francisco?"

"For now. My work keeps me traveling a lot of the time. Here today, somewhere else tomorrow."

"Oh," she said. And again Leo detected a trace of disappointment in her voice.

"But you have family here, in San Francisco, right?" she asked. "A wife? Kids?"

Leo smiled to himself. "Nope, just me. How about you?"

Piper laughed self-consciously. "Me? No. No husband or kids, at least, not yet. Maybe one day." She looked into the empty bowl wistfully. "It's just me and my two sisters, Phoebe and Prue. I'm sure you'll meet them sometime or another."

No significant other, that was what Leo had read into her words and that look of longing as she stared into the bowl. In spite of himself, he was relieved, and his heart leaped erratically in his chest. Whoa, he reminded himself, you're putting distance between yourself and Piper, remember?

She went to the refrigerator. "I need to get a few things out of here, don't let me get in your way."

Leo stretched out on the kitchen floor away from the refrigerator door. "You're not in my way," he said, undoing the bolts at the bottom of the appliance. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Piper grabbed milk, butter, and a carton of eggs from inside, balancing the eggs in the crook of her arm. She reached into the refrigerator for another item and the eggs tilted dangerously to the side.

He leaned up from the floor. "Here, let me help you with that," he told her.

"That's okay, I've got it," she said, tucking yet another item beneath her chin, a strange balancing act.

Leo stood up. "I'll grab the eggs," he said, eyeing them as they tottered left and right. He grasped the egg carton and tugged. But then he realized his mistake, as Piper couldn't release the carton without unburdening the other items in her arms. He watched helplessly as the milk carton toppled to the floor along with the butter dish, and the egg carton, now a twisted mass of Styrofoam, became crunched between their bodies.

"Uh-oh," Piper breathed.

Leo stood frozen in place. The broken eggs were oozing and sliding from the carton down the front of his shirt, but all he seemed to notice was the softness of Piper pressed against him, holding the mess suspended between their bodies. For a long moment they looked at one another, so close he could see the golden specks in her brown eyes, the spatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose, tiny droplets of spilled milk on her cheeks.

Without thought, he reached up and gently wiped at the droplets, smoothing them away. His fingers lingered on her cheeks, the milk gone. It was only when glowing flickers of light suddenly appeared from his fingertips, that he pulled them away, astonished, the warnings going off in his head like a siren. That had never happened before. He looked down at Piper, but she seemed not to notice.

She smiled faintly at him, and then, looking down at the mess between them, she grinned. For the first time since the fiasco, it struck him how ridiculous they both must look, covered in milk and egg slime, holding on to one another to keep the mess from sliding to the floor and becoming a bigger mess. Leo found himself grinning, and then they were both laughing at their predicament.

Piper bit her lip. "Do you think we could waddle over to the sink? We can get rid of this—" she nudged the crushed egg carton. They walked crab-like over to the sink and deposited the carton.

"Your clothes are a mess," she told him, grabbing a dishtowel and wiping at the eggshell fragments on his shirt.

"So are yours," he said, looking at the top of her head as she went about cleaning him up.

"I can change," she said. "But I can't let you leave out like that—it looks like you had a fight with a chicken truck." She turned the facet on and wet the dishtowel.

"I'll be fine," he said, still reeling from their close encounter. He should move away, he thought; go to the other side of the room or outside for a breath of fresh air. He need to clear his head.

But Piper was wiping at his shirt again, too close, too mind-boggling close. So much for the distance he was trying to put between them, he thought, looking down into the sink at the ruined eggs.

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