“Hmm,” I ponder, stepping back and up a half-step. I know she’s not gonna tell me anything.

The second stretches and snaps. I smile, as if to say “I knew you’d be chicken.” and turn around. My hair is down, and it flounces appropriately behind me.

“There’s plenty you don’t know…”

“So you’ve claimed,” I raise a cynical eyebrow at her over my shoulder and keep climbing. She waits, a half-flight below.

“You don’t know… that your ***** looks hot right now.”

“Honey, my ***** always looks hot. And that has what to do with you?”

“A whole lot, ’cause I’m getting off by looking at it.”

“Very revealing.” I roll my eyes. “I’m not sure I can handle this sudden intimacy.”

She boyishly leaps up the steps two at a time, grabbing my *****.

“So… I’m going to guess some things about you.” I say, turning around, walking backward, suddenly in a goofy silly mood. “Hmm… I think – your full name is Shane Q. McCutcheon the Third, and that you are descended from… Moldavian royalty.”

She smiles, and I’m glad she’s caught my playful mood, too.

“McCutcheon is an old Moldavian name,” she grins. God, this woman can so quickly make me shuttle between delight and annoyance.

“See, I knew that,” I say, pushing open the door that leads into the third level of the lot. “And I think the Q stands for… Quotilde.”

“Damn, you’re good.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“I bet,” she grins, and her tone is outright flirtatious.

“And let me see… I bet when you were a girl you had eighteen brothers and one sister, and that’s how you wound up so butch.”

“I’m not butch.”

“You sure aren’t femme.”

“***** you.” She stops walking and narrows her eyes at me, playfully.

“Any time,” I say in my best *****-me voice, unlocking my car door with a press of my keychain.

“So… I’m guessing that you were a real diva around the palace, in, you know, Moldavia, like, rejecting all the food made for you, and insisting on only having the best royal garments.”

“Yup,” she says, getting into the car. “You’ve got me pegged.”

“And I’m also guessing that you were really fat.”

She laughs and slides into the passenger seat.