I march back across the grass, which desperately needs cutting, but guess what? The mower doesn’t work.
I slam through the back door, climb up onto the kitchen counter yet again, and wedge the screwdriver between the window and the frame. I give the back end of the screwdriver a solid whack with the hammer, and it bites back hard into my hand. I do the same thing on the other side of the window and then set the tools down and try to open the window.
Nothing.
DAMN IT.
I try again on both sides, higher, near the top of the window. Still nothing.
Getting more frustrated than ever, I decide to use a bit more force; this window WILL open, dammit.
Wedging the edge of the screwdriver between frame and window, I take a deep breath, line the hammer up with the screwdriver, and smash it as hard as I can.
The frame splinters apart, and the glass cracks. I curse floridly, and then set the tools down and try to open the window. I heave, and tug, and yank, and then, with a creaking, cracking noise, the window slides upward…sort of. It tilts in the frame, the right side moving slightly while the left side moves marginally. One more mighty heave and the window slides up all the way…
And the glass, already cracked, breaks entirely, chunks and shards of glass shattering on the counter and hitting the ground outside.
It’s open! Broken, but open.
I clear the broken shards away, inside and out, and, of course, I cut myself on a piece of glass. Sucking at the blood and cursing nonstop now, I deposit the bag of glass into the garbage can outside my garage, and go back inside. I wash my cut finger, squeeze a paper towel around it until it stops bleeding, and then wrap a Band-Aid on it, all the while staring at the mess of my kitchen window. The frame is splintered in several places and cracked from top to bottom, and the glass is shattered.
And it’s supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow.
I consider, for about six seconds, doing the dishes like I’d intended.
Nope. Not gonna happen tonight.
Screw it.
I have a couple bottles of red wine—one of my few splurges—so I open one, pour a nice big glass, and dump half a bag of Skinny Pop into a big bowl, grab my iPad, and curl up in the corner of my couch.
I need moral support. I have precisely one number in my favorites list: Audra Donovan, my best friend. I touch the number, put the phone on speaker, and then set it on my knee.
She answers on the fourth ring. “Hey, babe. Sorry, I can’t talk. I’m with a client.”
I hear music thudding in the background, and a deep male grunt of exertion.
“Ugh, fine,” I grumble. “Be that way. Your best friend needs you, but it’s fine. Whatever.”
She says something, but it’s muffled and meant for her client, and then I can hear her properly. “Oh quit being passive-aggressive, Imogen. You know I hate it when you’re passive-aggressive.”
“I had the worst day ever, Audra,” I whine. “I need a drinking buddy.”
Audra sighs. “You know I would, but I have clients until nine tonight and then again early in the morning. But we’re having tacos and margs on Friday, right?”
“Yeah, but that’s days away still.”
She just laughs. “Wow, you really had a shitty day, huh? You’re never this whiny.”
I can’t help laughing with her. “You have no idea how shitty.”
“I’m sorry, babe. Look, I’ve gotta go, but I’ll see you soon, okay?”
“Fine,” I moan, perhaps somewhat melodramatically. “Go be more important than me.”
She just laughs again. “God, you’re being ridiculous. Drink some wine and go to bed. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
“Kay-bye,” I say, turning it into one word.
“Bye!” she calls in a singsong.
I haven’t had dinner, and I’m going to end up drinking this whole bottle of wine and eating the entire bag of popcorn but hell, after the day I’ve had, I don’t even care. It’s Skinny Pop, so it’s not THAT bad, right? And they say red wine is good for you…
Honestly, at this point, I don’t even need an excuse.
As I try to relax by catching up on Facebook, my mind begins to wander, and I think back on the past couple of years. Nicholas stopped looking at me as an object of attraction roughly fourteen months ago. Actually, fourteen months, three weeks, and two days ago. And…four hours.
How do I know, down to the hour, when my husband—ex-husband—stopped desiring me?
Because it was fourteen months, three weeks, two days, and four hours ago that I had my last miscarriage after our third and final attempt at IVF. Close to $60,000 in fertility treatments and medications—debt which I bear almost entirely. We tried for years to get pregnant. Countless doctor appointments. Funny positions, lying with my legs in the air for half an hour after lackluster sex with my distracted husband, shots, pills, transvaginal ultrasounds which I attended alone…
After that last miscarriage, Nicholas just checked out. He stopped looking at me. Stopped seeing me at all, much less seeing me as a woman, as his wife, as his friend, even less as a woman with sexual appeal.
He reserved all that attention for Tanya, his secretary. Clichéd, but true. He’s an associate principal at the local high school, and he has his own secretary. Tanya is a twenty-two-year-old, size-three, fake D-cup, community college drop-out, who apparently has a thing for forty-four-year-old balding, overweight, associate principals with a low sex drive, lower sperm count, and a twenty-four-hour refractory period.
With those thoughts running through my head, I notice I’ve already finished my first glass of wine, and think about what I’m going to watch on Netflix. I take my iPad with me to the kitchen and pour another glass of wine. I can’t decide between season four of The Tudors, and the latest Ali Wong special, so I scroll through my Instagram feed for a minute.
My cousin Sheila and her husband are having a baby—woohoo for them.
My favorite reality star is in Tahiti, drinking rum and looking fit and fabulous—I mean, she has a six pack and guns, and she’s older than me. No fair.
Nicholas’s sister is posting a series of selfie-stories, mostly loops of her posing at the gym—she’s a personal trainer, and I followed her on the idea that it would motivate me to get in shape, but instead it just makes me feel even more lacking and unmotivated.
Bloody Hell. Why do I do this? Why do I go on here when all it does is make me feel like shit?
I’m about to close out the app when an ad catches my attention.
Instead of a fitness model, it’s a photo of burly, tattooed, sexy male arm holding a wrench, about to tighten a pipe under a sink.
There’s a caption with it:
Dad Bod Contracting—for ALL your domestic contracting needs. Have a leaky faucet or clogged disposal? Need a new patio with intricate paving designs? Want your garage transformed into a yoga studio? Dad Bod Contracting has you COVERED. Our clean, well-mannered, and friendly professionals pride themselves on attention to detail. Every job comes with a 100% customer SATISFACTION guarantee. No job is too small. Hand us your “honey-do” list and we’ll get it done, and we’ll look good doing it! A good job well done is one phone call away, so call Dad Bod Contracting today!
There’s a phone number with a local area code, and an email address.
I have zero dollars, I remind myself.
Not true—I have just enough in the bank to pay the mortgage, utilities, and buy exactly $126 worth of groceries.
The kitchen window will cost more than $126 to fix, guaranteed.
I have just under two grand available on my credit card, though. That is meant for emergencies, and I’ve been trying to pay that down rather than put more on it.
But it’s going to rain, and I have to at least get a board or a tarp on that window until it can be properly fixed.
I really don’t have the money for this.
But screw it.
I use Siri to dial the number,
since my phone is near death. The phone rings for a few moments—three rings, four, and then five, and I resign myself to going to leaving a voicemail message and dealing with a wet kitchen in the morning.
Then, a miracle happens.
“This is James.” His voice is deep, rough, curt, but not unfriendly.
“Hi, um, I saw an ad on Instagram… is this Dad Bod Contracting?”
“Yep. I’m James Bod, I own the company.”
“Is that your arm in the photo?” I hear myself asking. Why did I ask that?
A pause, and a hint of amusement in his voice when he answers. “Ah, no. That’s one of my employees.” Another pause. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“Um. Yeah. I…broke my kitchen window and it’s going to rain. I definitely need it covered at the very least, and I was wondering how much it would cost to fix it.”
“What kind of window?” he asks, and I hear sliding and scraping in the background, and a hammer, and a saw whining and buzzing.
“The kind that slides up and down? It’s over my kitchen sink.”
“So not a floor-to-ceiling, or anything unique.”
“Nope, just your average window.”
“Okay, well I think I can have a guy out there in an hour or two. He’ll at least be able to board it off to keep the rain out.”
I pull the phone away from my ear and glance at the time: 6:49pm. “He’ll come over at eight or nine tonight?”
“He will if I tell him to, because I’m paying him. He’s also got no life, so it won’t be interrupting anything.”
“Hey jackass, I have a life,” I hear someone say in the background.
“Pounding pitchers at Billy Bar doesn’t count,” James replies. “Sorry. He’ll be there ASAP, okay? No worries.”
“Okay,” I say. “Thank you.” I hesitate again. “Um, how much will it cost for him to come out?” I hate having to ask, hate the embarrassment of having him know I’m literally counting pennies.
“Quotes are free.” Then I hear a crash on his end of the phone. “Watch it, asshole! Put a hole in the drywall and I’m not paying for your time to fix it. Jesus. Clumsy oaf.” To me, then. “I gotta go. He’ll be by in an hour or two, and don’t worry about the cost. Just recommend us to your friends; god knows we need the business. Just text me your address.”
He hangs up, I text my address to him, and then set the phone down.
Recommend them to my friends.
Ha. That’s a good one.
What friends? I have one friend, Audra, and she lives in a swanky condo where all repairs are part of the building maintenance. So…good luck with that.
Somehow, I’ve finished half the second glass of wine already. “Screw it,” I say out loud, and help myself to the rest of the bottle, and then toss the bottle into the trash so I don’t have to look at the evidence of my lush status. I bring the bag of popcorn with me back into the living room, curl back up on the couch, and turn on the Ali Wong special, because god knows I need to laugh.
The hour-long special has five minutes left when I hear tires in the gravel driveway. The engine shuts off, and a minute later a heavy tread pounds on the creaky porch steps.
The knock is four sharp pounds, as if the person on the other end is either impatient, or very strong, or both.
Still clutching my wineglass, I answer the door.
In my scrubs.
Sweaty from the heat.
More than a little tipsy.
Have I mentioned that it’s been more than a year since I’ve had sex?
Hopefully that explains the reaction that follows.
2
If you take pure, raw, unfiltered, male sexuality and boil it down to its essence, and then infuse that with things like smoldering eyes, rugged good looks, and a piercing stare, you’d have a general approximation of the man who stood in my doorway.
HOLY SHIT.
I just blink up at him—and I mean up. Way up. Six feet and probably four inches up. And then I scan downward, slowly, blatantly, and probably hungrily—in the way that a starving lioness might stare at a distracted gazelle.
I couldn’t begin to guess at his weight, but it’s a lot, and it’s all solid muscle. Well, mostly solid muscle, at least. He’s within a few years of my age, either way. He’s wearing dirty, faded blue jeans—the perfect kind, not hipster tight or too baggy, just tight enough that I was antsy for him to come inside so I could get a good look at his butt. His boots are thick black steel-toe work boots, scuffed and stained and faded. He’s wearing a black Led Zeppelin T-shirt with the sleeves expertly cut off, showing thick, burly, powerful arms covered in full-sleeve tattoos—I see crossed revolvers and skulls and pinup girls and dragons wrapped around assault rifles and playing cards, the logos of several bands, and what seemed like lyrics in graffiti lettering…it was a jumbled collage of images that would probably tell me a lot about him, if I took the time to study them. Which I’d like to do.
His chest is as thick and bulky as the rest of him and he has an untamed mane of black hair pushed back from his face by a pair of mirrored Oakleys, the hair thick and coarse, tangled, wind-tossed, speckled with flecks of white paint, and he wears a beard to match, a bushy, combed thatch of thick black hair two or three inches long. His eyes, though. Holy moly. Puppy-dog brown, warm and kind and filled with humor. He has a tool belt slung low around his hips, filled with various kinds of tools—hammers and wrenches and screwdrivers and other things I don’t know the name of.
He clears his throat, “Evenin’, ma’am.” He winks at me. “Estimates are free, but staring ain’t.”
“Sorry—I’m—I’m sorry,” I stammer, trying to collect my dignity, get my jaw off the floor, and my libido back in hiding where it’s been for so long. “I—it’s been…a day.”
He laughs. “Wednesday, if you want to be technical about it.” He peers past me. “James mentioned you have a broken window?”
“I—yes. Yeah, my kitchen window is broken.”
He waits expectantly for several beats, and then clears his throat again. “Um, so—can I come in and take a look?”
I realize I’m still staring, standing in the doorway. Mooning may be a better description.
“Yes. Yeah. Please.” I stand aside and extend an arm in invitation.
He sweeps past me, smelling of wood and paint and sweat and man. I took my time shutting the screen door…
I just wanted to see his butt, okay? So sue me.
It’s every bit as nice as I’d expected, a denim-clad pair of cannonballs I would like to sink my teeth into.
Whoa, down girl. Rev back that libido of yours.
My front door opens directly into my living room, with the stairs leading to the upper level on the left as you enter, with a half bath under the stairs, and the doorway to the kitchen on the right and the back door beyond that. The man enters my living room, stops in the middle, and pivots in place, his eyes scrutinizing everything, taking it all in. He shifts his weight on the floor, testing the solidity of the floorboards. Peers up at the ceiling—noticing, probably, the lack of crown molding, or maybe the stain where the tub overflowed and leaked. Or maybe the cracks in the plaster. Or…well, any number of hideous flaws in this tumbledown house I never wanted, but am now stuck with.
He finally finishes his inspection and shoots me a glance. “Fixer-upper that got away from you, huh?”
I barely suppress a growl. “Something like that.” I move past him into the kitchen—and now it’s his turn to watch me, and I distinctly feel his gaze on my backside. Which may or may not have prompted me to sway a little extra, and put a little more spring in my step than normal. “Kitchen is through here.”
There’s a box fan in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, and another by the back door, which is propped open with an old nursing textbook. He notices all this, too.
In the kitchen he stops and does another full perusal, taking in the aging refrigerator, the warped, cracked laminate floor,
the chipped Formica counters, the cabinets—original to the house, but missing some hardware. And, finally, the tiny single stainless steel sink, and the splintered window frame, the broken glass…and the hammer and screwdriver on the counter.
“Wouldn’t open?” he surmises, grinning at me.
“No. And it’s hot, and I’ve had a shitty day, and I just wanted the window open. And then it…broke.”
He laughs, a good-humored sound. “It broke, huh? The hammer and screwdriver didn’t come into play at all?”
I’m not sure which I want more—to kiss the cocky, teasing smirk off his face, or slap it off. “Do you have a name, or should I just call you Tim the Toolman Taylor?”
He does a passable impression of the Tim Allen character’s trademark goofy grunt. “I’d answer to that,” he says, peeling his sunglasses off to pass a hand through his hair before replacing the Oakleys on his head. “My name’s Jesse.”
I hold out my hand. “Imogen.”
“Imogen,” he says, drawing out the syllables: IHMMM-uh-jen. “Lovely name.” His hand is strong, warm, callused, and gentle as he shakes mine.
I blush. “Thanks.”
He doesn’t let go right away, and instead his thumb brushes imperceptibly against the web of my thumb. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too.” He still hasn’t let go of my hand, and it’s becoming awkward. If only because I haven’t let go either. “Do you need your hand back? So you can look at the window?”
He shrugs. “Nah. I can look at it from here.”
I yank my hand away and cross my arms over my chest. “Ha, ha. Okay, mister. What can you do for my window?”
He glances at it, smirking again. Amused, perhaps. “Not much, really. I have a piece of plywood in my truck. I can slap that sucker up there and it’ll keep the rain out until we can replace the window.”
I gulp. “Will you have to replace the whole thing?”
He nods, crossing over to the window. He fingers the frame where it’s cracked from top to bottom, and splintered at the point of impact. “You fucked this thing up pretty good.” He winces. “Screwed it up, I mean. Not supposed to curse on the job. Sorry. Anyway, this is an old window and is beyond repair.”
The Naughty Boxset Page 60
