by Sara Whitney
“Sorry, sorry, sorry.” He held up his hands. “I know you’re committed. Now that it’s warming up, we’ll start working on the outside too.” He turned to the sink, where he rinsed and scrubbed his coffee mug before setting it on a dish towel to dry.
She watched him in amusement. “Sorry. My contractor hasn’t installed the new dishwasher yet.”
“God, he’s lazy. Good thing I can run my own mug under some water.” He dried his hands and watched as she pulled on her jacket. “I’ll walk you out. Protect my guys from your wrath.”
“What wrath?” As they headed down the driveway, she gave a wide berth to the dumpster blocking access to the garage. No sense risking rust stains on her blouse.
He moved to walk between her and the corroded metal exterior. “Oh, was that a different short brunette I saw yelling at the plumbers for parking on her lawn last week? If that wasn’t you, it was your hotheaded twin.”
“Everything is thawing! I don’t want them to turn my yard into a mud pit!” She’d reached her car, which she was parking on the street as construction was ongoing.
“Hothead,” Aiden muttered fondly while her stomach pitched and rolled over how damn cute he was when he smiled at her like that. There was no way he understood just how devastating he was to the unsuspecting women around him or he’d muzzle that smile in the interest of female sanity.
And in the interest of her own sanity, she needed to quit smiling at him on the front lawn of her beautiful new home. “I have to go. Try not to let the house fall into a giant sinkhole today.”
“Small sinkholes only! Got it!” Aiden called as she climbed into her car.
She was still laughing as she pulled away from the curb, but after such a flirty start, her day had nowhere to go but down. It wasn’t one single thing that she could pinpoint that started the crappy avalanche. It was a billion small ones.
It turned out to be too cold in the office for a skirt after all, so she spent all day goose-bumpy.
Her email password had to be reset, which required an hour on hold with the Lowell Consolidated IT department in the Minneapolis headquarters.
Her Bluetooth headset hadn’t charged overnight, so she had to wait on hold on the corded phone rather than multitasking by organizing the supply closet or cleaning the copy machine innards with an old toothbrush or literally anything to help her pass the time as IT decided whether she was worthy of her own email.
The delivery guy got her lunch order wrong, and she ended up with a sandwich that seemed to be mostly onions rather than the chicken salad wrap she’d been looking forward to.
And everybody seemed to be out of the office, so she did nothing but send calls to voice mail for the ad reps and the deejays. Even Mabel was gone before noon, which made the day drag even more than normal. Usually she could count on girl talk to make the clock tick forward a little more quickly. The deejay on air right now was Skip, who was friendly but didn’t usually leave the booth during his shift, so there was no hope of entertainment on that front.
The final straw came when her email was finally up and running again and she found a reply in there from Brandon. The boss from hell unequivocally denied her request to digitize all the office forms into fillable PDFs. No explanation, just a terse “don’t bother.”
She slammed her palms on the desk with a little scream of frustration. It had been a good idea, and it wouldn’t have cost the company anything. She could’ve streamlined the forms, cleaned up the questions they didn’t use anymore for ad sales and new music requests and whatnot. But noooooo, Brandon clearly wanted her to stay in her lane, her lane being phones and faxes. Her brain was going to rot in her head thanks to corporate bureaucracy.
By four p.m. she’d been reduced to staring dully at the parking lot security footage. Brandon had insisted on cameras and a locked entrance for the safety of the employees, but absolutely nothing was stirring today, not even the ground squirrels that lived in the grass beyond the edge of the lot.
“Bored!” She wilted over the edge of her chair and wailed the word to an uncaring universe.
Her phone buzzed. The universe had heard her and sent a rescue! She snatched the device from her purse to find a photo of a beaming Mabel holding a tiny, red-faced infant. The message read Welcome to the world, Lucille Marie!
She set the phone down to glance along the empty station hallways. Is that where everybody was? Ana had gone into labor, and nobody had given her a heads-up. Which… fine. Ana hadn’t been due for another two weeks, so this must’ve been unexpected, and cell reception in Beaucoeur’s hospital was notoriously spotty. Still, it hurt to be reminded that she was ever so slightly outside their circle of friends.
She shook her head. God, she was being a brat. Babies were chaotic, and she shouldn’t have expected anything different. Swallowing her disappointment, she typed back: Tell them congrats! She’s perfect!
Mabel: She is, even though they didn’t name this one Mabel either.
She was smiling as she pulled up the number for a local florist and ordered a celebratory bouquet to be sent to the new parents from their friends at the Brick. But after that was done, all she wanted to do was put her head down on her desk and cry.
What was wrong with her? She pressed a hand to her stomach to try to diagnose it. Frustration at feeling trapped in her job? Jealousy over Dave and Ana expanding their family, which obviously included Mabel as a cherished member? Sadness that her mom and Belly had cancelled their planned ladies’ night on Saturday because Peter had surprised them with a weekend getaway to Chicago?
Of course, on top of all that was Aiden, who was so effortlessly charming that she was starting to forget that everything was fake. If his smiles were dangerous, his casual touches were lethal. She almost needed to drop him off at a bar so he could get his flirt on with somebody else, if only so he’d get it out of his system and quit turning it on her. Of course, that was equally depressing; she trusted him not to break their “nobody else” deal, but she also didn’t love remembering that he’d been the town’s biggest player before and would undoubtedly be that guy again shortly after their deal was over. She needed to keep her head on straight when it came to their relationship. Their nonrelationship.
Peter didn’t know it, but that plant actually was going to outlast them. God, he was going to gloat when that happened even though a dignified breakup was exactly what she and Aiden had planned. It was enough to make her want to set that damn thing on fire, but she wasn’t a fan of harming innocent foliage.
Still, all of it—Aiden, her mom, the plant, new baby Chilton, her cold legs, the unchallenging job—left her thoroughly demoralized by the end of the day. When the clock hit five, she wasted no time in powering down her computer, snatching her purse, and getting the hell out of the station. But once she was home, her mood didn’t lift as she’d hoped. Aiden or one of his guys had gotten her gutters under control and had started doing whatever grout repairs they deemed necessary, and the inside was starting to take shape too. The lighting throughout the downstairs was far less murky than it had been, no doubt due to some kind of light bulb magic on Aiden’s part. She could see every area that was being improved: the sanding underway on the living room floor, the walls newly stripped of their ugly wallpaper, the exposed ceiling beams in the master bedroom waiting to be stained. It was all coming together faster than she’d ever expected.
And that was a major part of her problem. The brightest spot in her life right now was her new house, but that was entirely wrapped up in the man who was renovating it. Once he was done, he’d be gone and she’d be left with walls full of memories.
That preemptive melancholy tangled with all the bad-work mojo from earlier and clumped together in a hard ball of mad in her stomach. She wandered to the kitchen and, lacking any better ideas, grabbed a fresh bottle of wine from the pantry. She poured herself a glass and stared glumly at her closed laptop.
Maybe she could spend the night clicking through shelter listings and rescu
e sites, bookmarking every pair of sad doggie eyes and sad doggie sob stories that tugged at her heart. How many dogs could her new house hold? Six at least, probably. She’d be the new lady on the block with a fake boyfriend, a job she hated, a sucky stepdad, and six dogs.
Cool. Very cool.
She sipped her wine and veered ever closer to self-pity territory, but recognizing an imminent downward spiral, she grabbed her phone and hit the first number on speed dial. When Faith answered, she demanded, “Tell me you’re free for drinks tonight.”
“Can’t.” In the background, a raucous chorus of voices spoke over one another and almost drowned Faith out. “I’m waiting for the District 18 school board meeting to start. They’re voting on funding proposals tonight.”
And since Faith’s nonprofit depended on those funds, she’d want to be there of course. Thea was so hard up for company that she almost offered to join her for the meeting, but she wasn’t quite that desperate. Also, she was half a bottle into the wine already.
Then another idea popped into her head. “You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna get a start on tearing out these kitchen cabinets.”
“Wait,” Faith said. “You’re doing what?”
“Demolition time!”
“Whoa, are you sure?” Faith sounded alarmed, but Thea didn’t care.
She had to do something to purge the dark energy bunching in her limbs and clenching her stomach. Tearing out some ugly 1970s cabinetry was exactly what she needed.
“Yeah, I’m good, actually. This is what I’m doing tonight. Thanks for listening, Faithy.” She hit End and tossed her phone down, then picked it back up and powered it down. She was done talking for the day.
Was she worried about Aiden’s fingerprints all over her new house? Then she’d better be the one who did some of this work herself. She’d leave her own imprint.
She drained her glass and marched upstairs to change into work clothes. Once she was back in the kitchen, she tied her hair back with a bandanna and got to work.
Fourteen
Aiden pulled into Thea’s driveway and turned off his truck. Faith had called him twenty minutes ago in a state of mild panic to ask if it was safe for Thea to start pulling out the cabinets alone tonight. He’d assured her it was, then bolted out the door as soon as he hung up.
He walked to the back of his truck to grab the necessary supplies before heading up her sidewalk. Lights blazed from the front window, and from the front porch he could hear music thundering through the house. The sound of the doorbell hadn’t finished echoing through the house when the music snapped off and Thea appeared, holding a screwdriver in one hand and a wineglass in another.
Her mouth dropped open in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“Hello, ma’am.” He pretended to tip a hat at her. “We’ve received complaints of unauthorized home repairs happening after hours and sent a crew to inspect it.”
Her forehead creased and then immediately smoothed. “Faith called you,” she said flatly.
“Faith called me,” he confirmed. “I’m just here to make sure you don’t accidentally knock your house down.”
She heaved an impatient breath. “Fine. Come in. Work during your off hours. See if I care.”
He hid a smile and stepped over the threshold. He’d seen nervous Thea, chatterbox Thea, excited Thea, charming Thea. Grumpy Thea was new and kind of fun.
“Why does Faith even have your number?” She wheeled around and brandished the screwdriver at him. “You know what? Don’t answer that.”
He followed her into the kitchen. She was wearing a thin white tank top under baggy denim overalls, and goddamn it looked good on her. He tried hard not to notice that she wasn’t wearing a bra, but her small breasts pressed against the tight fabric of her shirt were impossible to ignore.
He swallowed hard and dragged both his thoughts and his eyes away from her body to refocus on why he was there. “Okay, killer, let’s see what you’ve got going on.”
She’d unscrewed three of the cabinet doors so far, and a fourth hung by just one hinge.
“Good start,” he said. “Did you kill the power along this wall?”
“Yep.”
“You’re a natural.” Their agreed-upon timetable floated through his head, and he couldn’t help but point out, “You know this wasn’t supposed to happen until next week.”
She rolled her eyes. “You and your schedules.”
“Your new cabinets haven’t been delivered yet! I’m trying to save you from inconvenience.”
She sent him the world’s greatest “you have insulted my intelligence, sir” look, and he hid his smile at her adorable irritation.
“Okay then. Hope you enjoy having no kitchen for a week. Why don’t you keep removing doors, and I’ll come behind you and unscrew them from the wall.”
She scowled. “This isn’t nearly as destructive as I thought it would be.”
“Safety first.” He pulled a pair of goggles out of his back pocket and settled them on her nose, then put on a pair of his own. Then he looked inside the first doorless cabinet. “Actually, you may get your wish. These are glued to the wall. You know what that means?”
Her face lit up. “Time to smash?”
“Time to carefully smash. Let’s get rid of what we can through civilized means first.”
“Ugh, fine.”
He grabbed a second screwdriver for himself, and they got to work removing doors and shelves, but after a point all that was left were the old, ugly cabinets themselves refusing to give up their grip on the wall.
“Time to pound shit,” he announced. “Be right back.”
He jogged out to his truck and grabbed two sledgehammers. When he got back, Thea was doing that curled-in-on-herself thing that he’d seen after her stepdad’s visit, which was so much more alarming than her earlier grumpiness.
Good thing he had the perfect remedy for shitty feelings.
“Go to town.” He handed her a sledgehammer. “Try not to destroy the walls.”
“Nice!” Her face brightened, and she squared up to the cabinet on the far end. But her first swing was too tentative and glanced off the side without making an impact.
“Here.” He hefted his own hammer. “Like this, see? Swing at the waist so the power comes from your whole body.”
He turned, swung, and struck the cabinet with a satisfying thunk that sent chunks of old, brittle wood tumbling to the ground.
She watched him closely, then mimicked his stance and swing. The sledgehammer hit the cabinet this time, but it barely nicked the front edge. “Dammit!”
Her growl was ferocious, and again, he hid a chuckle. She might use that hammer on him if she knew how cute he was finding her irritation.
“Okay, good start. But again, you’ve got to swing from here.” He hesitated for a beat, then moved behind her and set his hands lightly on the curve of her hips just below her waist. “Use your body weight to propel the hammer forward.”
She glared over her shoulder. “What are you saying about my body weight?”
His fingers tightened, and he drew her back against him for a fraction of a second, suddenly reminded of that morning when he’d kissed her without a second thought. It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder if they had an audience. He’d just done it on autopilot. His fault for going without sex for as long as he had and for enjoying her company as much as he did. Those two things were a dangerous combination.
Still, his hands lifted to smooth down the satiny skin of her exposed shoulders. “You’re a tiny, delicate flower, so it’s going to be harder for you to give your swing enough force. But I believe in you. Give it another go.”
He moved his hands back to her hips—the better to feel her windup and not because he enjoyed the warmth of her skin of course. And this time when she swung, she knocked a large chunk of cabinet free. She hooted and swung the hammer over her head in triumph, almost clocking him in the process.
He dodged, and she winced. “S
orry. I’ll try not to murder you with construction equipment tonight.”
“Appreciated,” he said. “I’ll loosen what I can with the crowbar, and you keep knocking the rest free. Sound good?”
She nodded, and soon enough the only sound was the thunk of the sledgehammer and the crack of the wood separating from the wall. Demolition was punishing work, but Thea held her own, swinging and connecting over and over as she excised the ugly from her house.
After forty minutes without speaking much—forty minutes in which Aiden surreptitiously watched Thea’s body twist and sway as she worked—they’d stripped the kitchen wall bare. He set his crowbar down and brushed debris from the front of his damp shirt. “Nice work.”
She turned to him with a bright smile. “We did that!”
“Sure did,” he said, thrilled to see her sparkle back. “As good as any member of my crew could’ve done.”
She ducked her head and waved off his praise, wincing a little as she rolled her neck and stretched out her arms. She’d be sore tomorrow, for sure. His first instinct was to stand behind her and massage the soreness out of her muscles, but touching her like that screamed danger. Fuck, she looked good though. Sweat darkened her formerly clean tank top, the skin on her neck and chest glistened with perspiration, and her hair stuck in damp tendrils to her cheeks. She pushed the safety goggles onto her head again and swiped a dusty arm across her brow, and all he could think about was a shower. A joint shower. Imagine the hot water running over their bodies, washing away the sweat and grime, easing their aching muscles, pinkening Thea’s skin…
Goddammit. Every time he was around her these days, touching her was all he could think about. Maybe he should’ve remembered his abstinence bender before he agreed to spend hours and hours with a smart, funny woman who always smelled nice. A woman he’d made a no-sex bargain with.
The only shower he’d be taking tonight was a cold one on his own.
