Hers By Request

by Karen Ann Dell

  The two men worked together with a minimum of conversation for several hours, during which time Dev gained considerable admiration for Jeff’s skills as a jack-of-all-trades. While Jeff installed the new water-heater, Dev removed the old baseboard heaters and, after Jeff showed him how to connect the new ones, began installing them. Meanwhile, Jeff tackled the plumbing connections and by one o’clock they had the heat and hot water issues licked. Dev made a quick run to the diner in town and brought back sandwiches and sodas. They took a break to eat and admire their handiwork.

  “Once we get the caulking done to block all the drafts, this will be one cozy little cottage,” Jeff said.

  Dev surveyed the results of their labor so far and nodded. “Wish we could insulate the walls and floor, too,” he said, then added quickly when he saw the expression on Jeff’s face, “but I know that would be a major remodeling project.”

  “You got that right. Major with a capital M. It would be easier to knock this place down and start all over again. Be happy with what we’re doing. It’s going to make a big difference for Amanda. That was the point of this little adventure, right, D?”

  “Yeah. I want her safe, comfortable and happy before—” Dev clamped his mouth shut. He caught Jeff studying him, curious to hear the rest of that sentence.

  When Amanda had introduced them, he’d found Jeff to be irritating and immature, but after being in close proximity with the man for the past couple of days, he began to see the banter and devil-may-care attitude for the camouflage they were. Underneath all the trash talk and teenage jargon was an intelligent—even sensitive—guy. Not that it meant Dev would share his innermost secrets with him. He didn’t trust him that much. The language still got on his nerves, but Dev felt that if he could get past the façade, he and Jeff might just become friends.

  “Before . . .?” Jeff prompted.

  “Before I’ll be satisfied with what we’ve done.” Dev drained his soda, crushed the can, and tossed it into the trash. “Let’s finish up. Do you want to caulk the windows or put new weather stripping on the doors?”

  Jeff gathered up the remains of his lunch and put them into the garbage. “I’ll do the weather stripping. There’s only two doors.” He grinned, slapping Dev on the back. “You can do the windows.”

  His smug grin faded a little when Dev reminded him he’d have to take the doors off their hinges to do the job. He tossed Jeff the roll of weather stripping and picked up the caulking gun. Again they fell into a rhythm and worked in companionable silence until Jeff was ready to re-hang the doors.

  “I’m gonna need a little help here, D,” he called to Dev who was in the bathroom finishing the window over the toilet. “I can’t get this sucker back on its hinges by myself. I think it’s a little warped.”

  Dev joined him at the door, a fair amount of caulk decorating his shirt and pants. The glove on his left hand was sticky with the white goo and he hesitated to grab a hold of the door and get caulk all over it.

  “Dude, just take the damn glove off,” Jeff said, exasperated, as he tried to hold the door in place while Dev vacillated. “I don’t give a shit what your hand looks like. It’s not going to bother me any.”

  Dev hesitated, and Jeff blew out a breath.

  “Jesus Christ, you treat that thing like it’s Medusa’s head. I’m not going to faint or go blind if I see it, you know. But if you grab this door and get that caulk all over it, you’re cleaning it up. So make up your mind before I drop the damn door on your foot and fuck that up, too.”

  Dev striped the glove off and dropped it into the sink, then gripped the top half of the door and steadied it while Jeff banged the hinge pins into place.

  “Thanks. Now help me with the other door, and we can call it a day.”

  When they finished, Jeff made it a point to examine Dev’s injured hand. He shrugged and said, “Well, it won’t win any beauty pageants, but I’ve seen worse.”

  “The hell you have,” Dev countered as he tried to identify the strange sensation in the pit of his stomach.

  “God’s truth,” Jeff swore. “A guy on my dad’s crew got his sleeve caught in a cement mixer. Sucked his arm right into the thing. Now, that was one bloody mess.”

  He wasn’t into one-upmanship when it came to mangled hands, so Dev just nodded. “Yeah, I bet it was.”

  He went over to the sink to wash out his glove. While he worked, he diagnosed the funny feeling in his gut. It was relief. Not unlike the ability to take a deep breath after being in a strait jacket for eight months. To talk about the ‘elephant in the room’ that he carried around twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with the same amount of attention one would give the weather was liberating. Jeff’s matter-of-fact appraisal shrunk that elephant to a much less intimidating size. His indebtedness to this guy was growing exponentially.

  Jeff started to pick up the debris from their work. He tossed what he called ‘salvage’ into a cardboard box, the rest went into Amanda’s biggest trashcan. Dev joined in the clean up and Jeff watched him stack the old heaters by the front door, and remarked, “Your hand is pretty flexible. Too bad they didn’t do some skin grafts to make it look a little better.”

  “They offered to, but I didn’t want to spend any more time in the hospital. I’d been in for weeks and I just wanted out, you know?”

  That was partly true. Mostly, though, he didn’t feel like he deserved the cosmetic repairs to remove the scars. The nerve damage was too severe to allow him to play the piano again but that wasn’t bad enough. He’d wanted to punish himself as much as possible for being alive when Danny wasn’t. That was the main sticking point he and Chris Majewski had spent hours debating.

  “I guess you could go back and have them do it anytime,” Jeff said. “The Army would still pay for it, right? I mean, if you wanted to, that is.” Jeff tossed off the comment as he started taking the old heaters out to Dev’s truck.

  Dev followed him out with some more of them. “Hey, why are you putting them in my truck? Won’t the trash collectors pick them up? Or do we have to take them to a local dump?”

  “Neither. I’m going to use these in some of the units over at the motel. The ones in there are even older than these and a few don’t work at all. These may not be new but they’re better than what we’ve got, and I know George will never spring for new ones. You don’t mind if I take ‘em, do you?”

  “Hell, no. If you can use them, take them.”

  By five o’clock Amanda’s little cottage was neat and tidy and, best of all, warm. Dev turned on one of the lamps in the living room and the one next to her bed, then locked the doors and drove Jeff back to the Blue Point Motor Court. They unloaded everything into one of the currently vacant units. The clouds that had been gathering all day finally reached critical mass and a fine rain started to fall.

  Dev stuck out his hand, and Jeff slapped it. “Thanks for all the help, Jeff. I never could have done it without you.”

  “That’s true,” Jeff agreed with a grin. He shook his head when Dev peeled off several Ben Franklins from his money clip. “No need for that, Dude. I’ll sell these heaters to George and have him pay me to put ‘em in. That’ll be payment enough.”

  “No way, guy. You take this. You earned it, and I don’t have time to argue.” He stuffed the bills into Jeff’s shirt pocket. “I have to run. Got to get cleaned up for my dinner date with Amanda.”

  “You never did tell me how you fixed things with her, Dude.”

  “Let me get through dinner and the great unveiling tonight before we declare things ‘fixed’ between me and Amanda. She still might kick me out when she sees what we did today.” He climbed into the truck and stuck his head out the window. “And don’t call me dude,” he said, this time with smile.

  He studied his left hand, still without a glove. Should he leave it like this when he
picked her up? Wearing a glove was safer. But she wanted to see him, so she said. Might as well get all the shocks over with in one evening.

  CHAPTER 16

  “Thanks for coming in, Bill,” Amanda said. She stood and walked the young man to the door of the gallery. “We’ll be in touch with you the week before the party to tell you when to arrive. We’re going to have all the staff meet at the little house on Admiral and Mrs. Wyndham’s property about two hours before the guests are due, just to go over all the last-minute details. You will be wearing a long-sleeved, white dress shirt with a black bow tie and black slacks. You can change when you get here, and remember, your shirt needs to be starched and ironed, okay?”

  “I’ve got it, Ms. Adams. Don’t worry, I’ll be here in plenty of time.” He hurried to his car through the fine drizzle that had begun to fall.

  Amanda heaved a sigh and rubbed the back of her neck. She felt as though she had been talking nonstop since morning. She’d made a big dent in hiring staff today, but she still needed waitresses to circulate with trays of champagne and hors d’oeurves. She went into the back room and sat at Zoe’s desk, meticulously adding Bill Leonetti’s name to her staffing spreadsheet.

  Between the two of them, she and Zoe had interviewed fifteen people today. That had kept her so busy she didn’t have time to think about the FBI agent, the serial killer, or Dev. As soon as she closed her laptop, those things popped to the front of her mind.

  Her brain was overloaded juggling so many problems. Her car would be ready tomorrow, thank goodness, but the bill had to be paid when she picked it up. Her emergency fund was gone and her checking account was down to double digits. There was no hope for it, she would have to ask Mrs. Wyndham for another advance. She hoped the woman didn’t give her a hard time about it. It was her own fault for underestimating the amount of money they needed up front as deposits for all the supplies she had ordered. Mrs. Wyndham knew it was their first event so maybe she would understand.

  Amanda propped her elbow on the desk and rested her forehead in the palm of her hand. There were times, like today, when she just wanted to run away from the responsibilities of adulthood.

  Zoe came down the back stairs from her apartment carefully balancing two glasses of white wine. She handed one to Amanda and slid a chair next to the desk for herself.

  “I don’t know about you, but I need to unwind after all that talking. How many did we wind up hiring? I lost track after lunch.” She took a big gulp and smacked her lips. “Oh yes, that’s much better.”

  “We hired two bartenders, a caterer, three college boys for valet parking, five more for the clean-up service, and one waitress. We need at least two more to help with set-up in the few hours we’ll have to prepare.”

  Amanda sampled her wine and pinched the bridge of her nose. She’d had a headache dancing behind her eyes all day in spite of the two aspirin she’d taken at lunch. She tugged the elastic band off her hair and ran her fingers through it. Maybe the ponytail she wore was too tight. She suspected the morning’s events were the main reason, though.

  Zoe watched her over the rim of her glass. “So, talk to me about what held you up this morning. You seemed a little shaken when you finally got here. Did you have a problem with Dev?”

  “No. The poor man arrived to pick me up just in time to see me lose it. I got a phone call from an FBI agent. He wanted to know the details about the night Dad went missing.”

  “Have they come up with something?”

  “No. They’re still getting information from anyone who’s contacted them about a missing person who might have been one of this guy’s victims. I’m sure the list is enormous and it will take them months to go through it and try to match up any of the . . . remains they find.”

  She took another swallow of wine.

  “I was so into recalling that night, remembering every little detail and standing in the very room my dad was heading for when he left work, I got pretty emotional.” Amanda rolled her eyes. “The moment I hung up from the call, Dev was at the door and I guess I must have looked terrible because he got all concerned. He was so sweet I rewarded him by bursting into tears and sobbing all over his shirt.”

  “Good thing he was there,” Zoe said. “It sounds as though you needed a shoulder to cry on.”

  “I sure picked a lousy time to have a meltdown though. Leaving you stuck here by yourself with the first interview. He wanted to know what set me off, but I didn’t want to take the time to go through it all then, so he’s going to pick me up here and take me to dinner. Let’s hope I can give him the gist of the past few days without any more histrionics.”

  “Dinner, hmm? He is being awfully considerate. Especially after that disagreement you were going to tell me about. I’m still waiting for all the details, Mandy.” She sipped her wine and watched Amanda expectantly.

  “Uh, Zoe, I don’t think there’s time to talk about this right now. Dev’s going to be here any minute and I need to at least run a comb through my hair.” She got up to get her purse.

  “Of course. I understand completely.” She snagged Amanda’s arm and tugged her back down into her chair. “Just give me the Reader’s Digest version,” she said firmly. “I’ll get all the juicy details later.”

  “Zoe, come on, I . . .” She rubbed her forehead at Zoe’s raised eyebrow and implacable stare. “Okay, here’s the condensed version. We had sex. It was off the charts.” She finished her wine in one gulp. “Then I decided I wanted to see his injured arm, which he had managed to keep covered up till then. I suggested we take a shower. He told me in no uncertain terms that I didn’t want to see that part of him.” She got indignant just thinking about it again. “So I said if I couldn’t see all of him we should forget the whole sex thing and just go back to being friends.”

  Both of Zoe’s eyebrows were up to her hairline as she nodded sagely. “Uh, huh.”

  “Yeah. Stupid move on my part. Especially since he didn’t give in and I didn’t back down, so our affair lasted roughly four hours. After mulling my decision over for a day, it took about two minutes for me to change my mind when he put his arms around me and let me cry all over him this morning.”

  “In which case you’d better get freshened up,” Zoe said. “Why are you sitting here talking to me?’

  Amanda narrowed her eyes. “You’re the one who—” She stood up again and headed for the stairs to Zoe’s apartment, shaking her head in disgust at her friend’s laughter.

  She barely had time to wash her face, comb her hair, and put on a bit of lip-gloss when she heard the door to the gallery open and close. That had to be Dev and she wasn’t sure how safe it was to leave him alone with Zoe, knowing she’d be trying to wheedle more info out of him—and not very subtly either. Amanda hurried down the stairs.

  “Hi.” She smiled brightly and picked up her coat.

  “Hi.” He smiled in return and the heat in his gaze wasn’t missed by Amanda—or Zoe.

  “I’m all ready to go.” She gave Zoe a hug. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”

  Zoe confined her reply to, “Oh yeah.” But the twinkle in her eye was unmistakable. Amanda ignored it and put her arm through Dev’s as they walked to the door.

  Only then did she notice he didn’t have a glove on his left hand. Her surprise was so great she almost stopped mid-stride. Instead, she slid her hand down to lace her fingers with his and kept walking. She beamed a smile up at him and tossed a goodbye over her shoulder to Zoe as he opened the door for her. The rain had changed to a fine mist, but the temperature had dropped since sunset. The damp cold was chilling so she leaned closer to Dev, whose body gave off heat like a banked furnace.

  “I’ve been told the little Italian restaurant a couple of blocks from here is pretty good,” he said. “Is that okay with you?”

  “Yes, it’s fine. Donatelli’s is one o
f my favorites. During the summer, it’s jammed every night. Even now, in the off season, it’s usually pretty busy on a Friday night.”

  He headed toward his truck but Amanda resisted and suggested they walk since the restaurant was so close. She didn’t want to let go of his hand. His decision not to wear a glove was huge, and she wanted him to know she had no problem holding it. He had to be nervous about displaying his injured hand in public. She sent a silent prayer heavenward. Please God, don’t let some jerk make a stupid comment.

  “I hope it’s not too busy. I didn’t think we’d need reservations, so I didn’t call ahead.” He slowed down and scanned the few blocks that comprised most of Blue Point Cove’s downtown. “If you’d rather we went somewhere else, it’s okay with me.”

  She winked up at him. “Never fear. I’ve got a little ‘in’ at Donatelli’s. We should be good.” She urged him along the sidewalk to the cheerful red and white striped awning that covered a few outdoor tables, deserted in this weather, and preceded him inside.