by Lizzie Shane
He waved a hand, cutting her off. “Anyone would have done the same.”
Would they? she wanted to ask, but he was already turning away, strolling toward the charred wall and assessing the damage.
“We were lucky. Looks like the damage is pretty contained. Easy to fix.” His hand sketched through the air over the blackened holes. “Replace the electrical and reframe. Hang some drywall and you’re good to go. Probably won’t even need to refinish the floors. Fairly low cost, two, three days of solid work for a good crew, and you’re set.”
“So you’re a carpenter in addition to being a fire fighter?” As if the one wasn’t hot enough on its own.
He looked away from the wall, his grin easy and self-assured, but somehow modest at the same time. “I’m just a volunteer with the fire department. And work on the mountain isn’t always steady, so I help my brother-in-law out with brute force labor when I could use some extra cash. I’ve learned some, hanging around those guys, but I’m no expert. We’ll get him out here to give you a proper bid. And either way, I’ll fix your door frame and rehang your door tomorrow morning—if that works for you. I don’t usually teach on Thursdays.”
He nodded toward the windows as he said teach and it took Caitlyn a moment to realize he meant ski school. So add sexy ski bum to the tally of hotness. If it was physical, it seemed like he was good at it.
She refused to dwell on that thought.
“Tomorrow morning would be great.”
“Great. The good news is it’s Tuller Springs and you don’t really need to worry about security. We’ll keep the outer door locked so none of the tourists get lost and wander in, but since it’s just the two units, you don’t have to worry about anyone invading your privacy tonight.” He held up his hands like she’d told him to stick ‘em up, dark eyes gleaming wickedly. “I promise to keep my distance.”
What if I don’t want you to?
Caitlyn bit back the urge to say the flirty words. What the hell was wrong with her? She was engaged. And she’d never been a flirt to begin with. It was like being possessed by the world’s trashiest demon.
“How soon can your brother-in-law get out here to look at the rest of the damage?”
“That’s one call I didn’t get to yet,” he said. “Hold on and I’ll see if I can get him out here.”
He pulled out his phone and wandered over to the giant windows for a little privacy as he made his call. She watched him move, noting the way his jeans hugged his ass in a nearly indecent way. They were damp about halfway up the calf to the knees and she realized his dark hair glistened with a hint of moisture too. He’d been teaching. Skiing with those snug blue jeans tucked into his boots. Would his ski jacket come down far enough to hide his ass or would his students see every flex as he led them down the mountain. She’d seen the women who came to the mountain—taut and Botoxed in their winter couture. Will was probably a very popular instructor.
Which was none of her dang business.
He wasn’t her knight in shining armor. He wasn’t her anything. Just a neighbor. Being neighborly.
Caitlyn forced herself to turn away. She crossed to the kitchen area and plucked a still mostly cool bottle of water out of the fridge. Maybe she could get the contractor to add in a water filtration system while he was at it. And a breakfast bar. And maybe expand the bathroom from its current microscopic proportions.
She grimaced. “I’m an idiot,” she informed the fridge, in case there was any doubt. She was planning upgrades and improvements to an apartment she was leaving in a matter of months. She just couldn’t seem to get it through her brain that her life really was about to change that drastically.
Los Angeles. She was going to be living in Los Angeles. With her husband.
“You’re in luck.”
She whirled around at the voice behind her, hoping he hadn’t heard her talking to the refrigerator.
Will strolled over from the windows with his easy—sexy, her hormones commented helpfully—gait, pocketing his phone as he came. “No one wants construction done over the holidays and Dale’s next job doesn’t start until the kids head back to school next week, so he’s free this afternoon and he can come by to give you a bid right away. I played the brother-in-law card and he said he may even be able to squeeze you in around other projects so you don’t have to wait for a break in his schedule. Since it looks like a pretty straightforward repair—no fancy parts that need ordering—he could probably start as early as tomorrow, but I doubt our fabulous landlord Les is going to have any idea what kind of insurance settlement he’s getting for a few weeks at least, so you’ll probably have to wait until then to start work.”
“What if I paid for the work? Could we get it done by next week? Before my students start up lessons again on Monday?”
He frowned. “We could probably get most of it done, yeah, but you don’t want to do that. Let the insurance guys work it out with Les.”
“He can pay me back when he gets the settlement. It’s worth it to me not to have the damage and then the construction distracting my students off and on for the next several weeks. And besides, it’s kind of my fault anyway.”
“Hey.” He came around the café table and propped his hip beside hers on the counter. “It wasn’t your fault. Shorts like that happens sometimes. Especially in houses where the wiring hasn’t been looked at in thirty-five years.”
Her heart thudded so loudly she was surprised he couldn’t hear it. So close. He was tall, but not so massive that he towered over her. Just large enough to be a firm, masculine presence. Broad and warm and stable in a world that kept trying to shift out from under her. She felt her face heating and couldn’t meet his eyes.
“I’d been drinking.”
“Yeah, I figured that part out,” he said dryly.
The heat in her face kicked up another few degrees. “I threw a glass full of vodka on the fire.” She didn’t know why she said that—the arson investigator had already decided she wasn’t to blame and she had to go and practically ask to be sent to prison. But as soon as she confessed, the tightness in her chest eased and more words rushed out in desperate explanation. “I didn’t mean to. It was a reflex. I went to turn the light on and it sparked and I panicked. The cup just—” She mimed a flinging gesture. “And then fwhoosh.” Her hands sketched the explosion of flames in front of her face.
“That explains the vodka at the bottom of the wall,” he said. “We thought you’d just dropped it when you fell.”
“What?”
She looked up to find him watching her, a strange tightness across his features, like he was trying very hard to keep a straight face. “I’m pretty sure you missed.”
“What?”
“You threw the vodka at the foot of the wall. You missed the fire by a good two feet.”
“But it went fwhoosh.”
“Yeah, the fire started in the wires behind the wall. The fwhoosh was when the drywall caught. So it really wasn’t your fault. I’m not surprised your memory of it wasn’t the clearest though. You’d definitely tied a few on. When I asked you if there was anyone else in the apartment, you told me to save the piano.”
Her blush was going to be permanent at this rate. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it was kind of cute. In retrospect. At the time I thought you were a crazy person.”
“That isn’t me,” she swore. “I don’t drink like that. Ask anyone.”
“I believe you. But I have to ask. What was with the veil?”
There was something in his eyes, something that was so ready to be understanding—as if he expected her to have a good reason for putting on a massive wedding veil and going on a bender in her own apartment. And she did have one. She could tell him the veil was a joke—which it was. She could tell him she was self-medicating her way though her first reality television experience—which was true, too. She just couldn’t tell him the biggest part—that she was engaged and freaking out about it.
The half-truths wou
ld paint a very compelling picture, but the second she drew breath to tell him about Marrying Mister Perfect, the words caught in her throat. She’d been nervous about going on the show before, excited and afraid of making a fool of herself, but she hadn’t been embarrassed. Now the idea of telling this gorgeous man that she needed reality television to make someone want her was beyond mortifying. Yes, I am that pathetic.
She didn’t want his incipient understanding to morph into a pitying oh-you’re-one-of-those-desperate-Suitorettes. Though, was that really worse than being caught playing Miss Havisham in her living room?
“Gag gift,” she managed to mutter.
His eyebrows lifted and he leaned in, murmuring conspiratorially, “I have a feeling there’s more to the story than that.”
Oh my. When he looked at her like that, every self-preservation impulse she had gave up and left the building. She could tell him anything, his eyes promised. Or she could just lean in a little more and stop the conversation a different way. The tangle of want that never seemed far away when he was in the room was tight around her now. It would be so easy…
“Will?” The shout carried through the open doorway.
“Saved by the electrician,” Will said for her ears only. Then, louder, “Up here, Rico.”
Caitlyn let herself breathe again when Will’s depthless eyes finally turned away from her. Saved, indeed.
Chapter Eleven
Miranda dialed the number for the unregistered cell from heart, tension coiling around her. She hadn’t heard from Caitlyn in over two days, not since Tuesday night, and now one of her minions—as she really ought to stop thinking of the production interns—had just handed her a report with a very disconcerting story highlighted.
“Hello?”
Caitlyn’s voice came over the line, muffled, as though she was trying to avoid being overheard, but definitely her. She was fine. Thank God.
“Would you care to tell me why I’m looking at a report that says you burned down your house on Tuesday night after the show?”
Her tone may have been a touch more biting than usual, but she hated being blindsided. Especially by disasters. Miranda reached for her stress ball, squeezing it and breathing through the tension unknotting from her shoulders.
“That is a wildly exaggerated version of the story,” Caitlyn protested. “There was a slight electrical fire at my place on Tuesday, yes, and I meant to call you about it, but I’ve been very busy getting repairs taken care of so it doesn’t disrupt my teaching schedule and I just forgot. Sorry.” A momentary pause. “How did you find out anyway?”
“I have interns scouring the net for any mention of any of you girls. Apparently a report was filed this morning about the fire.”
“Aren’t things like that sealed?”
“I don’t know and I have interns who are trained not to ask whether or not they are allowed to get the information. They just get it.” She dropped the stress ball and flipped idly through the report—no other mentions of Caitlyn. “Does Daniel know?”
“We haven’t had a chance to talk and I didn’t think it was the kind of thing you left on a message.”
“No, probably not.”
She could hear the disenchantment in Caitlyn’s voice. Crap. Daniel was screwing it up already and they hadn’t even gotten to the part of the show where he started making out with other girls. He was so busy running around being Mister Perfect that he seemed to have forgotten he needed to make Caitlyn feel like she was perfect or there wouldn’t be a happily ever after. Dumbass. Men were so unbelievably useless.
“I know it’s been hard so far, with him so busy with the publicity, but that will be dying down this week. Now that the initial push is over, we won’t have to trot him out again until the final weeks. You guys should get a chance to reconnect.”
Caitlyn hesitated and her words, when they came, were hesitant and soft. “Miranda, if I were having second thoughts…”
Oh shit. This was so much worse than she’d thought it was. “Jitters are perfectly normal, hon. Especially at this phase when you feel disconnected from him. I know your relationship came on fast and then you didn’t have time to settle into it before he was whisked away, but don’t make any hasty decisions until you see him again. Give him a chance to remind you why you love him. Focus on that mid-season getaway. Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
They said their goodbyes and Miranda disconnected the call, not wasting a second before texting Daniel. Call your fiancé.
She somehow resisted the urge to add “dumbass” to the end.
The first marriage on a reunion show in Marrying Mister Perfect history. It could still happen. The social media reaction would be epic. And it would be a good thing. A mark in Miranda’s karmic plus column.
Provided Daniel didn’t screw it up.
Her desk phone bleeped, her assistant Todd’s voice following. “Bennett Lang on line one for you.”
Her heart thudded hard. Shit. What did he want? Two months of nothing and now… what? They hadn’t exactly parted on good terms, but calling her office line when he could just text her cell… what did that mean? Was this how he meant to apologize? If it wasn’t, did she even want to hear what he had to say?
Miranda depressed the button, keeping her voice ruthlessly calm. “Take a message, please.”
She waited, her thoughts racing around her brain like a mice in a maze. She got nothing done for the next ten minutes, but forced herself to wait that long before gathering up her tablet and heading to the editing bay, stopping at her assistant’s desk right outside her office and asking with studied casualness, “Was there a message?”
“He didn’t leave one.” Todd looked up, eyes gleaming. “That’s a name I haven’t heard around here in a while. You two getting back together?”
Miranda frowned repressively at her gossip-hungry assistant—even though she knew it would do nothing to quell his curiosity. “I don’t know what you think you know, but our relationship was always strictly professional.” If you don’t count the hot monkey sex we had for a few months before he decided I was morally beneath him and needed to be fixed. “He was probably calling about some cross promotion for the shows. If it were personal he wouldn’t be calling the office line, would he?”
“If you say so.”
But Todd’s expression showed he wasn’t buying what she was selling. Not that she blamed him. MMP and ADS were on different networks. Cross-promo was highly unlikely.
“Do you want me to put him through next time, since the great Bennett Lang is apparently above messages?”
“No. Keep screening his calls. Eventually I’m sure he’ll deign to leave one.”
Todd’s brows arched and his lips curved cattily. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll be in the editing bays.”
Trying to make a show that is entertaining enough to satisfy the ravening hordes without destroying the relationship of our happy couple. Lucky me.
Chapter Twelve
Daniel called so soon after she got off the phone with Miranda Caitlyn was certain the producer had told him he had to—which pretty much ruined any romance attached to the act. Caitlyn grabbed the phone and snuck back out onto the dingy landing, letting the newly hung door fall shut behind her and block out the sounds of the three man crew, including Will, working on the wall.
The electrician had given them the all clear to turn the power back on—and it turned out he was the same guy Will’s brother-in-law used for electrical work, so he’d come back this morning to redo all the wiring in the wall that had fried, and any other areas that looked suspect. Will’s brother-in-law had given her a ridiculously low bid and agreed to begin work immediately, but give her a few weeks to work things out with the landlord before demanding payment—all part of the friends and family package, he declared, doing a terrible job of hiding the speculative glances he kept flicking between her and Will.
Glances which had her wondering if Will might be single after all. No
t that it made any difference. She was engaged. And her fiancé was calling.
“Baby! It’s so good to hear your voice. I’ve been missing you so much.”
She wasn’t sure which was more disconcerting. The fact that she didn’t actually believe the man she was going to marry missed her, or the fact that for the last several days, she hadn’t missed him. “Daniel, this isn’t really a good time. I’m having some work done on my place.”
A completely empty excuse. The guys were more than capable of proceeding without her input—in fact, if she tried to help, she would probably only be in the way. Though she had certainly been enjoying “supervising”—which had consisted mostly of watching Will swing a hammer and trying to develop mind control so she could convince him to take off his shirt. The man looked good with a hammer.
“Why?” Daniel asked. “Baby, just sell it as is.”
“I rent. And could you please stop calling me baby?”
It was only after the words were out that she realized she’d never spoken so sharply to him before. He’d always seen her with her “company manners” as her mother called them. But sometime in the last week, her desperate desire to hear from him, to be reassured that she hadn’t imagined everything they’d shared, had turned a corner and now she didn’t even want to hear his voice.
A long pause stretched as he digested what she’d said.
“Sweetheart,” he said finally—rotating through endearment lottery. “I wish I could say your name aloud, but someone could overhear me and we can’t risk that.”
And just like that, she felt like a heel. He had to be understanding and logical, didn’t he? She sank down to sit on the steps. “No, you’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Are you all right? I’m sorry I’ve been so terrible about keeping in touch. I know this is a hard time for us. Every day I wish I could be with you. You’re my everything. And I’m sorry I’ve been so caught up in work that I’ve neglected you. Will you forgive me?”
The urge was strong to hold her grudge. To tell him that shilling for a reality TV show wasn’t work. But she was doing it again—not giving him the benefit of the doubt. Running away and sabotaging their relationship, just like she always did.
