“I’m getting jealous of the house right now.” Lucky chuckled, breaking her out of the enchantment. She turned as he walked up the steps carrying all four of her bags. “What do you have in these things? Not even all my fire gear is this heavy.”
Ametta lifted one of the bags out from underneath his arm. “Clothes. And things I need to plan the redesign. Books, samples, and things.”
Maybe she’d gone a little overboard when she packed. Most of her interior designing was done on her laptop, but clients preferred to see and feel things not on a screen. Men especially were tactile creatures. She’d noticed Lucky liked to touch things. Those big hands of his might look like they’d been worked well, but he had a gentle touch.
He set down one suitcase and opened the doors for her. Bowing a little at the waist, he swept his arm out. “Welcome to my home, Miss Dorn.”
She paused. “You didn’t lock the doors?”
“Nope. Don’t have to on the island. Everybody knows everyone.”
“First thing to add to my list, security system. The cold and isolation don’t stop thieves. Or opportunistic teens. Or crazy ex-girlfriends. Do you have any of those?” Ametta stepped into the vaulted front foyer. The arches and sweeping staircase were stunning, but there wasn’t anything else. No art, flowers, or color. Foyers like this were meant to make guests go wow.
“You’re not very subtle, are you?” Lucky set down her bags before flicking on the light. A tacky 1970s crystal chandelier hung above them, and various electric candles lit up on the walls. Ugh. “No angry exes here. The last woman I was serious about didn’t have any fire in her. She was sweet, but I wanted something more. Now I’m dating a woman who burns bright.”
Ametta stopped thinking about how she wanted to redesign the foyer and turned to face him. Every muscle in her body tightened. “You’re dating someone? Who?”
Lucky extracted the suitcase from her and set it down to take her hand in his, caressing her fingers. “You. I’m a one-woman man.”
She withdrew her hand and nodded. The relief she felt pissed her off. She wasn’t going to stay in Alaska, so why should she care if he dated someone else? “We aren’t dating. You’re my client, remember? You don’t mix business and pleasure.” And if she could stop staring at him, she’d better follow the rule herself. “Will you give me a tour, Mr. Osberg?”
And a tour he did give. Every horribly decorated room. The house itself was amazing, but he had a recliner more worn than her father’s sitting in the formal sitting room with a huge flat screen television and a mess of game systems with three other chairs all in a row. A mancave in the formal sitting room. Unforgivable.
Most rooms were unused. They contained a few pieces of dust-covered furniture. One man living by himself in this house. It was a waste.
Trailing her fingers along the polished rail as they returned downstairs, Ametta overflowed with ideas. “First, I’ll fly in my plumber and electrician. They’ll check to see if anything under the walls and floor needs updating, and I’m going to assume there will be, so be prepared for a lot of demolition. I’ll have someone check the foundation just in case too. Old houses, especially ones of this size, have a lot of problems with their foundations. While that’s going on, you and I can go from room to room deciding what you want to do with each of them. The right side, I would love to open up. Knock down the walls between the secondary sitting room, dining room, and kitchen. Make it an open concept. Perfect for parties.”
“Slow down.” Lucky laughed. “There’s no rush. Besides, I’m not really sure what I want to do. I don’t have any solid ideas.”
“I do. Now for—”
“I’m sure you do. That’s why I hired you. We can spread this out the whole winter. And if you work a few other jobs too, it’s all good. It can take a year or two and I wouldn’t mind.”
In jeans and a t-shirt with thick woolen socks on his feet, he looked so out of place and yet so a part of it at the same time. That was going to be the challenge for her. Modernizing a Cremaschi house for a twenty-first century bachelor. And there was nothing more she relished other than a challenge. “I don’t want to slow down. I want to dive into this. Besides, once all the totems are found, I’m leaving Alaska. Sedge and Saskia might have found all the others by now. I have no idea. They never keep me updated on things.”
“They haven’t found them.” Lucky shook his head. When she narrowed her eyes at him, he slipped his cell out of his pocket and held it up. “Kinley keeps me updated. I told her to contact me any time they might need me or if anything odd popped up in this area. She already sent me out to investigate sightings of multiple Kodiaks together, but it just turned out to be the unseasonably warm weather and the extra berries bringing more together.”
He talked to her sister? Ametta had no idea they had said more than hello to one another. And they sent Lucky out to look for a possible totem, but no one had included her in anything.
Her enthusiasm fizzled. Did her family believe since she was still leaving Alaska that she didn’t care? It was bullshit. Family had always been most important to her. She’d put her dreams on hold to stay and help them.
“You okay, babe?” Lucky laid a hand on her lower back.
No. But it didn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. “Let’s just get back to talking about the house. It’s so big for just one man. This is a place aching to be filled. Why was it none of your cousins wanted to live here?”
Lucky folded his arms and rolled his shoulders a bit. “I told you the house has a mind of its own.”
When Ametta finally stopped with her questions, Lucky took her out to dinner to a small brewery that served savory steaks with its beer. There were only two restaurants in Old Harbor, and no one delivered. How a bachelor survived without takeout was beyond her.
She stayed up late writing and mapping her ideas for various rooms in the house. Every now and then, the old place would let out a groan, and once, her bedroom door opened on its own. A sign to her the frame or floor was uneven. Hopefully not much had to be done to the structure itself. Cremaschi did pride himself on the quality of his builds as well as the beauty.
But when her bathroom light kept flickering and the shade on the guest bedroom window noisily rolled up, Ametta resigned herself to the fact the bones of the house would need mending.
In the morning, Lucky had to go to the firehouse, and she bounced on her toes for some alone time with the house. She wandered through the main floor, inspected every corner, and took note of what original pieces still remained in Lucky’s possession. She hadn’t been so excited about a project in a long time. All her vision was fixed forward to when she left Alaska, but then this house came along. Holy God.
No one would understand her enthusiasm about this except Kinley. At just after ten, with coffee in hand, she settled into a high-back chair in the secondary sitting room and called her sister.
Kinley answered after five rings. “Hi, Mett. What’s going on?”
“You won’t believe it!” Ametta’s voice echoed as she laughed. “Did you know Lucky lives in a Cremaschi house?”
“What? Lucky… a Cremaschi house? Is he okay?”
“Yes, yes. He’s fine. I’m fine. He lives in a Cremaschi house, Kin. The only gray stone one with white and black brick accents.” She sent her sister the image via her cell. “See?”
After about five seconds, Kinley drew in a breath. “Oh, wow. It’s beautiful. Angelo Cremaschi. Lucky lives in that house?”
“Yeah, I know. I think he’s related to Cremaschi because Cremaschi only gave family his houses, and Lucky inherited from his mom who owned it after his grandmother. How did I not know this?”
“Did you ever ask?” Kinley said.
Ametta groaned. “Well, that’s not all. He offered me a job. A total interior redesign.”
“Of a Cremaschi house? Holy cow.”
“Yes, I know!” Ametta took a gulp of her coffee and kicked her feet like a hyper child. At least her sister under
stood how major this was. This wasn’t an opportunity any designer would pass up.
“Are you going to do it?”
“Well, I have to do it.”
“You don’t have to do anythin—” Kinley stopped, covered the mouthpiece of her phone, and talked to someone else. Who could it be at ten in the morning? Oh, wait. Ransom. “Sorry, Mett. You do what you’re most comfortable with, and—EEEEP!”
Ametta winced at her sister’s squeal and laughter. She once imagined Kinley as an architect-nun. All about her art and taking care of their father as he got older. Sure, Kinley had a boyfriend during college, but that hadn’t ended well, and even when they had been together, they were very reserved. Ransom, on the other hand, was not someone she imagined to be Kinley’s type.
If Ransom was as much of a player as he came off to be and he hurt her sister, the lynx shifter better run because he’d have Ametta and several other polar bear shifters coming to tear him apart.
“Kin. It doesn’t matter about anything else. It’s a Cremaschi house.” She emphasized the name. “Besides, Saskia is taking care of Dr. Sanderson’s bathroom, and it’s not like I’m out there hunting totems. My shopping trip with Mr. Ellsworth is postponed until January or February now. How’s he doing, by the way?”
Berton Ellsworth was one of Ametta’s favorite clients and Ransom’s boss. Bert contracted Dorn Pararenovations to build his house from the ground up. It would be a castle, even though Bert didn’t call it that. And Ametta was going to decorate it with the finest designs from Russia.
Last month, a giant had invaded Bert’s property, and he had tried to slay it. The giant almost killed him instead. Kinley and Ransom took the monster down in the end.
“Bert’s doing good. Sad he missed out on the trip with you this month.”
“Yeah, me too. But now I have all this free time in my schedule.” Why was she waffling about this? “I’m going to do it.”
“Good for you. Do you think Lucky would let me come out to see the house?” Kinley’s question was followed by a whispered plea to Ransom to stop. And whatever that guy was doing to her sister, Ametta did not want to know!
“I’m sure he would. I’ll likely be out here awhile. I’ll let Dad and Saskia know. You’ll call me if anything comes up, right? You won’t go out and try to wrestle another giant or whatever the hell Saskia fought against, Jinkies or something.” Even as she spoke, Ametta jotted down another idea for the sitting room in her notes.
“Jinxioc. They’re like evil gnomes.” Kinley corrected her and gasped. “Ransom!”
“He better not be sexing you up while you’re on the phone with me.” Ametta shook her head. “Go back to whatever. I’ll talk to you later, Kin.”
“No, no, he’s not. Okay, bye!”
The hang up was abrupt. A clear sign that Kinley was lying or that Ransom was about to have his way with her.
Ametta blocked that out of her mind and focused on the job ahead. She would continue to believe her sisters lived sexless lives much like her own recently. If fourteen months could be counted as something recent.
Damn. Had it been that long? And now she was stuck on an island in a house alone with Lucky. A man whom she had an attraction to more powerful than anything she’d ever experienced before. Really, she needed a medal for not hopping into bed with him already.
But if this reno was going to take as long as she suspected, the marathon of resisting him was just beginning.
Lucky returned in the early evening with what looked like half the grocery store. He refused to let Ametta help take the food in and make dinner. Not that she was much of a chef, but certainly she didn’t expect him to be either.
It turned out that Lucky did know how to cook. Not only that, he cooked very well.
“It’s the fireman in me. We all take turns cooking meals for each other at the firehouse.” He set a plate beautifully arranged with asparagus spears, chicken, and potatoes in front of her. Everything seasoned and looking like a picture from a magazine. “If we don’t know how to cook, we’d be laughed right out of the place.”
“Thank you.” Ametta wasn’t even sure she knew how to work her own oven. So why was it immensely sexy to see Lucky at work in the kitchen?
“Oh! Almost forgot the wine.” Lucky retrieved a bottle from his fridge and scooped two glasses from his cupboard as he came to sit at the table with her. He uncorked the bottle and poured the drinks with smooth practice.
Ametta regarded the food and the wine and then him again. “Okay. Who the hell are you?”
He chuckled and raised his brows. “You know exactly who I am.” He picked up his wine and held it up for a toast. “To my beautiful interior designer. Cheers.”
She clinked glasses with him and took a sip. “Seriously, who are you? I imagined you living in some snug little cabin eating pizza and playing poker with your buddies. Yet here you are living in a Cremaschi house, alone. How do you afford it being a fireman? Which is important to know since my services aren’t cheap and neither will be your reno. If this is you trying to impress me and get me to spend more time with you, then let me go home now.”
“If I wanted to impress you, babe, I would’ve told you right off that I was independently wealthy, and I don’t get paid for being a firefighter. I do it because I want to, because I like to help people.” Lucky took a drink, set the glass down, and sighed as he picked up his fork. “Not that I think you’re a woman who would fall for a guy just because he has money, but I wanted you to know me as a man before I introduced you to the man with a fat checkbook. And, yes, I asked you to reno the place so I could spend more time with you.”
Why couldn’t he live in California and have a house in Paris? If she could pack him up and take him with her when she left, she would. But he was Alaskan through and through. He couldn’t understand why she wanted to leave. How no one else could see it was the only way to achieve her dreams was beyond her. That and the fact she didn’t do casual flings were the reasons she didn’t push him against the counter when he was cooking and have her way with him.
She ate as she studied him. No, the fat checkbook didn’t make her love him, but it would have eased her guilt when he refused every single time to let her pay for lunch. And to fight fires for free. To volunteer to put his life at risk. How could a man like this exist?
“What are you thinking?” Lucky’s eyes locked with hers. The one eye richly brown with golden specks, and the other, the one the eagle hunter had raked, a milky coffee.
“The reno.”
“That wasn’t a reno gleam in your eyes.” Lucky pointed at her with his fork. “I know the look you get when you’re really involved in your work.”
“Really? And what’s that?”
He sat back and smiled. “It’s a sparkle in those pretty dark brown eyes that turns into a hungry fire. It illuminates and energizes your whole body.”
Flatterer. But dammit, every word rang with honesty.
“So, about the reno then, I’d like to demolish this entire kitchen. Start from a bare…” Was the wine bottle wobbling? Ametta reached out and grabbed it before it could fall off the table. “Must be a small earthquake. I didn’t feel it at all.”
To prove her wrong, her wine glass tipped and fell, spilling wine on her lap. She leapt up, patting at her skirt with her napkin. A quake didn’t make one glass fall over. Her heart pitter-pattered faster in her chest as the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.
“Damn. So sorry, Mett. Let me get you a dish towel.” Lucky hurried to retrieve one.
“Another reason to demolish the kitchen. Everything is probably uneven from all the quakes over the years.” She glanced at the bottle as she said it. It remained solidly in place.
Just a quake.
Her plate lifted off the table and smashed down with force. Ametta shielded her face with an arm. What the fuck?
It dawned on her what he meant when he said the house had a mind of its own. No. The place was not haunted. It couldn’t
be. Not a Cremaschi house!
Lucky’s arm wrapped around her, and he guided her away from the kitchen. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” When she nodded, he nudged her to the mancave. “Go and have a seat. I’ll clean up and bring you something else to eat.”
“This doesn’t freak you out?” Ametta gestured to the table. The hair on her arms stood on end. Energy zipped through the air. How could he be so calm?
“No. It’s usually very peaceful here.” He rubbed her back. “I’m wondering if the house isn’t ready for a reno. Maybe we should go more slowly with it—”
“What? No! What this place needs is a freaking exorcism.” Wanting to shake some sense into him, she grabbed him.
The lights flickered, and she gripped his arms tighter.
“Grandfather, please stop.” Lucky hugged Ametta to him.
Everything went silent. No more aggravated energy tickled her skin. The lights remained on, and the house seemed just a normal house again.
“Grandfather?” She stepped back from him, folded her arms, and rubbed her too cool flesh.
“Well, not my biological grandfather. But a great, great, great… an ancestor of mine. We’ve just always called him Grandfather. He protects the house.” Lucky shrugged.
“Great.” A grandpa ghost. And one that wasn’t happy about the reno. There were no more stubborn folk than the elderly when it came to change. “Will it be a problem while doing the reno? I have the safety of my contractors to think about.”
“No. I’ll make him understand. This is my house.” He nodded once and went to clean up the mess.
Ametta had a hundred questions for him, but in the end, it didn’t matter about the ghost. If he said he would handle it, he’d do it. It was her job to focus on her work, and now that she didn’t doubt the spirit’s presence, she could ignore all the annoyances it created.
At least, she thought she could.
Shattered Spirit (Totem Book 4) Page 2
