by Emma Hart
“Are you gonna stare at me like I’ve grown another head or what?”
He snapped out of it. “I must be in the twilight zone. Either that or you got abducted.”
I clicked my tongue.
Chase took the steamer from me and turned to the wall. “See how the bit you did is peeling?”
I nodded as his blue-green eyes met mine for a hot second—a stupid, hot second that sent a buzz down my spine.
“That’s what you want. You probably only just saved the plaster by pulling it off. A straightening iron is the best way to explain it to you.” He paused. “You know how you do one bit of hair three or four times, but you move the iron really fast?”
“Yeah. You used to ask me why I didn’t just hold it there until it was straight,” I muttered dryly.
“And you told me it was because you’d burn your hair off. Then showed me a video of someone doing it with a curling iron.” His lips were pulling up at the edges.
I remembered it.
And it took everything not to smile back—he’d looked absolutely horrified as the girl in the video had lost a huge chunk of her hair and was basically bald in that spot.
“Right. I remember.” I met his eyes, and it was a mistake.
His smile reached his eyes, and there was something in his gaze that made me swallow. It was warm and familiar and made my heart clench.
I looked away then up at the wall. “So it’s like that? Move it over several times?”
“Yeah.” His voice was rough, and he cleared his throat. “Like this.” He pressed the steamer against the wall, held it there for a couple seconds, then moved it to the side. He stayed within the confines of the piece of paper, slowly moving it back and forth, then moving it down after he’d done it a few times.
I watched as he did the whole sheet of wallpaper. The very top was already curling away from the wall beneath it, but my eyes were on his hand as he moved the steamer.
On him.
They flitted back and forth. From the hands I knew were big and strong and soft to the profile of the man I’d loved when he’d been little more than a boy once upon a time.
My stomach fluttered as he rolled his shoulders and got on his knees to do the very bottom of the paper. His light-wash denim shorts hugged his ass unfairly well, and his t-shirt pulled up just enough that I could see the dimples at the base of his back.
I snapped my eyes away before he was done.
What was I doing?
I hated him. He’d almost ruined my life and my business. Why was I ogling him just because he was helping me? I didn’t need him to do any more than what he was doing.
“Now,” he said, “If you grab the scraper, it’ll peel right off. You might get a few stubborn bits in the corners, but you can use some hot water with a sponge to get right in there. See?”
He grabbed the scraper and reached up. He was tall enough that he could reach the top of the wall without standing on anything—unlike me. The scraper against the wall was a cringe-worthy sound up there with nails on a chalkboard, but he was right. The paper peeled right off, apart from one or two spots in the corner near the window frame.
He peeled off the final bit at the bottom of the wall with a flourish and dropped it on the floor in front of him.
I picked up the trash bag from the counter and handed it to him with a raised eyebrow.
Laughing, he bent down and put the paper in the bag. “Get the big bits off first, then go around after for the little bits. Otherwise, you’ll get all caught up in it. And if you’re still using this bag after strip three, then I’ll eat my socks.”
I snatched the bag from him and rolled my eyes. “We’re not all messy like you. Some of us need trash in the trash bag, not all over the floor.”
“And laundry in the basket, and shampoo in the basket, and toothbrushes in the cup, and—”
“It’s basic tidiness. It’s not my fault if that’s always evaded you.” I sniffed and put the bag down. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He handed me the scraper with a wide smile.
I stared at him.
“You can smile at me, you know.”
“I think being nice and not stabbing you with this scraper is enough for today.”
His smile turned lopsided, and he actually reached out and flicked my hair. “Ah, there’s the Raelynn everyone knows and loves.”
“You’re within stabbing distance.”
“Modern day Wednesday Addams,” he continued, moving too quickly toward the door.
I twirled the scraper in my hand and almost dropped it.
He turned to leave, the sound of his laughter all he left behind.
And, god fucking damn it, I smiled.
***
Stripping wallpaper took a really long time. Like, longer than you’d think. It didn’t help that I did have to go around some of the furniture that was attached to the wall, and that meant a lot of sponge and hot water treatment, then I had to be careful not to scratch anything.
I was more than a little grateful when Sophie showed up after work with pizza and coffee and a willing pair of hands.
“So you let him in to help and didn’t yell at him?” she asked for the third time.
“Yes!” I was exasperated at this point.
“Wow.” She moved the steamer over the wall next to me. “I’m shocked.”
I got enough paper off the wall to grab it with my hand. “He offered to help, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I would have asked the devil himself to help at that point, and it’d only been five minutes.”
“It’s a good thing you never tried to work with kids. Your lack of patience would kill you.”
“I don’t have the patience to attempt it, never mind do it.” I peeled the paper right down and sighed happily when it came off in one long strip.
“So satisfying,” Soph muttered.
“Like popping zits or peeling off dead skin after a sunburn,” I agreed, getting the scraper back on the wall. “It’s not a big deal. If Marnie hadn’t been in the store, there’s no way he’d have stopped to help me. He was just being nice.”
“And you, in turn, didn’t kill him.”
“That’s a fair trade to me.” I peeled off more paper.
“And me.”
I dropped the scraper. The handle landed on my foot. “Fuck!” I leaned against the wall, grabbing my foot. “Don’t you knock?” I snapped at Chase.
His eyes sparkled. “If I knocked, I wouldn’t be able to eavesdrop on you.”
“Chase.” Sophie fought a smile as she looked at him.
“Sophie.” He returned her smile.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, still holding my foot. “Aside from trying to make me chop off my own toes.”
“Better yours than mine.”
Sophie coughed a laugh, and I glared at her.
“I just finished cleaning up and wanted to see how you were doing, that’s all. You’re almost done.”
“You sound surprised.”
“And you gave up on the trash bag. How many strips of paper did you last?”
“Five.” I raised my chin defiantly. “I want to see you eating a sock tomorrow.”
He laughed, rubbing his hand over his five-o’clock shadow. “You’d tell me you lasted longer no matter how many I said.”
I folded my arms, resting my foot on the steps we’d been using to reach the top of the wall. “Maybe I would. Maybe I wouldn’t. I don’t have cameras in here. You can’t prove anything.”
“Neither can you.” His smile was too smug.
“You’re getting on my nerves.”
“Yeah, but you’re talking to me now, aren’t you?”
I opened my mouth then stopped.
Damn it.
He was right.
He leaned against the doorframe, tucking his hands into his pockets with a shrug. “You can stay quiet now, but it’s not going to change the fact you’ve had two whole conversations with me today an
d only threatened me once.”
“Watch it,” Sophie said, setting the steamer down and reaching for her coffee. “She may be pretending her foot doesn’t hurt, but she can’t put weight on it.”
She was so fired as my best friend.
Chase’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”
I swallowed and looked away. “It hurts. I’m giving it a minute.”
“It’s probably broken. That scraper is solid wood,” Soph said, picking it up. “Yep. Ouch.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted.
“Then put your foot down.”
“Fine.” I put it down gingerly, watching as it touched the floor. Pain shot through my second toe, and I squeaked as I put weight on it.
Soph looked triumphant. “Yep. I bet you broke it.”
I glared at Chase. “If it’s broken, I’m going to kill you. I can’t have a broken toe!”
He walked into the store and around behind the counter where we were. “Let me take a look at it.”
“No.” I jumped back. “Ow! Shit!”
“Rae. Let me look. At the very least, let me help you sit down. If it’s broken, you can’t walk on it right now.”
“Jesus,” Sophie said. “Do it, Rae.”
I stared at him. He was not touching my foot. No way. “You’re not a doctor.”
He was silently laughing if the shine in his eyes was anything to go by. “No, but I’m the oldest of four, remember? I’ve seen more broken bones than you have.”
“The answer is still no.”
“Fine.” Instead of walking away, he bent over and launched me onto his shoulder. I screamed, kicking my legs. “If you keep kicking, you’ll hurt your toe again,” he warned firmly. “You need to sit down, you stubborn woman.”
“I’ve got stronger words for you, you fucking—” I stopped at the sight of his sister standing in the doorway.
Marnie Aarons blinked, her dark hair falling in her eyes. “I’m sorry. Did I step into two-thousand-and-sixteen?”
“No. Put me down!” I knocked my fists against Chase’s back. “Now, you animal!”
He set me down on the window seat. “There. That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”
“First you break my toe, then you manhandle me, and now you talk to me like a child?”
He met my eyes with one eyebrow. “Don’t act like a child.”
“You are so lucky Sophie has the scraper, or I’d ram it into your dick right now!”
“Sophie’s here?” Marnie walked in and peered over the counter. “Hey, Soph!”
She looked back. “Hey, Marnie! How’s school?”
“Crap. Boys are assholes and girls are bitches. I’m glad it’s over forever.”
“Words to live by.”
Marnie snorted and walked over to me. “He broke your toe?”
“Technically,” Chase started. “She broke her own with the scraper.”
If looks could kill, he’d be on his way to the morgue. “And why did I drop the scraper, Chase?”
“I might have been in the doorway and shocked you.”
“Might have been?”
Marnie rubbed her hand over her forehead. “I preferred it like, two days ago, when you didn’t talk to each other.”
“So did I! Ouch! You—” I jerked my attention back to Chase as he pulled my shoe off.
He grinned up at me. “It’s broken. Sprained at the very least. It’s already bruising and swelling.”
“I’m going to kill you. As soon as I can walk without wanting to cut off my foot, I’m going to cut off your hair with a scraper and stab you in the ass with a screwdriver. I’m on a time limit here! How am I supposed to do this with a broken toe?” I waved my finger at him. “If I didn’t know better, I’d accuse you of doing this deliberately! You open next to me to get back at me and now you sabotage my renovations!”
Marnie snorted. “Actually, he opened next to—”
“Finish that sentence, and I’m telling Mom that the weed she found in your room belongs to you and not Amber,” Chase said firmly. “She needs this on ice.”
She shrugged. “I don’t have ice.”
“Gee, Marnie. I wonder where you can find that in an ice cream shop.”
“Right. How much do you need?”
“Just bring out what you find and a towel to wrap it in.”
Dutifully, she went to the back of the store to get it. Sophie set down the steamer and followed her, leaving us alone.
I caught his gaze. “What was she going to say?”
He shook his head, crouching on one knee and putting my foot on his thigh. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Then why didn’t you let her finish?”
“It’s not important.”
“It clearly is, or you wouldn’t have stopped her.”
“Don’t you have bigger issues than what my crazy little sister was about to say?”
‘Not when it was obviously something you don’t want me knowing,’ I wanted to say.
“Thanks to you, so telling me what she was going to say is the way to apologize to me for being the reason my toe is now probably broken.”
Chase slowly shook his head. “No, it’s nothing. Just Marnie being Marnie. Do you have any painkillers here?”
“No. What was she going to say?”
“Jesus, you’re like a dog with a bone. I’m not telling you.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I’m gonna see what’s taking them so long.” He gently put my foot on the window seat, shifting me around with it, and walked back into the kitchen.
Wasn’t today just going fucking fabulously?
CHAPTER SIX – CHASE
“I can’t believe it,” Sophie said as soon as I walked into the kitchen. “Couldn’t you send her flowers or something instead?”
I glared at Marnie. “You’re fucking dead.”
She held up her hands. “She told me she’d tell Mom about the pot if I didn’t tell her what I was going to say.”
“Don’t tell her.” I met Sophie’s eyes. “Please.”
“Don’t tell her you made the stupid choice of almost ruining her just to get her to talk to you? Don’t worry—I have no intentions of doing that. You can do it yourself when you grow a pair of balls big enough.”
Marnie snatched up the towel on the top of the freezer. “I’ll take this to Rae. And no, I won’t say anything.”
She disappeared out of the kitchen, and I went to follow her.
Sophie grabbed my arm and yanked me farther away from the door. “What were you thinking?” she hissed in a low tone.
“I wasn’t, all right?” I replied just as quietly. “I wasn’t fucking thinking, Soph. I gave her time, and she didn’t talk to me even though I’d done nothing wrong.”
“Then why didn’t you close when it became obvious that she was done with you?”
I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I closed my mouth and swallowed instead, running my hand through my hair. Nothing I said would justify my actions in any way, and I deserved all the crap she and Rae could throw at me for what I did.
It was damn selfish. And I wanted to do nothing more than make it up to her.
Unfortunately for me, my silence told Sophie everything she wanted to know. She touched her fingers to her lips, blinking at me, and then whispered, “You still love her.”
Scratching my nose, I looked away. “I’m not having this conversation.”
“Oh yes, you are!” She grabbed my shirt and stood in front of me. “You’re still in love with her.”
“I thought she’d talk to me. I thought the longer I stayed, the angrier she’d be with me and that she’d talk to me. I didn’t think she’d give me the silent treatment for as long as she has.”
“Yeah, neither did I,” she muttered. “Did you know she almost had to sell?”
I shook my head. “I swear, I had no idea how bad it was. I never meant to hurt her.”
Sophie folded her arms across her chest and looked at me. “I believe you.”
&nb
sp; “You believe me? Why?”
“I just do. I don’t believe you’d ever deliberately hurt her. I think you’re a fucking asshole for opening that store, but I don’t believe you did it to wreck her.”
I let out a long breath and leaned against the fridge. “Yeah, try telling her that.”
“Not my job. That’s yours.”
“I’ll wait until she stops threatening me with bodily harm.”
“If you’ve broken her toe at the beginning of her renovations, that might be a little while yet.”
I glanced out at the doorway where I could hear Rae and Marnie laughing together. Marnie had always loved her—having three brothers wasn’t easy. To her, Rae was the sister she’d always wanted.
“Does that steamer still work?” I asked Sophie.
She nodded. “I just turned it off for a bit. Why?”
“Grab it. Let’s finish the wallpaper.”
“What?”
“What?”
Sophie frowned at me. “You’re going to finish the job with me?”
“Yeah. It might surprise you, but I’d give up my store if it meant she could have hers back.”
A small smile crept across her face. “Noted. Let’s go.”
I followed her out to the front and slipped past her. Rae glared up at me as I dug in my pocket and pulled out my keys. “Here.” I held them out to Marnie. “Drive my car home.”
“How are you gonna get home?” She looked at them.
“I’ll drive Rae home in her car and walk back.” I jangled my keys, and she finally took them. “Don’t be a dick, do the limit, and if you stop off to buy pot or see that jerk you’ve been dating not so discreetly, I’ll kick your tiny ass.”
“You’re a dick,” she shot back at me. “I’m going straight home. Don’t you worry.” Before anyone could say anything else, she waved goodbye to the girls and disappeared through the front door.
“Why aren’t you going?” Rae looked at me.
“Can you strip wallpaper?” I raised an eyebrow. “No. I didn’t think so. I’m going to help Sophie finish and then take you home.”
“Why can’t Sophie drive me home?”
“Because then your car would be on the road and you’ll probably get a ticket,” Sophie said. “Stop being so awkward and arguing for the sake of it. Besides, I don’t want to take your moody ass home.”
