He pushed away from the door frame. “You should be excited. You worked hard, and now you have a set of flushing toilets. And if I’m not mistaken, I might have seen Gabi smuggle some ice cream into the freezer the other day. Anyone want some?”
The girls whooped and headed for the dining hall, but then Madison turned around, a glimmer of humor in her eyes.
“So now do we get to do a ceremonial burning of the outhouse?”
* * *
“Chow time!” At eight o’clock the next morning, Luke stacked pancakes on a plate, then set them on the counter with a platter of sausages.
The girls barely lifted their heads.
He raised his eyebrows. “We commence work in thirty minutes. You can do it with fuel on board, or without. Your choice. I don’t care one way or the other.”
Grumbling ensued, but all four of them pushed up from the table and came to fill their plates. Gabi watched as each of them took more food than she’d ever seen them eat at school, and she smiled as she realized they were hungry because they’d actually been burning calories doing something other than sniping at each other.
“Where’s Piper this morning?” she asked Luke as she plucked a sausage link from the platter.
“She’s too busy with work right now to give us weekends. I figured I’ll do breakfast, the girls can get their own lunches, and maybe you could do dinner—if that works for you.”
“Sure.” She cringed. “As long as you like pasta.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Not a cook?”
“I live at a boarding school where an executive chef prepares our meals. Not a lot of opportunity to learn, unfortunately.” The words came out of her mouth before she had time to consider how they sounded, but it was too late to reel them back in.
He didn’t take the bait, which she found odd, but somehow comforting. “What about when you were a kid? Didn’t your parents ever teach you to cook anything?”
She shook her head. Ha. She wasn’t sure the kitchen at any of her homes had ever been used by anyone but caterers.
“Um, no. I lived at Briarwood then, too.”
Luke turned. “So have you ever not lived at Briarwood?”
“Briefly.” She shrugged. “I went to Wellesley before I came back to work there, which—I know—sounds totally cliché.”
“I didn’t say it.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You didn’t have to. I could feel you thinking it.”
He pasted a bored expression onto his face as he held out the spatula. “Pancake?”
“Just so we’re clear”—she took the pancake—“I’m not some boarding-school princess who doesn’t know how to tie her own shoes.”
“I assume you’ve got shoes covered. We can work on the oversensitive piece next. And maybe we need to teach you how to cook while you’re here, so you don’t starve if the executive chef goes on vacation?”
“Very funny. I can actually cook enough to stay alive.”
“What’s your specialty?” He raised one eyebrow in challenge.
She shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know that I have a … specialty, so much.”
“All right. Say it’s a chilly Sunday night in the fall. You’ve had a long weekend, and you just want a nice dinner. What would you cook yourself?”
“Lucky Charms. Isn’t Sunday-night cereal a universal thing?”
“No, though I applaud your taste in breakfast-for-dinner.” With his foot, he opened a cupboard under the griddle and pointed at a giant box of the cereal.
She laughed. “No way.”
“Why do you sound so surprised?”
“Luke, you make your own granola.” She shook her head. “I did not peg you for colored marshmallows.”
“A guy’s gotta have his weakness.” He smiled, and her stomach did a flippy thing that scared her.
“Well, your coffee’s becoming my weakness.” Yes, coffee. “I had no idea camp coffee could taste so good.”
“Camp coffee?” He put a hand to his chest like she’d stabbed him. “You think this is camp coffee?”
“It’s not?”
“Oh, it hurts to hear you say that.” He flipped the last pancake to the platter and shut off the griddle. Then he opened a cupboard near his head and pointed to a canister of coffee grounds she was used to seeing at the little grocery store near Briarwood. “That is camp coffee.”
She nodded. “Does this mean you’re sharing your own personal stash with me?”
“I am, and it’s dwindling rapidly. You drink an impressive amount of coffee.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Job hazard of raising teenagers.”
He did that one-eyebrow-up thing. “Raising them?”
“These girls get dropped off on September first and picked up on June thirtieth, Luke. I don’t know how it is at other boarding schools, because I’ve never experienced them, but at Briarwood, most of the dropping off and picking up isn’t even done by the parents. Most of these girls go home for a week in December, but not all of them. They live at Briarwood. Twenty-four-seven, they live with me.”
“Huh.” He poured juice into two glasses and handed one to her. “I never really thought about it that way. Never pictured your population as particularly … needy.”
“They are, Luke. Just not in the traditional sense of the word.”
“Well”—Luke gathered his own plate and headed for the swinging door out to the dining area—“in my experience, money generally creates more problems than it solves.”
She followed him to a table and sat down. “What is your experience? Because I get the distinct sense that you might rather have seen your camp go up in flames than see it bought by a hoity-toity boarding school.”
He raised that damn eyebrow again. “Your words, not mine.”
“Never mind. I get it.”
He wasn’t talking, and Piper’d said not to push him. As dead curious as she was about his history, for now, she’d stop asking. She rolled her eyes, biting into a pancake. It was crazy-good, especially followed by a bite of spicy sausage. She might just have to take him up on his offer to teach her to cook, if his pancakes were any indication of his abilities in the kitchen.
And if his abilities in the kitchen were any indication of his abilities … elsewhere …
“Good?”
She looked up to find Luke watching her, an amused expression on his face. She put her fork down, wondering just how quickly she’d inhaled the second pancake. Also wondering how well he could read her thoughts.
She swallowed hard. “The pancakes are delicious, yes. Thank you for cooking for us.”
“Breakfast is my specialty.” He winked, but she couldn’t tell whether he’d intended a double entendre, or if she was just hearing one.
“So.” She wiped her lips with a paper napkin and set her plate aside. “You said work commences in thirty minutes. What’s your plan?”
“Showers.”
She smiled widely. “Showers? Really?”
He laughed, rolling his eyes. “If I’d known this was the way to your heart…” Then he looked away, like he hadn’t meant for those words to come out of his mouth.
“Actually, the way to my heart is a big cast-iron tub full of lavender-scented bubbles, but I’d happily make do with a camp shower at this point.”
“Yeah, no tubs here.” He pressed his lips together like he was trying to knock a vision out of his head. “And definitely no bubbles.”
“Does this mean you’re offering to keep supervising my monkeys?”
“God help me, but yes. I think I am.”
Gabi laughed at the expression on his face, then felt a pang of guilt as she pictured the list of things he was supposed to be getting done right now.
“Are you sure you really have time to keep doing this? With them, I mean?”
“Why? You want them back?” He smiled. “Because just say the word.”
“I just feel guilty. You have a huge list of stuff to get done. And before you say it, I kn
ow you don’t necessarily like that list.”
“I don’t.”
“An-nd you said it.”
He shrugged. “It’s true. But on that list is a new bathroom, with showers. So I’m still getting stuff done that needs doing. I’m just getting a little more help with it than I expected.”
“Is that how you’re seeing it?” Gabi pictured the pile of bent nails the girls had collected last night when they were done. There was no way this bathroom-building was going faster with her girls involved.
He took a deep breath. “It’s all good, Gabi. Let’s finish the bathroom, and then we can figure out the next steps, okay? I’ve got work, and they need work. Match made in heaven, yadda yadda. And you and me?” He waved his index finger back and forth between them. “We’re not the worst team ever, right?”
Chapter 15
Four hours later, Gabi was about to dunk Luke and the girls all in the lake. All morning, he’d sat in a lawn chair outside the new bathroom. All morning, he’d sipped his coffee and read the newspaper. All morning, the girls had gotten closer and closer to killing each other.
He’d handed them the plumbing plans after breakfast, pointed them to the parts, and told them they needed to figure out how to plumb the shower. When Gabi had flipped out—just a little bit, mind you—about torches and soldering and the like, he’d given one of those long-suffering sighs he was so good at, and had then pointed at the pile of plastic parts.
“No metal. No fire.”
“You’re having them build a plastic shower?”
He’d put his hands up in the air, exasperated. “You prefer fire?”
So now an entire morning had gone by, and the girls were at each other’s throats. Gabi’d taken a short walk just to get away from the sniping, but now she was back in the clearing, heading for Luke.
“How are they doing?”
A squawk from inside gave her all the answer she needed, and she winced.
He sipped his coffee nonchalantly. “It’s alpha-dog day.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re sick of working cooperatively. Today they’re all trying to be in charge at the same time. It’s not going well.”
“Even Waverly?” Gabi felt her eyebrows rise.
“Nah. She’s just trying to align herself with whoever’s in charge at the moment. Tough morning for her—it keeps changing.”
Gabi looked at him, the picture of relaxation. “You seem awfully amused by this. And unconcerned about your endless list of things that need doing.”
He shrugged, looking back down at his newspaper. “It’ll get done. This is important for them to work through.”
She paused at his words. How did he know what needed working through? And why was he willing to give up his entire day to it, anyway?
She shook her head to clear it. “So how’s the actual plumbing coming? Are they making any kind of progress?”
He looked up. “Desperate for that shower, aren’t you?”
“Yes. And don’t think it hasn’t occurred to me that you must have a perfectly good one in your cabin, because you keep showing up just-showered-fresh, and it’s driving me nuts.”
She felt heat rise in her cheeks as the words came out, and she turned away. Yeah, it was driving her nuts, because when he came in with his hair all damp and his body smelling like the piney outdoors, all she wanted to do was touch the nape of his neck, where the dark waves met skin. All she wanted to do was press her body against his, to see if the muscles in his chest were as strong and solid as they looked. All she wanted—
“Gabi?” His amused voice broke into her totally inappropriate daydream. “You lusting after me? Or my shower?”
“I’m not lusting after any—”
Just then another shriek rose from inside, but this time it sounded like elation, then pounding feet.
The four girls poured out of the doorway, smiles on their faces. “Luke! We’re ready! It’s ready!”
He looked up. “You sure?”
“Yes! Turn on the water!”
Gabi smiled, their enthusiasm contagious. “You guys really figured it out?”
“Yup!” Eve wiped her hands on her shorts. “Piece of cake.”
Luke pushed up from his chair, headed for the water shutoff. “All right. I’ll turn it on. Just one question, though—I see some parts still lying here on the grass.” He pointed down at three pieces of plastic. “You didn’t need those?”
“No.” Madison had a superior look. “We tweaked the design, and used less parts. That’s allowed, right?”
“I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” He motioned them back into the little building. “Okay. Let’s turn this baby on!”
After they’d gone inside, Gabi sidled up to him. In a low voice, she whispered, “Are those missing parts going to be an issue?”
He looked up at her, his hand on the valve, a sly grin on his face. “You’re about to find out.”
He twisted the valve to its left, and there was a pause, then a chorus of screeches. These ones, however, were not the happy kind.
“Turn it off!”
“It’s flooding!”
“Oh, no!”
“Madisonnnnnnn!”
Gabi couldn’t help but laugh as the girls came stumbling out of the bathroom, soaked to the skin, their hair hanging in dripping ropes. Luke stood beside the valve, which he shut off as soon as Madison emerged, the last of the crew.
He walked calmly to his chair and picked up his coffee, then opened the newspaper back up. When nobody moved, he looked up.
“So … obviously something’s not right. Try again. And maybe use all of the parts this time. Designs exist for a reason, girls.”
After they’d picked up the extra pieces and headed—muttering—back into the bathroom, Gabi took a deep breath and plucked his newspaper out of his hands, forcing him to look at her.
“Did you know it was going to be a failure?”
“Yep.”
“So why did you let them continue?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Because that’s how you learn.”
“By failing?”
“Sometimes.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m not sure I approve of your methods, Luke. Don’t you think you should help them now?”
“Nope.”
“You’re willing to sacrifice this entire day to this project?”
“Yep.”
Oh. My. God. She was going to strangle him with a string of his own “nopes” and “yeps.”
“Gabriela, let me ask you this—when they step into that shower tomorrow, will they enjoy it more if they figure it out? Or if I go in and bail them out?”
“I don’t honestly think they’d care, at this point. They just want a shower.”
“Well, if I go help them right now, then they leave the project thinking they failed. If they battle it for the afternoon and win, then they’ve succeeded at something today.”
“They succeed at things every day, Luke. Who exactly do you think you’re dealing with here?”
He paused, and she got the distinct feeling she’d hit another nerve. Then he plucked the newspaper back out of her hand and took a deep breath, meeting her eyes.
“I think I know exactly who I’m dealing with here.”
* * *
“Okay, we’re ready for inspection.” Sam’s voice was muted as she came out of the bathroom to fetch Luke two hours later.
Ten times that day, he’d been tempted to leave the girls on their own and go tackle his own projects, but fear of them taking off had kept him glued to the perimeter of the bathroom. The girls might seem focused, but they were also sly enough that they’d slipped through Gabi’s supervision once. He’d be damned if it would happen again, this time on his watch. Not when he’d worked this hard to gain even a modicum of her trust.
So he’d sat there and pretended to read, for hours on end. He’d listened as the girls had grappled for control inside the bathroom. After Gabi had hea
ded up to the dining hall to start making dinner, he’d smiled as they’d insulted each other with words that would have made even his most hardened students blush.
And then it had gotten quiet. Blessedly quiet. For a minute, he’d worried that they’d headed out a window and down to the lake, but then he’d heard tinkering, and then the oddest sound of all. One of the girls had giggled, and then another, and before long, it had sounded like all four of them had succumbed.
That had been a half hour ago.
And now Sam was fetching him to check over their work. He crossed his fingers that they’d done it right this time, but not just because their mistake had made such an unholy mess the first time. Something deep down made him want them to succeed at this task, both to prove to themselves that they could do it, and to prove to Gabi that he hadn’t been nuts to make them try.
“Use all the parts?” He didn’t get up.
“Every single one, yes.” She nodded. “Turns out, when you look at the plans right side up, things make more sense.”
“Funny how that works. Though I’m not exactly sure how four people your age could possibly not notice it was upside down in the first place.”
“Luke, no offense, but we don’t do a lot of plumbing at Briarwood.”
He pushed out of his chair. “All right. Let me see how you did.”
He walked into the bathroom, where the other three girls leaned against the new stalls. They looked tired and hot and sticky, but also triumphant. Good.
He looked at the piping they’d run, checked the connections, tapped on a few things for effect, then nodded.
“Looks good. All right. You guys stand here. I’ll go turn it on.”
Eve scooted out the door. “Oh, hell, no.”
“What’s the matter, Eve? Don’t trust your own handiwork?”
“I trust my own handiwork just fine. It’s other people’s handiwork I’m not so crazy about.”
“Well, you all worked together on this one.” Luke shrugged. “So I say you all stand right there outside that shower stall and see what happens when I turn on the water this time.”
Eve rolled her eyes, but she headed back into the bathroom to wait with the others. Luke walked around to the back of the building and turned on the valve, bracing himself for the sound of sputtering water, but the only sound that greeted him was silence.
She's Got a Way Page 12
