by Kim Law
“Because you keep going quiet. You’re thinking about him.”
“I’m not… it’s just…” Joanie sighed. Why was she fighting it? “There’s something about him that’s bothering me this time, is all. It’s not like it was at Christmas. He makes me nervous. Jittery. And I don’t like being jittery.”
“Okay.” Lee Ann turned serious in an instant. “Then let’s figure it out.”
She loved Lee Ann for this. The problem solver.
“What specifically has bothered you?” Lee Ann asked.
“The way he looks at me,” Joanie stated. She pictured Nick standing out front of her shop, smiling at her as if he couldn’t remember his name. It had been cute.
“He saw you in your miniskirt, didn’t he?”
“Uh-huh.” Joanie nodded.
“You know your legs make men go dumb, Jo.”
“I have to show them. It goes with the theme.”
Lee Ann snorted. “And with making a fortune selling cupcakes.”
Joanie giggled and licked her fingertips one more time, catching a spot of blue icing on her tongue before closing the box she’d just packed.
“So Nick ogling your legs bothers you?”
“Not exactly.” How did she explain it? “It’s just that, every time he’d look at them he’d get this really goofy grin. But something about it kept feeling like… I don’t know. More. Another example was this morning when we were talking at GiGi’s,” she hurried on to say. “He kept looking at me as if he could see something inside me that isn’t there. He kept asking what I saw when I looked at the place. I see a heap that needs to be burned to the ground, yet the way he was looking at me made me want to run to the mirror and check for myself. You know what I mean?”
“Hmmm…”
Before Lee Ann could continue, Joanie jumped back in. “And yesterday, yeah, he was hot for my legs. He wanted me. Big deal, I’ve seen that my whole life. But Lee, I wanted him too. Bad.”
There was a tiny pause. “Then go for it, hon. Have some fun.”
“He comes with a cat.” She enunciated each word carefully.
Laughter rang through the phone. “What does his cat have to do with anything?”
Joanie sighed. “He’s a nester. He wants serious. I can’t sleep with someone who comes with a cat.”
She grabbed her purse out from under the counter and slipped the strap over her shoulder.
“Yeah,” Lee Ann admitted, her voice hesitant. “He is the settling-down type.”
“My point,” Joanie replied. “Let’s drop it. It’s a ridiculous conversation, anyway. He’s working for me. That’s all.”
“And preparing for a hot date.”
“Oh, good grief. It is not a date.” It wasn’t. It was a business dinner. “How did anyone possibly get that idea?” Joanie flipped off the remaining lights and grabbed her jacket from the coat rack. She headed through the back room.
“Well, let’s see,” Lee Ann began. “He was picking up supplies at Sam’s Foodmart and mentioned that he was cleaning your house before you got back out there tonight. Jean from the store would have told someone else who came in, who carried it from there to who knows where, where it got all around town, so that now everyone thinks there’s a hot date going on this evening.”
Joanie shook her head, amazed at the path the rumor had taken. “He picked up cleaning supplies and that turned into a hot date?”
“He also picked up two steaks, potatoes, and the fixin’s for a salad.”
“Oh.” Yeah, that could do it. She pushed open the back door. “Well, we’re not having a date. Feel free to spread that around. He said he’d provide dinner. I’m taking dessert.”
“He also got wine.”
Joanie narrowed her eyes. It was not a date! And he’d better not be thinking it was. “Maybe wine’s just his thing.”
She knew she might sound silly, but she wasn’t about to so much as hint at a date. It was bad enough the whole town already thought it was one.
Rolling laughter filled Joanie’s ear as she stepped into the quiet alley and locked up. Lee Ann was clearly enjoying her discomfort.
“Are you about finished?” Joanie spoke into a pause in the laughter.
“Okay, I’m sorry. I know. It’s business, not a date. But I have a word of advice.”
Which did not surprise Joanie at all. “What’s that?”
“Dalton men have something about them, Jo. Something that’s pretty irresistible.”
Joanie set her cupcakes and purse on her passenger seat and shrugged into her jacket. “And?”
“And… since he’s making you nervous already, you need all your wits about you if you plan to make sure it stays only business.”
Joanie smirked. No shit. “So how do I do that?” she asked.
“My advice? Don’t drink the wine.”
The sun had just disappeared below the horizon as Joanie’s Mini Cooper pulled into the driveway, her lights flashing over the front yard, and Nick’s blood began that double-time thing it liked to do when she was around.
He’d spent the day scrubbing out the grime in enough rooms to make the house livable, but she had never been far from his mind.
He liked her. He liked that she didn’t seem to take herself too seriously and that she didn’t make excuses for who she was. That she smiled and laughed, and was just generally fun to be around—even when she was in a grumpy mood.
She stepped from the ragtop and he was pleased to see she’d returned pretty much as she’d been that morning. Jeans and a pullover with a light jacket thrown over the top. Not that the jeans weren’t flattering, but he wasn’t sure he could have taken the boots and skirt tonight.
As she came up the porch steps, she stopped to look him over, crisscrossing shadows from the encroaching darkness keeping him from reading the expression in her eyes.
He lifted his beer in salute. “Have a seat. I bought a couple rockers while I was in town. Needed a place to be able to enjoy the evening since the inside of the house smells like it’s been closed up for years.”
“It has been closed up for years,” she grumbled. She eyed him where he sat. “You do anything without that cat?”
He glanced down where the cat lay contentedly curled up in his lap. “Cat comes and goes as he wants, but he’s fond of this spot. Though he’d be more so if we were sitting in front of a big-screen. With cable. And not outside in the cold.”
Slim eyebrows, slightly darker than the blond hair on her head, lifted. “I had the cable disconnected a couple years ago. I’ll call and get it turned back on.”
He watched her. Her mood wasn’t as cranky as it had been earlier, but it still wasn’t like yesterday afternoon when she’d been selling cupcakes. “And the big-screen?” he prodded.
She shrugged. “Afraid you’re stuck with what’s in there. Be glad it isn’t black and white, is all I can say. GiGi wouldn’t upgrade for years.” She eyed his cat again, looking at the animal as if he were the reason for the world’s problems. “The heat works,” she finally added, lifting her gaze to Nick’s. “Though I can’t help if you prefer it out here.”
He grinned at her directness, and reached out with his foot to push the other chair toward her. His movements sent Cat scurrying across the porch.
Instead of sitting, she watched Cat until he leapt off the far end of the porch and then she turned back to him. “You named your cat ‘Cat’?” She crossed her arms.
“His full name is Caterpillar.” Nick itched to see if he could turn her mood around. “We found him curled up in the machinery on a job one day and he never left. Have a seat, sweetness.” He nudged the chair again. “I’m not going to bite.”
“Hmph.” She finally sat, then reached out and placed a white bakery box on the concrete railing surrounding the porch.
“Are there cupcakes in that box?” His mouth watered at the thought.
“Half a dozen, all for you.”
“You are trying to fatten up the men in
this town, aren’t you?” He couldn’t help but picture her looking over Brian Marshall the day before. The back of his neck tingled, wishing she would do the same to him right now.
She leaned back in the rocker and closed her eyes, and instantly seemed to melt into the wood slats of the chair. But she didn’t respond to his question.
“Want a beer?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Wine then?”
One eye popped open. “You get the wine to go with the steaks?”
Ah, small-town gossip at its best. He gave a simple nod. “A couple bottles. Wasn’t sure what you preferred, but you struck me as more the wine than beer type.”
“Hmph,” she reiterated, but he had no clue what it meant.
“Wine then?” He moved to get up, but her words stopped him.
“Don’t think I’m drinking tonight.”
“Oh?” He sat back down. “Any particular reason?”
She shook her head again, then stood and put a few feet between them. “Just a bad idea. How about we get to your thoughts on the house? I’ve got a long day tomorrow and need to get home.”
Something made him think it was more likely she didn’t want to be there alone with him.
Sensible. He would be smart to go along with it.
His previous thoughts of all work and no play had taken a crashing nosedive the instant she’d grilled him for naming his cat “Cat.” She was simply too cute.
Joanie stopped as she stepped inside the house, amazed at the difference since she’d been there that morning. It still smelled musty, but the thick layer of dust was gone, and she no longer had the urge to sneeze.
The screen door closed behind her and she looked back over her shoulder. She had to give the guy credit, he was a cleaning machine. “Remind me to have you at my house to clean sometime.”
The quick curve of his mouth snagged her attention in record time. Why she’d spent the day thinking about the man was anyone’s guess, but she had to get focused on the job ahead and nothing else. Especially not that mouth.
Or the fact that he was already getting to her. And he’d done nothing more than buy rockers for the front porch.
She headed into the kitchen and was equally surprised to find the oven working and the kitchen table cleaned off save for the sketches lying on the stained Formica. Looking at them, she realized they were Nick’s plans for the house.
“Wow.” The word came out softly as she slid into a chair and pulled them closer. “You came up with these fast.”
He headed to the counter and plugged in a portable grill before joining her. “Remodeling is our focus in Nashville. We take plenty of other jobs too, but renovating an existing structure like this one is what I love most.”
“Lucky I found you,” she murmured. She looked up from the papers and was struck by the naked vulnerability she saw in his eyes. He was nervous to hear her opinion? The thought caused a pang to echo in her chest. Pointing to the last sheet, she asked, “What’s that?”
“A third floor.”
“Why would I—”
“We’re going to have to strip the rafters and shore up the joists anyway. Adding a narrow staircase on the second floor could be done at the door of that back bedroom and not take up too much space. What we lose in storage, we can add on the third floor. All I’m thinking is a single space up there. A bedroom with a sitting area and an overlarge bath. It’ll be a guest room, or maybe the hideaway of a teenager who needs more privacy than the rest of the kids.”
The type of space she would have loved as a teen. She shook her head. “That’ll mean I need more from the bank. I don’t think I can get it.”
“It’ll also bring in double what I put into it in the sale of the house.”
“But if I can’t get it to begin with?”
Nick returned to the counter to toss the steaks on the grill, then grabbed another beer from the fridge. When he came back, he poured a glass of wine from a bottle he had breathing on the counter. He put it down in front of her. “In case you change your mind,” he said.
She looked at the glass, then shifted her gaze to the counter where the steaks were sizzling. Steaks, wine, cooking her dinner. How stupid did he think she was? She couldn’t be wooed with food.
And certainly not when he was performing step one of his seduction routine. She’d seen men like him before. They made the same moves for every woman, assuming they were all alike.
Well, they weren’t. She wasn’t.
And she wouldn’t be treated as if she was.
Making an instant decision, she rose from the table and pulled a chair over to the far corner cabinet. If she wasn’t mistaken, there would be something more to her liking on the back of that top shelf.
Nick said nothing, but she could feel him watching her as she climbed up, stretched her hand over the plastic cups at the front of the shelf, then wrapped her fingers around the neck of something far more entertaining than wine.
She smiled when she pulled out the dusty bottle of Jack. GiGi always had one around. She’d probably even managed to sneak a bottle into the nursing home with her.
“If I’m going to drink,” Joanie started, glancing back over her shoulder to find Nick eyeing her, “it isn’t going to be some lame wine you’re trying to seduce me with.”
His brows went up.
Before she got down, she caught sight of a metal box shoved to the side on the top shelf. She grabbed that, too, along with the bug-eyed owl salt and pepper shakers sitting beside it. They were covered in sticky grime from years of nonuse, but she’d clean them up and take them to GiGi when she visited next week.
“You drink whiskey?” Nick asked as she ran the top of the bottle under the water to clean it of dust.
“Not much of a wine girl,” she verified. She pulled down a tumbler. “You want some?”
Nick merely shook his head and held up his beer.
His silence told her that she’d shocked him. Good. She didn’t like people pigeonholing her.
Once she poured herself a drink, she returned to the table, where he lined up all the papers and slowly walked her through the full design. The man really did have a vision.
“Prices are best guesses at this point,” he said. “You never know until you get into a project what issues you may hit, but upon my initial inspection, I think we’ll be pretty close to these figures.”
She sipped at her drink, enjoying the burn. It’d been a long time since she’d had whiskey. “Yet it’s still thousands more than I can get.”
“Right, but that’s where I come in. I’d like to bankroll the rest of it for you, free of interest. I get repaid when you sell.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but he reached over and captured her hand in his, making her snap her mouth closed. The warmth from his palm oozed through her, tugging gently, and she glanced at the amber liquid in her glass. She hadn’t drunk nearly enough to be experiencing the urge to lean closer to him.
“It’s a win-win,” Nick added. His thumb stroked between two of her knuckles. “It’ll be a masterpiece when I’m finished. You’ll probably have multiple offers within days of putting it on the market.”
“What’s in it for you?” Surely he wasn’t thinking this would win her over.
“It’s simple,” he said. “I want my company to succeed here. Your allowing me to do this sets me up for that.”
She pulled her hand out from under his and lifted her glass. The liquid burned all the way down, clearing out her sinuses along the way.
The funny thing was, looking at the drawings was making her nostalgic. Which made her uncomfortable. It wasn’t as if she’d lived the world’s worst life in the house, but she had few good memories to fall back on. Just plenty of crap.
She had her mother constantly morphing herself to chase the dreams of some man. Pepaw leaving, causing GiGi to get stuck in a life with no meaning. Then there had been Adam. Couldn’t forget good ol’ Adam. She’d been sixteen when that had hap
pened. She’d learned real quick that she’d also inherited the ability to go stupid for a man. Just like every other Bigbee woman.
Nope, nothing good here. There was only heartache and loneliness in this house.
Yet, what Nick saw when he looked at the space made her remember she’d once had similar dreams herself.
As a kid, knowing the house had been in her family for generations, she’d imagined one day growing old with her own family here. Yet over the years, as her relationship with her grandmother deteriorated, the last thing she’d wanted was to live in this house one minute longer than necessary. She’d moved out fifteen years earlier and hadn’t looked back since.
The signal on the grill sounded and Nick went to serve up their food. She finished off her whiskey, already feeling the effects, and briefly recalled Lee Ann warning her not to drink tonight. When Nick came back, she looked from the plated food to the strong, solid jaw of the man before her and the nervousness she’d felt the day before returned.
“It’s a big decision,” she said. She licked her lips. “Putting that much into it, taking your money. I’m going to need some time to think about it.”
He nodded. “Of course.” He handed her a fork and knife and she took a bite of the crisp salad, noticing he’d even included a small cup of butter for her baked potato. The man had the routine down to an art. He thought of everything. “Just don’t wait too long,” he added. “I’ll start on some of the basic work that has to happen while you think through things, but we’re going to need the majority of the six weeks to get all of this done.”
And at the end of it, she’d say good-bye to the house that had been in her family for over one hundred years.
Her chest suddenly burned, and it had nothing at all to do with the whiskey.
She forced down a few bites, asking questions as she continued thinking through the drawings in front of her. She really wanted to do it. If for no reason other than to see the house restored to the glory she suspected it had once been.
Yet, something warned her it wouldn’t be that simple.
“The food is really good,” she stated, when she realized she’d been downing the meal without being gracious enough to thank him for cooking. She pushed the remainder back and stood with her glass in hand. “But if you don’t mind, I think I’ll sit out on the porch for a bit. I need to think through this some more.”
