by HK Carlton
“I’m so sorry.” True empathy crossed her features.
“Me, too. Do you and your daughter use Skype to communicate? Sometimes it’s so great to see their little faces. I know that when I was over there, seeing Lindsay’s smile made all the difference.”
“I can imagine.” She moved to the window again. Salem joined her and, with some effort, worked the pane open.
“They should be replaced, right?” Her gaze met his.
“Yes. Immediately.”
She sighed. “I thought so. Looks like they’ve leaked at one time.” With her index finger, she traced the dried brown rivulet on the wall.
“Or several,” he warned. “There’s probably going to be some rot when we open this up.”
“Okay.”
“One thing, though…”
“What’s that?” She stared at him with apprehension.
“Do I have the job?”
“Do you want it? Everyone else has walked away. I realize it’s a huge undertaking. I assure you I have the finances to see this through.”
“Can I ask you why you bought the place?”
She sighed and looked around the room. “Let’s go downstairs and talk,” she suggested.
Salem followed her down the stairs and out onto the porch. She sat on the top step next to the folder he’d left there. But, as he set his boot onto the second step and was about to lower himself to a sitting position, the rotten wood gave way under him and his foot went straight through.
“Oh, no!” Kaylah jumped up as Salem’s leg disappeared, almost to his knee.
Swiftly, he put his hand down to catch himself then lowered his ass to the top stair.
“Oh my God, your leg! I’ll call nine-one-one. She yanked her cell phone out and was poised to dial.
“No. Don’t do that. I’m fine.”
Wide-eyed, she looked dubiously between his trapped calf and his face.
“But, you… It’s… The wood is right into your leg.”
“It’s not as bad as you think. Here.” He shifted so he could slip his pocketknife from his back pocket. He began to cut away his pant leg, revealing the prosthetic limb beneath.
To his surprise, her expression softened from horror to relief—but not in pity, he didn’t think. Her gaze slowly lifted and she met his. Most people didn’t know how to react. He was stunned when a small smile played around her mouth. She rolled her eyes and said, “Oh.”
“Yeah,” he replied as he twisted the limb. “Do you think you could…?” Fuck! Here goes another job! How was he supposed to move on with his life when he couldn’t catch a simple fuckin’ break and no one would give him a chance to prove he could still do the job.
“Oh, sure.” She bent and put her hands on either side of his fake leg.
“Give it a pull,” he directed.
She did, but it didn’t budge. “Try again. Harder. You can’t hurt it.”
Giving it one more yank, it came off. Salem shifted again, away from the hole in the step. “Here. Let me make room for you.”
Kaylah sat back down next to him but much closer, to avoid the tender wood.
“Careful now,” he warned, then held out his hand to take possession of his missing extremity. When she handed it to him, their hands touched and, as she withdrew, she did so slowly, lingering and trailing her fingers over his. That undercurrent of sensation he’d experienced before went straight to his cock this time.
“You’ve got quite a splinter there,” she said, as he grabbed onto it and pulled it out. He tossed the shard into the grass. Luckily, it had only worked into the prosthesis and not pierced the joint.
“A souvenir from overseas?” she asked.
It was weird, the look she gave him. It seemed to be one of renewed interest or commiseration—not the usual response. But her reactions to him had seemed a bit odd, even at the café and definitely on the bridge.
“Yeah,” he replied simply.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her eyes never leaving his, “for your service.”
A bit overwhelmed by the remark, he nodded then turned his attention back to reattaching his leg. Adjusting the sock over his skin, he popped it back in place.
“I’m so sorry about this,” she said.
“No harm. Good as new,” he joked, giving his leg a little kick to show her.
“Now I know what you meant about repairing some of these things outside first. When do you think you could start?”
“Start?”
“Or, maybe now you don’t want to?” Her shoulders sagged again as she peered at the mangled stair. “I don’t want to endanger you or your crew.”
“No, no, it’s not that at all, I just… Uh… We haven’t even discussed price or timeline—your vision of how you’d like it to look when it’s done. Do you want a renovation or a restoration? This is an old place. You should probably get more than one guesstimate.”
“Oh, I have. No one else wants to touch it.”
“Right. You said that. You probably shouldn’t tell a prospective contractor that, though. He’ll jack up the prices on you because he knows he has you over a barrel.”
“Would you do that to me?” She stared, as if measuring him.
It wasn’t a trust issue that had him fighting to keep a lid on his racing thoughts but an image of bending her over anything. Maybe not a barrel, but the foot of his bed was looking pretty good. Fuck! He knew essentially nothing about this woman or her circumstances, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to fuck her.
Suddenly, his phone shrilled and they both jumped.
“Sorry.” He looked at the caller ID. “It’s my answering service.”
She nodded. “Go ’head.”
“Hello?”
He listened as the automated voice relayed a message. He hunted around for his notebook. Just out of his reach, Kaylah anticipated his need and slid it closer to him. She plucked his pen from his work-shirt pocket, then handed it to him.
“Thanks.” He jotted down the information.
After he ended the call, he said, “I’ve got another estimate.”
“Oh.”
Again, he noted the disappointment in her voice as she stood.
“How about I go do this then maybe we could go to the café and hammer this out over coffee, maybe even dinner?” He shrugged.
Her gaze darted but she agreed.
“Good, then. I’ll pick you up around six?”
“Okay.”
Salem stood and put some weight on his leg, testing it out before balancing fully. He gathered his book and tucked his pen back into his shirt.
Feeling a bit awkward, he gave her a quick nod and started down the walk.
“Hey, Salem… You might want to stop at home and change your trousers.”
He turned to find her grinning. He looked down at the sliced-open pant leg, revealing his prosthetic.
“Or, you know, I could cut open the other side and start a new fad.”
“Hey, now there’s a plan. I like the way you think.” She smiled and his heart beat a little faster. She was something.
With his hand on the door of his truck, he paused. “Hey!”
Kaylah walked closer so he wouldn’t have to shout.
“By the way, who gave you my number?” Whoever it was, he owed them a nice bottle of something expensive. Jenna from the café, maybe?
But Kaylah cocked her head to the side in obvious confusion. She reached around and fished in her back pocket. With a flourish, she came up with one of his business cards. “This was stuck in my screen door when I got home yesterday, with the time of our appointment written on the back.” She turned it toward him to verify. “I assumed…you…?”
“No, this is weird.” He didn’t even recognize the handwriting. “I got a call from my answering service—at the restaurant, in fact, right after you left.” He reached inside the truck and grabbed the napkin off the dash.
Kaylah made her way around to his side to look. She read it then looked
into his eyes.
“Well, uh, I guess it’s fate,” he said, having no other explanation for the time being.
She gave a small shrug. “Or Jerusalem.” She just about whispered his name, but she said it with such wonder, it made his one good knee weak.
They stared at each other for an overlong moment.
“I’ll see you at five-thirty,” he said.
She nodded and didn’t even razz him about moving up the time.
Chapter Three
Salem sat across from Mikaylah in the best Italian restaurant in town, one of his favorite haunts. The contractor’s agreement sat on the table between them.
After placing their orders, he took a sip of his beer and watched her.
“Pasta Doble, huh?” She smirked while fingering one of the red and white napkins with the name and logo of the establishment. “Will there be dancing after?”
Salem was about to make some quick quip about one-legged dancers when her lovely eyes flashed.
To his surprise, her smile never slipped. The glint in her eyes intrigued him.
“Let me guess. You’re not much of a dancer,” she said.
“You’d be wrong, lady, I Paso like nobody’s business.”
Her grin grew and almost reached her eyes.
“I think Rich and I have tried every single dish on the menu.”
“Rich?” she asked, cocking her head.
“My brother.”
“I thought his name was Sicily.” Smirking, she’d called his bluff.
“Right, right.”
“You made it seem as though you were both named after places your parents had, uh…visited,” she finished, diplomatically.
“That’s a nice way of putting it.” He chuckled. “And yeah, that part is true.”
“Rich, hmmm, not as exotic as Jerusalem.”
“Richmond, actually.”
“Huh. I feel rather let down.” She shrugged. “Although, Virginia is for lovers.” The corner of her generous mouth twitched.
“That’s what Dad used to say,” he agreed, raising his beer mug in salute.
“So, you never said…” Salem steered the conversation. “Why’d you buy that old place?”
She took a sip from her glass of red wine then set it down. “Well, it was actually my daughter’s idea. Once she’d decided what college she was going to attend, I had every intention of following her, selling our old home and buying something closer to her. I had nothing to keep me where we were if she wasn’t there. We’ve no family to speak of.”
Yes. No husband.
“And I can do my job from anywhere.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a freelance writer.”
“That sounds interesting. What specifically do you write? Anything I might have heard of?”
“I doubt it. I do a bit of everything. I’ve written articles for journals, newspapers, magazines—paper and online. I had a weekly column in our hometown paper, but when I gave them the heads-up that we might be moving, they decided to discontinue it. I’m afraid local print chronicles are becoming a thing of the past.”
He nodded in agreement.
“And I’ve written the occasional greeting card or lyrics to commercial jingles, to pay the bills. But, more recently, I’ve been writing copy for the local radio station here.”
“Really? I thought the broadcasts sounded better. That’s you?”
“Well, I’m not sure about that, but thank you. I’m enjoying it. It’s something different for a change and it’s helping me acclimate to the town a bit.”
“How’d that lead to the money pit?” He took large gulp of his draft.
“Well, Autumn’s bright idea was, since this is a college town, if we bought a place with several rooms, we could also rent them out to make some extra income. I had every intention of turning it into a boarding-house-type deal.”
His forehead furrowed. “But your daughter isn’t living with you. I’m confused.”
“You’ve seen the place. It’s not fit for her to be in. She’s better off in the dorms until I can make the place at least safe for us. There’s barely enough hot water for me to get in a decent shower in the morning. The old pipes couldn’t manage a teenage girl who takes forty-five minute ones.”
“Ah, so she’s tucked away on campus.”
“Well…not exactly,” she said, while picking at the flaky top of one of the crusty buns.
He waited.
“It took me a while to get here. I had some things to deal with back home, with the old house and such, and, by the time I arrived, Autumn had been offered a partial scholarship to a different school. It had been her first choice of schools when she’d initially begun the whole post-secondary process.”
He frowned. “Well, that’s strange.”
“Apparently, there was a mix-up in the paperwork. Though she’d already committed to the program here, it was something she simply couldn’t pass up. A ‘once in a lifetime,’” she all but whispered.
“Wow, I’ve never heard of that happening. What short notice.”
“It was totally unexpected.”
“So, you moved here to be with her and she’s—”
“She may as well be a million miles away,” Kaylah finished forlornly.
Shit. She was on the verge of tears. He wanted to get her off the Autumn subject.
“How on earth did you get yourself into this, Kaylah? The Cleary House, of all places. I mean, even when we did the walk-around today, you weren’t clueless about all the problems the house has. Why’d you buy it?”
“Well, you’ll appreciate this, I’m sure.”
With interest, he sat forward, waiting for the big announcement.
“Stupidly—and yes, I know it was stupid—we purchased the place online, sight unseen. It looked much better there.”
“Aw.” Salem relaxed back against the seat. “Happens all the time and I’ve no idea how people keep getting screw…er, uh, duped. Everyone knows the Internet is the biggest liar. It’s a con man’s playground. Everything looks better online.”
She shrugged. “It was a great deal.”
Setting his palm atop the renovation quote, he asked, “Still think it’s a great deal?”
She sighed.
“So, after you realized what you’d gotten into, why didn’t you immediately throw it right back on the market?”
“I was told by a neighbor that it’s been up for sale for over three years. You and I both know no one is going to even look at it until I do some work on it.” She shook her head. “Autumn and I were so excited. This was going to be a new beginning for both of us. Before we actually saw it, we’d really gotten into the swing of things, planning and designing what we were going to do with the place. But now I’m here and she isn’t. And, honestly, I know in my heart, she isn’t coming back. I can hear it in her voice. And I really can’t see myself renting to a bunch of college kids. I’m just not up for it without her.” Mikaylah stared down at the tabletop for a long moment. “I think I’d just like to fix it up, sell it and go where she is.”
She seemed overly sad about being separated from her child.
“You two are really close, aren’t you?”
Toying with the stem of her glass, she nodded, still distracted. Now he understood the constant sadness in her lovely eyes.
“I think it’s really sweet. I hope Lindsay and her mom stay as close when she’s that age.”
She peered over his shoulder.
“Well, if you don’t want to turn it into off-campus housing, we can still divvy it up into several units for rental purposes?” he blurted. “Maybe keep it as an investment-type deal? That way you can use the cash it generates to buy a decent house where Autumn is. Or, if you don’t want the headaches of being a landlord, outright sell it as a turnkey investment opportunity for someone else.”
“Do you think we could?”
“If you hire me, we can.” He grinned and she finally looked up at him.
“We need to go over the contract first.”
“I’m sure it’s fine.”
“You say that now, but it’s not going to be cheap. I’ll need to do some revisions and rework some figures now that I know what you’re looking to do. There are different building codes for multifamily dwellings. You’ll need extra exits for fire regulations, smoke alarms—probably a sprinkler system. I’ll check on that.”
“I hadn’t thought of those things. Maybe we should just do a quick patch-up and be done with it? I’m running out of time.” She rubbed her chest again, just above her breast, as if she had a sore spot. He wondered if she even realized she was doing it. It was distracting as fuck, at least for him. He wouldn’t mind massaging it for her.
“Do you have a timeline?”
“Uh… Oh, no, not really.”
She was confusing him, being so indecisive. He hadn’t sensed that from her during the afternoon walk-through.
Needing another drink, Salem signaled the server and held up two fingers.
“Well, let’s decide on what exactly you want for now. We’ll fix it up or renovate, but I kind of need to know to draw up an accurate estimate.”
“You make it sound so simple,” Kaylah said, keeping her focus on him. She sounded discouraged.
“Are you all right?” He couldn’t help but ask when she continued to massage her chest.
She slowly lowered her hand. He was certain she knew exactly why he’d asked, but she didn’t elaborate.
“Yes. I’m fine.”
“How long is your daughter’s program?”
“Four years. Please don’t tell me it’s going to take that long.”
He wasn’t sure. The dwelling was a mess. Once he started opening up walls, ceilings and floors, anything could be uncovered and need replacement or updating. It was never just what appeared on the surface. His brother had taught him that. If he ran into asbestos or mold, that just took the aggravation to a whole new level of environmental issues—not to mention cutting into the budget.
