“If you take that side, I’ll try to move it from here.”
He complied. Even with one arm, he had far more strength than she did and was able to push his side several feet to her six inches—and then he moved over and pushed her side, as well.
“That should be far enough. If I have to shove that thing another inch, I’m afraid I’ll have a heart attack.”
“Or at least break a nail.”
She held up her hands. “I’ve got no nails to break right now, courtesy of all that Christmas decorating we did. I’m going to be in serious need of a manicure if this keeps up.”
“Yeah. Same here.”
“Thanks. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t shown up. I probably would have left a buffetshaped square of wallpaper right there and painted around it. I can’t believe how heavy that thing is. It must be solid oak.”
“Or maybe your grandma Pearl hid gold bricks in the bottom.”
“Wouldn’t that be the answer to my prayers? Don’t think I haven’t gone through every drawer and cupboard in the house looking for old bond notes, hidden cash bundles, gold doubloons. Whatever. So far, no luck.”
“I guess that means you’re stuck in Hope’s Crossing for a while.”
She wasn’t quite ready to look at the reasons why she didn’t find that prospect as depressing now as she might have a week ago.
He looked around. “So what color are you painting the room?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” She was surprised he asked and had a feeling he was, too. “Hey, I can show you the paint cards and you can help me choose.”
“No, really. That’s okay—”
She ignored him and grabbed the samples she had picked up from the paint aisle of the hardware store. “I think I’m painting neutral tones through the rest of the house but I wanted something with a little more splash here. I’m thinking a neutral on three of the walls and then something rich on the big one where we moved the buffet.”
Though he looked as if he would rather be painting his own fingernails, he dutifully looked at the chips. After a long moment’s scrutiny, he pointed to one on the edge of the pile.
“I like this one. Cocoa Heaven. A nice warm brown.”
Remarkable! She grinned at him. “You have good taste, Dylan Caine. That’s exactly the one I was going to choose. Why did you pick that one?”
He shrugged. “It just reminded me of my dog. He’s got a spot on his back exactly that color.”
She laughed hard at that; she couldn’t help herself. He smiled, too, and the moment seemed to pull and stretch between them. Her heart seemed to give an almost-painful squeeze.
“I should probably go,” he said after a pause.
She looked away, flustered at these ridiculous feelings she couldn’t seem to control. “Oh. Right. And I’ve got hours of steaming off wallpaper ahead of me.”
He started for the door, stopped for a moment and then turned back around. “Do you need help? I can probably spare an hour or so for you. It might help the work go a little faster with two of us.”
She stared at him, shocked by the offer. He looked as if he wasn’t quite sure why he had made it—and perhaps was already regretting it—but she didn’t care. She was deeply grateful, both at the help and that he seemed to want to spend more time with her, or at least wasn’t in a big rush to hurry away.
“I could definitely use a hand.”
“Good thing I’ve only got one, then.” He winced. “Sorry. Habit.”
Grandma Pearl got a cat from the animal shelter once who hid under the bed and hissed and lashed out a paw, hackles raised, if anybody tried to get close. Her grandmother had explained the cat had been badly abused by a previous owner, and as a result, attacked instinctively before anybody could strike first. Gen wondered if Dylan pointed out his disability in the same sort of protective mechanism.
With love and care, Mr. Fuzzy had eventually learned to trust Grandma Pearl enough that he lost his bristly ways with her and even most of the time with Genevieve. She had to wonder whether Dylan might ever do the same.
“Do you mind if I bring in my dog?” he asked now. “He’s out in the truck, since I only thought I was running in for a second.”
She wasn’t a huge fan of dogs, but what could she say after he’d offered to help her? “Um, sure.”
“I’ll be back in a second.”
She watched him go, pretty certain he wouldn’t be lured to her side with a little catnip and a mouse toy.
“you’ll have to be on your best behavior, Tuck,” Dylan said to his dog as they walked toward Gen’s door. “No scratching at fleas, no jumping up on anybody, no leghumping. I have a feeling Genevieve hasn’t had a lot of experience with a couple of mongrels like us.”
Tucker gave him a doleful look out of those big droopy hound-dog eyes and then gave the musical wooowooo bark his breed was famous for, the song some compared to a choir of angels and others found the most annoying sound in the world.
It was all a matter of perspective.
If he had a single brain cell left in his head, he would just start the truck again, back out of her driveway and head up the canyon. He had no business manufacturing excuses to spend more time with Genevieve Beaumont.
He had no idea why he had. One minute, he had been ready to walk out the door, the next the offer to help had gushed out of him.
Gen made him do the craziest things. Again, no idea why. Bar fights, decorating Christmas trees, stripping wallpaper. What the hell was wrong with him?
He didn’t understand any of this—he only knew that she seemed to calm the crazy. He had the strangest feeling of peace when he was with her, as if all the chaos inside him, the anger and bitterness and regret, could finally be still.
She must have been waiting for him to come back. The door opened the moment he rapped on it.
Her eyes grew wary as she looked at the big dog, who reached past her hip. She reached a hand out to offer a tentative pat on Tuck’s head. Sensing a sucker, his dog turned those sad, please-love-me eyes in her direction and nudged at her hand as if he hadn’t just spent two hours at Pop’s getting attention from all the girls.
Gen scratched behind one floppy ear and Tuck’s eyes just about rolled back in his head.
“Wow. He’s…big. I’m used to smaller dogs. My mom has a bichon frise.”
He wasn’t quite sure what that was, though an image of a little white ball of fur stuck in his head. His dog was big and brawny, with broad shoulders and that morose face.
“Don’t worry. He’s a big softy. Aren’t you, Tucker?” At his name, the dog barked a little, nothing too prolonged, as it could be, but Genevieve still looked startled.
“What kind of dog is Tucker?”
“A black-and-tan coonhound. It’s quite an honorable breed. George Washington actually had many of them, including the most famous—Drunkard, Taster, Tipler and Tipsy.”
“A proud heritage indeed,” she said. “Do you, er, hunt raccoons?”
He barely managed to keep from snorting. What kind of good old boy did she think he was? On the other hand, he drove a dilapidated pickup truck and his coat had definitely seen better days.
“No. I actually got him when I was stationed in Georgia. Somebody dropped him and a couple others in his litter by the side of this little backwoods road. I just about hit him one night driving home from visiting a friend but managed to swerve just in time. Instead, I hit a mile marker post and scraped up the fender of a really nice Dodge Ram pickup truck, too. I found homes for the other puppies, but by then Tucker and I were pretty good friends.”
He gave the dog an affectionate scratch. Maybe he did have a bit of good old boy in him. His favorite moments were long, lazy summer evenings on the porch of his house watching the shadows stretch over the mountains and the world go dark while Tuck dozed at his feet.
He doubted Genevieve would appreciate knowing Dylan found the same peace with his dog that he did listening to her chatter.
“Does he need anything? Some water or, I don’t know, some peanut butter on a cracker or something?” He shook his head. “My nieces and nephews have been giving him treats under the table all evening, none of it good for him. He probably just needs a warm place to take a nap.”
As if on cue, the dog headed to a patch of carpet in the living room in front of a heater vent, circled a few times to claim it as his and then stretched out.
Once the dog was settled, Gen turned back to Dylan. “How much experience do you have with a wallpaper steamer?”
“About as much as you’ve had with black-and-tan coonhounds, I imagine.”
She smiled, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. He liked seeing her this way, with her hair a little tousled, her skin flushed, her face fresh and natural.
She would probably look just like this after making love.
Everything inside him seemed to shiver, and he had to take several sharp breaths to regain control.
“I’ve been thinking about the logistics here,” she went on, “and I think it would be best if you direct the steamer while I scrape off the wallpaper.”
He could handle that, as long as he could keep these inappropriate sexual thoughts at bay.
She frowned. “You’re not really dressed for this. It’s a messy job. I’m going to be sticky with wallpaper glue and little shreds of paper for weeks.”
Pop didn’t strictly have a dress code for his Sunday dinners, but he didn’t appreciate his family showing up in any old thing, either. Dylan had worn a blue long-sleeved oxford to dinner, with the sleeve pinned up over his stump.
He should have worn the prosthetic arm. As painful as it could be some days, it wasn’t quite as unsightly as that empty sleeve.
“It’s fine. It will wash.”
“Just take off your shirt. I can see you’re wearing a T-shirt underneath. You can just work in that and then change back into the other shirt when we’re done.”
He shifted, wondering what he had gotten himself into. He ought to tell her to forget this whole thing. He hated dressing and undressing with one hand. It was awkward and uncomfortable, especially trying to shrug out of a shirt. He also didn’t wear short sleeves much anymore, even in the summertime.
“Sure. Okay,” he finally muttered. Feeling stupid, he did his best to unbutton the shirt without looking like a three-year-old learning to undress himself and then pulled it off and hung it over the same chair with his coat.
She was watching him, her eyes wide and her color high. Morbid fascination, he might have thought, except she seemed to be looking more at his chest and his shoulders than the empty spot below his left elbow.
“Where do we start?” he asked.
She cleared her throat and tucked another strand of hair behind her ear. “Um. This is the steamer.” She turned it on. Tucker looked up through the doorway at the whining noise then dropped his head again, the lazy old thing.
A hose led from the main machine on the floor to a rectangle panel about the size of a notebook. Tendrils of steam curled out of it.
Gen handed that part to him. “Just hold the plate against the wall to moisten the paper and release the glue, section by section. I’ll come along behind you and try to find an edge to lift away with the scraper.”
After a few moments, they fell into a comfortable rhythm. Working vertically, he would steam a piece for a moment then she would scrape that while he moved to the next area. By necessity, they had to stay close together, the steam from the machine swirling around them in an oddly intimate way. He was hyperaware of his body—each pulse of blood through his veins, each inhale and exhale.
He was also aware of her, the flex and release of her biceps as she worked, the way she nibbled her lip as she scraped away at a particularly difficult spot, how her T-shirt molded to her chest…
“Oh. I almost forgot,” Gen said after a few moments. “I had music going while I worked. I turned it off to answer the door.”
She pulled a tiny silver remote out of the pocket of worn jeans and aimed it at a small speaker unit in the corner. Some kind of weird music eased out, lots of accordion and mournful French that sounded like something out of a smoky Paris jazz café.
He raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
Her expression turned rueful. “What can I say? Sometimes I’m in a mood. What would you prefer?”
His music tastes were all over the place but lately he mostly enjoyed classic rock. It might help keep his mind off enjoying a little ooh là là with her.
“Got any CCR or Stones?”
“I can make a playlist.”
She fiddled with the MP3 player attached to the speakers, and a moment later, Mick and the gang started in on “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”
Perfect.
The work was physically demanding but not disagreeable. He had already found at his house in the canyon that deconstruction—tearing down in order to rebuild—could be oddly satisfying. The experience was the same here.
Together, they made good progress. After maybe half an hour, they finished the second wall. She stopped and shook out her arms.
“Why don’t we trade places for a while?” he suggested. “Your arms are probably killing you.”
“But I can always switch if one gets tired,” she said, her expression solemn.
Something bleak and grim lodged in his chest. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Gen,” he said quietly. “I feel sorry enough for myself.”
He grabbed the scraper away from her and set to work on the section he had last steamed.
After a charged moment, she picked up the steamer. “So I’m thinking about ripping up the carpet next,” she said. “I pulled up the tacks in one corner and it looked as if it had hardwood underneath. I have no idea how to refinish floors but I read an article this afternoon online and it didn’t sound all that difficult. You have to start with tearing out the carpets, obviously, and then you remove all the tacking strips, which sounds like an awful job. I can’t imagine how gross it will be under the carpet. I might have to rent a floor sander but they have those at the home-improvement store.”
She started chattering about finishing wood floors, about buying new hardware for the kitchen cabinets, about all the other things she planned to do on the house—many of which she had already told him up at the cabins, but he didn’t care. The words surged over and through him, edged with an oddly poignant sweetness that left no room for the bitter.
She knew.
Somehow she knew how much he liked listening to her talk about anything and everything in that throaty, sexy voice.
She couldn’t possibly understand why. Even he wasn’t sure he comprehended why her conversation filled some gaping chasm inside him, how focusing on the mundane details helped keep all the ugliness at bay.
A fragile sort of tenderness seemed to twist and writhe around them like the steam, easing its way around all that ugliness, scraping him bare just like he peeled away her wall.
He faltered in his steady movements but quickly recovered. He couldn’t let himself have feelings for her. Now, that was a freaking disaster in the making. He pushed it away and focused instead on the story she was telling him about a trip she took to the wine country of the Loire Valley with some friends.
Before he knew it, she had jabbered her way around the entire room. His arm throbbed from the relentless scraping, but it was a good kind of sore, earned through hard work and effort.
“I guess that’s the last of it,” she wound down enough to say and turned off the steamer. The music on the media player had stopped, too, without either of them being aware of it.
The room suddenly seemed far too quiet.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all your help, Dylan. You’ve saved me so much time and energy. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said gruffly, wondering what the hell was wrong with him that he actually felt more centered and calm after an hour of scraping wallpaper layers off a wall with Gen
evieve Beaumont than he had from sharing dinner with the people he loved most in the world.
“I must have yakked your ears off.”
“You didn’t. See? Still here.” He tugged at an earlobe and she smiled a little.
She tucked that errant hair behind her ear again. Her fingers were long and slender—elegant, even with her battered manicure.
He should leave. Now. The warning bells sounded in his head but he ignored them. Instead, he crossed the small space between them, leaned down and took what he had been thinking about since the moment he walked into her grandmother’s ugly house.
CHAPTER NINE
On the crazy scale, kissing Genevieve Beaumont topped out at “Are-you-out-of-your-freaking-mind?”
He knew it intellectually in the tiny sliver of his brain that could still function at that level, but he ignored it. This just felt too right, too perfect. It had been so damn long since he had felt the wonder of a woman’s kiss— the soft sweetness of her breath mingling with his, the press of her curves against his chest through thin cotton, the urgent churn of his blood.
Other than a shocked inhale, she didn’t react for a few seconds, then he felt the slide of her arms around his neck and she returned his kiss with delicious intensity.
His mouth moved on hers, wondering how he could possibly have forgotten how delicious that surge of blood, that edgy hunger could feel.
She tasted sweet and minty, with just a hint of that vanilla scent that surrounded her. She made a soft, sexy sound in her throat and he deepened the kiss, unable to believe she was here next to him, her mouth warm and enthusiastic against his.
Their mouths fit together perfectly. In his experience, that wasn’t always the case. First kisses could be awkward affairs, trying to figure out what to move where, but this… This was better than any of the increasingly heated dreams he’d been having about her since that memorable night at The Speckled Lizard.
She made another sexy sound and drew her hands up around his neck. He had to be closer to her. Without thinking, he went to wrap his arms around her. Both arms.
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