by Nicole Helm
“I— Okay? Just like that? Okay?” Her voice was all baffled edginess.
Jacob shrugged. When it came to favors for friends, he’d never been any good at saying no. Besides, he excelled at charming parents. What was a few dinners with Leah and her family? She’d had plenty of dinners with his. All he had to do was pretend to be a boyfriend.
How hard could it be? Long as he kept his hands to himself, easy.
“Not up to anything kinky, are you?”
She scowled, all hints of vulnerability disappearing into that I’m-gonna-kick-your-ass glint in her eye. “No.”
“Then sure. Why not?”
“What are you going to make me do to make it up to you?” she asked skeptically.
He grinned and rubbed his hands together. “Hmm. I will have to think about that one. So many options.”
The scowl deepened until her eyebrows all but touched each other. “Damn it, Jacob.”
“Hey, now, I’m doing you a big favor. So, there are going to be a few rules.”
“Yeah, like what?” She crossed her arms over her chest. Jacob found himself wishing her dress had a lower neckline.
He shook that thought away. “Like, for starters, you can’t be all prickly and pissed off with me. If I’m your boyfriend, you’re in love with me, right? Women in love aren’t prickly.”
“I’m always prickly. And you like to bring it out in me.” She dropped her arms at her sides. “You’re really going to do this?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
He couldn’t read her expression. Not even a little bit.
“Thank you.” The words were heartfelt and it knocked some of the teasing out of him. The Leah he knew didn’t do heartfelt.
“You’re welcome. Just let me know when. Don’t have to kiss you, do I?”
She screwed up her face. “God, I hope not.”
He didn’t care for her answer, but kept the easy smile on his face. “Good. Probably be like kissing my sister.” Yeah, not by a long shot.
* * *
LEAH KICKED HER heels off the second her door was open. They landed with a thud in a pile of other shoes and clothes in her entryway. Some magazines and junk mail littered the floor, too. She was really going to need to clean up before her family arrived.
She could have had them stay in a hotel, but she knew how much Mom and Dad hated hotels. Or, more accurately, the expense of them.
The fact they had to pinch their pennies was one in a long list of things that were Leah’s fault, so she owed them.
Maybe Grace could help clean up. Maybe Kelly and Susan, too, if they were surviving their first month as new parents. MC’s interior designer and administrative assistant hadn’t been around much since they’d adopted their baby, taking maternity leave and switching off days when they did work. Leah had missed having them around as she was almost as close to them as Grace.
But Leah’s place was definitely not suited for a baby, so they’d probably have to pass. At least for a little while longer.
Leah dropped her keys on the cluttered kitchen table, then remembered how she’d been late to a job last week because she hadn’t been able to find them. She retraced her steps, found the bag she took to work every day and tossed them in there.
The house itself was a work in progress. A falling-down English cottage–style one-story built in the ’20s, it had been abandoned for ten years before she’d bought it, and the price had been right for a handy woman making a modest living. The past five years she’d put a lot of work into it, but she cringed at the thought of Mom and Dad seeing it. Her salary and Jacob’s help only went so far.
Maybe if she showed her family “before” pictures, they’d be impressed with how far she’d come.
On a sigh, Leah stepped into her room. Yeah, she was definitely going to need some help in the cleanup department. She smiled a little. It was nice knowing she’d have friends who’d chip in without a second thought.
MC and its employees had become her second family. For a while, she thought it’d be enough. She could do without her parents, and the brother she’d never been all that close to, because she had friends who cared about her. She didn’t know when that suddenly hadn’t been enough. But it wasn’t anymore.
She slipped out of the dress and examined the long white scar down the center of her chest. Mostly she tried to pretend it wasn’t there. A reminder of too many things she wanted to forget.
Fifteen years. For fifteen years someone else’s heart had beat in there. The five years directly following the transplant, she hadn’t treated it or herself or her family well. In fact, her careless, selfish, destructive behavior had almost broken them all apart as much as it had almost killed her.
So, she’d left Minnesota and moved in with the black-sheep aunt no one in her family talked to. She’d gotten her life and health together, put herself through electrician training. And without her and her health issues in the way, Mom and Dad had gotten back together after the stress of her health and hospital bills had caused them to separate.
Now she had this life. And it was good and enough time had passed that she wanted to heal. Wanted to have a family to spend holidays with. Wanted her brother to forgive her for wrecking their family. She wanted to make up everything she’d ruined.
So, if she had to lie, cheat or steal to accomplish it, she would. Hopefully it ended with the lying. Even more hopefully, it ended without her even more screwed up about Jacob than she already was.
CHAPTER TWO
JACOB STOOD IN front of the dilapidated old Victorian on Jasmine Street in the heart of Bluff City, Iowa. It was surrounded by renovated or completely rebuilt houses and small businesses. It was an eyesore and for sale.
Perfect.
Leah stepped out of the house followed by Henry, MC’s plumber. They were both covered in dust and wore hard hats. Jacob had already toured the place twice before he’d brought out Leah and Henry, so today he’d stayed outside, not wanting to hover over them while they checked it out.
“Have to rewire everything, and I mean everything. There’s not crap for restoring, electrically speaking.” Leah stood next to him, squinting at the old house.
“Plumbing, too. Have to redo everything. Shit hole.” Henry’s plumbing estimation.
“Pipe dream, boss.” Leah clapped him on the shoulder, but he barely felt it.
Yeah, pipe dream, but he could see it. He could see it fully restored and absolutely perfect. With Grace and Kyle—his business partner and now also his sister’s boyfriend—moving out of the main house once their house was finished being built back in their hometown of Carvelle, Jacob was thinking about selling that first project. Without people sharing the same roof, the big house on the bluff was too much for him. MC had a strong enough reputation he didn’t need the grand showpiece as an office anymore, and he really didn’t want to think about living in that monster by himself.
This house would be a better size. He could work and live there like he did at the main house. It could still be a bit of a showcase of what he could do. Right in the heart of town. And if he bought it, it wouldn’t be demolished and turned into a strip mall.
“Jacob.”
“Hmm?”
“It’s a money pit.”
Jacob spared Leah a glance. “My favorite kind.”
She shook her head. “One of these days it’s going to blow up in your face. You can’t keep taking risks like this.”
“What’s life without a little risk?” Jacob turned his attention back to the house. Especially when the risk was this perfect. “I’ll put a lowball offer in. See what happens.”
“What about the Perkins house?”
“I can do both.”
Leah shook her head again. She did that a lot when he got on one of his extracurricular proje
cts, but she also always pitched in. She’d complain and poke fun until she was blue in the face, but she’d be the first one there with him and the last one to leave. He supposed that was how she’d somehow suckered him and Grace and Kyle into helping her clean up her house before her family’s arrival.
Speaking of that. “You gonna have food tonight?”
Leah slid the hard hat off her head, began tapping it against her thigh. “I’ll order some pizza. Buy some beer and sodas.”
“Dessert?” He grinned over at her when she scowled. She had a big, dirty coat on over her sweatshirt. Her hair was a static mess from the hard hat. Her cheeks were pink from the cold.
Jacob looked back at the house. This sex drought was really, really getting to him.
“I’ll get some snickerdoodles.”
“If it doesn’t contain chocolate, it is not a dessert.”
“I’m not buying a bunch of chocolate and watching you guys scarf it down when I can’t have any. Cruel and unusual.”
“Not our fault you’re allergic to everything.”
“One pan of brownies. Store-bought. And you’re taking all the leftovers home with you.”
Jacob grinned, slung his arm over her shoulders. “You drive a hard bargain. Guess I can live with that while I’m slaving away cleaning your pigsty.”
She wiggled out from under his arm. “Think of it this way. You get a front-row seat to the look on Kyle’s face when he sees how messy I really am.”
Yeah, seeing his anal-retentive partner’s face when he got a load of Leah’s place was going to be fun. “Fair enough.”
“You two gonna blab all afternoon? Freezing my balls off.” Henry marched over to the truck.
Leah rolled her eyes and followed suit. Jacob took a few extra seconds to give the house one last look. It was going to be his, money pit or no money pit.
* * *
“LEAH, MY GOD, how do you live like this?”
Leah had to bite back a smile. She was messy. Definitely. She knew it wasn’t an attractive quality and it embarrassed her...sometimes.
But Kyle’s complete and utter horror was too funny.
“Thanks for coming, guys. Food and drinks are in the kitchen. Grab what you want. I did actually clean that room.”
It had taken all weekend and then another hour this afternoon when she’d gotten home from work, but it was one room down and she was determined to keep it clean until Friday, when her parents and Marc arrived.
“As far as cleaning goes, trash anything you want. Everything with any sentimental value is in my room, which I don’t need help with.” It needed help, no doubt, but she didn’t like the idea of Jacob poking around in there. Not when he was likely to find all sorts of things she didn’t want him seeing. Pill bottles, inhalers, old pictures. No, she didn’t want him, or any of her friends, seeing any of that.
“Leah, this isn’t going to take an evening. This is going to take a decade.”
Leah patted Kyle’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’ll survive. I promise. If you start having chest pains or a numb feeling in your arm, you just tell Grace and she’ll rush you to the hospital.”
“Ha-ha.” But he smiled, which was becoming more and more normal. Man, that was nice. Leah liked seeing Grace and Kyle together. The easy way they balanced each other out, made each other happy.
Anytime she thought of that and felt a little bit jealous, she immediately blocked the feeling out. She refused to be jealous of anyone anymore. That was part of what had caused her so many problems after her surgery.
Jealous everyone else got to do what they wanted, whenever they wanted. She’d been less and less inclined to take care of the second chance someone else’s life had given her.
Jeez. What was wrong with her, thinking about that right now?
She handed out paper plates and let everyone grab what they wanted. Her cheese-free pizza was a sad commentary on the state of her life, but what could she do? The body she was born with was a mess of allergies and malfunctioning parts.
For the next four hours she, Jacob, Grace and Kyle worked through the scattered piles of debris. Organizing, putting things away, sweeping, mopping and dusting.
Damn, what would she do without these people?
After emptying the vacuum canister for at least the fifth time, Leah stood in the kitchen and took a deep breath. Her lungs were a little tight from the dust and exertion, so she slipped away to her bedroom for a sneak hit on her inhaler. She needed to grab a mask, too, but when she stepped back out, she heard a noise down the hallway.
It sounded like it came from the worst room in the house. The room she wasn’t going to bother cleaning because she hadn’t even begun renovations on it. She was going to block it off. There was no way she’d get it viewable by next week.
Mask forgotten, she walked to the open doorway. When she looked in, expecting and dreading to find evidence of mice, she found Jacob instead. He was standing in the middle of the room, little work notebook in hand, jotting notes.
It wasn’t fair he could look so damn good in jeans and a flannel shirt and a beard. Minus the beard, it was what she was wearing, and she knew very well she didn’t look like someone anyone wanted to jump.
Ugh. Why did she have to want to jump him? Since that thought was so frustrating, she put extra accusation into her voice. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Making a list.” He didn’t even glance at her. Instead, he kept writing in his little notebook just like he did at work.
She took a step inside. “A list of what?”
“Things that need to be done before your parents come stay with you.”
“What?”
He finally looked up, tucked the pen behind his ear. Why the hell was that sexy? Oh, right, because she was dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
“Look, if I’m your boyfriend and I’m a contractor, they’d expect these things to be taken care of.”
Defensiveness settled through her and she crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s a work in progress.”
“You’ve lived here five years. How long have we been together?”
She didn’t understand how he could be so casual about it. But it was Jacob. Jacob was casual about everything.
Except his work. MC was the one place his laser focus and intense dedication went. Well, that and his family.
“Leah? Hello? You want this lie to fly you’re going to have to think about these things. Details and—”
“I know. I know. They think we’ve been dating a year,” she muttered, kicking at the warped floorboard.
He let out a low whistle. “Damn. You ever been in a real relationship for a whole year?”
“No.” She didn’t need to ask him if he had. She knew the answer to that since she paid way too close attention to his dating life. Jacob could barely manage a six-week relationship.
Though it might have something to do with the way he went about dating. Like a mission. A to-do list to get to his wanted destination. Family.
Which was none of her business. Fake relationship or no. Especially since “family” wasn’t something she’d ever be able to offer anyone.
“You know, if we’ve been dating a year they’re going to expect us to actually, oh, I don’t know, touch each other. Possibly even sleep together.”
Her face burned. So embarrassing. “I don’t think my devoutly Catholic mother is going to be concerning herself with our sex life.”
He walked toward her, tucking the notebook in his front pocket. “‘Our sex life.’ Weirder words I’m not sure have ever been spoken.”
“No shit.” Leah tucked her hands into her armpits, hugging herself close. They were alone and this was weird with a capital W.
“So, you know, speaking of our sex life, how do you see that go
ing?”
He was joking and grinning, but the proximity meant she was having a hard time getting that through to her brain. Actually, not so much her brain as her sorely neglected libido.
Leah took a breath and summoned all the unaffectedness she could muster. “Why are guys so gross?”
“After cleaning up your house, you do not get to talk to me about gross.”
Fair enough. “You’re not doing anything to this room, Jacob. I’m blocking it off. We’ve been too busy building MC to work on my place. Got it?”
He made a considering sound in his throat and then left the room. Damn it, she hated when he did that. The no-answer thing meant he was going to do something stupid.
Well, it couldn’t be any stupider than her asking him to be her fake boyfriend.
* * *
JACOB KNEW HE should leave with everyone else, talk to Leah about this situation somewhere...safe. But there really was no time like the present.
He plopped himself onto her newly-cleaned-up couch. “So, we ever going to talk details about this whole fake-relationship thing?”
Her whole body visibly stiffened, and then she rolled her shoulders. “Yeah. Sure. I just...”
“You remember this being your idea? You begged me to agree to it.”
Some of her tension morphed into irritation, which was exactly what he’d been going for. “I did not beg.”
“Pretty sure the word please was used.”
“Begging and being polite are two different things. Can we talk about this some other time? When I’m not exhausted and covered in dirt.”
She did look tired. Pale, and there was a weird rasp to her voice. He noticed she got that whenever she’d been working particularly hard.
But he also knew if he left, she’d keep working. There was no quit in Leah. “You know me. I like a plan. Blueprint. Details. Fill me in.”
“Right. Right.” She pulled the cuffs of her shirt down, then pushed them back up to her elbows. And then repeated the process two more times.
He wasn’t used to nervous, unsure Leah. It was fascinating. Something he wanted to poke at. “Where was our first date?”
