Clancey cursed under her breath at the cold air he’d let in. It wasn’t so bad as long as she was moving around the store, but sitting or standing at the cash register was enough to chill her through. She hated to think what it would be like when the weather really got cold.
“Not my problem,” she reminded herself.
She had to hunt through the stockroom to find the tiny electric heater that had kept her toes warm all last winter in the other store. Two customers came in to browse just as she was setting it up, and the blast of damp, chilly air that swirled in with them made her hurry.
She plugged the heater into the outlet, twisted the control to high and waited for the first waves of radiant heat to wash over her ankles. Instead she heard an ominous pop, and the nauseating smell of burning plastic rose. In the same split second the lights winked out. Only the remnants of gloomy daylight that managed to struggle in through the windows remained.
Clancey snatched the heater’s plug from the outlet, apologized to the customers and ran for the basement electrical panel. But when she threw the switch that should have restored power to the circuit, it showed a dull red warning. She knew that wasn’t a good sign, so she turned it off again and stood biting her lip. She could call an electrician, but it was Saturday. Heaven knew when she’d actually get action. And she certainly couldn’t just leave things as they were.
So there was really only one option. She was going to have to go outside and tell Rowan that she’d just fried the electrical panel. And she would simply have to ask if he couldn’t please do something about it, really soon.
CHAPTER EIGHT
As soon as Rowan saw her, he stopped trimming up the juniper shrub on the far corner of the lot and turned to watch, his eyes narrowed, as she ran toward him.
Clancey told herself that there was no real need to hurry. Why scare him out of his wits? She had the situation under control for the moment, at least. It wasn’t as if flames were shooting up the staircase. Yet, she reminded herself.
So she kept running, and therefore was out of breath and fairly close to him before she realized the expression in Rowan’s eyes was not apprehension at all, but appreciation. He seemed to be enjoying the sight of her, in narrow-cut tweed trousers and a soft green sweater. Especially the sweater.
That slowed her to a walk. She also folded her arms firmly across her chest, trying as best she could to make the action seem casual. It didn’t work, of course. That merciless green gleam of laughter was in his eyes, and the first thing he said as she came up to him was, “I guess this means you’re not running out here to fling yourself in my arms.”
Clancey ignored that. She was almost panting — not so much from the exertion as from nerves — as she told him about the heater, the ominous pop, the smell of burning plastic and the red warning light when she’d tried to correct things.
Rowan rubbed the end of his nose with his index finger. For what seemed a very long time, he had no comment at all.
Clancey’s self-control snapped. “If I was trying to burn the place down, I wouldn’t be out here for help.”
“You’ve already made a fair start at it, that’s sure.” He stepped back and looked at the shape of the juniper again as if he didn’t have another concern in the world. “So what are you planning to do now?”
Obviously he didn’t intend to do anything about it, Clancey told herself. She turned on her heel, but had taken only two steps toward the house when she stopped in her tracks. What on earth could she do about the mess, after all? And what good was it going to do — aside from salving her pride, possibly — if she stamped back into the house like a baby elephant having a tantrum, if she couldn’t think of anything constructive to do when she got there?
So she came back to his side. “Rowan,” she said, “you can’t seriously mean that you expect me to handle this — do you? This whole nonsense of inside and outside jobs was crazy from the beginning. It’s your house, dammit! Would you just come in and look at the blasted thing?” She was shivering. Her sweater was thickly knit, but the cool breeze had no trouble slipping between the strands of yarn. Her hand was shaking as she reached for his sleeve. “Please? I’ll—”
I’ll do what? the little voice in the back of her brain asked frantically. What sort of enticement can I offer him?
“I’ll sign the lease,” she said. “Right now. Before you even come inside, if you like.”
He gave a sort of snort. “How about adding an amendment to cover damages? By Christmas I won’t have any house left.”
She bristled. “This is not my fault, you know. If the place had adequate wiring, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“Clancey, no house has wiring that can stand up to three lamps, a cash register, a calculator, a heater and heaven knows what else, all plugged into one outlet. How did you have it all wired, anyway? Six extension cords?”
She couldn’t help looking a little guilty. He said something under his breath that she was glad she couldn’t hear clearly and started for the house.
Clancey relaxed and tried not to smile as she followed him across the leaf-strewn lawn. It would be all right now.
The customers she’d left inside Small World seemed to have taken the sudden dusk as a challenge. One of them had chosen a collector’s doll, the other had managed to find a book. Without thinking, Clancey flipped the button to turn on the cash register to ring up theft purchases. There was, of course, no response from the machine, and she scrambled for a pen and a receipt book.
Rowan returned from the basement just in time to witness her confusion. “You might want to turn on a light,” he suggested, tongue in cheek, “so you won’t make mistakes in addition.”
She glared at him. He dropped gracefully to the floor beside the misbehaving outlet and began to whistle softly. There wasn’t a great deal of space behind the small counter to begin with, and one very solid male sitting cross-legged at her feet certainly didn’t help the situation. The tuneless whistle was the final straw.
“You’re the human calculator,” Clancey snapped. “What’s the sales tax on a hundred and thirty-nine dollars?”
Rowan stopped whistling long enough to tell her. Before she had the figure written down he’d interrupted himself again, just long enough to give her the total bill. “Can you handle making change,” he asked politely, “or shall I tell you what that is, as well?”
She would have liked to kick him in the kneecap and then protest innocently that her foot had slipped in the confined quarters. But she restrained herself. “I can handle it just fine, thanks — if I can get the damned cash drawer open.”
She’d never had to use the manual override before, and she congratulated herself for even remembering it existed. She was certain Rowan would have taken great pleasure in reminding her.
Thank heaven for a slow day, she was thinking as the two women departed, change and packages in hand. She settled herself on the high stool to watch as Rowan unscrewed the outlet. It wasn’t that there was nothing else she could be doing, but the way his body was wedged against the counter, there was no way to get past him short of climbing over the cash register.
“Here’s the problem,” he said finally. “The outlet shorted out and sizzled even before the circuit breaker popped. Good thing you weren’t standing in water when it happened.”
He handed her the outlet. Even Clancey’s inexperienced eyes could see the scorch marks. “Great,” she muttered, holding it warily. “What do you expect me to do with this?”
“Throw it away. That’s all it’s good for.” He tugged the connecting wires out into the open and bent them at sharp angles so the bare ends were well away from each other.
“Isn’t that dangerous, leaving wires hanging loose like that?” Clancey asked.
“Not when the power is shut off.”
“You’re planning to leave it off? But I can’t work without electricity.”
“Obviously. The outlet will have to be replaced.”
“Oh,” she
said with relief. “And you don’t carry one around with you, is that it?”
“Not generally. Well, I’m going back to my pruning.”
“You can’t mean you expect me to take care of this? Rowan, dammit—” Then she remembered she’d made a promise and hadn’t yet kept it. Was that what he was waiting for? She scrambled through the papers in the cabinet under the cash register, found the lease and scrawled her name along the proper line without allowing herself to think it over any further. In any case, additional time to think wouldn’t change anything, because she didn’t have any options left. “There. I’ve signed.” She thrust the paper at him. “That means repairs are up to you, inside and out. It’s right there in section seven.”
He sighed and took the paper out of her hand. “I was sort of afraid you’d do that.”
Clancey blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I was beginning to look at the advantages of letting you stay.”
She opened her mouth, but shock had robbed her of her voice. Before she found it again, he’d gone on.
“If you do manage to burn the place down, it’s insured,” he mused. “And if you don’t — well, perhaps I could learn something from Leonard Schultz. Just pocket the lease payments, stop paying for taxes and upkeep, and let somebody else get the house, and the frustration, in three years the same way I did.”
Clancey laughed. “You’re no slum lord.” She couldn’t have explained why, but something about the way he had said those things convinced her that there wasn’t a fragment of truth in any of them. Hank was wrong, she realized, and was letting his dislike of Rowan interfere with his judgment. “You couldn’t just let the house sit here and rot. You have too much of a conscience.”
Rowan sighed. “You’re probably right. It would keep me awake nights if I stuck some other poor devil with this place.”
So he was getting tired of it, she thought. He certainly didn’t sound like the same man who’d strolled through the rooms that first day, unfazed even by a leaking roof, and announced that it was a great house. But then, she had to admit that she herself had suffered some small shifts in attitude about the place.
She felt a tinge of horror, now, at the idea that she’d blithely planned to buy the house from Leonard Schultz someday and do the renovation herself. A little paint stripper, some bolts of wallpaper — that was all she’d thought it would take to restore long-gone elegance. She hadn’t given a thought to unromantic projects such as ceilings and electrical wiring and plumbing. No doubt the hot-water pipes would burst any day now, and with the mushroom factor in full force, who knew where that might end?
But Rowan was no novice when it came to old houses. He would have realized the amount of labor a renovation entailed. This dispirited attitude of his must be only temporary, the result of unpleasant surprises coming one after another. And it was no wonder he felt that way, really. If he’d been able to plunge into work right away, while the project was new and his enthusiasm was fresh, things like this wouldn’t have bothered him at all. She’d have bet on it.
She told herself not to feel guilty about Rowan’s frustrations, because it hadn’t been her fault. Besides, now that she’d agreed to let him start to work inside as well as out, that enthusiasm of his would return with a burst. She was certain of that. She might wake up tomorrow morning to the sound of sledgehammers knocking out walls.
She looked at the scorched outlet box in her hand. “It’s almost a relief, really,” she said. “Maybe it’s just that Halloween is only a few days off, but I’m beginning to wonder if the place is haunted.”
Rowan snapped his fingers. “That’s what it must be. Leonard put a hex on it.” He pushed himself to his feet and groaned as he flexed the knee that had been cramped against the wall.
“Rowan,” she began as he headed toward the front door.
He turned, brows raised.
She was leaning on the counter, arms folded on the glass top. “You will let me know before you start doing anything major, won’t you? I mean, I’d hate to come downstairs some morning desperate for coffee and find out you’d torn out the whole kitchen.”
He smiled, not the mischievous grin, but the warm and devastating smile that could lighten up a room all by itself. “Don’t worry about it,” he murmured. His fingertips flicked across her cheek and settled warmly under her chin.
Clancey could feel her heartbeat quicken, and she was relatively sure he was aware of it, too, even before his mouth brushed hers. It was a soft, mobile kiss, over almost before it began — at least, the actual contact was quickly broken, though Clancey suspected the aftereffects might persist for some time to come.
“You’re a dear, Clancey Kincade,” he murmured. “Where did you get that name, anyway?”
“It was my mother’s maiden name,” she managed to answer, through the electric ripples that seemed to be chasing each other around her body. “She always wanted a child named Clancey, and I came along first, so I got the honors. When my brother was born two years later, they named him Will. Not fair, was it?”
He smiled slowly. His fingertips began to move gently against the soft skin of her throat. “You’d rather have been named Will? Actually, I’d say it was a good thing you turned out to be a girl.”
Now what kind of an answer was she supposed to make to that? She managed to croak, “Oh?”
The mischievous twinkle sprang into his eyes. “It was especially fortunate for Will. A boy called Clancey would have had a fight a week, living up to his name.”
He was out the door, still smiling, before she could do more than clench her fist and shake it at him.
As she set about straightening merchandise on the shelves, Clancey found herself thinking that while it would be a nuisance to live in the midst of chaos for the next few weeks, it might actually be fun, too. If she couldn’t keep the house herself — and she’d finally reconciled herself to that fact — then at least she’d be able to see it beginning to take shape. She couldn’t help but wonder exactly what Rowan’s vision for it was, and this would be her only chance to find out.
And if the work on the house meant she’d be seeing a great deal more of Rowan — well, she could manage to live with that, too.
******
Clancey was as interested in art and theater and civic projects as anyone, but she had to admit that she wasn’t enjoying the fund-raising banquet. Too many long hours and restless nights, topped off by a heavy meal and forced inactivity, had left her fighting a battle to keep her eyes open by the time the main speaker took the microphone.
She should have broken her date with Hank and taken Rowan up on the invitation he’d made when he came back from the hardware store with the new outlet. Chinese food, followed by a stroll to the ice-cream shop and a fast-paced game of gin rummy, might not have been the most glamorous program possible for a Saturday night, but it would have been far more to her liking than a dry ceremony honoring people she’d never met for accomplishments she didn’t know anything about.
At least with gin rummy she would have been able to choose a comfortable chair.
Clancey told herself firmly that she shouldn’t complain. So what if it was a less-than-exciting evening? It was for a good cause.
But as the speaker droned on, she couldn’t help thinking that a different sort of companion would have helped matters. Someone to share a laugh with at the speaker’s occasional light remark. Someone who’d at least glance at her once in a while and smile, to acknowledge that her presence was important to him.
She let her eyelids drift shut, and allowed her imagination to roam.
Someone who would hold her hand unobtrusively under the edge of the table, or put a casual arm across the back of her chair. Someone with dark hair and deep blue eyes, who she was certain would look wonderful in the severe black of evening clothes.
Someone like Rowan.
Her eyes snapped open just as the speaker’s voice soared to a conclusion, but it took a moment for her to realize that ev
eryone around her was applauding.
Someone like Rowan....
Clancey bit her lip and joined politely in the ovation.
“Dynamite speaker,” Hank said in her ear.
Clancey nodded. She’d known that was what Hank would say. When he liked a speaker, the speech was dynamite, when he didn’t, it was a loser.
That’s not fair, Clancey told herself. She’d been seeing Hank for a year, so of course she’d learned to predict his actions, and even his words sometimes. She’d met Rowan only weeks ago. He might be just as predictable, once she got to know him.
No. She shook her head ruefully. If there was one quality Rowan McKenna absolutely did not possess, it was predictability. Of that much she was certain. She’d often been annoyed with him, if not actually infuriated, but she’d never suffered a twinge of boredom in his presence.
When Hank took her home, Clancey invited him in for coffee, but was almost relieved when he refused. She was, however, surprised by his reasons.
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