Her Man Upstairs

by Dixie Browning

Might have to do what? Open her bookstore in the garage? It wasn’t even insulated, much less heated.

  So then what, rob a bank? Get a loan? She hated debt with a vengeance, having been in it for one reason or another most of her adult life.

  He’d taken off his leather bomber jacket. Good sign or not?

  Who knows. The Sphinx was a chatterbox compared to Cole Stevens. He wore a faded blue oxford-cloth dress shirt with frayed collar, and turned back his cuffs to reveal a pair of bronzed, muscular forearms lightly furred with dark, wiry hair. She couldn’t help but notice his hands, but then, she always noticed a man’s hands. They said almost as much about him as his shoes. Shoes were something she had noticed ever since hearing her friend Daisy, who was a geriatric nurse, talk about this doctor who wore neat three-piece suits and silk ties, but whose nails were dirty and whose shoes were always in need of a polish. It turned out that for years he’d been killing off his elderly patients.

  Okay, so his carpenter’s deck shoes weren’t the kind you polished. They were old, but obviously top-of-the-line. He had nice hands with clean nails, and she liked the way he handled her drawing pad, treating it as though the drawings had real value.

  How would those hands feel on a woman’s body? It had been so long….

  Breathe through your mouth, idiot, your brain’s obviously starved for oxygen!

  She waited for him to speak—to say either “This looks doable,” or “No thanks, I’ll pass.” The faded blue of his shirt made his skin look tan, which made his hair look even lighter on top and darker underneath. She was almost positive the tan was real and not the product of a bottle. Sasha, who was a hair person, could tell in a minute, but Marty didn’t want Sasha to get even a glimpse of this guy. Her redheaded friend was a Pied Piper where men were concerned, and Marty intended to keep this one around for as long as it took.

  For as long as it took for what?

  To finish the job on schedule, fool!

  “I didn’t know if you took anything in your coffee,” she said when he finally glanced up.

  Despite a lap full of drawings, he’d made an effort to rise when she’d come in. She’d shaken her head, indicating that he should sit. Obediently, he’d sat, knees spread apart so that what Sasha called his “package” was evident.

  You are not having a hot flash! You’re nowhere near ready for menopause!

  “Black’s fine,” he said, and took a sip of coffee.

  “I could open another window. The rain’s let up,” she said. The odor inside was still pretty awful.

  “No need,” he said, and went on studying her drawings.

  Hopefully he hadn’t noticed her burning cheeks. “The stick figures are silly, I know,” she said in a rush. “I was just doodling. Sort of—you know, illustrating me washing dishes, leaning over to use the under-the-counter fridge. Anything you don’t understand, I can explain.” That is, she could if she could manage to get her brain back online.

  “They’re clear enough. Thing is,” he said, “this right here is a weight-bearing wall. I’ll need to leave at least three feet of it, but then I can open your entryway right here and shift this wall down to here.”

  She forced her eyes to focus on the area he was indicating instead of his pointer finger. Then, because they needed to share the same vantage point if they were to discuss her drawings, Marty left her platform rocker and settled onto the sofa beside him.

  Even without the bomber jacket he smelled sort of leathery with intriguing overtones. Salt water, sunshine and one of those subtle aftershave lotions that were babe magnets.

  “Mmm, what was that?”

  “I said the space can be better utilized if you don’t mind using part of the closet for your range and oven. Stacking units would fit.”

  Marty realized their shoulders were touching—in fact, she was leaning against him. She sat up straight, but as he outweighed her by at least fifty pounds, she had to struggle to overcome the slope of the cushion.

  Damn sofa. She’d never liked the thing, anyway. Sasha had bought it at a huge discount for a customer who also hadn’t liked it, so she’d let Marty have it at cost.

  “Well,” she said brightly, wriggling her butt away from his until she could hang on to the padded arm. “Uh, there are a couple more things we need to talk about. That is, if you’re still interested in taking the job.”

  Cole flexed his shoulders and tried not to breathe too deeply. Yeah, he was still interested in taking on the job. Construction jobs were plentiful all up and down the nearby Outer Banks, but then, Muddy Landing was undergoing a small building boom as more and more Virginians moved south of the border. And while wages might be higher on the Banks, working conditions, especially in January, could be a lot worse. Climbing all over a three-story building some fifty or more feet above ground level, with a howling wind threatening to blow him out into the Atlantic? No, thanks. If he had to relearn the building trade after more than a decade in management, he’d sooner start out in a slightly more protected environment, even if his employer did happen to be a bit of a flake.

  “The first man who answered my ad told me the job was a boondoggle. I’m not exactly sure what he meant. Actually, I’m not even sure what a boondoggle is, and words are my business—in a manner of speaking. Something to do with the government, I guess.”

  Cole had to smile—something he hadn’t done too much of in the recent past. “I think it’s a general description of most bureaucracies. You mentioned time constraints?” He reached for another biscotti—his third. The things were meant for dunking, but he figured he didn’t know her well enough for dunking, so he bit off a chunk and tried to catch the crumbs in the palm of his hand.

  “Right. There’s this deadline,” she said earnestly. “New zoning laws go into effect the middle of March, and unless I’m in business before then, I won’t be grandfathered. That means—”

  “I know what it means.”

  “Yes, well—of course you do. See, there are already several businesses in the neighborhood, but they won’t allow any new ones to open after the fifteenth.”

  She hooked her bare toes on the edge of the coffee table, then dropped them to the floor again. She kept rubbing her thumb and forefinger together like a crapshooter calling up his mojo. Her eyes darted to the clock, and she bit her lip.

  “Ms. Owens, are you sure this is what you want to do? Tear up your house so you can open—what, a bookstore?”

  “I have to,” she said simply. Then, with another glance at the clock, she quickly explained about Marty’s New and Used. “Up until last fall I rented a two-room cinder-block building that used to be a garage and a bait-and-tackle shop and some other things. Anyway, the rent was cheap enough and the location was okay, I guess, but the income still couldn’t keep up with the overhead. Some days I didn’t even sell a single book.” She gave up rubbing her fingers and folded her hands together, resting them on her knees. Her toes were back on the coffee table. “So I thought if I reopened here, I’d at least save the rent because I own my house. It’s all paid off. My first husband inherited it from his mama.”

  Whoa. Her first husband? He was nowhere near ready to share personal histories.

  The third time he caught her looking at the clock he asked her if she had a problem.

  “Not really, but there’s this dog I walk twice a day. I’m running late today because I was waiting for—”

  She hesitated, and he filled in the blanks. She’d been waiting for him to show up.

  “For the rain to stop,” she finished.

  The rain had stopped. A few chinks of salmon-pink sunset broke through the dark clouds.

  Cole said, “Then why don’t I leave you to it? I need to run a few errands if I’m going to stick around the area.”

  She looked so hopeful, he could have kicked himself. They hadn’t even reached a concrete agreement yet.

  “Are you? Going to stick around, I mean? Like I said, if things don’t work out just right, I’m stuck with a
garage full of bookshelves and a spare room filled with thousands of used paperbacks.”

  “Two things we still need to talk about—your deadline and my wages.”

  Looking entirely too hopeful, she said, “When can you give me an estimate?”

  If he didn’t watch it, Cole told himself, those big gray eyes of hers were going to influence his decision. That was no way to start rebuilding a career. “How about we both think it over tonight and I come back first thing in the morning with an estimate. If we reach an agreement, I can start right away. I should be able to bring it in on schedule, depending on how much time you need after the job’s completed.”

  They both stood. Her eyes and her ivory complexion and delicate features called to mind the word fragile, yet he had a feeling she was nowhere near as fragile as she looked.

  She said, “Come for breakfast. You’re not organic or vegan or anything like that, are you?”

  “Methodist, but sort of lapsed,” he replied gravely, and heard a gurgle of laughter that invited a like response. He managed to hold it to a brief smile.

  They agreed on a time and she saw him to the door and said she’d see him in the morning. It sounded more like a question than a statement, but he didn’t reply. He had some serious thinking to do before he made a commitment. One thing for certain—he was nowhere near ready for retirement. As to what he was going to do with the rest of his life and where he was going to do it, that was still up for grabs.

  Standing in the doorway, Marty watched as the most intriguing man she’d met in years adjusted his steps to her flagstones. She sighed. What a strikingly attractive man—and yet he wasn’t really handsome. It was something else. Something in the way he carried himself, the way he…

  Maybe Sasha was right and she was seriously deficient when it came to vitamin S.

  Mutt was all over her the minute she opened his gate at the kennel. His owners, the Hallets, who lived three streets over in the development that had grown up around Alan’s mother’s old house back in the seventies, were on a two-week cruise out of Norfolk. Marty was being paid to pick Mutt up twice a day for a run, as the space provided by the boarding kennel hardly sufficed for a big, shaggy clown that looked as if he might be part St. Bernard, part Clydesdale.

  “Whoa, get off my foot, you big ox.” She managed to snap on his choke collar while he did his best to trip her up. He’d started barking the minute he saw her, and didn’t let up until she opened the front door. Then he nearly pulled her off her feet trying to get outside.

  She gave him a full half hour because that was what she’d agreed to do. Not a minute less, but not a minute more this time because she had to have him back by six when the kennel closed for the day. If she missed the deadline she’d have no choice but to take the crazy dog home with her, and that would be disastrous.

  There had to be an easier way to earn money. If she were a diver she could drive to Manteo to the aquarium every day and scrub the alligators or maybe floss the sharks’ teeth. Unfortunately, her marketable skills weren’t all that impressive in a town where, other than flipping hamburgers, jobs were practically handed down from father to son. None of Muddy Landing’s farming, fishing and hunting applied to her.

  Maybe she and Sasha could start charging for their matchmaking services. Practically everyone in town knew what they were up to, anyway. It was no big secret; they’d been at it too long. They’d been good at it, too—Daisy, Sasha and Marty, with occasional input from Faylene, the housekeeper they’d all shared for years until Marty had gone out of business and Daisy had unexpectedly fallen in love with a good-looking guy who’d come east in search of his roots. A nurse and easily the most sensible of the trio, Daisy had fallen head over heels and ended up marrying Kell and moving to Oklahoma.

  Marty and her friends had been good at it, though—all the planning and finagling it took to bring two people together. Three of their most recent matches had actually ended in marriage and two more couples were still involved.

  Of course, there’d been a few spectacular failures, too, but it had been great fun. Mostly they’d been forgiven their blunders.

  But Sasha was up to her ears in her latest decorating project, so matchmaking was taking a time-out. “And that just leaves me,” Marty panted as she struggled to hang on to the end of the leash. She was wearing out her last pair of cross-trainers trying to keep up with Super Mutt. “Slow down, will you? Let me catch my breath!”

  If she hurried, she might get home before he left for the day.

  Right. Looking like she’d just finished a five-mile run. That would really impress the heck out of Cole, wouldn’t it?

  By the time Cole got back to the small marina with a take-out supper consisting of barbecue, fries, hush puppies and slaw, the last vestige of daylight had faded. And second thoughts were stacking up fast. Not about the work itself, although it had been a while since he’d done any actual construction work. That wasn’t what had him worried.

  As he stepped aboard his aged thirty-one-foot cabin cruiser, he waved to Bob Ed, who was outside sorting through a stack of decoys under the mercury-vapor security light.

  The friendly guide called across the intervening space, “You see her?”

  “I saw her.”

  “Ya gonna do it?”

  “We’re still negotiating,” Cole called back.

  Nodding, Bob Ed went back to checking out his canvasbacks. He was a man of few words. Which was just as well, Cole thought, amused, as Bob Ed’s better half appeared to be a woman of many. Cole had met her only briefly, but she’d made an indelible impression.

  What bothered him, Cole admitted to himself once he was inside, the lights on and his small space heater thawing out the damp cold, was the Owens woman. Or rather, his reaction to her. Before meeting her he would have sworn he was permanently immunized. Trouble was, Marty Owens and Paula Weyrich Stevens, his high-maintenance ex-wife, were two different species. If Paula had ever lifted a hand to do anything more strenuous than polish her nails, he’d missed it. Even for that she usually depended on a manicurist. Paula’s idea of a perfect day started at noon with a three-daiquiri lunch at the club, followed by a shopping marathon, followed by dinner out with whatever poor sucker she could reel in to escort her while her poor slob of a husband worked late. Actually, Cole had been consumed those late nights with digging into the mess at Weyrich, Inc.

  Marty Owens, on the other hand, varnished bookshelves in her spare time and tried to cover the smell by setting a pan of cinnamon on fire. She walked a friend’s dog—at least, Cole assumed she did it for a friend. If she was hard up enough to do it for money, she probably couldn’t afford the remodeling job she wanted done.

  On the other hand, if she didn’t get it done, what would happen to her business? Reading between the lines, he could only conclude that she was pretty close to the edge. And, like a certain ex-builder he could name, looking for the best way to revive a career that had collapsed through no fault of her own.

  Not that he could swear to that last, but from what he’d seen so far, Ms. Owens was industrious, intelligent and not afraid to get her hands dirty. The fact that she was also sexy without making a big deal out of it wasn’t a factor in any decision he might make. No way.

  Definitely not.

  As for the demise of his own career, Cole freely accepted the blame. All he’d had to do was turn a blind eye to what he’d uncovered—the good-old-boy bidding system, the under-the-table payoffs, the shoddy workmanship that had eventually resulted in three deaths and a number of injuries when the second floor of a parking garage collapsed due to insufficient reinforcement.

  Oh, yeah, he’d blown the whistle on Joshua Weyrich, but by that time his marriage to Paula was washed up anyway. Looking back, about the only thing he and Paula had ever had in common was a serious case of raging hormones. Once that had died a natural death, there’d been nothing left to sustain a relationship. The only reason they’d stayed together as long as they had was that breaking u
p required more time and energy than either of them was willing to spend.

  But once he’d blown the whistle on her father, détente had ended. He had gladly ceded to Paula the showy house they’d been given as a wedding present, plus all furnishings, including the baby grand piano she didn’t play, the art collection she never bothered to look at and a bunch of custom-made furniture designed not for comfort but to impress.

  With the help of a good lawyer, Cole had managed to keep his boat, his old Guild guitar, his fishing gear and roughly half his investments—which was all he really needed. He considered himself damn lucky to walk away with that much.

  Now he looked around for a place to set his supper. The fold-down table was covered with fishing tackle. He made room for the take-out plate and a cold beer, shucked off his shoes and slid onto the bench. To say his living quarters were compact was putting it generously, but then, he didn’t need much space. The wet slip, utilities included, cost a lot less than he’d been paying at his old place on the Chesapeake Bay.

  He turned on the twelve-inch TV and caught up on the news while he ate. When the talking heads turned to the latest celebrity trial, Cole’s thoughts drifted back to the woman he’d just met. After hearing about the job prospect from Bob Ed and his lady, Ms. Beasley—mostly from the lady—he hadn’t known what to expect. Julia Roberts with big gray eyes and a brown squirrel’s nest dripping down her back didn’t fit the image he’d conjured up when he’d spoken with her briefly on the phone.

  When she’d asked to see his references, he’d mentioned Bob Ed.

  “Any reason why I should trust your word?” she’d asked.

  The answer, of course, was that she shouldn’t—but if she didn’t know it, he wasn’t about to tell her. If he’d learned one thing from the mess he’d been involved in over the past eighteen months, it was to listen to his instincts.

  And right now his internal weather vane was telling him there was more at stake here than just a chance to see if he could still do the work. Without bothering to think further, he grabbed a paper napkin and started listing the tools he’d need to buy.