“Nah,” I say, trying to stay nonchalant, and hoping it’ll help her recover more quickly from whatever emotion is playing out on her pretty face. “I have a policy of never firing people who’ve spit coffee on me. Too erratic. You never know what they’ll do.”
The brittle vulnerability on her face clears like clouds after a storm, and her smile is a sunrise breaking through. She stands up quickly, grabs her coat, and roots around in her bag. She pulls out her purse, opens it, and throws down exactly the same amount of money I already left on the table. It’s easily more than double what our lunch cost, and I can’t help a smile creeping onto my face at just how stubborn she is. I turn around quickly and head outside to avoid her seeing it.
“Thank God for that,” she says, tugging her coat closed and doing up her buttons as she catches up to me. “I don’t think I could have taken being fired twice in one day.”
I stop dead, and she must have still been distracted by her buttons because she walks right into my back. I have to spin around quickly and grab her arms to stop her from falling.
I did have a question, but as I stand there looking down at her, my hands planted on her upper arms, it completely slips my mind.
Maybe, I think, as I watch her slowly blink up at me, maybe the walls could be just a little lower. I glance down at her lips, slightly ajar and pursed in a look of surprise, and wonder if maybe I might be able to add a gate, and open it a little every now and then so she could come inside. I take a breath, and I could swear I’m about to say something foolish, when the moment is suddenly broken by the sound of a loud banging on the diner window.
Sam is standing inside, holding up Allie’s Care Bear hat, mouthing “You forgot this!”
My breath comes out as a nervous laugh instead, joining hers, and tinkles all around us like the fragile shards of our almost-kiss.
As she goes inside to retrieve it, I take a moment to clear my head. Stupid. It was a stupid, reckless moment. I avoid relationships at the best of times. Allie is beautiful, smart, and funny… and she has two young children to care for. The least I can do is keep my distance and avoid complicating her life even more.
“So you got fired from the bar, I presume?” I ask when she’s back. I speak casually, a little more stiffly than before, but she seems relieved by it. I shove my hands in my pockets and keep a couple of steps away from her as we head around the corner to the parking lot.
“Yup!” she says, matter-of-factly. “Jimmy called me this morning before I started in the diner. JJ—that’s his son—is back in town and he needs a job.” She shrugs. “That’s just how things work around here, you know?”
I don’t know, but I nod anyway, fishing the key out of my pocket and hitting the button to unlock the car. It’s pristine inside, and still has that new-car smell that somehow lingers in rentals despite the 200,000 miles a year they run.
“I don’t mind,” she says, pulling on her belt. “JJ is a nice guy. And I was getting pretty tired between all the shifts.”
I feel a snake of guilt slither up behind my sternum. I had no way of knowing she was working three jobs so she could support her two children. I guess I just assumed she was saving up for some big vacation, or a house, or something. I feel bad for her, but I get the distinct impression she’d hate that. So I keep my face in check, and simply nod an acknowledgment
Even so, the knowledge that she’s now even more dependent on what she earns through HelpForHire cements my resolve to stick around. At least until Christmas. I can find things for her to do, even if I have to invent them.
“You’ll have to tell me where to go,” I say, pulling out of the lot. “Where first?”
“Left,” she says. “And then a right.”
Before I even get onto the road she’s fiddling with the radio. It never occurs to me to change the radio when I pick up a rental; if there’s nothing I like on the stations that came with the car, I just switch to my phone instead. But Allie looks like she’s on a mission, sending the radio crackling through static until it picks up on a station, then crinkling her nose adorably before moving on. There’s a surprising selection considering where we are.
She stops when she hears a couple of notes of Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer and gives a little gasp, turning slowly towards me as her eyes widen and her mouth opens with mock-exaggerated delight.
“Are you a fan?”
“TOMMY USED TO WORK ON THE DOOOOCKS!” she says, by way of response.
“Isn’t this from like two decades before you were born?”
“UNION’S BEEN ON STRIKE, HE’S DOWN ON HIS LUCK, IT’S TOUGH… SO TOOOOUUUGH!” she ignores me.
We hit a long straight, and when I glance over again she’s playing air guitar along with the instrumental section. I can’t help but laugh, and she grins back at me, breaking my heart open a crack.
“WOOOOOAH WE’RE HALFWAY THERE!” I shout-sing when Bon Jovi kicks back in. Allie shoots me an over-the-top wide-eyed look of surprise, then curls her mouth downwards and nods a few times as if to say “not bad, newbie, not bad.” We sing our way down the road until she finally directs me through an open double gate to a house with a big yard and a side-alley.
“Kane Warren,” Allie says, her face flushed from singing as Bon Jovi’s voice fades away. “Electrician. He’ll quote you double what he wants so make sure you haggle.”
I grin, feeling lighter than I have in a long time, and jump out of the car with her.
Every tradesman we meet for the rest of the day over-quotes, and Allie’s information about how much they tend to over-quote is invaluable. As is her presence. It couldn’t be clearer that every single person we visit is delighted to see her, whether it’s the tradespeople or their spouses, and her being there puts us on a more equal footing than if I’d done this alone. All of them are wary of being taken for a ride by the out-of-town city boy.
By dinner time, I have quotes and provisional starting dates for every job I need, except one.
“Shame about Caleb,” says Allie from the passenger seat.
Caleb is the plumber. He’s out of town visiting his sick mother and his wife has no clue when he’ll be back.
“Yeah,” I say, without really meaning it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a shame his mother is sick. But I feel a little pleased about the delay. It’s an excuse to stick around longer.
I pull up back where we started, just up the street from the diner. Allie’s car is parked opposite us on the other side of the road.
“Okay,” she says, gathering up her stuff. It’s amazing how she seems to have turned the passenger side of the car into a nest in only a few hours, using only the things she already had in her bag. There’s lip balm on the dash, a half pack of gum in the door, a notepad on the floor beside her feet, a half-empty bottle of water in the cup holder... I’m surprised she didn’t have a couple of throw pillows in there. She shoves it all back into her bag and pushes the door open. “See you Friday?”
“See you Friday,” I say, barely looking at her.
I don’t want her to go. I want her to come back to the mansion with me. I want her to turn half of my couch into her nest, the same way she did with the car. I want half of my bed to be hers.
“Great,” she says. “I’ll let you know if Caleb calls.”
“Au revoir!” I smirk.
She closes the door, pokes her tongue out at me through the window, and waves. The wide grin is still on my face when I pull into the mansion ten minutes later.
Chapter 7
Allie
I finish my Friday morning shift at the diner just in time to pick up Emma from preschool and drop her off with Sadie. Just like every day since I got the job at the mansion, she’ll collect Lottie from school and look after them until I get off this evening.
Once I’ve waved them off I sit in my car looking through my playlist to decide what to listen to on the drive. Just as I settle on Lenka’s Everything at Once, an email notification pops up from HelpForHire.
&nb
sp; Allie,
Could you grab a wrench at the hardware store on your way over? Will pay you for it when you get here.
Thanks,
G
I stare at it for a while, particularly at the way he’s signed off. “G.” It’s definitely more casual than the “G. Blair” that left me expecting a middle-aged woman, right? And “Thanks” instead of the more formal “Regards”. Not to mention that I seem to have graduated from “Ms. Brooks” to just “Allie.” Maybe I wasn’t hallucinating when I imagined he was about to kiss me outside the diner the other day.
I look up, right into the mirror on the driver’s side visor. There’s a puzzled frown plastered across my face, and it suddenly strikes me that I’m being ridiculous. I roll my eyes, quickly chastise myself for overanalyzing every part of the message, and put the car into drive.
I arrive at the mansion just after 1 pm, wrench in hand, and let myself in. Greyson is in the kitchen. He’s looking casual in jeans, sneakers, and a long-sleeved t-shirt, and he’s finishing off a sandwich with his earpods in, watching some sort of video on his laptop.
I can barely take my eyes off the way the white cotton-blend clings to his rippling chest. The bulky sweaters and coats have been hiding multitudes. He’s broader and more defined than I’d realized, and it’s doing things to me.
“Oh, hey,” he says, noticing me. He pulls out a pod and his lips even lift into a half-smile.
“Hey,” I say, lifting up the wrench. “Here ya go.”
I close the space between us and set the wrench down on the counter, then nod towards the laptop.
“What’s that?”
“Plumber,” he says, around a mouthful of half-masticated sandwich, and points at the screen. He swallows and turns the laptop to face me a little more, and changes a setting so the sound comes through for me to hear.
“Okaaay,” I say, glancing from the screen to Greyson and back again.
“Well,” he says. “Caleb is out of town. I have a tap out back that needs fixing. I figured… how hard can it be?”
I lift both my brows at him. He really doesn’t seem the type to just... have a go at things. But there’s something a bit different about him today. He seems a bit more… open.
“Well...” I say, carefully, watching him pick up the wrench and weigh it in his hand like he’s held one before. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t. “It could be pretty hard, considering Caleb apprenticed with his dad for about ten years before he took over the busin—”
“Psh!” he cuts me off. He’s so upbeat I’m stunned into silence. He has an energy about him that I haven’t seen before, and it suits him. “If you’re that concerned, you can help me.”
“Me,” I say. I meant it as a question but it comes out as a sort of incredulous, deadpan statement.
“You,” he says, nodding. “I just need to finish the video and then we’ll head out and have a go at it.”
I look at him skeptically but he just turns back to the screen, so I set my bag down and go stand beside him. I guess “small repairs” was part of the job description. No sooner have I started watching the video than the on-screen plumber turns a tap and water comes gushing out. I’ve apparently missed all the actual instructions. This does little to quell my skepticism.
“Which tap is it?” I ask.
“It’s way down at the end of the yard,” he says, standing. “Out back, beside the old stone shed.”
I’ve never noticed it, so I shrug-nod. “All right. Are you done with your lunch?”
On the table, beside his laptop, I notice that his notepad is covered in coffee rings. Coffee is beginning to feel like the theme of our relationship, between the spilling coffee and the spitting coffee and coffee rings on books. Maybe I should just stop drinking coffee around him. It’s not so necessary anymore, anyway; my coffee consumption has dropped by half since Jimmy fired me.
Greyson wipes his hands down on his pants, grabs up the wrench and a toolbox that’s so rusted it looks designer, and heads outside. I follow behind him. I’m still pretty skeptical about this whole plan, but either way, I have a feeling that it’s going to be an interesting afternoon.
“How are the girls?” he asks, as we tromp across the uneven grass.
“Uh,” I say, thrown off by the question. “They’re good. I had a full day off yesterday so we made forts when they were done with school and watched dinosaurs.”
“Dinosaurs, huh?” he asks. I’m surprised by how conversational he is. And intrigued. What’s changed?
“Yeah, they love dinosaurs.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” he smiles, coming to a halt beside the tap.
“I guess so,” I say. I hesitate before I go on. Smalltalk usually comes easily to me having grown up in Sunrise Valley, but I always seem to second-guess myself around Greyson. “Do you have kids?”
“Me?” he asks, looking up at me from where he’s crouched down, riffling through the toolbox. He shakes his head. “Nope. But my brother has two. A girl and a boy. Four and seven.”
“Oh!” I say, eased somewhat by his amiable expression. “Emma and Lottie and three and six. Do you see them much?”
He nods. “My brother is my business partner and he lives just down the street from me. I usually go over there for dinner a couple of times a week.”
“You must be missing them,” I say, trying to imagine being away from Eddie and Sadie for any length of time. I’ve been out on my own before, but now, having the girls, family feels so much more important.
He pauses and looks up again, this time with a screwdriver in hand. He tilts his head thoughtfully and then nods.
“Yes,” he acknowledges, as though he hasn’t really thought about it until now. “Though not as much as I’d have expected to. I’ll see them for Thanksgiving. And they’re planning a visit next month.”
“Here?” I ask, more quickly than I intended.
“Yes.”
“You’ll still be here next month?”
He looks back down at the tools, and there’s a pause before he answers.
“Until Christmas at least,” he says. “Though I may have to head back to the city for the occasional meeting.”
“But not to see your wife?” I ask, and immediately bite my lower lip. He looks up again, studies me, then gets to his feet and turns toward the tap. I swear I see a hint of a smile creep onto his face as he turns.
“Not to see my wife,” he says. “Nor my non-existent girlfriend. Pass me that cloth there, please.”
I feel lighter, all of a sudden, and I dutifully lean over to the toolbox and grab out the cloth that’s sitting on top, handing it over.
“So you’re in marketing and your brother is your business partner,” I say, watching him wipe around the old tap with the cloth, clearing away the mud and slimy old leaves that have clung to it. “So you’re a city CEO?” I ask.
He snorts a quick laugh. I guess it is a bit of a smalltown-stereotype way to phrase it.
“Get you, Nancy Drew. Yes. And my brother is CTO.”
I purse my lips and give an impressed whistle, and he rolls his eyes—but he’s grinning.
After about half an hour, I’m prepared to definitively say that he didn’t pay enough attention when he was watching the video. That, or plumbing actually is “that hard.” He’s been straining and pulling at the wrench for a good twenty minutes, and the nut it’s secured around has not budged one single bit.
For my contribution, I’ve stood here watching his forearms tense and the muscles in his back bulge, and his face contort into a grimace every time he tries.
“I’ll try some grease,” he says, after the three-hundredth attempt. He’s nothing if not persistent, I’ll give him that.
While he walks over to the toolbox, I tilt my head to look at the tap. The wrench is still attached. In a moment of impulse, I brace my back against the shed, lift my right foot, and give the wrench a little nudge.
Greyson turns around and smirks when he sees what I’m doing.
“It’s no good,” he says. “It won’t budge. I tried ever—”
He cuts off when I kick the wrench again, harder this time. Not because he’s annoyed that I tried, but because it actually moved.
There’s a brief clang and a rattle, the tap shakes a bit, and the last thing I see is Greyson’s shocked face before a strong, powerful jet of clear water shoots out of a gap in the pipe and hits him square in the chest.
“FUCK!”
“OH MY GOD!” I shout, at the same time.
He jumps out of the way, much too late for it to do any good, and he’s standing there, staring at me, his hair flattened and dripping, his t-shirt clinging to his muscle-bound torso, drenched from head to toe.
I can’t help it. A roll of laughter rumbles up from my belly and out of my mouth. The tap is still spewing water, but I am absolutely weakened by laughter, doubled over, and barely capable of breathing, let alone turning it off.
“Oh, you think that’s funny, do you?” he says with a wicked grin, and starts striding towards me.
Before I realize what’s happening, Greyson is on me. He grabs around me, pulling me into him, and smushes my face into his sopping wet chest.
“No! Arrgh! Christ, you’re soaking!” I cry, still laughing as I wriggle out of his grip and immediately slip on the newly-wet mud, landing square on my backside. “Ow!”
There is a delightful sound ringing in my ears, deep and rich and beautiful, and I realize that it’s him, laughing.
He gets down on his knees and takes hold of my calves, pulling me toward him across the mud, and lays into my ribs, tickling me as I squirm and laugh and struggle to catch a breath.
“Stop!” I shout. “Mercy! Mercy! I’m sorry!”
He stops as soon as the words are out of my mouth and props himself up over me on one hand, both of us sputtering out the tail end of our laughter.
My Smalltown C.E.O. Scrooge: A Festive Romantic Comedy Page 5
