The Best Of Blaze - Six Sexy Romances. Jo Leigh
mind but this guy looked no more than late twenties maybe. He had dirty-blond hair cut neat and a close-trimmed nearly blond beard. He was looking up, concentrating on the wiring above his head. He wore jeans, neither tight nor baggy but perfectly fitted, and a red-and-navy flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, with a fitted white T-shirt underneath.
“Hey, Joey,” he said with a grin. “Good to see you again. How’s Hawaii been treating you?”
He turned his head her way and grinned at her. She knew that grin.
“Chris?” This Chris was that Chris?
“Chris? Who’s Chris? You know this guy?” Kira rasped in her ear.
She knew this guy. It was Chris, wasn’t it?
Oh, my God, it was Chris.
Chris... Chris Steffensen. Dillon’s high school best friend. The skinny, scrawny, long-haired, baggy-pants-wearing, Nirvana wannabe even a decade after Nirvana was an appropriate thing to be obsessed with at their high school... This was that Chris? That Chris she wouldn’t have trusted to screw in a lightbulb, and now he was wiring up a ceiling fan? And seemed to be doing a very good job of it.
“Did you...did you fix up this whole house?” she asked, rudely ignoring his question about Hawaii.
“Oh, yeah. I’m doing some work for Dillon and Oscar these days. Long story. You like what we did with the place?”
He grinned again, a boyish eager grin. She couldn’t see anything else in the world because that bright white toothy smile took over his face and her entire field of vision. Damn, he was pretty. When did he get so pretty? And he was taller than she remembered. He must have had a bit of a post-high-school growth spurt. Taller and broader. Those shoulders of his...well, there was only one thing to say about that.
Joey hoped Kira was still listening.
“Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
CHRIS STARED AT HER, brow furrowed.
“Joking,” she said. “I know it’s bad weather.”
“It’s Oregon weather. Should we awkwardly hug now?”
“God, yes.”
“I’m going to hang up,” Kira said, laughing into Joey’s ear. Joey ended the call and stuffed her phone into her jacket pocket.
“Did you...just hang up on somebody?” Chris asked, his eyebrow slightly arched. When did he learn how to do that?
“Yes. No. She hung up on me first. It’s okay. We’re friends. We do that a lot. Hug now?”
He jumped lightly down from his stool, and Joey stepped into his arms. He’d said “awkward” and it was but also it wasn’t. First of all, he felt good—warm and solid and strong. And second, he smelled good, like sweat and cedar. Finally, it was just Chris, after all, even if it had been nearly ten years since she’d seen him.
“God, it’s good to see you again,” he said softly, like he meant it. It was the absolute opposite of Ben’s “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Yeah, you, too.” She stepped back out of his arms before making a fool of herself by bursting into tears.
“You’re a day early. Dillon said you wouldn’t be here until tomorrow.”
“I changed my flight. Is that a problem?”
“Not a problem at all. I just meant to be out of here by then. But I’m almost done. The master was the last thing. Ceiling fan, then paint.”
“No hurry. Stay as long as you need to. All night even.” She winced. Why did she say that? “So...how are you?”
“Fine.” He sounded slightly suspicious. She didn’t blame him. She was acting slightly odd. Finding out you’d been dating a married man could do that to a girl. “You? How’s Hawaii?”
“Lovely. Lots of volcanoes.”
“You’re on a volcano right now.”
“Hawaii and Oregon have a lot in common. Volcanoes and rain. And...that’s it.”
“They’re practically twins. You look great, by the way,” Chris said.
“I’m wet.”
Chris’s eyebrow went up another notch.
“Wet from the rain,” she said hastily.
“Right. The rain. Hawaii’s been good to you.”
It was sweet that he said that, but she looked like hell and she knew it. She’d dressed in the classic Oregon uniform of Columbia jacket (red), jeans (blue), rain boots (a nondescript army green) and no umbrella. Umbrellas were for tourists, which meant her dark hair was plastered to her forehead. And she’d cried a little in the car and given herself raccoon eyes. She had naturally warm brown skin, which she’d inherited from her Mexican-American father, and a Hawaiian tan on top of it, so at least she wouldn’t appear as washed out as she felt. If she’d known Chris would be here looking as good as he did, she would have made more of an effort.
“You look fantastic. I barely recognized you with the short hair and beard. When did that happen?”
“Short hair? Um, eight years ago? The real world made me do it. The beard? Last November. Bad breakup. She dumped me for a Trail Blazer. I stopped shaving. Everyone told me I looked better with the beard so I kept it. I trimmed it, though. I had a little ZZ Top thing going on.”
“A Trail Blazer? Like one of the basketball players or the cars? Because if she dumped you for a car, that’s weird.”
“The basketball players. Apparently she had a thing for tall guys.”
“You’re tall. You’re huge.”
That eyebrow went up one more notch.
“I keep saying sexual things without meaning to,” she said. “Sorry. I’m running on very little sleep. I can’t be held responsible for what my mouth does.”
The eyebrow was as high as it could go.
“I did it again, didn’t I?” she asked.
“It’s okay, Jo.” He furrowed his brow. “Do you still go by Jo? Joey? I don’t want to call you that if you don’t. Are you Jolene now?”
“Definitely not Jolene. Everyone still calls me Jo or Joey. They better since it’s all I answer to.”
“Joey, it is. I’m almost done here, and then I’ll get out of your hair.”
“You aren’t in my hair at all. The cabin looks amazing. I can’t believe you did all this.”
“Not all of it. I had to subcontract the exterior. I can do cedar siding but it takes forever.”
“But the rest of it? The floors, the kitchen, the paint...the pumpkins?”
“Some kids were selling pumpkins at a stand by the road. I’m a sucker.”
“Were you always good at painting and flooring and advanced pumpkin carving and you just kept it a secret?”
He shrugged. “I learned a lot of it from Dad. Except the pumpkin carving. That’s self-taught.”
“You go to school for this?”
He nodded. “Yeah, trade school. Then I apprenticed for a few years. Anybody can learn to do this stuff. Just takes time.”
“Mount Hood must keep you busy. Half the cabins around here were falling down when we were kids.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. I had to turn down four other jobs to do this one for Dillon.”