Her Man Upstairs. Dixie Browning
else I need for a small kitchen.” She could mention the plumbing and wiring later. She didn’t want to scare him off until she had him on the hook. She was rapidly running out of time. If it didn’t happen with this one, she might not make the deadline, in which case she might as well have a humongous yard sale, sell off her remaining stock and then look for a job in an area where there weren’t any. Either that or pull up stakes and move, which wasn’t an option. The closest thing to roots she had was this house. Beau had tried to force her to sell it, but she’d held out. God knows, it was about the only thing of hers he hadn’t forced her to sell. The paintings and antiques he’d inherited from his own family had been sold off soon after they’d married, along with the few nice things she’d been able to accumulate.
Damn his lying, thieving hide. She hoped wherever he was now, he was married to some bimbo who would take him for every cent he had.
Marty laid a Tole tray with two mugs, sugar, half-and-half and a plate of biscotti. As a bribe, it wasn’t much, but at the moment it was the best she could do.
“Of course, I guess I could always get a camp stove and a dorm refrigerator,” she said as she joined him in the living room. “It’s not like I did a lot of entertaining.”
No comment. Was that a good sign or a bad sign? At least he hadn’t walked out after seeing her drawings. The stick figures might have been overkill. Occasionally in moments of desperation she got carried away.
“I guess we need to discuss money,” she said, searching his face for a clue. If knocking out a wall or two and putting in a kitchen on the second floor was going to cost too much, she might have to—
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