Airman To The Rescue. Heatherly Bell
lived nearby and Matt had been trying to reconnect with Hunter after many years of living abroad. As far as she could tell, the reunion wasn’t going well.
She did know a little about teenagers and their anger and resistance to absentee fathers.
Matt also looked in on his father, who had retired early and lived nearby. Then there was the hellish landlord she’d been hearing rumors about lately. Matt was looking for another place to rent in the area, preferably a home where he could have his son visit every other weekend. How could she, in all good conscience, take any more time away from a man who already had far too many demands on him?
“Matt,” she said slowly, drawing out his name, and peeling his warm hands off her legs.
“Sarah,” he repeated, allowing it, but giving her a slow and devilish grin that reached into her heart and gave it a little twist.
“Forget it.” She stood up, smoothing down her jeans and taking a deep and sexually frustrated breath.
She couldn’t have Matt around every day fixing her house. A woman only had so much self-control around a man like Matt. She figured within three days of him at the house, working in a tool belt and no shirt—at least in her fantasies—she’d attack him and make a fool out of herself. And she’d had enough of that in the past few months, thank you very much.
“I need to get back to work. Thanks for bringing me in here to calm down. I don’t know what happened out there. I guess I lost it for a minute.” She put her hand on the doorknob and turned to give him a small attempt at a smile. It felt tight. Fake.
He was back to leaning against Stone’s desk, his big arms folded across the white button-up Mcallister Charters shirt. No one wore a shirt like Matt Conner did. Like Stone and the other pilots, he wore a type of uniform when he flew. The white button-up with its logo, usually sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and black cargo pants filled out in all the right places. The aviator glasses often completed the outfit, making him drool-worthy. She also knew him to be highly intelligent. A pilot. An engineer. A mechanic. Apparently also a carpenter of sorts.
And one hundred percent heartbreaker.
“Hey.” His smooth-as-whiskey voice stopped her halfway out the door.
“Yeah?”
“I’m not going to forget it.”
She didn’t answer, too tired to fight with him anymore, and made her way back to the Snack Shack. Jedd had gone back to work, and the entire coffee mess had been cleaned up as if nothing had happened at all. A couple of customers were waiting patiently, and Sarah apologized to them. Behind the counter, she stayed busy filling coffee orders and warming up pastries in the microwave.
And she tried not to notice when Matt finally emerged from Stone’s office a few minutes later, his long, lean body moving through the hangar until he disappeared out the doors to the tarmac.
Tried not to notice. But as usual, she couldn’t resist.
THREE DAYS LATER, Sarah sat in the middle of the floor in the hallway, safety glasses on, a hammer in one hand and a nail in the other. Stone had previously replaced worn, missing and loose panels in the home. She, on the other hand, had decided that she wanted brand-new cherrywood flooring throughout. Now that half of it was done and half not done, she’d need to finish the job herself. And she would make this hardwood floor her bitch. How hard could this be when Satan could do it?
“You can do this. You’re an artist. This is just a different medium,” she told herself.
This much was true at least. She had a bachelor of liberal arts from Colorado University. Because she hadn’t much wanted to starve, she’d wound up working as a forensic artist for the Fort Collins Police Department. Her work had earned her a reputation back home. She’d drawn sketches of alleged suspects worthy of an art gallery, some had said. Of course, she disagreed, but she had a higher standard than most.
Van Gogh. Monet. They were her standard.
She no longer felt satisfied or rewarded by all the hard work she’d done for the PD. No longer happy to simply collect her paycheck and call herself an artist. There was still something to be said for art that simply existed for no other reason than beauty.
But now her father’s house would suffer at the hands of an incompetent carpenter. This bothered the artist in her, but maybe her dad deserved it.
She’d read the instructions on the wood slat box. Engineer talk, all of it. Clear as mud. Sounded like they were describing how to build a ship to fly to Mars, so she ignored the stupid instructions and let common sense be her guide.
And now she was short a nail.
She fixed the last nail into a single wood slat, one little tap after another. She’d nearly bruised her lower lip by the time she was done. “There!”
At this rate she should be done in approximately six months.
Shackles came into the hallway, sniffing around her like a Hoover, as if he’d missed a crumb somewhere. When he picked up a nail, Sarah panicked. Had he already swallowed the missing one? If so, why wasn’t he lying on the ground convulsing in agony?
“Drop it! Drop it, Shackles.”
She pulled his jaw open only to be rewarded with a growl. Finally prying the nail out from between his teeth without getting bitten in the process, she carried him into the spare bedroom and shut the door. He yipped his regret from behind the closed door.
“Too late for apologies. You won’t be committing suicide on my watch.”
Turning in a circle, air coming in short desperate spurts, Sarah wondered whether she could call 911 for a dog. She finally took in a full breath when she found the missing nail sticking halfway out from under one of the floor slats. So she would now have to rip up this section and try again, but at least her dog wouldn’t die.
She had to work faster. Thankfully Gus had left some of his tools and she would be confiscating those as payment for the work not delivered. Maybe a nail gun would be the answer to going faster. Power tools. Great idea. She’d seen Satan fooling with the nail gun, and making good time with it, too. Speaking of Gus, she could no longer leave a message on his phone. Box full. Surprise. Emily had heard from one of her event planners at Fortune Ranch, her family’s business, that Gus Hinckle had indeed been arrested. Drug possession was the rumor floating around town. Suddenly the constant runny nose made sense. It was not, as he had claimed, spring allergies.
More importantly, Sarah would never see her money again. Having worked with the police department, she understood felony charges would take priority over anything else. In any case, she had neither the time nor the money to sue him. This was her hot mess, and she’d fix it.
Buying her father’s house was supposed to be about a trip down memory lane, and a time for healing. She had a chance to break from her routine life in Colorado and the job that sucked the life out of her soul. A chance to try on a new attitude in a new place. And maybe, if she could make this house her own before she had to say goodbye to it, she might be able to go back home with a renewed purpose. A new beginning. As an added bonus, she’d reconnected with her brother.
Stone had grown up with their father, and Sarah had been raised by their mother. A strange custody arrangement by anyone’s standards. Even Stone now agreed, after a difficult period of time during which he hadn’t been able to face that the man who’d been his hero had done something wrong. It wasn’t like Sarah didn’t blame her mother, too. Practically being an only child had tied Sarah to her mother in a kind of guilt bond that had lasted for years. Out here in California, she’d been free from that guilt, even if she still didn’t quite belong.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
She’d had a goal when she’d come out to Fortune that went beyond hammering out estate problems with