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“Sorry,” she apologized. “My brain doesn’t usually kick in this early in the morning.”
“Early?” he echoed in amusement. “You think this is early?”
“I don’t think,” she said, followed by a yawn she couldn’t stifle. “I know.” She started for the stairs. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the man with the toolbox wasn’t following her. “The bathroom’s upstairs.” She pointed for emphasis.
“Wait,” he called out, bringing her to a halt. The woman was either way too trusting or simply naive—and he had to admit that she didn’t look to be either. Especially if she turned out to be who he thought she was. “Don’t you want to see my credentials?”
Tiffany yawned again, not at his question, but because her body desperately yearned to go back to bed and she couldn’t.
“You’re driving what looks like a service truck, you’ve got on coveralls and you’re carrying around the biggest toolbox I’ve ever seen. Those are credentials enough for me.”
Besides, she added mentally, knowing my mother, you probably already got the third degree before she hired you.
“What about my estimate?” he asked. They hadn’t talked about what he was going to charge her for the work. He didn’t plan to overcharge her, but she didn’t know that. “I haven’t given you one because I need to see the bathroom first.”
Tiffany waved away his words. “I don’t need to hear it,” she told him as she began to walk up the stairs. “My mother insisted on paying for this remodel, and after arguing with that woman about everything else under the sun ever since I could talk, I thought that this one time I’d just give in and say yes.
“Your bill,” she told him as he followed behind her, “will go to her, and trust me, if you try to fleece her, you will live to regret it—immensely. My mother’s a little woman, but she’s definitely a force to be reckoned with. None of my brothers-in-law will go up against her. They’ve learned that if they want to keep living, they need to stay on her good side,” she concluded as they reached the bathroom he was going to be remodeling.
The door was standing open and she gestured toward the interior. “Here it is,” she said needlessly. “Knock yourself out.”
And with that, she turned on her bare heel and walked away.
This had to be the most unorthodox job he’d ever been called to. “Wait, don’t you want to tell me what you want?” Eddie asked, calling after her retreating back.
Tiffany only half turned in his direction. She wanted nothing more than to get dressed and then collapse on the bed in the guest room for a few hours. She assumed that the man her mother had sent didn’t need any supervision. He appeared competent enough.
“I want a bathroom,” she told him. “One where everything works, 24/7. And it would be nice if everything matched.”
“Well, of course it’s going to work,” he told her. That’s why he was here, and he wasn’t about to do a shoddy job. But her answer didn’t begin to address his question. “What about the style? And the color?” he pressed.
There was something familiar about his voice, but like his smile, she couldn’t place it and she wasn’t up to thinking right now. Her brain was foggy. Maybe it was just her imagination.
“Style and color would be good,” she replied, nodding as she began to walk away again.
Eddie took a breath. He realized that the woman with the gorgeous legs and the football jersey wasn’t being flippant. She apparently still wasn’t fully awake.
She shouldn’t have answered the door half-asleep. He couldn’t help thinking that she really was in need of a keeper.
Eddie tilted his head a little, trying to get a better look at her face. Her shiny, long, blue-black hair kept falling into it. His curiosity was becoming more aroused, but he really didn’t need to have it satisfied in order to do a good job.
It would just be nice to know what his client actually looked like.
And then she turned slightly in his direction and it hit him like a ton of bricks. It was her, the Tiffany he knew in college. The Tiffany who was so different from the little girl whose sweater he’d buttoned all those years ago.
He wanted to tell her, then thought better of it. Now wasn’t the time. He’d tell her after the job was done.
Pushing back that thought, he tried to pin her down again—at least a little bit. “What do you like? Modern? Antique? Classic?”
The words he tossed her way seemed to circle around her head, even though she tried to visualize the styles. Tiffany had a feeling he wouldn’t give her any peace until she made some kind of a choice.
So she did.
“Modern,” she told him.
Heading back toward the stairs, she heard him declare, “Well, that’s a start.”
Feeling she needed to acknowledge his response, she nodded. “Yes, it is.” Then, just to keep things civilized, she added, “If you want coffee, help yourself. There’s a coffee machine in the kitchen. It’s on a timer.”
Having reached the banister, she ran her hand along the sleek light wood as she made her way down the stairs. When she reached the bottom, she quickly hurried to the back bedroom, flipped the lock on the door—just in case—and arrived at her real destination: the guest room bed.
A sigh of relief escaped her lips as she collapsed on the mattress.
The last thought that floated through her mind was that there was something vaguely familiar about the man who had come to remodel her bathroom.
The next moment, it was gone.
* * *
Tiffany felt like she had been lying down for only a few minutes when the noise suddenly started.
It was loud enough to have her bolting upright, abruptly terminating what was beginning to be a pleasant semisleep.
Glancing at the clock on the nightstand, she saw that she’d actually been asleep for half an hour, but that was far from enough. Especially since the noise turned out to be steady enough to keep her from putting her head back on the pillow. And it was definitely irritating enough to keep her from falling asleep again.
“He’s actually working,” she muttered incredulously. “Who does that as soon as they arrive?”
The noise gave no sign of abating. For the second time that day Tiffany got out of bed. But this time, rather than heading for the door and the annoying doorbell, she went in search of the source of the teeth-jarring noise.
Hanging on to the banister, she half walked, half dragged herself up the stairs, all the while struggling to finally wake up—permanently. There was no point in even thinking that she could go back to sleep again. That ship had definitely sailed.
Once on the landing, Tiffany made her way toward the source of the noise, which was growing louder with every step she took. It was emanating from just beyond her bedroom, she discovered. Specifically, from her master bathroom.
The noise seemed to vibrate right through her chest.
Standing in the doorway, Tiffany looked accusingly at the culprit behind her shattered morning’s sleep. “Why are you destroying my bathroom?” she asked.
Covered in dust and wearing a mask over his face to keep from breathing it in, Eddie looked for a moment at the woman whose bathroom he was remodeling, before setting down the sledgehammer he’d been wielding. He pushed the mask to the top of his head and answered her question.
“Well, for one thing, I can’t put the new fixtures in without getting the old ones out,” he told her. He gestured around the bathroom. “That includes your bathroom tub, sink, medicine cabinet and commode.”
Commode? That certainly was a delicate way to talk about the toilet, she thought, somewhat surprised.
Tiffany blinked, and for the first time since she had let the man into her house, she actually looked at him. Not through him, around him or over him, but at him. And now that she did, even though her brain was still just a wee bit foggy and out of sync, she realized that there really was something vaguely familiar about the man standing in her bathroom, effectively making rubble out of it.
Where did she know him from? Nothing specific came to mind, though a memory seemed to play hide-and-seek with her brain, vanishing before she could get hold of it.
The next moment, she let it go, focusing on the more important question for the time being. “You do know what you’re doing, don’t you?”
Amusement curved the corners of his mouth as Eddie watched her for an incredibly long minute. “It’s a little late to be asking that, isn’t it?” He looked around at the rubble he’d created. “You didn’t ask to see any letters of reference, or photographs of my previous work.”
“I assumed my mother had you vetted,” she replied. “Which is good enough for me. She’s like a little barracuda. Nothing gets past her.”
He understood what she was telling him, but it hadn’t been like that. The woman who’d called him, saying she’d gotten his number from Ms. Sommers, had just said that her daughter’s bathroom needed remodeling and to use his better judgment. He’d found that rather unusual. He found Tiffany being so lax about it even more unusual.
Maybe she had become less intense over the years. After all, it had been five years since he’d last seen her. The Tiffany he remembered from their classes together in college had been extremely competitive and had had to verify everything for herself. She’d also given him one hell of a run for his money. Maybe it was a good thing that she didn’t recognize him just yet. He did need the money this job would yield. For now, he decided to play this by ear.
“I just thought you’d want to ask some questions yourself,” he told her.
“Okay,” she said. “How long is this going to take?” When he made no attempt to answer, Tiffany gestured at her disintegrated bathroom. “This,” she emphasized, moving her hand to encompass the entire spacious room. “All this. Rebuilding it. How long is this going to take?” she repeated, enunciating every word.
Leaning the sledgehammer against a wall, Eddie dusted himself off. “‘This’ is turning out to be a bigger job than I thought it was going to be.”
She gave her own interpretation to his words. “Is that your clever way of asking for more money? Because I already told you that my mother—”
“No,” Eddie said, cutting her off before she could get wound up. The Tiffany he remembered could get really wound up. “I’m asking for more time. I thought your bathroom could be remodeled in a weekend, but now that I see it, I realize it’s going to take at least two.”
She still didn’t understand why this contractor could work on the bathroom only on weekends. It didn’t make any sense to her. “Why not just come back Monday morning and keep at it until it’s finished?” she demanded.
Eddie inclined his head, as if conceding the point—sort of. “A week ago, I would have agreed—”
“Fine,” she declared, satisfied that she’d won this argument. “Then it’s settled—”
Eddie talked right over her. As he recalled from past encounters with Tiffany, it was the only way to get his point across. “But that was before I took a day job.”
She assumed he was talking about another construction job. “Put it off until you’re finished.”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“Anything is possible,” Tiffany insisted. “I know that you construction people take on multiple jobs.” Her best friend had dated a man who had his own construction company, and she’d complained about taking second place to his work schedule. “That way, if one falls through, there’s still enough work to keep you going.”
“This isn’t another construction job,” Eddie informed her. “It’s a different job entirely, in a different field.”
He resisted the urge to explain just what that other job was. He wasn’t superstitious by nature, but in this instance he was afraid that if he talked too much about the job that was waiting for him come Monday morning, somehow or other he’d wind up jinxing it. He loved working with his hands, loved creating something out of nothing, but construction work didn’t begin to hold a candle to being a teacher. The one allowed him to create functional things; the other was instrumental in awakening sleeping minds, brains that were thirsting for knowledge. And amid those budding minds one could very well belong to someone who might do great things not just for one or two people, but for a multitude.
But Tiffany wasn’t about to let this drop. He began to think that she hadn’t changed, after all. “What kind of field?”
“A field that might eventually produce someone who could do something to effect the masses,” he told her, leaving it at that.
“The masses?” she questioned, eyeing him as if he’d taken leave of his senses. “You make it sound as if you were part of the CIA.”
“No, not that organization,” he replied.
“But you won’t talk about it?” she asked, really curious now.
“I’m not being paid to talk, I’m being paid to work,” he reminded her, picking up the sledgehammer again. But Tiffany made no move to leave the area. She was obviously waiting for him to tell her what he was referring to. “I’d rather not jinx it,” he finally told her, being quite honest.
She cocked her head, trying to reconcile a few things in her brain that just weren’t meshing. “You’re superstitious?”
“Just in this one respect.”
“Good,” she said, turning to leave as he began to work again. “Because superstitions are stupid.”
It was her. If he’d had the slightest doubt before, he didn’t anymore, Eddie decided. She was just as opinionated now as she had been then.
As she left the room, he slanted a long look in her direction. From there he couldn’t see her face, only the back of her head. But even the set of her shoulders looked familiar.
It was Tiffany Lee, all right. And right now, he couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not. The only thing he knew was that he wasn’t going say anything to her about their shared past. At least, not yet.
Chapter Three (#ulink_d0357b3c-8340-5893-ae6e-6a8ccee43e7c)
Since Tiffany apparently didn’t recognize him, Eddie decided to keep the fact that they had a history to himself and not say anything to her until he felt the time was right—like after he finished the job. After all, he couldn’t have made that much of an impression on her if she didn’t remember him. He vividly remembered their interactions in college, but it was obvious that she didn’t. If he reminded her of it, she might just turn around and fire him.
It was best to leave well enough alone.
Working at a steady pace, he demolished the bathroom and then carted the debris out to his truck until it was filled, at which time he hauled it to the county dump. That involved a number of round trips. All in all, it took him practically the entire day.
He worked continuously, taking only one thirty-minute break to consume a fast-food lunch that was far from satisfying.
By four thirty, he was completely wiped out and decided to call it a day. But he didn’t want to just pack up and leave, the way he knew some people in his line of work would. He wanted Tiffany to be made aware that he was leaving for the day. Otherwise, she might wind up thinking she had to wait around for him to return.
When he didn’t see her during his multiple trips back and forth to his truck while he was packing up his tools and equipment, Eddie resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have to go looking for her. Since she hadn’t said anything about leaving the house, he assumed she had to be on the premises somewhere.
As unobtrusively as possible, he went through both floors of the house, going from room to room.
Tiffany wasn’t anywhere to be found.
Would she just leave the house—and him—without saying anything? Granted, it wasn’t as if she had to check in with him, since technically, he was the one working for her. But just walking out without letting him know that she was going or when she’d be back didn’t seem quite right to him.
What if something came up and he wanted to go home while she was out? He couldn’t very well just leave her house standing wide open. That was tantamount to issuing an invitation to any burglar in the area. And despite the fact that if anything happened, it wouldn’t be his fault, he would still feel responsible if someone did break in and steal something.
With a sigh, Eddie resigned himself to waiting for her to come home. That was when he happened to glance out the rear bedroom window. It was facing the tidily trimmed backyard, which was where Tiffany had disappeared to.
She appeared to be completely engrossed in a book. She was sitting at a small oval table in the little gazebo that was off to one side of the yard.
He should have thought of looking there first! Eddie upbraided himself as he left the bedroom and hurried down the staircase. After all, it was a beautiful April day.
Since she had obviously taken it upon herself to stick around while he worked, he could understand Tiffany wanting to take advantage of the weather. Which explained why she was outside, reading a book.
After reaching the bottom of the stairs, Eddie went to the rear of the house and opened the sliding glass door. It groaned a little as he did so. He debated leaving the door open—after all, informing her that he was leaving for the day wasn’t going to take any time, he reasoned. But then he thought better of it—just in case—and pulled the door closed again.
Despite the groaning noise, Tiffany didn’t even look up.
She was totally engrossed in the book she was reading—a real book, he noted with a smile, not one of those electronic devices that held the entire contents of the Los Angeles Public Library within its slender, rectangular frame.
For a moment he said nothing. He almost hated to disturb her, but he really needed to get going.
His body ached from swinging his sledgehammer and hauling out the wreckage that had been her bathroom just eight hours ago. What he craved right now was a long, bracing shower with wave after wave of hot, pulsating water hitting every tight muscle and ache he had—and a few that he probably didn’t even know he had.
