Always and Forever

But as she took in the musty smell from the house being closed up for so long and noticed the dust that had accumulated on the walls and baseboards, the picture became clearer. And the shame it caused nearly suffocated her.

From the moment she’d moved her mom into Mossy Oaks, Phil had started to neglect this house, seeing it more as a burden than a part of her history. It took losing it to appreciate what she’d had.

Phil followed Jamal into the formal dining room. And stopped cold.

“Drywall?” she said. “You’re putting up drywall?”

“Only one section of the wall was cracked, but I figured I’d just redo the entire room.”

“With drywall?”

He measured her with a curious stare. “What do you have against drywall?”

“You mean besides the fact that it has no business in an 1870s Victorian? It also greatly reduces the resale value of the house.”

He waved off her concern. “I’m not concerned about resale value right now.”

This is no longer my house, she reminded herself. Jamal owned it; he could do whatever he wanted with it. Even if it meant putting up freaking drywall.

“Just...show me the rest,” she said.

“Here’s one of the things I’m putting into your capable hands,” he said, pointing to the pocket doors that recessed into the walls between the dining room and kitchen. “They’re pretty banged up, but if at all possible, I want to keep them.”

“Of course you want to keep them. They add too much character to this house to think of getting rid of them.”

Phil glided her hand along the smooth mud where the panels of Sheetrock met. She could not believe the man was replacing the classic plaster walls with drywall, but at least he’d done a good job.

“You did this work by yourself?” she asked.

Jamal nodded. “Have I impressed the guru?”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Why not? Everyone else does.”

“First, I’m not a guru,” Phil sad. “My dad deserved that title, not me. And secondly, I work mostly in wood and wrought iron, so I’m not the one to properly judge drywall installation.”

“That’s too bad,” he said. “I was hoping you’d be impressed.”

Phil looked over at him and was caught off guard by the sexy smile pulling at the edge of his lips. She knew flirting when she saw it, and she was definitely seeing it in action right now.

That would not be good. She could not handle a sweaty, sexy, flirting Jamal Johnson.

“So, besides the doors, what else is there?” she asked.

“I’ve got my blueprints out here,” he said, motioning for her to follow him outside.

Phil stopped short. “If you’re not doing a renovation, why did you draw up blueprints for a house that’s already built?”

He shrugged. “You work in wood and wrought iron, I work in blueprints. It just makes it easier to have a map of the house so I can pinpoint each thing that needs to be addressed.”

She accepted his explanation with the same amount of guarded skepticism in which she took everything else he told her. Outside, the blueprints were spread out on the top of a folding table, held at each corner with pieces of leftover wood. She stood next to Jamal as he pointed out various jobs that needed to be done throughout the house. She tried to ignore the combination of sweat, sawdust and man that flooded her senses. Ignoring a ten-piece brass band blowing in her ear would have been easier.

“My biggest headache right now is fixtures,” Jamal was saying. “I’d love to get something comparable to what’s in the downstairs bathroom and kitchen, but I can’t find anything even close.”

Phil ordered herself to focus on the job at hand, and not on his scent. Or the muscles rippling underneath his T-shirt. Or the way she’d clung to them when they’d danced months ago.

“You won’t find them in hardware stores,” Phil said. “Your best bet will be companies that specialize in reclaimed fixtures. They salvage pieces and sell them to people restoring older properties. I’ve got several contacts I can check for you.”

When he didn’t comment for several moments, Phil glanced over at him. That smile was back, the one that made her heart beat just a bit quicker.

“I knew I’d come to the right person,” he said. “Together we’re going to take Belle Maison in a completely new direction.”

Yeah, that’s what she was afraid of.

* * *

As Phylicia leaned over the table, studying the blueprints, Jamal studied her. He couldn’t get over just how much of a contradiction she was. She worked in a decidedly male-dominated field, yet those high cheekbones, amazingly deep brown eyes and lush, full lips could easily grace the cover of a fashion magazine.

She was tall and slim, but years of manual labor had added definition to her arms and shoulders. Jamal remembered how they had looked in the sleeveless bridesmaid gown she’d worn at the wedding.

Why had someone so sexy, so feminine, decided to work with hammers and sanders? Probably because she was damn good at it. He’d noticed several pieces of furniture in various stages of restoration when he’d visited her workshop yesterday. She seemed to spend most of her time laboring over stuff most people would write off as useless. But in her hands, what was once decrepit gained new life.

She tilted her head to the side and her ponytail draped along her neck. Jamal had the strongest urge to run his fingers through it, lift it off her neck and taste the skin underneath. It would probably get him slapped.

Yet, if he’d done the same thing the night of the wedding, Jamal was certain his kiss would not only have been welcome, but reciprocated. He didn’t understand what had gone wrong. Unless...

“Are you seeing someone?”

Phylicia’s head popped up, her stunned eyes widening. “Excuse me?”

Okay, so maybe he could have been a tad more subtle. But he didn’t do subtle all that well, and he wasn’t in the mood for playing games.

“Are you in a relationship?” he asked. “Is that why you avoided my calls after Corey and Mya’s wedding?”

“No, I don’t have a boyfriend. But—”

“Good,” he said.

“No, not good,” she returned. “It’s none of your business.”

Jamal crossed his arms over his chest and challenged her with a direct stare.

“Don’t do this, Phylicia. Don’t pretend you didn’t feel that spark between us at Mya and Corey’s wedding. We were together the entire night.”

“I was the maid of honor and you were the best man,” she said. “Of course we spent a lot of time in each other’s company at the reception. But we were not together together.”

“What about after the reception? The sun was coming up by the time I brought you home. We talked for hours that night, Phylicia, yet when I called you the next day, it was as if you didn’t know who I was.”

“Jamal, please.” She put her hands up. “I’m not looking to get involved with anyone, even on a casual basis. If you want me to work with you on the restoration, know that it is the only thing I’m willing to undertake. I don’t mix business with my personal life. Now, what exactly are you looking for from me?”

He cocked his head to the side. “Let me get this straight. Are you saying that if I choose to see you on a personal level, you wouldn’t help me with the house?”

“Actually, you don’t have a choice. The two of us getting involved is not an option.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I said so. Now, are we going to go over these plans, or am I getting in my truck and going home?” The sharp edge to her voice brooked no further argument.

Jamal glanced at the pile of construction debris just over her shoulder, trying like hell to rein in the frustration that threatened to topple him. He was itching to make her admit that what he’d felt that night had not been one-sided. Pulling her close and kissing the hell out of her would accomplish that.

It would also guarantee that she would leave the property and likely never come back. And that was not an option.

“Blueprints,” Jamal bit out.

Phylicia bobbed a curt nod and leaned over the blueprints. Jamal studied her with a mixture of frustration and disappointment—heavy on the disappointment. Catching a whiff of the soft, flowery scent that drifted from her hair only made things worse.

She pointed to the materials list. “Exactly what is strawboard, and why do you need so much of it?”

“It’s a building material made from compressed wheat and rice straw,” he answered. “I’m redoing the upstairs bedrooms with it.”

Her eyes rolled. “This is another of your environmentally friendly things, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s considered green technology,” Jamal replied with a defensive edge he’d tried, but failed, to keep from his tone. “Strawboard is as durable as plaster and drywall and more fire- and mold-resistant than either of the other materials. It also provides better sound insulation, so guests won’t be disturbed by what may be going on in the next room.”

“But what about the wainscoting in the bedrooms? It’s over a hundred years old,” Phylicia protested.

“I’m not getting rid of the wainscoting.”

“But you can damage it by removing it. And if you think bathroom fixtures are hard to find, just try century-old beadboard wainscoting.”

“That’s why you’re here,” he said. “To make sure none of this valuable original woodworking gets damaged.”

She brought both hands up and rubbed her temples. Jamal was pretty sure she wanted to strangle him.

“What’s this?” she asked, pointing at a spot he’d X-ed out on the blueprint.

“It’s an odd little room on the other side of the house. Looks as if it was added long after the original structure was built.”

“I know about the room,” she said. “What are you planning to do with it?”

“Get rid of it.”

Her brows spiked in shock. “Why?” she asked with enough distress to give him pause.

“Because it sticks out like a sore thumb,” Jamal answered cautiously. “I want the house to be as authentic as possible, and the room takes away from the original design.”

“Authentic!” she screeched. “You’re putting strawboard walls in a Queen Anne Victorian, yet you’re claiming you want authenticity?” Her expression darkened, those smoky brown eyes turning almost black. “Of all people, I cannot believe this house fell into your hands.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You are going to destroy it!”

“The house was abandoned,” Jamal pointed out. “It was already on its way to being ruined.”

“It was not abandoned!” she shouted. “I’m sick and tired of everyone saying the house was frigging abandoned!” She slapped her hands on the table. “I can’t do this.”

The emotion he heard clogging her voice shot a lightning rod of alarm through him. “Phylicia, what’s going on here?” he asked.

“I’m sorry.” She pulled in a deep breath. “You’ll have to find someone else to help you.”

She glanced up at him for the briefest moment, but it was long enough for Jamal to notice the sheen in her eyes. He caught her by the elbow, but she jerked away from him and half walked, half ran to her truck.

“Phylicia!” Jamal called, but her truck was already backing out of the driveway. Jamal stood in complete shock, trying to figure out just what in the hell he’d done wrong this time.

Chapter 4

Phil pulled into her driveway and hopped out of her truck, making a beeline for her workshop. She needed a solid hour of mind-numbing work before she could even think about doing anything else. She wanted to hit something with her mallet. Hard. But she’d passed the pounding stage on all of the projects she currently had in the works.

The blowtorch would have to do.

Phil headed for the back of the shop. She lowered the safety shield over her face and ignited the blowtorch. Moments later, she was lost in the piece she had been working on for the past few months.

With painstaking precision she carved intricate loops and curlicues through the metal she’d found at a scrapyard, creating a lace effect. Immediately, the lace curtains that once hung in her mother’s painting room popped into her mind, and her hand slipped.

“Dammit,” Phil cursed. She released the trigger on the blowtorch and surveyed the damage her slip had caused to the metal. Nothing too noticeable, thank goodness.

“Phylicia?”

Phil nearly fell off the stool at the unexpected summons. She whipped around, the blowtorch still in her hand.

Jamal took two giant steps back, his hands raised in surrender. “Careful with that.”

Phil lifted the safety shield from her face but didn’t put down the blowtorch. “How did you get in here?”

“The door wasn’t locked.”

Of course it wasn’t. She lived in Gauthier. She never locked the door to her shop while she was working. She’d have to rethink that. This was the second time he had crept up on her.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want to know what happened back at the house,” he said. “Why did you run off?”

Phil’s entire being sagged in defeat. It was no use withholding the truth from him. He would eventually find out. With the way gossip traveled in this small town, she was surprised no one had revealed Belle Maison’s previous owner to him already.

“It’s my house,” Phil said. His confused expression would have been comical if there was anything even remotely funny about any of this. “The Victorian that you have all these fancy plans for? It’s my family’s home. It’s where I grew up.”

“But the bank said they owned—”

“Yes, the bank owned it,” she cut him off. “It’s a very long story that I’m not about to get into, especially with you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Especially with me? When did I become the bad guy, Phylicia?”

“When you bought my family’s home and decided to make it into a bed-and-breakfast.” Phil raised her palm, stanching his protest. “This isn’t your fault, and I know you don’t deserve any of the disgust I feel toward you.”

He flinched at her harsh word choice, and Phil felt even worse.

“I’m sorry. That was uncalled for,” she said. Phil shook her head. “I just can’t do this, Jamal. What you’re doing? Opening this B&B? It’s a great thing for Gauthier. It’s going to be a huge draw for tourists, and I know the businesses on Main Street are going to benefit from it. But that’s my house,” she said, pointing east toward Belle Maison. “It’s hard to see it being destroyed.”

“I’m not going to destroy the house. How many times do I have to say that?”

“When it comes to this sort of thing, it seems we have different definitions of what it means to destroy. And you are planning to destroy a part of the house.”

“Just that one room,” he said.

“It’s the most important room in the house!” Phil yelled.

She covered her face with her hands and pulled in a deep breath. As the tears collected in her throat, Phil mentally cursed each and every one of them. But it was too hard to maintain a stoic facade. She was never one for wearing her heart on her sleeve, but when it came to her mother, she couldn’t hold back.

Phil bit her lower lip to help curb the wavering. She wiped at the tears that traveled down her cheeks.

“Twenty years ago, my father built that room for my mother. It’s where she painted. She needed a place with plenty of natural sunlight, and there wasn’t a room on the east side of the house that was suitable. She would spend hours in that room. Her painting meant everything to her.”

Phil sucked in a deep breath. “I’ve lost so much of her already. Hearing that you planned to tear down her room... It was just too much.”

She couldn’t interpret the expression on Jamal’s face. He just stood there, staring at her, and her discomfort grew with every nanosecond that passed.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I had no idea. About any of it. The bank never told me anything about the previous owner. Shit, Corey didn’t even say anything.”

“I was surprised neither Corey nor Mya told you it was my family home. But neither of them knows how Belle Maison ended up on the market. Mya believes I put it up for sale intentionally.” She looked up at him. “I never would have let the property go if I’d had a choice. I love that house. It’s been in my family for generations.”

His mouth dipped in a frown. “Phylicia, I’m really sorry that you had to sell your family’s home, but I’ve invested too much into this project not to see it through.”

“Oh, God, I’m not asking you not to go forth with the B&B. I’m a businesswoman, Jamal. I understand how these things work. You bought the house. It’s yours. I just can’t be a part of the restoration process. I thought I could, but to stand there and watch my mother’s room being torn to the ground?” Phil shook her head. “I just can’t do it.”

Several moments passed before Jamal asked in a gentle voice, “What if I don’t touch that room?”

Phil’s eyes shot to his. She didn’t want to believe the sincerity she saw there. “You would do that?”

He took a step toward her. “The room isn’t hurting anybody,” he said.

His deep brown eyes searched her face. When he reached toward her, Phil stiffened, but he only captured the safety shield and pulled it off her head.

“Besides,” he continued, “as you pointed out, I’m making a lot of other changes, so my authenticity argument doesn’t carry much weight. And the house holds sentimental value for you.”

“For me, not you.”

“It’s clear how much it would hurt if the room was destroyed. I don’t want to be the one who hurts you, Phylicia.” He reached forward and lifted her ponytail from where it draped along her neck. “I think someone did that already.”

She gazed at him, feeling as if she’d been drawn into a trance by his hushed voice. “Why do you always call me Phylicia?”

The edge of his mouth quirked in a smile. “Because it’s your name.”

“Everyone else calls me Phil.”

“That’s a man’s name. And despite that blowtorch you were wielding a few minutes ago, there’s no denying that you are all woman, Phylicia.”

As he dipped his head toward her, a tiny voice told Phil to move out of his reach. But a much louder voice told her to stay right where she was. It had been way too long since she’d been kissed, and after the day she’d had, Phil couldn’t think of a single thing she needed more.

The moment Jamal’s soft lips touched hers her heart melted. He was gentle in his coaxing, but insistent, his lips enticing her to join in. He cupped the back of her head and slanted his to the side to get a better angle.

Phil heard a moan but couldn’t tell which one of them had made the sound. Without fully recognizing what she was doing, she linked her hands behind Jamal’s neck and cradled the back of his head. She parted her lips and thrust her tongue inside his mouth, losing herself in the kiss.

An animalistic growl rose from his throat. Jamal held her in place as his tongue plunged into her mouth. He tasted like cinnamon, spicy and sweet, and as his tongue made itself at home in her mouth, Phil allowed herself to enjoy it. He knew just what to do, applying just the right amount of pressure before pulling slightly away, making her reach for him.

After she had enough fodder to fill her nightly fantasies for a while, Phil ended the kiss, leaving Jamal with a dazed expression, his eyes heavy with desire.

She took several steps back. “Did you offer to leave the room untouched just so you could get away with kissing me?” Phil asked, trying to add some levity to the sexually charged tension suffusing the room.

“No,” he said, a hint of humor tingeing his voice. “I promised not to touch the room because it’s the right thing to do, but I would have kissed you anyway,” he said. “I’ve been dying to kiss you since Mya and Corey’s wedding. And that was before I saw you holding a blowtorch. That just pushed me over the edge.”

Phil rolled her eyes. Despite the fireworks his kiss had set off within her, she needed to reiterate her previous assertion. “I meant what I said, Jamal. If we’re going to work together, you can’t do that again.”

“What? Kiss you?”

She nodded.

He blew out a ragged breath. “Are you really going to make me choose between kissing you and having you work on the house? That’s not fair.”

“Wait a minute. Didn’t we already have this conversation?” Phil asked. “There is no choice. The whole you-and-me thing isn’t going to happen.”

“Come on, Phylicia. You know we’d be good together.”

“I don’t know any such thing,” she returned.

A simple, sexy brow quirked. “Need me to show you again?”

Phil’s insides quaked with instant want. God, this man was dangerous to her undersexed body.

She picked up the blowtorch. “Stay back. I mean it.”

Jamal’s head pitched back with a crack of laughter. “You definitely have a dangerous side to you, Phylicia Phillips.” He leaned in close and whispered in her ear, “You should know that I like that in a woman.” He winked at her, then turned and headed for the door. “I’ll see you at Belle Maison tomorrow morning,” Jamal called over his shoulder.

She watched him walk out of her workshop, and a part of her wanted to follow him. How was she going to survive the next couple of months working alongside that man? Especially now that she knew how he tasted.

As she tapped the igniter on the burner head and connected the blue flame with the metal, Phil muttered, “Boy, you just love heaping trouble on your head, don’t you?”

Chapter 5

“Good morning.”

Jamal looked up from the board he was measuring. He couldn’t contain his smile as Phylicia walked toward him, carrying a thermos. He was constantly amazed at the way this woman could make faded jeans and a plain white T-shirt look sexy.

“Good morning,” he returned.

She took a healthy sip from her thermos before capping it and allowed her eyes to roam around the yard. Finally, she looked his way, giving him her full attention, and the current that zapped between them was enough to singe the hair on his skin.

Phylicia cleared her throat. “I thought about your plans on how to tackle the restoration,” she began. “I think you may be setting yourself up for more work if you go one room at a time. You should just tear down everything at once.”

Her all-business tone made it apparent that she had no plans to pick up where they’d left off after yesterday’s kiss.

Jamal folded his arms across his chest, one brow cocked. So that’s how it’s going to be?

Phylicia lifted her chin. Damn right.

His mind recoiled in protest, but Jamal knew it was for the best, especially with all the work that needed to be done and the limited time he had left before guests began arriving. But there were after-work hours. And the work crew he’d hired would soon add a lot more manpower to the project.

“Are you ready to get to it?” Phylicia asked, all business. “I could get started on removing the wainscoting today.”

“I thought you wanted me to leave the wainscoting untouched?” he asked.

“It’s your house, Jamal.” She scrunched up her nose. “You have no idea how hard it was for me to say that.”

“Phyl—” he started, but she put her hand up, halting him.

“It is your house. You agreed to leave my mom’s painting room intact, which I am unbelievably grateful for, but I don’t expect you to change all of your plans just to suit me. You hired me to help preserve elements of Belle Maison’s original structure; that’s what I’m here to do.”

“I also hired you for your input,” he said. “I’m open to suggestions. Doesn’t mean I’ll go along with all of them, but as highly recommended as you come, I’d be a fool not to listen to what you have to say.”

He tossed the measuring tape aside and moved toward her. “I want us to work together as a team.”

He reached for her, but she took several steps back. She held her hands up, her face resolute. “Look, Jamal, I already told you that if I’m going to work with you on this project, what happened yesterday afternoon cannot happen again. That kiss was...well, it was a mistake.”