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While the store owner boxed the light up for them, they browsed, picking through old farm tools and vinyl records, a tray of pocket watches and boxes of linens. “My grandmother always used to smell like Joy,” she said, picking up an old bottle of the French perfume. The bottle was empty, but there was an echo of scent that reminded her of her mother’s mom, a wonderful woman who played piano and baked the best pies.
“My grandmother smelled like this,” Serena said, picking up an old can with “Player’s Tobacco” written on it.
They had such different backgrounds it was amazing they’d become friends. Serena rarely talked about her past, but through passing comments like this one, Cassie knew it had been rough. Serena had dragged herself up from the gutter to become one of the most successful women in Cassie’s circle, while Cassie had two parents who loved her, were still married and still called each other sweetheart. How did she get so lucky?
Of course, Serena was getting married to one of the best men on the planet, while Cassie had celebrated her thirtieth birthday still single. Her present to herself had been a three-bedroom house she’d have trouble filling.
Unless she took in a lot more stray cats.
5
THEY CARRIED THE chandelier out to the car, fitting it nicely in the space Cassie had set aside. Then Serena said, “Max is flying in to play hockey with the boys on Monday night. He’s bringing Claire with him.”
“Oh, the famous Claire.”
“Yes. The bush pilot. I thought maybe we three women should go out and have a drink while the men play hockey.”
“You don’t think Claire will want to watch Max on the ice?”
“Please. She lives in Alaska. I’m sure she’s dying to get away from snow and ice.”
“Be great to meet her.” Cassie had found Max’s combination of brains, wealth and Latin charm to be slightly intimidating. She couldn’t imagine him with a bush pilot.
“I only met her once, but I think you’ll like her.” Serena chuckled softly. “She’s quite a character.”
“I could definitely use a night out.”
“Excellent. We’re on, then.”
“What if Claire says no?”
“Then we kidnap her.”
“No wonder you’re a business leader. You always have such sound plans.”
Serena pulled out her phone and punched in something. Probably she was already updating her calendar for Monday. Or texting Claire.
“Well, I’d better get back and start on the bedroom. Drop by sometime and check out the progress.”
“Love to. Oh, wait, I almost forgot. I have something else for you.” And Serena ran to her car, her long legs looking good in tight jeans. Cassie reminded herself that she really needed to fit in more time at the gym.
Serena returned a minute later with a mischievous look on her face and a brown paper bag holding an object about the shape and size of a—Oh, my gosh, she didn’t. Yes, she did—calendar.
The firefighters’ charity calendar. Hunter’s finest firefighters, buff and ready to rock your world one month at a time.
She laughed as she opened it slowly, beginning with Mr. January, who was a fine-looking African-American guy with the most amazing pecs she’d ever seen and—
“Oh, don’t even think about poring over every month,” Serena said. “Flip to June.”
Cassie didn’t need to be told a second time; her fingers itched to fly past the first five months of the year. Flip, flip, and there he was.
Dylan.
Dylan, shirtless, his firefighting pants slung low on his hips, posing with an ax over his shoulders and a look in his eyes that made her feel as though she were in danger of being scorched. Oh, my. Those eyes, those abs, the shoulders.
“I see he has a tattoo,” she said finally, feeling a little weak. It was a linked-chain-type thing in dark ink that circled his right bicep. She wondered what it would feel like to put her hand around that tattoo. How far around his muscular arm would her hand even reach? Her palm grew warm thinking about wrapping around that hot skin.
“Let’s just say that in my apartment? It’s always June.”
They snorted with laughter. “Does Adam know?”
“He says when we get married, I have to leave the calendar behind.” She glanced at Cassie over the glossy photograph of a grinning Dylan. “He says, ‘It’s Dylan or me. Make your choice.’”
The color photograph flashed in the sunshine, making Dylan gleam like a bronzed god. “That’s got to be a tough choice.”
“I tell you, Adam’s a great-looking guy. Don’t get me wrong. And I will love him to the end of time.” She leaned closer. “But a girl can still look.”
“Uh-huh.” And Cassie wondered how long she could keep looking and remembering to breathe at the same time.
Serena’s phone signaled an incoming text. She glanced at it. Frowned. “Speak of the devil.”
“Dylan texted you?”
“No. Adam.” She put the phone away with a crease between her brows.
Cassie wanted to ask if everything was okay, but before she could say a word, Serena was backing away and waving. “Let me know how it looks when it’s up. The chandelier, I mean.” And then she was gone.
As she drove home Cassie had to face that her outing, while successful on many fronts, hadn’t exactly been the mental cold shower she’d hoped.
Thanks to Mr. June, she felt hotter than when she’d left.
When she pulled into her driveway beside the dusty truck, she immediately grabbed the calendar and stuffed it back in the brown paper bag. She hid it in the chandelier box so her handyman hottie wouldn’t see her toting pictures of his hot, half-naked self. Then, leaving the back of her car open, she walked into the house.
“Hi, Dylan, I’m back.”
“Okay, I’ll come help unload.”
“Thanks.”
He walked out of the bathroom in one of his threadbare old T-shirts and plaster-dusted jeans. The T-shirt wasn’t even tight, but as he moved she felt as if she was seeing him, gorgeous and shirtless once more. Now she knew he had a tat on his upper right bicep, she felt a strange urge to see it in the flesh.
“You okay with that box?” He paused in front of her and she realized she was standing there like a fool. Staring at him.
“Yes. I was only thinking you probably need some water since you’ve been working in all that dust.”
“I was wearing a mask. But yeah, I’ll get some. Good idea.”
He glanced at the box in her arms. “I’m guessing that’s not floor tiles.”
She shook her head. “It’s a chandelier. For the bedroom. Serena bought it for me as a housewarming gift.”
“Awesome. That will look great upstairs.” Then he narrowed his gaze. “And why do I have a feeling that my housewarming gift will involve putting it up for you?”
She chuckled. “Because you are so very smart and intuitive.”
He shook his head at her as he walked by and she turned to watch his all-too-amazing back view as he disappeared through the door.
She took the box upstairs, and then pulled out the bag containing the calendar. She felt so foolish having the firefighter calendar at all, and now it was in her bedroom. There wasn’t anywhere to hide it. Everything was still in boxes except her chest of drawers. She opened her T-shirt drawer and shoved the calendar in there. Then ran back downstairs.
He was bringing in tile boxes three in a stack, which caused his arm muscles to delineate so she had to drag her gaze away.
She managed two boxes in a stack, but she wasn’t striding along as if they were a couple of feathers.
She followed his lead, stacking the boxes in the front hall beside the stairs. There was the kitchen tile, tile for both bathrooms, wall tile, shower tile, tile for the shower floors. She’d had no idea there was so much involved in remodeling a small house. She didn’t have the kitchen backsplash yet because she wanted to get her counters first. But she had some ideas, and new magazines seemed to get published every week with new layouts and even newer products.
It was getting so bad that she was beginning to dream of tile and appliances. And maybe a certain guy who was good with an ax.
* * *
“OKAY, HERE’S THE DEAL,” Dylan said, standing with his hands on his hips and looking around Cassie’s bedroom with a practiced eye. “If you want the chandelier put up, then I’m going to paint that ceiling first. And if we’re painting the ceiling, we might as well get the walls done at the same time.”
She looked early-summer ripe in snug denim cutoffs and a sleeveless blue shirt, her curly hair dancing when she nodded. “Makes sense.”
“I’ll tackle the ceiling while you do the walls.”
She nodded but didn’t look exceptionally confident. She’d finished scraping the walls and he could see the places where she’d filled holes. Her pretty hazel eyes seemed as big as the kitten’s when she gazed at him. There was a sprinkle of freckles across her nose that he hadn’t noticed before.
He might as well know the worst. “What’s the last thing you painted?”
“I helped my dad paint my bedroom when I was—” She stopped to think. “Twelve? Thirteen?”
He wondered if he’d gone too long without a woman from the strong way he reacted when she gave him that look. The half-humorous one, as though she were laughing at herself and inviting him to share in her amusement. He had no idea why he found that so sexy, but he couldn’t keep the grin off his face. “So you’re an experienced bedroom painter, then.”
“I might need a refresher course in the finer details.”
At least she was keen to get involved, which he liked to see. “Okay, put on some clothes you don’t mind getting paint all over and we’ll have a lesson in painting 101.”
“Okay.”
“Great.”
He cranked open the stepladder he’d brought upstairs with him. She was hovering in front of her dresser. He prepared to climb the ladder. “Aren’t you changing into your grubbies?”
“Uh, I was waiting for you to leave the room.”
She hadn’t seemed that shy. He felt as though he’d blundered into one of those female areas that always confused him. “Can’t you change in the bathroom?”
“I—um, my—” She glanced at the dresser, looking embarrassed, then back to him. “Could you give me five minutes?”
And suddenly he got it. She probably kept her sex toys in her dresser along with her clothes. Didn’t want him getting an eyeful. He hopped off the ladder, trying really hard not to imagine what kind of toys were in that secret drawer. And trying even harder not to picture the two of them playing with them on that big comfy bed underneath the chandelier he was about to install.
6
HE RAN DOWN the stairs and grabbed some paint cloths and plastic sheeting, a roll of painter’s tape and rollers, brushes and both the ceiling paint and the wall color. He took the time to give both cans of paint a good stir. When he’d allowed ten minutes to pass, he gathered the painting supplies into a box and pounded back up the stairs, giving her plenty of warning that he was on his way.
Still, he knocked before he walked into Cassie’s bedroom. She was fully dressed in jeans that weren’t even close to grubby and a long-sleeved T-shirt advertising fish food. She was already unscrewing the old beige plastic switch plate covers from the walls. Excellent. She didn’t turn around when he came in, just kept working.
He climbed back up his ladder and tackled taking down the cheap old fixture that had probably been hanging up here for the entire life of the house. Who looked at something that ugly every night for fifty years? Right before they went to sleep?
Which sent his mind skidding back to those images again. The atmosphere in the room was different. Charged. Heating up. He suspected it was him thinking about what secrets were hidden in her sex-toy drawer. He told himself to stop. He was working for her, not sleeping with her. But like the proverbial elephant, the more he tried to stop wondering what was in her secret stash, the more his imagination conjured up every toy he’d ever seen, heard of or dreamed up.
He took down the light fixture—dead flies, old cobwebs and all—and carried it downstairs in a large box to add to his growing trash pile.
Back in the bedroom, he found Cassie was unscrewing the last of the outlet covers. A neat pile of them sat in a corner, all the screws gathered together. He liked the orderly way she worked.
“Okay,” he said, “when you’re done with those, we’ll cover everything up and then I’ll paint the ceiling while you...?”
Together, they pulled her bed away from the wall. He didn’t have to tell her how to lift, he noted. She bent from the knees and lifted like a pro. They moved her dresser away from the wall and not for one second did he allow himself to think about what was inside that dresser. Nope. There definitely wasn’t a pink vibrator in there. Stop it. No fur-lined handcuffs. He wasn’t even thinking about the possibility. No blindfolds or massage oils. He was relieved when they finally had the room cleared of boxes and the bit of remaining furniture away from the walls. He left Cassie draping plastic over her bed while he prepped the ceiling for painting.
Since he was painting the ceiling the same white as before, he contented himself with giving it a good rub with a dry cloth, removing old cobwebs and any loose dirt or dust that might adhere to the wet paint. He moved the ladder around, doing a quadrant at a time.
He got Cassie washing the walls down so the paint job would look professional. He could hear the soft splash when she dipped her sponge into the water and the swishing sound as she washed the walls.
He worked fast, wanting to get to the painting. Not that he loved painting ceilings—it always gave him a crick in his neck—but he held on to the image of the completed room and that helped him get through the tedious parts.
She hadn’t put on music and he didn’t want to impose his choices on her, so they worked in silence. He said, “How’s it going down there?”
“I’m sick at how dirty this water is.”
“This whole room’s going to be clean and fresh by the time you go to bed tonight.”
“Good.”
“You might want to sleep in the other bedroom tonight, though. It will smell like paint in here.” What was the matter with him? Could he mention her and beds in the same sentence a few more times?
“Good idea,” she said. “I’ll get the guest room made up.”
“I saw a bunch of diving stuff in your garage. You’re a diver?”
“I am. I’ve been diving since I was a kid. I grew up in Southern California, so the water was a lot warmer. I spent every second I could in the water. Surfing, diving, swimming. Still do.” He heard the slosh as she dunked her sponge and squeezed it out. “Though up here I’m in a wet suit most of the year. How about you? Do you dive?”
“I’ve tried it. But I’m more of an aboveground kind of guy. I play hockey, basketball, stuff like that.”
He imagined living in eternal sunshine. “Do you miss it? California?”
He heard the sponge stop moving, as though she were contemplating the question. “I do sometimes. I miss the weather and my family. I moved up here for the job, but once I got used to all the rain, I really came to appreciate the green. The forests and mountains. I still go back a few times a year, but this is home for me now. Especially now that I’ve bought a house.”
“A house is only as permanent as you make it. I buy and sell houses all the time. Fix them up and move on.”
