he thought with another spurt of gut juice as he came to Charley’s dingy white, 1920s-era two-story house, perched some twenty feet or so above street level at the top of a narrow, erratically terraced front yard. In the fine snow frosting the winter-bleached grass and overgrown rosebushes, it looked like a lopsided Tim Burtonesque wedding cake. Even through the snow, the house showed signs of weary neglect—flaking paint, the occasional ripped screen, cement steps that looked like something big and mean and scary had used them as a chew toy.
He could only imagine what it looked like on the inside.
Let alone what the atmosphere was likely to be.
Noah sucked in a sharp, cold breath, his cheeks puffing as he exhaled. Maybe he should’ve given Roxie a heads-up, he thought as he shifted the clipboard to rummage in an inside pocket, hoping he’d remembered to replenish his stash. Yes. Although he’d quit smoking more than five years ago, there were still times when the urge to light up was almost unbearable. This was definitely one of those times.
Thinking, Never let ‘em see you sweat, he marched up to the front door, plastered on a grin and rang the bell.
Ding-dong.
Wrestling a dust bunny with a death grip from a particularly ornery curl, Roxie carefully set the tissue paper-smothered Lladro figurine on her uncle’s coffee table and went to answer the front door…only to groan at the sight of the slouching, distorted silhouette on the other side of the frosted glass panel.
Thinking, Road, hell, good intentions, right, Roxie yanked open the door, getting a face full of swirling snow for her efforts. And, yep, Noah Garrett’s up-to-no-good grin, glistening around flashes of what looked like a slowly-savored chocolate Tootsie Roll pop.
Eyes nearly the same color twinkled at her when Noah, a clipboard tucked under one arm, lowered the pop, oblivious to the sparkly ice bits in his short, thick hair. His dark lashes. The here-to-forever shoulders straining the black leather of his jacket—which coordinated nicely with the black Henley shirt underneath, the black cargo pants, the black work boots, sheesh—as he leaned against the door frame.
“Hey, Roxie,” he rumbled, grinning harder, adding creased cheeks to the mix and making Roxie wonder if dust bunnies could be trained to attack on command. “Dad said Charley needed some work done around the house?”
“Um…I expected your dad.”
A shrug preceded, “He had other obligations. So I’m your man.”
In your dreams, buddy.
Although there was no reason, really, why being within fifty feet of the man should raise every hackle she possessed. Wasn’t as if there was any history between them, save for an ill-advised—and thankfully unrequited—crush in her senior year of high school, when grief had clearly addled her brain and Noah had been The Boy Every Girl Wanted. And, rumor had it, got more often than not. Well, except for Roxie.
Twelve years on, not a whole lot had changed, far as she could tell. Not on Noah’s part, and—apparently—neither on hers.
Which, on all counts, was too pathetic for words.
“Kitchen first,” she muttered as she turned smartly on her slipper-socked foot, keeping barely ahead of the testosterone cloud as she led Noah through the maze of crumbling boxes, bulging black bags and mountains of ancient Good Housekeepings and Family Circles sardined into the already overdecorated living room.
“Um…cleaning?” she heard behind her.
“Aunt Mae’s…things,” she said over the pang, now understanding why it had taken her uncle more than a year to deal with her aunt’s vast collections. Even so, Roxie found the sorting and tossing and head shaking—i.e., a box marked “Pieces of string too small to use.” Really, Aunt Mae?—hugely cathartic, a way to hang on to what little mind she had left after this latest series of implosions.
Except divesting the garage—and attic, and spare room, and shed—of forty years’ worth of accumulated…stuff…also revealed the woebegone state of the house itself. Not to mention her uncle, nearly as forlorn as the threadbare, olive-green damask drapes weighing down the dining room windows. So Roxie suggested he spruce up the place before, you know, it collapsed around their heads. Amazingly, he’d agreed…to think about it.
Think about it, go for it…close enough.
However, while Roxie could wield a mean paint roller and was totally up for taking a sledgehammer to the kitchen cabinets—especially when she envisioned her ex-fiancé’s face in the light-sucking varnish, thus revealing a facet to her nature she found both disturbing and exhilarating—that’s as far as her refurbishing skills went. Hence, her giving Gene Garrett a jingle.
And hence, apparently, his sending the one person guaranteed to remind Roxie of her penchant for making Really Bad Decisions. Especially when she was vulnerable. And susceptible to…whatever it was Noah exuded. Which at the moment was a heady cocktail of old leather and raw wood and pine needles. And chocolate, God help her.
“Whoa,” Noah said, at his first glimpse of the kaleidoscope of burnt orange and lime green and cobalt blue, all suffused with the lingering, if imagined, scents of a thousand meatloafs and tuna casseroles and roast chickens. She adored her aunt and uncle, and Mae’s absence had gouged yet another hole in her heart; but to tell the truth the house’s décor was intertwined with way too many sketchy memories of other sad times, of other wounds. Far as Roxie was concerned, it couldn’t be banished fast enough.
“Yeah,” she said. “‘Some’ work might be an understatement.”
Just as this estimate couldn’t be done fast enough, and Charley would sign off on it, and Noah or Gene or whoever would send over their worker bees to make magic happen, and Roxie would get back to what passed for her life these days—and far away from all this glittery, wood-scented temptation—and all would be well.
Or at least bearable.
The Tootsie Roll pop—and Roxie—apparently forgotten, Noah gawked at the seventies-gone-very-wrong scene in front of him, clearly focused on the job at hand. And not even remotely on her.
Well…good.
“And this is just for starters,” Roxie said, and he positively glowed, and she thought, Eyes on the prize, cupcake.
And Noah Garrett was definitely not it.
Despite the stern talking-to Noah’d given himself as he hiked up all those steps about how Roxie was no different from any other female, that he’d never not been in total control of his feelings and no way in hell was he going to start now—The second she opened the door, all dusty and smudgy and glowering and hot, all he knew was if the Tootsie Roll pop hadn’t been attached to a stick he would’ve choked on the blasted thing.
Noah’d stopped questioning a long time ago whatever it was that seemed to draw females to him like ants to sugar, it being much easier to simply accept the blessing. So if he was smart, he mused as he pretended to inspect the butt-ugly cabinets, he’d do well to consider Roxie’s apparent immunity to his charm, or whatever the hell it was, a blessing of another sort. Because if she actually gave him the time of day he’d be toast.
While he was pondering all this, she’d made herself busy sorting through a couple of battered boxes on the dining table on the other side of the open kitchen—more
