grinned back. “Now you’re talking.”
“Add a monthly stipend of four hundred dollars for my personal expenses and you’ve got yourself a deal.”
“Four hundred!” he echoed, stunned.
“Do we have a deal or don’t we?”
Damn but she was impulsive, he thought. Almost as impulsive as he was. And she drove a hard bargain. But what did it matter whether they thought about this for ten minutes or ten days, as long as it solved all their mutual problems, which it did. Dillon studied her with satisfaction, realizing it had been easier for him to take care of both his own guilt and Hank’s widow than he’d ever imagined it could be. “Okay, you’re hired.”
“You forgot one thing, Dillon,” Hayley said, looking into his dark blue eyes and ruggedly handsome face with all the directness she could muster.
“Oh, yeah, what’s that?”
“You didn’t tell me I’d be moving into an absolute disaster,” Hayley said, early the following morning.
Dillon frowned at the red walls and red velvet furniture in the formal living room. “I didn’t know it was this bad,” he said grimly, looking no more pleased than she felt.
Hayley sent him a skeptical glance as they trudged through the adjacent kitchen, which was decorated in shades of avocado and lemon yellow. “How is that possible?” she asked disbelievingly. “After all, you bought this house.”
“No,” he said with a flash of white teeth, “my sister did.”
Hayley stopped him before he could head up the stairs to the second floor of the sprawling, white brick Colonial. “You bought this house without at least seeing a detailed report of everything it would need to make it livable?” she asked, incredulous.
“Right.” Dillon glanced thoughtfully up at the chandelier overhead, which was coated with several years’ worth of dust and spider webs.
Hayley kept her eyes trained on his face. He didn’t look like an idiot. He looked smart, strong and sexy. Too sexy, she thought, her eyes roving over his tall, solidly built frame and broad, powerful shoulders. She hadn’t been attracted to a man since Hank’s death, but she was attracted to Dillon. And she felt that sizzle of attraction with heart-stopping awareness every time she looked into his mesmerizing dark blue eyes. “Why?”
“Why not?” Dillon shrugged. He tested the wooden banister and found it as wobbly as it looked. His glance met hers again. “I had no interest in trotting through home after home. One place is as good as the next as far as I’m concerned, so I decided to let my sister, Marge, handle the actual selection. That way, I already had a place when I got back to the States. All I had to do was wait for my stuff to arrive, find someone to unpack it and move in. Then she found this place, said it needed redecorating. A hell of a lot of redecorating. But it was a great bargain. So, shrewd investor that I am, I figured I’d capitalize on the financial opportunity.”
“She didn’t tell you it looked like a highly disorganized white elephant sale inside?”
“No. She said nothing about it being furnished like a clearance sale at an outdoor flea market.” Dillon shoved a hand through the tousled, two-inch-long layers of his dark brown hair and shook his head. “In terms of redecorating, I figured I’d have to pick out new paint, wallpaper and carpet. Worst case, maybe even fix some of the plumbing. Which, of course, is why I hired you.”
“Because you didn’t want to mess with it,” Hayley assumed.
“Not in this lifetime.” Dillon affirmed her guess with a tantalizing grin.
So he hated decorating, Hayley thought. Most men did. He did pick out his clothes well. The brown Harris tweed jacket and dark brown trousers not only fit his muscular body well, they complemented his dark brown hair and suntan.
“But I have to admit, Hayley, this—” Dillon took a deep, bracing breath as he looked around him “—is just ridiculous, even for someone like me who really doesn’t care where they live. If you want to back out—”
Hayley wasn’t going to let him discourage her. It didn’t matter to her the house was wrecked or that he was close enough to her in age and ruggedly good-looking enough to give her pause. All that mattered to her was the eventual cut of the profits it would bring. With that, she could make herself and Christine a real home. “Dillon, we’ll fix it up.”
“I’m not sure that’s possible.”
Hayley laughed softly. “Sure it is,” she persisted, her artist’s eye already seeing the potential beneath the disastrously decorated interior, even if he couldn’t begin to. Whether Dillon could see it or not, this was the kind of house in just the kind of place that Hayley had always dreamed of living in. If only this were hers, she would’ve really arrived. It irked her that Dillon took for granted what she wanted most. And it baffled her that he was so disinterested in this kind of life that he hadn’t even bothered to see the house he was buying.
She knew if she’d seen the pictures of the exterior of the majestic two-story Colonial on the serene, tree-lined drive she would’ve broken land speed records getting here! And to know it was hers…all hers. That would be heaven.
Well, Dillon might not care much for this kind of well-to-do suburban life-style, but she did. And she was going to enjoy every second she was here. Just as she would use the profits they made on the sale of the house for the down payment on a home for herself and Christine.
It wouldn’t be nearly as grand as Dillon’s home, of course. But it would be theirs. And it would be loved and cared for, by both herself and Christine.
“You’ll feel differently about this house once it’s cleaned up and redecorated,” Hayley promised as Dillon continued to scowl at their surroundings. She could envision it now—with plush carpeting and freshly painted walls, plenty of sunlight pouring in…
“Don’t try and humor me, Hayley,” Dillon retorted, unappeased. “This place ranks with some of the tackiest places in the eastern hemisphere. And I oughta know—for the last twenty years I lived in them.”
“Hello!” a chirpy voice called. A tall slim woman with cropped dark brown hair stepped through the door.
“Hayley, meet my sister, Marge. The genius who selected this place.”
Marge strode forward to give him a quick hug. “I knew you’d be overwhelmed,” she said, smoothing down the fabric of her green plaid skirt and coordinating turtleneck sweater. “Which is precisely why I didn’t send you any pictures except of the outside.”
Which Hayley admitted to herself didn’t look too bad. The exterior had already been painted a gleaming white, with dark pine green shutters and a glossy black front door.
“What in blazes happened here?” Dillon demanded.
“Look, Dillon, this place does have its advantages,” Hayley interjected.
“Such as?”
“An excellent floor plan, spacious
