finally asked.
She wailed something about her daughter hating her. Logan assumed she was Ryan Grant’s sister. There’d been an indefinable something about her that reminded him of Ryan. Logan didn’t know her brother that well, but now he tried to remember what Ryan had said about her.
She was divorced, or at least separated. Logan remembered Ryan banging around one day on a work site, growling under his breath about his goddamn stubborn sister who was buying a house that would fall down on top of her idiotic head any day. Logan had paused, a screwdriver in his hand, and asked why she was buying the place. The gist, as he recalled, was that she’d left her bastard of a husband and she claimed this was all she could afford without asking for help either from him—or her own brother—which she refused to do.
“I wouldn’t give a damn,” Ryan had concluded viciously, “except that the roof will fall on my niece’s head, too. Why couldn’t she buy a nice condo?” he had asked in appeal.
Personally, Logan didn’t blame her. He liked the looks of this place. It was worth a little work.
He kept patting her back and waiting while her sobs became gulps and then sniffles. Logan knew the exact moment when she realized she was crying all over a man she didn’t know.
Her body went very still, stiffened, and then she all but leaped back. “Oh, no! I must look…” She scrubbed frantically at her wet cheeks. “I’m so sorry!”
“I invited myself in,” he reminded her. Sticking his hands in his pockets, he ostentatiously glanced around, admiring the French doors leading into the living room, the staircase, the arched doorway to the kitchen. “Nice place,” he added.
“If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’ll just, um…”
The doorknob rattled behind them, and the door swung open.
“Helen!” exclaimed his bedraggled blonde. “Thank goodness! This is Mister, um… The cabinetmaker. Will you show him the kitchen while I…” She was already fleeing up the stairs.
The redhead who’d come in with the child gazed in surprise after her…friend? Sister? Roommate? He had no idea.
“I didn’t beat her,” he said, trying to look harmless.
She gave him a distracted look. “No, she’s… It’s been an awful day. We should have called you, but we forgot you were coming.”
“Logan Carr,” he said, extending his hand.
“Helen Schaefer.” She shook his hand. “This is Ginny.”
“Ah.” How did you politely say, And who the hell are you?
“Ginny, did you want to watch television while I show Mr. Carr the kitchen?”
The waif shook her head hard, her big eyes fixed suspiciously on him.
Helen Schaefer didn’t look so hot, either, he noted, which made him wonder anew what had happened to upset both women so much. Her face was too pale under skillfully applied makeup, the shadows beneath her eyes purple. He’d felt the tremor in her hand, saw the gentleness with which she stroked her daughter’s head.
“Lead on,” Logan said, wishing the classy blonde hadn’t skipped. He picked up his clipboard from the step where he’d dropped it earlier.
The kitchen had potential and not much else. The vast floor space was wasted, as was typical for a house of this era. Cabinets had been added in about the 1940s, if he was any judge. Which meant drawers didn’t glide on runners, cabinets were deep spaces where you could lose a kid the size of this Ginny, and they stretched to the ten-foot ceiling, the upper ones useful only for stowing stuff that ten years later you were surprised to discover you still owned.
“We can’t afford to replace those,” the redhead told him. “What we’re thinking is that we can make use of this corner.” She gestured.
One area held a table, set with pretty quilted placemats. The corner she had indicated currently had a cart and oldish microwave, an extra chair and a lot of nothing.
Logan considered. They didn’t want to replace their crappy, inadequate kitchen cupboards. Instead, they had in mind him building something that didn’t match in this corner.
Go figure.
“Make use in what way?” he asked politely.
Apparently reading his mind, she smiled with the first spark of life—and amusement—he’d seen in her.
“Kathleen and I have started a business together. We’ve only made a few sales—this is really at the ground floor—but unfortunately it’s taking over the kitchen, and we all have to live here, too.”
“All?” he asked, hoping he didn’t seem nosy.
“Kathleen owns the house,” she explained, “but Ginny and I live here, too, along with another roommate, Jo, and Kathleen’s daughter Emma.”
The one who hated her, he presumed.
And who was Joe, lucky bastard, living with a couple of beautiful women? Unless they were lesbians and Joe was gay.
Nah. Logan couldn’t imagine the woman who’d tumbled into his arms and felt so natural there as a lesbian. Unless that was why she’d left her husband…
Damn it! he thought in irritation. What difference did it make what lifestyle she’d chosen? He wasn’t courting the woman, for Pete’s sake! He was bidding to build some cabinets for her.
Period.
He cleared his throat. “What kind of business is taking over the kitchen?”
“Kathleen makes soap. I market it.”
“Soap.”
“Yeah. You know.” She gazed expectantly at him. “Bars of it. The good kind. Not the kind you buy at the grocery store.”
Personally, he bought whatever was cheap and not too smelly. Speaking of which… He inhaled experimentally. The kitchen was fragrant. He’d vaguely thought they must have been baking earlier, but the overall impression wasn’t of food, but more…flowery.
“Soap-making,” he repeated, and contemplated the corner. “Tell me what it involves.”
They both turned at the sound of a footstep. Looking like a different woman, Kathleen came into the kitchen.
Her face was expertly made up, her thick golden hair loosely French braided. She wore a long, black, knit skirt that clung to her hips and thighs, and over it a simple T-shirt in a vivid shade of aqua. She looked like a million dollars.
“I’m back,” she said with a warm but somehow practiced smile. “Ready to beg your pardon for forgetting you were coming, and then weeping all over you.”
Her face was maybe still a little puffy, her eyes a little red. Even so, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, from her high graceful forehead to pronounced cheekbones and a full, sensuous mouth. She had the kind of translucent skin, faintly touched with freckles, that
