She was five-five in the flat-soled tennis shoes she was wearing with her jeans and hot-pink T-shirt, and she tilted her head back to look up at him. It felt as if her smile was about ready to split her face in two. “I start tomorrow.”
His eyebrows shot up and he gave her an assessing once-over. He shifted a little. Maybe an inch. Two. But not toward her. Then she realized his eyes were no longer smiling and a few of the bubbles inside her popped. “You’re one of Arthur Swinton’s finds?”
Nevertheless, optimism and that golden aura made her push onward. “Yes. Mr. Swinton hired me. About two weeks ago.”
Arthur Swinton was the money behind the intergenerational project. And if it weren’t for the employment bonus he’d offered for people willing to move to Rust Creek Falls and work on the construction project, she’d never have been able to afford to come to Montana in the first place. The bonus had paid for her gas and the deposit on her duplex, and if she was careful, it would carry her over for a small while when the two-month job ended until she found a more permanent one.
That was the argument she’d given her family back in Cincinnati, and she was sticking to it.
“I read about Mr. Swinton’s offer in an online blog,” she told Jack, aware that she was speaking a little too quickly, a little too freely, yet unable to stop. “Lissa Roarke? She worked with that nonprofit organization, Bootstraps, and came to Rust Creek Falls to help out after the flood here last year.”
She could tell the details weren’t necessary by the way he nodded. “I know who she is.”
“It seemed like an ideal opportunity,” she pushed on. “So, are you a Rust Creek Falls native?”
His nod was even briefer and she could sense his withdrawal. “You did commercial construction in Cincinnati?”
She kept her smile in place, though her mouth went dry. She’d helped her dad build an extension on their garage, she knew the difference between a miter and a chop saw, and was an avid devotee to all television do-it-yourself shows. She was also well aware that didn’t make her an expert in anything. So she sidestepped.A little.
Okay. A lot.
The same way she’d sidestepped when she had her phone interview. “More, uh, more residential. Mr. Swinton needed a handyman.” She laughed overbrightly. “Handyperson, I guess I should say.”
Jack’s gaze turned even more assessing. As if he could see right through to the truth of the matter. That, in her enthusiasm to move to Rust Creek Falls, she might have exaggerated her experience a teensy bit. And she hadn’t corrected Mr. Swinton’s assumption that she had plenty of on-the-job experience.
The man had told her they were in need of general construction laborers, and specifically, he was looking for a woman. She’d guessed, by Mr. Swinton’s eagerness to make her fit his requirements, there hadn’t been too many females who’d applied.
Anxious to move the topic away from her employment and back onto more interesting matters—namely the good-looking, seemingly eligible and for a few seconds there, seemingly interested, guy standing before her—she jerked her head at the small house behind her. “So, do you live in the neighborhood, Jack?” There were three other houses on the street, looking sleepy and quiet at seven in the morning on a Sunday. He could have come from any of them.
“I’ve got a house a little ways outside town,” he said, revealing pretty much nothing, but dashing that hope all the same and leaving her wondering, instead, what he was doing there at that hour at all.
He moved his hand from the dusty car and pushed his fingers in the front pockets of his jeans. She determinedly kept her gaze from following the motion too closely. The man knew how to wear jeans.
“Keith’s gas station down on the corner is where you’ll want to take your car,” he said abruptly. “Keith’s a mechanic. He’s my cousin, but anyone around here will tell you he’s fair.” Then he settled his cowboy hat more squarely on his head, nodded and went over to one of the trucks parked on the street, same as her own car. It was black beneath the dust covering it, and had a rack in the back loaded with ladders. He climbed behind the wheel. “Hope you’ll enjoy Rust Creek Falls,” he said. Polite. Friendly.
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