The question was out before she realized what she’d said. “I’m sorry, Rob. It’s none of my business.”
He held up a hand. “It’s okay. I don’t mind telling you. Leah and I had an apartment across town. I didn’t want to live there after…” He swallowed hard. “Her labor didn’t go well, and Ginny had the cord wrapped around her neck. Just real bad luck altogether.”
She put a hand on his wrist. “You must have been devastated.”
“I didn’t get to think about that aspect of things too much. Babies take a lot of time and attention. I was pretty busy.”
“My husband left on a business trip two weeks after Connor was born. I know exactly what you mean.”
“We’re a pair then, aren’t we?” His gaze held hers, and his arm turned under her fingers until their hands closed upon each other, palm to palm. Not a simple handshake, but a deeper, warmer connection. She felt the texture of his skin, felt the strong dome of muscle at the base of his thumb, the deep valley over his life line. They held each other so tightly, a single pulse beat through both of them…or so it seemed.
In another instant, though, he had released her and dropped off the porch steps into the grass. “If you think of anything else you need before Wednesday, just call me,” he instructed, walking backward toward the driveway. “And be sure you use those new locks.”
“I will. Thanks for everything.” She waved to him as he pulled out of the drive, and should have gone inside at that point. Instead, she stayed on the porch, watching the Thunderbird drive down the street until it was lost from sight.
A very nice guy, she thought. A good friend, a great father.
And the sexiest man she’d met in…well, ever. She’d thought she preferred dark, compact professional men, until Rob. Now, tall and blond and lean was her idea of perfect. Forget the business suits and ties—give her a guy in a baseball cap, a black T-shirt and jeans faded to nearly white, with a rip across the knee and frayed hems. Let him drive a 1955 Thunderbird, turquoise and white. Her heart pounded just remembering how great he looked in that car.
Grace joined her on the porch. “Mr. Warren’s nice, isn’t he?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“You could go on a date with him. Ginny said her mom died a long time ago.”
“I don’t think Mr. Warren and I will be dating, Gracie.”
“Why not?”
“Because—” She gave in to a moment of temptation and imagined Rob with her on a date. Specifically, the end of the date, where he would reach across that white leather seat, take her in his arms and lift her chin up, then press his mouth to hers…
“We work together, and that’s all. For the troop. There can’t be any other complications.” She shooed Grace into the house and followed close behind, hoping she could heed her own sensible advice.
Otherwise, she had absolutely no doubt that indulging her attraction to Rob Warren would qualify as the most colossal complication of them all.
AS SOON AS HE opened the shop door on Monday morning, Rob heard his dad’s voice rumbling in a constant stream of complaints. When he looked in the doorway of the office, he found Mike Warren standing in front of the file cabinets with half the drawers already open. A pile of folders and a messy stack of loose papers on top of the desk reversed all the progress Jen had made during the weekend.
“What’s going on, Dad?” Rob stepped into the small room and noticed—again—the dusty window and blinds, the worn paint on the walls, the outdated calendar. The place needed a serious face-lift. If only he had the time…
“I was lookin’ for the invoice from that latest order we placed for lock sets. I know I laid it on the desk here last week, but I’m damned if the whole place wasn’t straightened up, so this morning I can’t find a damn pencil, let alone the papers I need.” Mike paged through one folder, pushed it aside and started on another as the papers in the first folder slid toward the edge of the desk and then the floor.
“Jen came in to do some organizing.” Rob caught the papers just before they fell, stacked them together and put them back into the folder. “Maybe what you’re looking for is in a file.”
“Yeah, well, why do you think I’ve got this stuff out on the desk?” His dad made a helpless gesture with his hands. “But the only folder I can find with the company name on it is catalogs. I don’t need the catalog, I need the damn invoice.”
Rob went to the far right file cabinet and pulled out the top drawer. “As I recall, she files the year’s invoices by month received, and month paid. We got that shipment…what? Two months ago?” He checked the June folder, then July. “Here it is. Those locks came in at the beginning of July.”
“Well, thank God you had some idea of where to look. This whole system is just a mess.” His dad tugged the paper of out Rob’s hands. “How’m I supposed to remember what month the damn locks came in?”
“There’s a logbook, Dad.” Rob took the journal from the left drawer of the desk. “We record the deliveries.” He didn’t mention that his sister simply did what their dad had told her to with regard to the paperwork. Mike wouldn’t want to hear that the system he despised this morning was his own invention. “So what’s the problem with the invoice, anyway?”
“I keep taking down locks that don’t work right.” His dad left the office and went into the workshop. On his bench was a stack of six boxes containing brand-new locks. “Gotta send ’em back.”
“That’s a good company. It’s hard to believe they’d distribute defective merchandise. Have you tested every lock in the shipment?”
“That’s your job today.” Without so much as a glance in Rob’s direction, his dad started checking over his toolbox, getting ready for the day’s work.
Rob stood still for a minute, unwilling even to breathe for fear his temper would get the best of him. “My job?” he said, finally. “You want me to test five hundred locks?”
Mike nodded. “That’s right.”
“And I get this job because…?”
“Who else? Trent’s on call today. Smith is working on that office building project, which leaves you.”
“I’ll take call again. Let Trent test the locks.” He sounded like a whiny teenager. But he wasn’t an errand boy or an apprentice. “Or let Smith stay here and work with the locks. I should be doing the office project, anyway.”
“You weren’t able to stay until six in the afternoons, like they needed. So Smith took the job. And you test the locks.”
“Why don’t you test the locks?” Absolutely the worst thing he could’ve said.
Mike looked at him, then—Rob felt like he was staring at his older self in a mirror—and straightened up to his full height. “I run this business. I make the decisions and I assign the jobs. Nobody argues. That’s the way it is.”
And I quit, Rob said, but only in his mind. He’d had the thought a thousand times in the last fourteen years,
