heard me. Unless you know anyone who works for free, I can’t afford them.”
“You run out of money?”
“You could say that. I planned on selling soon and flipping the house.” She groaned and rubbed her temples. “This is so much more complicated than on those home improvement shows.”
Those reality shows were filled with so much...fantasy. Find a fixer-upper for two hundred dollars, pour in some “sweat equity” and sell for a cool million. He didn’t know where these scenarios happened, but so far as he could tell it wasn’t planet Earth. He’d tried, of course, to warn Sarah about buying the house from Stone. To say the house needed a facelift was an understatement. Even Stone had tried to talk her out of the remodeling.
Initially Matt had believed Sarah might stay, but then she’d made it clear she would flip the house and move back to Colorado. So she’d be leaving, and he’d be staying. He only had a few more years left with his son, Hunter, before he turned eighteen. Only a few years to make a difference in his life.
He liked Sarah, but he also didn’t need the drama. Especially when she was only here in Fortune a while longer. But he wasn’t done torturing himself, nor would he stand by while Sarah lost everything. He squatted down in front of her chair, and put one hand on each of her jean-clad legs.
“I work for free.”
* * *
“FREE?” SARAH ASKED, distracted by the way his forearms connected powerfully and gracefully to the big hands on her legs. They were great forearms. Great hands, too. Great everything. Damn him. He was balanced on the balls of his feet in front of her, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the previous comment she’d made. The one he’d misunderstood so completely.
Or more than likely he was only teasing her with the fully sexual look he’d pinned her with a moment ago. She could almost see the moving frames of the porno movie playing in his mind. Why he continued to play with her like this she’d never understand. Oh yeah, that’s right, but she did understand. He was a man.
“I know my way around a hammer. I’ll help.”
She shook her head. “No. I can’t let you do this.”
“Yeah, you can.”
“No, Matt. You have enough going on in your life.”
“And I can handle it.”
If she hadn’t been trained for her work as a forensic artist back in Colorado, she might not have noticed the tells of the eyes. Matt’s were obvious to her, which made everything between them so confusing. His eyes consistently told her one thing and his words another. Right now the breath-stealing eyes said he was tired, tense, frustrated and something else she couldn’t put her finger on. Was it desire? Pity? Oh please, not pity.
Stop it. Stop trying to analyze everyone.
The problem was she knew too much about Matt Conner to believe him right now. When Matt had moved on from the Air Force, Stone offered him a full-time position piloting flights at Mcallister Charters. It had been time, Matt had said, to settle back in his hometown. The teenage son he’d had with a high school girlfriend lived nearby and Matt had been trying to reconnect with Hunter after many years of living abroad. As far as she could tell, the reunion wasn’t going well.
She did know a little about teenagers and their anger and resistance to absentee fathers.
Matt also looked in on his father, who had retired early and lived nearby. Then there was the hellish landlord she’d been hearing rumors about lately. Matt was looking for another place to rent in the area, preferably a home where he could have his son visit every other weekend. How could she, in all good conscience, take any more time away from a man who already had far too many demands on him?
“Matt,” she said slowly, drawing out his name, and peeling his warm hands off her legs.
“Sarah,” he repeated, allowing it, but giving her a slow and devilish grin that reached into her heart and gave it a little twist.
“Forget it.” She stood up, smoothing down her jeans and taking a deep and sexually frustrated breath.
She couldn’t have Matt around every day fixing her house. A woman only had so much self-control around a man like Matt. She figured within three days of him at the house, working in a tool belt and no shirt—at least in her fantasies—she’d attack him and make a fool out of herself. And she’d had enough of that in the past few months, thank you very much.
“I need to get back to work. Thanks for bringing me in here to calm down. I don’t know what happened out there. I guess I lost it for a minute.” She put her hand on the doorknob and turned to give him a small attempt at a smile. It felt tight. Fake.
He was back to leaning against Stone’s desk, his big arms folded across the white button-up Mcallister Charters shirt. No one wore a shirt like Matt Conner did. Like Stone and the other pilots, he wore a type of uniform when he flew. The white button-up with its logo, usually sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and black cargo pants filled out in all the right places. The aviator glasses often completed the outfit, making him drool-worthy. She also knew him to be highly intelligent. A pilot. An engineer. A mechanic. Apparently also a carpenter of sorts.
And one hundred percent heartbreaker.
“Hey.” His smooth-as-whiskey voice stopped her halfway out the door.
“Yeah?”
“I’m not going to forget it.”
She didn’t answer, too tired to fight with him anymore, and made her way back to the Snack Shack. Jedd had gone back to work, and the entire coffee mess had been cleaned up as if nothing had happened at all. A couple of customers were waiting patiently, and Sarah apologized to them. Behind the counter, she stayed busy filling coffee orders and warming up pastries in the microwave.
And she tried not to notice when Matt finally emerged from Stone’s office a few minutes later, his long, lean body moving through the hangar until he disappeared out the doors to the tarmac.
Tried not to notice. But as usual, she couldn’t resist.
THREE DAYS LATER, Sarah sat in the middle of the floor in the hallway, safety glasses on, a hammer in one hand and a nail in the other. Stone had previously replaced worn, missing and loose panels in the home. She, on the other hand, had decided that she wanted brand-new cherrywood flooring throughout. Now that half of it was done and half not done, she’d need to finish the job herself. And she would make this hardwood floor her bitch. How hard could this be when Satan could do it?
“You can do this. You’re an artist. This is just a different medium,” she told herself.
This much was true at least. She had a bachelor of liberal arts from Colorado University. Because she hadn’t much wanted to starve, she’d wound up working as a forensic artist for the Fort Collins Police Department. Her work had earned her a reputation back home. She’d drawn sketches of alleged suspects worthy of an art gallery, some had said. Of course, she disagreed, but she had a higher standard than most.
Van
