page. But that wasn’t what had surprised him. What had surprised him was that she was also smart, confident and incredibly spirited for a woman he’d assumed would be as one-dimensional as she appeared in print.
And that was not to say that he hadn’t noticed her actual dimensions, too.
He wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. Why in the hell was he so hot? He looked up at the sky, expecting to see that the reason for the heat pouring through his body was just the sun, blazing overhead. But it was still midmorning, and the feeble, pale sun was still lying low in the eastern sky. He couldn’t deny it. Lauren Simpson was making him sweat. And he didn’t like that fact one bit.
He’d come here with one thing in mind, Cole reminded himself as he grabbed a toolbox and threw the necessary tools into it with a clatter, and he wasn’t going to stray from it. To get what he wanted, he needed this job. And he’d do a lot better work if his mind wasn’t filled with images of her in the silky, flimsy, barely there stuff she wore in that damned catalog.
He cursed under his breath as he grabbed a hacksaw. Knowing just what she looked like under her harmless frayed jeans and blue T-shirt wasn’t going to help him find out what he needed to know. Nor would it help him to stay focused on finding what had been taken from him, prove it was his and head home.
Toolbox filled, he walked back to the house and took the swing down. In less than twenty minutes, he’d filled the damaged holes where the threads had been stripped, drilled new holes for a stronger chain he’d found in his truck, attached the chain with sturdier bolts and hung the swing back up.
He sat down to test the swing’s strength and was surprised by the satisfaction he’d taken in performing the simple task. Obviously it had been too long since he’d put his hands to actual labor. He sized up the front of the house and made a mental list of what needed to be done with an eye trained by over fifteen years in the construction business. The roof leaked, the porch boards were warped, the paint was peeling, the windows needed glazing—and that was just what he could see from where he sat.
He sighed as he got up and pulled a big, flathead screwdriver out of his toolbox. He was seriously over-qualified for this job, he thought as he began to unscrew the screen door’s hinges. But Lauren would never know that. At least not until it was time for her to know.
Suddenly, Jem peeked around the doorsill, his smile shy. “Whatcha doin’?” the boy asked as he inched his small frame outside the house.
An odd turbulence rocked through Cole as he remembered his own fascination with tools and construction when he was a boy. “I’m fixing the screen door,” Cole said as he pulled the wooden frame away from its moorings and leaned it up against the house. “If you’ve finished cleaning your room, why don’t you go get your mom to come check out the swing. It’s fixed.”
Jem spun on his heel and ran back into the house. “Mom! Mom! The swing’s fixed. C’mon!”
The boy’s enthusiasm tugged at Cole’s heart, but he continued working until he saw Lauren appear in the doorway, her son pulling her hand. She was smiling that cool, composed smile he’d seen so many times in print. She’d put an old-fashioned apron on over her jeans and top, but she still managed to look like the picture of a very sexy housewife who was meeting her man at the door.
And he’d be damned if he didn’t want to be that man for one crazy second.
“You’re finished already?” she asked as she stepped out onto the wide porch.
Cole nodded as he moved aside to let her past. But when she squeezed by, she lightly brushed one curvy hip against his thigh, making the heat in his veins spike dangerously. He felt as much as heard her sharp intake of breath, then saw her glance at him from wide, surprised eyes.
“You first, Mom,” the boy said, pulling them from the undertow created from their simple contact.
Lauren moved away from Cole quickly, then lowered herself into the swing gingerly and gracefully, crossed those long, lovely legs, then patted the space next to her for Jem to sit down. The boy plopped down enthusiastically and Cole noticed Lauren wince as she looked above her head to see if it would fall from the rafters at the impact.
“Awesome,” Jem said as he perched at the edge of the swing and dangled his legs.
Lauren looked at Cole and repeated, “Awesome,” then put her arm around her son and smiled down at him. Cole felt like a boulder the size of Cleveland had settled in his stomach as he watched them but he quickly shuttered his expression as she looked up at him, her exotic green eyes troubled.
“Thank you, Mr. Travis,” she said, her voice wrapping itself around his name so sweetly he almost felt like she’d reached out and touched him. “We’ve wanted to use this swing every day since we moved in.” Her smile wavered and she lifted her chin a fraction. “I’ll hire you for the weekend. But I still intend to conduct interviews and I’ll still need to see your references.”
The stubborn tilt of her chin warned him to tread lightly. “You interview everyone you can find,” he said as he turned and began to remove the hinges from the screen door. “I’ll just keep working until you find someone who can do the job as fast and as well as I can.” He paused, then glanced over his shoulder at her. “Or until you don’t.”
Two
By four o’clock the next afternoon, Lauren was so frustrated she wanted to cry. She peered over the top of the dog-eared, grease-stained piece of paper at the two potbellied brothers sitting on her antique settee who were, unfortunately, only the latest marchers in the parade of inexperienced candidates who’d come to apply for her job. But these brothers were different. While the others had been merely amusingly underqualified, these two were downright offensive.
From the moment she’d answered the door fifteen minutes earlier, she’d felt their oily gazes as distinctly as if they were touching her. Luckily, only a few minutes after they’d arrived, Cole had come in to change the lock on her front door. And though it pained her to admit it, having him there was reassuring.
As she pretended to read the Beer Boys’s list of references, she glanced over at Cole. He was entirely too sure of himself—and probably getting a good laugh out of this, she thought, her gaze lingering on him for a moment as he worked with graceful efficiency. Sitting before her was graphic proof that Cole Travis was the best man for the job. And let’s face it, she told herself, when it came to everything she was looking for in a man…er, handyman, these two lumps weren’t even in the same galaxy as Cole.
Suddenly, as if he could hear her thoughts, Cole looked over at the brothers and a deep frown settled in between his brows. Even in profile, his posture and demeanor were intense, ready.
In spite of a little voice inside her that tried to assure her with, “I can take care of myself, I always have!” she felt a warm sense of ease settling over her as she lowered the paper.
“So, ummm…” She looked back down at their “resume.” “Bobby, Johnny.” She looked up at them. “All the people you have listed as references seem to have the same last name as you do.”
They grinned at each other, displaying crooked teeth yellowed, she assumed, by chewing tobacco. “Yeah. We been working around our daddy’s place all our lives.”
“I see,” she said as an image from Deliverance flashed through her mind. She glanced at Cole again before trudging on with the interview. “And what kind of work do
