deciding whether to hire a full-time housekeeper. Do It URself, it had said. Pride Is In The Accomplishment.
She smiled as she threw the bread in a basket, then called Jem and her future handyman—who she’d asked to stay for dinner—to come inside. In five minutes, the three of them were gathered around her big, nineteenth-century farmhouse table.
Cole had changed into a clean denim shirt and his collar lay open at the neck, revealing only some of the dark-golden curls that lay beneath it. She tore her gaze away but not before her pulse had kicked up to a hot, salsa rhythm. What was it about this guy? she thought as she continued to fill her son’s plate and her own. A denim shirt and a peek at his chest hair was all it took to raise her blood pressure? Get a grip, Lauren.
As they passed the food around and Jem chattered away, she noticed that Cole asked questions and answered them in language her son could understand—something Miles had never quite mastered—and she wondered with a sudden flash of concern if her son might grow attached to Cole. Jem hadn’t mentioned Miles in ages, so maybe not, but she added it to her growing list of things to worry about anyway. She’d just have to make sure that attachment didn’t happen. And she’d start by making sure she didn’t get too close to Cole herself even though just having the man at her dinner table was making her feel melty in all the wrong places.
Cole hefted a forkful of the very tasty but very lumpy potatoes and, as he chewed, thought about how much his mother would love to pass on a few bits of potato lore to Lauren. But that wouldn’t happen because his mother was never going to meet Lauren, he reminded himself. And he’d do well to remember that before he complicated this thing further.
The dinner passed quickly in a buzz of companionable chatter, mostly stemming from Jem. Cole was amazed by how the smallest things in Jem’s day—catching a pollywog, finding a really nice stick to hit rocks with, rolling lemons from their tree down the street—took on a mythic quality in the boy’s retelling.
But as the narration went on, Cole couldn’t help but reflect on his own life—and what might have been if Kelly hadn’t left him one rainy Seattle morning with nothing but an envelope full of divorce papers to show for their marriage. If things had been different, he thought as the familiar tension tightened inside him, perhaps they, too, could have brought up a child like this.
The possibility that Jem might be his son overwhelmed Cole for a moment but he snapped out of it quickly when the boy’s face lit up in rediscovery of something that he’d forgotten.
“I found a snail shell by that big tree!” He fixed his excited gaze on Cole. “Wanna see it?”
“Sure I would,” Cole said as he laid his napkin beside his plate.
Lauren reached over and touched her son’s arm and her hair, that silky curtain that kept tempting Cole to bury his hands in it, swept forward over her cheek. “Why don’t you bring it downstairs in a few minutes, honey. Cole and I have something to discuss.”
“’Kay,” he said, slipping out of his chair and running up the stairs.
When Cole followed her to the living room, Lauren sat down where she had earlier when she’d interviewed the Brothers Grim, so Cole took a seat on the fancy old couch across from her. His curiosity about what she wanted to discuss pricked at his mind, but an alarming amount of his concentration was caught up with the sinful way her low-slung jeans hugged her curves.
Lauren twisted her slender hands together before folding them in her lap. “I’d like to hire you,” she said in a rush of breath.
The ever-present spring inside him relaxed a bit and a wide grin spread across his face. “No!” he said with mock surprise. “And with so many other qualified candidates?”
She delivered a quelling look, then spoke again. “In addition to the work on the house, the barn must be completely renovated in six weeks, with the fixtures built, display cases installed and security system operational. If I don’t open at the start of the Summer Festival, I’ll miss the biggest influx of tourists for the entire year.” She looked up at him, a tentative smile peeking through her mask of worry. “I’d like for you to take the job, Cole. You’re very talented.”
He almost said, “I’d like to show you just how talented I am,” but instead dipped his chin to hide a smile and waited patiently for the “but” he could hear in her voice.
Her expression took on an earnest hue before she said, “Cole, I need to know right now if you can commit to completing this job. From the little you’ve told me about yourself, it seems that you are the type of man who may wake up one day and, for whatever reason, decide to take off.”
Even though there was no way she could know who he really was, the idea that he, Cole Travis, the Rock of Gibraltar, was having his level of commitment questioned made him more than a little crazy. An awful bitterness he’d thought long since rested in peace began to smolder within him. But since nothing of his current situation was her fault, he buried it and answered her civilly. “Nothing could stop me from completing this job,” he said. “I promise you.”
Her face creased into a sudden, brilliant smile. “Good. Thank you.” She sounded relieved, which made him almost feel bad about what he wasn’t telling her about himself. And what he still had to say.
“Now.” He leaned forward and planted his forearms on his thighs. “About room and board.”
As he’d expected, her smile faded to a faint shadow. What he hadn’t expected was the slight but unmistakable blush that rushed in to stain her smooth cheeks. “Room and board?” she repeated weakly.
“The hotel I stayed in last night is the closest one I can afford. And it’s forty miles of winding country road from here. I’ll be able to start earlier and finish later if I stay here. I’d be willing to take something off my pay, of course, since you’ll be cooking for me.”
Her lips parted as surprise touched every feature on her beautiful face. “You did taste my cooking tonight, didn’t you?”
He tore his gaze from her sweet, bow-shaped mouth, nodded soberly and went on. “I worked out a simple plan while I was in the barn today. I’ll need to use a bathroom in the house for a week or so while I build your customer washroom, but I can fix up the loft as a bedroom right away.”
She kept trying to get a word in, making her look like a cute little guppy.
“Don’t you have a wife at home who might object to this plan?”
He shook his head. “No wife.”
“And you want to sleep in my barn.” It was a statement, but she sounded as if she’d run out of arguments.
Even though he shrugged like he didn’t care one way or the other, the truth was he suddenly realized it felt like his whole life was hinging on this one conversation. “Only if you want me to finish this job on time.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That sounds like blackmail.”
“I call it practical,” he said, shrugging with a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “But it’s your choice.”
She looked around the room, from the cracked floor-boards to the broken newel post to the fading paint. He tried not to feel satisfaction in the fact that she really had no choice at all. Finally, she looked at him and said, “Okay,” infusing her voice with none of the word’s meaning. “You can sleep
