that. The ideas and the images. You wish I’d touch your tool, Mr. Handyman! “Three-forty,” she agreed. “So if your tool is off-limits, that means you’re coming over and doing it yourself. Right?” It was beginning to sound promising, from a purely plumbing perspective, of course.
“Who the hell are you, and where the hell do you live?”
So he wasn’t very friendly. Brooding and temperamental types were good, too. Especially when they packed a pipe wrench. And right now, the wrench was all she really wanted. “Roxy Rose. Apartment five-B.”
“Five minutes.” Then he hung up.
Five minutes—just enough time for him to get dressed. Damn! Another fantasy shot to pieces.
On her way from the kitchen into the dining nook she used as her office, Roxy passed by a large hall mirror and stopped, then hopped up on a plastic step to appraise her face. Whoever had hung that mirror must have been hanging it for Amazon women, because in her full five-foot-two glory she could just barely see her face. In fact, the mirror chopped her off at the nose, giving her a clear shot only of her eyes and forehead. So she’d bought the step. Easy solution. Just the way she liked things—easy.
Roxy smiled at the reflection and pushed her tangle of uncombed hair back from her face. “It’s a natural look, trendy-chic,” she always claimed, when friends asked why it was sticking out in odd directions, different odd directions. Truth was, she didn’t like the bother of fixing it, and she’d owned that disarrayed look long before it had become trendy-chic. “Oh well,” she sighed. “It’s not like this is a date.” Besides, no one had ever accused her of being a trendsetter—not in Roxy-mode. Roxy was no-fuss, nomuss, no makeup, with no particular concern over it. Trendy was Val’s gig, one she used for special appearances, photo shoots and the like. Geez, those mugs of her on the city buses. All over Seattle. Here a Valentine, there a Valentine, everywhere a Valentine. And all those billboards. Yikes! There were certain stretches of road she assiduously avoided because she loathed and detested being looked down upon by the pseudo-her camouflaged up to fit the public perception.
Hopping off the step, Roxy wondered if now would be a good time to get Mr. Beautiful Buns to lower the mirror, since he was already going to be there with his tools. Does-n’t hurt to ask, she decided, kicking her step back to the wall. Probably wouldn’t hurt to throw on a tighter T-shirt, either.
“WHO’S THERE?”
“It’s three forty-five, lady. Who do you think it is?”
“Can you show me some identification please—slip it under the door?”
“Lady, the only ID I have on me is my pipe wrench. So open up or I’m going back to bed.”
Smiling, she knew what ID she wanted to see. Yeah, like she’d really ask him to turn around so she could take a look. Only in your dreams, Rox. “Well, hold out that pipe wrench where I can see it,” she said, opening the door an inch. And there it was, his tool thrust right out there at her, and right behind it bare chest. Bare chest every bit as good as his backside. The she-gods were loving her tonight because this was pure, glorious male potency at its best. “Okay, I’m going to trust that that’s a pipe wrench.” Not that she had even looked at the wrench.
“It’s a pipe wrench, lady, so do you want me coming in and using it, because I’m two seconds away from going back across the hall to bed. Which is where I should have stayed in the first place.”
Mercy, mercy, please come in and use it. “Across the hall, as in you’re my neighbor?” Through the crack in the door, Roxy’s eyes wandered from his chest, down the low-riding jeans to his bare feet then back up to his chest. Hairless—somewhat surprising, since men with black hair usually had a fine mat on their chest. But his chest was boldly bare, showing off his flat, rippled stomach. Oh, my heavens, a six-pack! “I guess I’ve just been too busy to meet—”
“Your leak, lady?” he interrupted, his lack of interest in neighborly chitchat made abundantly clear by his testy intonation.
Roxy’s eyes went back up to his face. Except for the furious scowl it wasn’t bad—not bad at all. Probably the first time she’d looked past his…endowments, and she sure liked what she was seeing. Whiskey-brown eyes, dark eyebrows, and that nighttime shadow of stubble. Now, that would be something real nice to wake up to. She remembered waking up to Bruce. He looked more like the bad end of a mop in the mornings. “Please come in…um…neighbor.” She unlatched the chain, opened the door and pointed to the kitchen. “It’s through the living room…”
“I know where the kitchen is,” he snapped, his testiness booting up another notch.
“I guess you would…did you mention your name, by the way?”
“Ned,” he grunted in passing. “Ned Proctor.”
“Well, Ned Proctor. Welcome to my apartment.” Stepping back as he whooshed by, Roxy caught a trace of his scent. He smells great, too. Could this get any better? He was like a fresh splash of something bold and virile, unlike her one and only date in the past three months. What was his name? Michael? Or was it Rupert? Whichever…he’d shown up smelling like an array of discount cologne samples, and she’d sneezed her way around the first block with him before jumping out of his car and hoofing it all the way home—in the fresh air. It took a whole month for her aching sinuses to completely recover from that redolent attack.
“It’s been driving me insane,” she said, watching from the doorway while he tried to manipulate the faucet’s single handle to stop the drip. “And that won’t work. I’ve tried.” For Ned, it was scarcely dripping now. Barely one drop every five seconds, and a puny little drip at that. An ugly plumbing conspiracy meant to make her look silly.
“You couldn’t have lived with that drip until morning, Mizzz Rose?” Glancing down at the floor, he shook his head, letting out the impatient sigh she was already coming to know quite well. “It’s not exactly pouring over, getting ready to flood the apartment below, is it?”
“I’m on…a project. All the dripping was breaking my concentration.”
Frowning, Ned glanced across at Roxy’s makeshift, make-a-house desk area next to the pantry. “It needs a washer, and I don’t have a washer.” He tucked his tool in the waistband of his jeans and headed for the door. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Come on, Ned. I’ve been calling you for days.”
“One day, two times,” he grunted. “And you were on the list.”
“Well, I don’t want to go back on the list.”
“First thing in the morning.”
“I sleep all morning.”
“Then I guess you’ll know what it’s like to be awaken during a sound sleep, won’t you?”
Not to be thwarted on this, the night of her bathroom design, Roxy scooted in next to Ned and yanked at the faucet handle impatiently, hoping to…Well, she wasn’t sure what she hoped to do other than what he wasn’t doing—which was fixing it. But the only thing that happened was a drip that doubled in both frequency and resonance. “So, now what?”
“I’d tell you to live with it, but that’s not going to get me back to bed any quicker, is it?”
“My contract
