Kelsey cleared her throat as a proxy for the brain she couldn’t seem to clear of Ian. “That’s okay, really.”
“Honestly, it’s not. It was nice of your father to suggest you could help, but I don’t want to take advantage of your time.”
Oh, so Ian could see that her father volunteering her was a dick move, but her own father couldn’t? Why did he have to be like this? It was so much harder to dislike him if he insisted on compensating her for her work.
“I don’t need money for it.” Kelsey forced the words out, debating whether it would be too strange if she sprinted toward her car.
Ian frowned as though working through a problem, and he took a step closer. “All right, if you don’t want money, and you don’t want beer, something else? Your father mentioned you’re renovating your house. Anything I can do to help? I’m pretty handy and good at moving heavy objects.”
Handy and good at moving heavy objects—that reminded her of the picture she’d seen of him on his family brewery’s website. The one where his arms and chest made it clear he was, in fact, capable of moving heavy objects.
The wind was suddenly drying out her lips, and Kelsey wet them. “Is that from all the time spent lifting kegs of beer?”
“Something like that.” He seemed amused, and she hoped her face wasn’t making questionable expressions again.
Kelsey hesitated. Her hopes of moving furniture this weekend had been dashed yesterday. Josh had to work his ER shift, and Kevin and Peter had appointments to tour a couple of venues for their wedding location. At this rate, she was going to have to move the furniture by herself, unless . . .
No. Asking Ian to drive to Wasilla with her and lift furniture was out of the question. It would take an entire day, and it wouldn’t be easy. It was too much compensation for what she was doing for him. Not to mention that the drive alone would be about five or six hours round trip. That much time in his company was too much temptation.
Ian noticed her hesitation though. “So?”
Damn it. Ian had put the images of him being all manly and lifting stuff for her into her head, and now she was stuck with them. He also seemed to honestly want to compensate her, and that was pushing him ever closer to likable. She was going to suggest this plan.
She was weak.
She also wanted the furniture.
Also, she was weak.
Kelsey kicked a loose stone down the sidewalk. “How do you feel about road trips?”
* * *
* * *
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE to be stressed while being loved by a puppy. Such was Kelsey’s philosophy, and since she was stressed, and since her own babies were no longer puppies, she’d sought one out specifically for his therapeutic services.
Neptune was her brother Kevin’s dog, and although he was getting bigger, he retained his distinctly puppyish features. And distinctly puppyish attitude. Her dogs had grown weary of Neptune’s shenanigans after a few minutes in his company, so Kelsey sat on the floor of Kevin and Peter’s house and let the relatively small bundle of black-and-white fur pounce all over her, giving her dogs a break from his attention. It took only a minute for her blood pressure to return to normal.
“You didn’t come here to visit me, did you?” her brother asked, strolling into his living room. “Just the puppy.”
“Look at that face! Look at those bright blue eyes.” Kelsey grabbed Neptune before he could get away and rubbed her forehead against his head.
On the couch, Peter chuckled into his laptop. “I think you need a new dog, Kels.”
“I think she needs to get laid,” said Nate through the video chat program Kevin had started. “She’s acting hormonal.”
Kelsey raised a middle finger in her older brother’s direction and hoped he could see it from the computer screen’s angle. Technology was often a poor substitute for face-to-face interaction, but without it, they’d hardly ever see Nate.
To his point, though, she didn’t need anything, despite what the men might think. She was quite capable of taking care of that sort of business on her own. She had her book boyfriends for emotional fulfilment, and Mr. Happy—her vibrator—for those more physical urges. But Nate’s unfortunate comment did bring to mind Ian, and the puppylike way he’d gotten under her skin today. And now she was feeling stressed again. It was bad enough that she’d been forced to acknowledge Ian was good-looking. She did not need to begin equating him with sex, too, although that conversation by the library was making it a challenge.
“Actually, did you know men’s hormones fluctuate more on a daily basis than women’s do?” Peter asked. “If anything, women are calm and steady compared to men.”
“How do you know that?” Kevin asked, plopping down on the couch. “You research fish, not people.”
Peter merely shook his head. “I have three sisters. I made it a point to learn these things in school. It’s called survival.”
“I knew I liked you,” Kelsey said. She tapped the floor, and her dogs ran over to her. “You’re a smart man. Pay attention, brothers. You might learn something.”
Nate scoffed and stuffed a bite of pizza in his mouth.
“I’m a college dropout. Can’t I just continue to be outclassed?” Kevin sat up abruptly. “Neptune, no! Drop it.” The puppy had started chewing one of his shoes. “Still, Kels, how long has it been since you spared a guy a second look?”
If spared a guy a second look was a euphemism for getting laid, six years. Not that she was about to tell her brother that. And not that she cared. As she’d told Maggie, she didn’t have the time, and she didn’t have the interest.
If spared a guy a second look was taken more literally, well, it was more like six hours. Hence the need for puppy therapy. Kelsey wanted Ian out of her brain, but that didn’t seem likely, given he’d agreed to her ridiculous request for help moving furniture.
“Change of topic,” she said as Neptune, having abandoned Kevin’s shoe, jumped on her lap. “What do you know about the Save Helen Society? Who’s behind it?”
Their website had contained scant clues as to the latter question. Based on her conversation with Ian, Kelsey had become convinced it was someone with sympathetic ears at the town hall, and the lack of information on the group’s website only made her more suspicious.
“I only know what it says on their website,” Kevin said, after giving Nate a brief rundown of the group. “As to who’s behind it, I’m pretty sure it’s Theresa Lipin.”
“Theresa Lipin?” Kelsey heard herself squeak, and it wasn’t only because Neptune had decided chewing on her arm was an acceptable substitute for her brother’s shoes. “Are you sure? How do you know?”
“I’m not positive, but that’s what I’ve heard. You might learn things, too, if you left your house more often and talked to people.”
“I don’t like people.” Kelsey swore internally. She should have known it was the Lipins from the beginning. Even if it wasn’t the mayor himself using the group to drum up support for his antidevelopment agenda, Theresa Lipin was his mother. She was also the grandmother of Josh’s girlfriend, and that raised a whole new question. “Josh better not have known that when he gave me the pin.”
Kevin’s eyebrows shot up. “He gave you an SHS pin? I don’t know. Can’t picture Josh tricking you into supporting a Lipin cause.”
He hadn’t tricked her, precisely. She did support the cause, and it annoyed the crap out of her that her interests aligned with those of the Lipins in this case. “You’re right. Josh is too much of a cinnamon roll to do that to me on purpose.”
“Too much of a what?” Peter had been pretending to read whatever was on his computer, but he shot Kelsey a bewildered expression.
“Too nice,” she explained, not bothering with a longer definition. “I wonder what the Lipins have against the new brewery.”
“The Lipins are against everyt
hing that’s good and pure and true.” Even Kevin couldn’t keep a straight face as he said it. “Who else could be against beer?”
“They do make good beer,” Peter said, abandoning all pretense of working.
“Very good.” Kevin nodded.
“Wait, since when does Helen have a brewery?” Nate asked.
Kelsey stretched out better on the floor. Neptune was exhausting himself, and he was taking her along with him. “You’ve had their beer?” she asked, ignoring Nate’s question. “If I’d known you liked it, I’d have taken the beer the guys offered me for you.”
That might not have prevented Ian from offering to pay her for her work, but who knew? Maybe she could have avoided the day’s awkward conversation and prevented those frustrating cracks in her dislike.
Peter let out a whimper, and Kevin actually bounded off the couch. “You passed up free good beer? How could you?”
“Quite easily.”
“Now I’m never going to help you get that furniture,” Kevin said.
Kelsey snorted. “Good thing I’ve arranged for alternate assistance, then. Ian and possibly Micah are doing it, since I can’t count on family anymore.”
She expected a snarky comment from Kevin in response to her friendly jab, but he gave her a surprised look. “You’re letting them help? Taking them to our grandparents’?”
Taking them to her grandparents’ house was unfortunately unavoidable, but she was desperate for the assistance. That was the lie she was telling herself, anyway. It felt a lot better than saying she was weak.
“They owe me for the work I’m doing for them. Seemed fair.” She kept her voice nonchalant, but her stomach squirmed when she thought about the long drive and longer day ahead of her with Ian for company.
But hopefully not just Ian. He’d said he’d get Micah to help as well, which seemed like way more muscle than necessary, but having the rock star lumberjack around might be best for her sanity.
“Neptune, leave Juliet alone.” Kevin swooped in and picked up the puppy, who’d grown bored of Kelsey and had started using her dog as his chew toy again.
“She’s fine,” Kelsey said. Juliet merely looked exasperated with the little one. Kelsey could relate, although she was thinking of someone significantly larger.
Her brother struggled to hold on to the squirming husky as he paced. “Make sure Dad doesn’t find out about all this time you’re spending with the guys if you don’t want to make his week. I think he’s given up on me or Nate carrying on the family legacy and is counting on you to provide him some heirs.”
Kevin’s tone suggested he thought as much of the family legacy nonsense as she did, but he and her older brother got to laugh at it. Because of course they did. Kevin was right. No one was putting pressure on them. As the girl child, all that shit was dumped on her.
Kelsey closed her eyes and groaned. At least it sounded like her twin wasn’t going to blab about it. The last thing she wanted was for her parents to increase their meddling into her (lack of a) love life.
No, make that the second to last thing. The absolute last thing she wanted was a love life—period.
Again, it wasn’t Ian’s or Micah’s fault her father was acting like a pest, but she had a hard time not resenting them for it. But maybe that resentment wasn’t a bad thing. She could use it to patch some of the cracks Ian had made in her walls today. She could plaster over her brief moment of empathy. Cover it up and bury it. It might make the trip less pleasant, but that seemed like a small price to pay for her ability to keep an eye on the big picture.
8
IAN WAS GOING to kill Micah. When he’d suggested the two of them could help Kelsey with the furniture on Friday, he’d done so because he’d known Micah was also available. He’d even made sure their plans would get them back home before sundown so it wouldn’t interfere with Shabbat—not because he cared, but because Micah would. So it was extremely convenient that his friend just happened to set up a meeting with a potential buyer for Friday morning that couldn’t possibly be moved.
“If nothing else, you could have had the decency to pretend you had a meeting before I scheduled a time with Kelsey,” Ian said, filling his thermos with coffee. “That way I could have asked to leave later instead of trying to accommodate you.”
Unlike him, Micah was not dressed yet. Because unlike him, Micah was a lying liar.
His friend stuck a bagel in the toaster as though nothing was wrong. “I’m not pretending. I do have a meeting.”
“Which you set up after I told you I’d volunteered us.”
“That’s an unfounded accusation.”
Ian held out a hand. “Okay, let me see your phone so I can make it a founded one.”
Unsurprisingly, no phone appeared in his upturned palm. “Relax. You’re going to have a fun road trip.”
“The point isn’t to have fun. It’s to repay Kelsey for her time.”
He’d always intended to offer her payment and would have done so at their first meeting, but she’d shown up with that SHS pin and a bad attitude (not to mention three large dogs), and he’d completely forgotten. Offering her beer later had been just what he’d said at the time—a token gift. It certainly wasn’t payment.
So when Kelsey had reminded Ian that she was helping them for free, Ian had decided he couldn’t forget again. And when she’d acted almost human the other day, it had seemed like a good time to do it.
Although simply writing her a check would have been easier, Ian had gotten the sense that wouldn’t have gone over well with Wallace. Since he didn’t know what the dynamic was between father and daughter, or what Kelsey thought of her father suggesting her writing services, he’d followed her lead.
Now he was regretting that. Micah would have provided a buffer on this trip. Without his friend, it would be him and Kelsey trading barbs all day.
Or worse—him and Kelsey not trading barbs. If they were getting along, and if he believed Kelsey didn’t personally have it in for him or the brewery, then Ian wasn’t sure how he’d survive the car ride. In that situation, Kelsey would become not an enemy but . . . something. What exactly, Ian wasn’t sure, but it included being an extremely attractive woman who he was trapped in a car with for six hours.
Once upon a time, that might have been the kind of situation Ian looked forward to, but that time had vanished many years ago. He had too much work to do to indulge in anything as frivolous as dating. The brewery had to come first, and in his experience, women didn’t like knowing they couldn’t be his top priority. Not that anyone liked it, he supposed, but it ruled out even casual relationships.
Of course, it was still Kelsey who was provoking these thoughts, and the words dating and relationship were therefore irrelevant. The world was full of pretty faces, and those attached to ugly personalities held no appeal. It was yet to be seen whether he and Kelsey could spend more than five minutes alone together without blood being spilled.
An SUV hauling a small trailer pulled up in front of the house, and suddenly a new concern popped into Ian’s head, one he should have been worrying about far more than Kelsey’s sweet eyes or bitter attitude. Her dogs. There was no way he could get in the vehicle with them. None. Just thinking about it had his hands sweating and his heart pumping so fast as to make the coffee pointless.
He’d need an excuse. Something he could toss out at the last second that would sound plausible. Micah would back him up, but Ian hated putting his friend in a position where he’d have to lie.
Ian had been looking out the window, and he ducked back into the living room, feeling like a fool. Here he was, a twenty-eight-year-old man who couldn’t get into an SUV with dogs. He knew it wasn’t impossible to get over his issue, but it was so far down on his list of priorities that he had never bothered to deal with it. Most of the time it didn’t even come up. He could handle dogs in public as long as they did
n’t get too close; it was dogs in confined spaces that were another story.
“You okay?” Micah noticed him pacing, and he stopped adding cream cheese to his bagel.
Cringing, Ian motioned toward the window. “Does she have the dogs?”
“Oh.” Understanding dawned on his friend’s face. He dropped his knife and peered out the window. “I don’t see any. Need me to run interference?”
Ian took a calming breath that wasn’t particularly effective. Then another. “Only if it turns out she does have them.”
“I’ll cover for you. No worries.”
The way Micah had his back—never blinking, never missing a beat—should have been reassuring, but it only made Ian feel more ridiculous and embarrassed. “Thanks.”
“She’s coming up the path.” Micah shoved Ian toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms. “Hide. You can’t be standing around looking healthy if I need to tell her you’ve been vomiting all morning.”
“That’s what you’re going with—vomit?” Ian shook his head and darted into his bedroom.
“You prefer I tell her you’ve had the shits all night?”
His blood pressure was already through the roof, so it wasn’t like Micah could make it worse, but his friend was sure trying. “How can you manage to be an asshole while simultaneously helping?”
“Not being an asshole,” Micah said, his mouth full of bagel. “I’m doing you a favor by lying for your pathetic ass. It’s a mitzvah. Now hide.”
Ian ducked into the room as he heard the door open.
“Hey, Kelsey,” he heard Micah say.
“Hi.” Kelsey sounded surprised and suspicious, probably because Micah was in plaid pajama pants rather than road trip attire. “Are you guys coming with?”
“Actually, I can’t go. Got a meeting this morning. Are your dogs out there though? Can I say hi?”
Ian rolled his eyes. Micah was so subtle.
“No,” Kelsey said. “I need the space in the car. Is Ian coming?”
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