by Beth Andrews
“Are you sure Mrs. Kavanagh lives here?” Max asked.
“Positive.”
“How do you know?”
Because he’d shown up here, two nights ago, without warning to beg for her help.
It’d been humiliating, having to tell her why he was so worried for Max, spilling a few of his secrets. Luckily, it’d been worth it.
“I just know. Are you coming or not? Because in ten seconds I’m shutting the door—”
Max jumped down, landing with his chin practically touching his bent knees. He popped up like a spring and followed Eddie to the rear of the truck.
“I didn’t know she lived in Shady Grove,” Max said in a hushed voice.
“Where did you think she lived? The moon? That’d be one long commute.”
He rubbed the side of his nose. “I thought her house would look different.” He glanced at the green cottage-style house, his shoulders drooping in disappointment. “It’s just regular.”
Eddie opened the tailgate and slid his toolbox toward him, checked to make sure he had what he needed, then lifted it. “What would you have preferred? An igloo? A thatched hut?”
Max shrugged.
“Teachers are people,” Eddie told him as he hoisted his toolbox. “Just like you and me. They live in regular houses, buy groceries, go to the movies, cook dinner, get sick and...”
And Max was playing his game again, his head bent over it as he softly chanted, “Come on, come on...”
Eddie walked to the house. Max would come up for air eventually. He could find Eddie then.
He knocked on the door. A moment later he heard the pounding of little feet running, then the doorknob jiggled.
“Hello?” Cassidy called.
For such a little thing, she had a booming voice.
The door opened and Harper blinked at him. Blinked again. “Have I stepped into a time loop? Because I could’ve sworn we were here just the other day.”
He searched for something to say, some funny, witty, smart response. James would smile and laugh, make a joke of his own. Eddie’s younger brother, Leo, would go right for the charm that was as much a part of him as breathing, giving her a wink and some slick come-on.
But Eddie’s mind was blank. Her fault. Her and that outfit she had on—a snug, black Pittsburgh Steelers T-shirt and dark jeans that molded to her curves. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, just like the one she used to wear when she’d cheered at the high school football games, and he scanned her figure again, wondered what she’d look like now wearing that little skirt.
Wished he could find out.
“Deddie!” Cass cried, running up to him in a pair of jeans and a tiny Steelers football jersey. “Hi! Hold me.”
She lifted her arms.
Harper’s sigh was a work of art, one most parents had heaved at one point or another. “Cassidy, do you have to be so bossy all the time?”
Cass hopped up and down, her arms still up. “Yes.”
Christ, but she was about the cutest thing he’d ever seen. He set his toolbox on the porch then picked her up and settled her on his hip. He grinned. “What are these?” he asked, tugging playfully at one of her pigtails. “Handles?”
She slapped both hands on her head, her little fingers getting tangled in the black-and-gold ribbons tied around her hair. “Piggy-tails. ’Cept I not a pig. I a big girl.”
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Harper told her, “but big girls use the potty.”
“No, Mommy,” Cass said solemnly. “Big girls wear diapers.”
“Then I guess you’re all set. Because the way things are going with your potty training, you’ll still be in diapers at your high school graduation.”
That fact didn’t seem to bother Cass one bit.
“Max wasn’t fully potty trained until he was almost four,” Eddie said, knowing how frustrating it was to be in charge of potty training. To be solely responsible for every aspect of your child’s development.
“So you’re saying there’s still hope?”
“There’s always hope. Not sure why it’s so hard to teach them something so basic and simple as using the toilet, though.”
She smiled. It lit her face. And took his breath away. “I know. After I told Sadie how Cass wet her pants four times in one day, Sadie started bragging about how she house-trained her puppy in a few weeks. I considered killing her and burying the body but then I figured I might need her to use those dog whispering skills on Cass.”
One of the first things James had done when Sadie finally realized they were meant to be together was get her a puppy. At least it wasn’t as binding as an engagement ring. Eddie still wasn’t sure one of them wouldn’t change their minds about the whole being in love and together forever thing.
“Cass’ll get the hang of it,” Eddie promised. “She’s a smart girl.”
Harper snorted. “I’ll say. She’s outsmarted me on this so far.” She glanced behind Eddie. “Hello, Max.”
Eddie turned as Max climbed the steps. “Hi.”
“Hi!” Cass wiggled like a fish on a hook and Eddie set her on her feet before she did a nosedive onto the porch. She grinned at Max. “What’s you name?”
He sidled next to Eddie. “Max.”
“Play with me, Max.”
Harper stepped onto the porch. “Max may not want to play, Cass.”
“Yes, he does. Come on,” she told Max, taking his hand but unable to move sixty pounds of shy, stubborn boy. “Come.” Another tug. “On.”
“Enough.” Harper’s stern tone got through and Cass, with a pout worthy of an Oscar nomination, dropped her chin to her chest and let go of Max’s hand. “Let’s find out what Max and his father are doing here and then, maybe, if you ask politely—that’s ask, not tell—Max will play with you. Okay?” Cass nodded but didn’t look up.
Harper winked at Max. “Now, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”
Don’t think Eddie missed the way she emphasized unexpected.
“We’re gonna fix your door,” Max told her.
“Is that right?” Harper raised her eyebrows at Eddie. “And why would you do that?”
Did he really have to answer when it was so obvious? From the way Harper watched him, he guessed he did.
“It sticks,” he said.
“Yes. But you don’t have to fix it.”
“I’m here. My tools are here.” He shrugged. Couldn’t she just leave it at that?
“Now can Max play with me, Mommy?” Cass asked. “Please?”
“That’s up to him. You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Harper told Max.
He straightened with all the bravery and enthusiasm of someone facing a firing squad. “It’s okay.” He looked at Cass. “I’ll play with you.”
“Yay!” Cass grabbed his hand.
“The Montesano charm strikes again,” Harper murmured as her daughter dragged Max inside. “But then, it’s as I always suspected.” She held Eddie’s gaze, curved those glossy lips that drove him mad into a playful grin. “It’s the quiet ones a girl has to watch out for.”
7
IT’S THE QUIET ones a girl has to watch out for.
She was teasing him, Eddie realized. Making a light, almost flirting comment because she felt it safe to do so. She probably thought because he kept his thoughts to himself, didn’t blurt out everything that popped into his head, that he was harmless.
He wanted to prove he wasn’t. That she had reason to be wary of him, of his true intentions. He wanted to invade her space, press his nose against the long line of her neck and inhale her scent. Taste her there, where the pulse beat at the base of her throat.
And that would be the end of her helping him and his son.
“I’ll need to take the door off its hinges,” he told her, “but it should only take a few minutes to plane it.”
She laughed as if he’d made some hilarious joke. “You’re not fixing my door.”
He’d already said he was—or, actually, Max had.
But it was the same idea so he didn’t bother correcting her.
His mother and sister had taught him exactly how impossible it was to win an argument with a woman.
He knelt at his toolbox. As he retrieved what he needed, Harper called for the kids, asked them if they’d like to play outside. By the time she zipped Cassidy into a pink jacket, gave them a bucket of sidewalk chalk and asked them to draw her pictures on the cement sidewalk, he’d grabbed a chunk of chalk for himself and rubbed it along the latch side of the door and opened and shut it several times.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Harper called, hurrying up the porch steps. “We have to discuss this.”
“Not everything needs to be talked to death.”
During the time they had their little discussion, he could be done and on his way back home.
“Be that as it may, you seem to have forgotten one itsy-bitsy—but very important—thing.”
Frowning, he glanced into his toolbox. He didn’t need much for this job, chalk—which she’d provided—and a hand planer. It wasn’t rocket science. It was planing a door so it opened and shut smoothly. “No, I didn’t.”
“You forgot,” she said in a calm, patient tone she probably used when trying to get through to the kids in her class, “that I did not hire you to fix my door.”
Was that all? “I’m off the clock. No charge.”
But when he knelt to tap the pin free of the bottom hinge, she blocked him. “Eddie, I didn’t ask you to fix my door. I didn’t hire you to fix my door. I do not want you to fix my door. Clear?”
“Crystal.”
She nodded, all self-satisfied as if she’d won some battle.
“You didn’t ask me to fix your door,” he repeated, straightening. “I’m offering. To...thank you. For helping Max.”
“Oh. Oh,” she repeated, drawing the word out so that it was three syllables long. No easy trick, that. “What you mean is, you want to fix the door so you won’t feel beholden to me.”
“I don’t usually use words like beholden, but yeah. That about sums it up.” And he didn’t like that she’d read him that correctly. That easily. “But if you don’t want it fixed—”
“Far be it from me to stand between a man and his pride,” she said, stepping aside and gesturing grandly. “Please. By all means, do what you have to do.”
He would. He just hoped like hell she didn’t keep staring at him as if trying to bore a hole into his skull so she could read his mind. Women, they all wanted to know every thought a man had, every feeling.
He was entitled to his own thoughts and to the right to keep those thoughts to himself.
Using a hammer and nail set, he tapped the pins free from the hinges. He wiggled the door free only to freeze when she laid her hand on his back. It was only for a second but it was long enough for her warmth to burn through the fabric of his T-shirt, to heat his skin.
He whipped his head around so fast, he was surprised he didn’t dislodge a few vertebrae.
She didn’t notice. She was too busy peering over his shoulder. “Why don’t you unscrew the hinges from the wall?”
“Easier this way.”
“Don’t you have to measure it?”
He carefully opened the door, pointed to the chalk. “See where it’s rubbed off?” She nodded. “That’s where it’s swollen.”
She smiled. “That’s really clever.”
Yeah, that was him. Clever. He wiggled the door free, let her help him lift it and lay it on its hinge side.
“Want me to hold it?” she asked.
“Why don’t you do the planing?”
She laughed, the light sound carrying on the breeze to wrap around him. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve never done it before?”
He held out the hand planer. “First time for everything.”
She hesitated then accepted the tool. “What do I do?”
“Just run it along the edge,” he said, pointing again to where the chalk was gone. “Hold it with both hands, flat against the wood. You don’t have to press hard, let the blade do the work and just...” He made a pushing motion, going up at the end as if ascending an incline. “Don’t stop dead when you reach the end, sweep it up.”
“Sweep it. Okay. Sure.”
He kept the door steady while she laid the tool on the wood.
“Sweep it,” she repeated in a whisper. She bit her lower lip, frowned in concentration and pushed the planer. “Like that?”
He nodded and couldn’t stop from smiling at how serious she was, how intent, as if he was going to grade her. “It probably doesn’t need much, maybe two or three more times.”
While she went over the door, he glanced at the kids. Max was on his stomach, making what looked to be an apple orchard on the sidewalk. Cass mimicked his pose, from her feet being in the air to her hand holding up her chin. Looked like his kid had his first female admirer.
“Well,” Harper said, as several thin sheets of wood curled at her feet. “What do you think?”
“Let’s try it out. See how we did.” Together, they lifted it upright and set it back into the hinges. “Much better,” he said after shutting it and opening it a few times. “Can you hand me those pins?”
She picked them up from where he’d laid them by his toolbox. She was quiet. He didn’t like it. Not when he was getting used to hearing her talk.
Her silence made him nervous. Made him think he had to find something to say to fill it.
Shit.
“So...uh...” He tapped the top pin into place, cleared his throat. “You like the Steelers, huh?”
He winced, felt a blush creep up his neck. Of course she likes the Steelers, you idiot. Look at her clothes.
“Like is such a weak word to describe what I feel for the boys in gold and black.”
She sounded so serious, so devoted to Pittsburgh’s professional football team, he glanced over his shoulder. She wasn’t kidding.
“I never would’ve pegged you as a football fan,” he said. Weren’t women like her, smart, educated women, into finer pursuits? The ballet or opera?
“I get that a lot. When we were first dating, Beau thought I only spent Sundays watching the games because he liked to.”
Beau, her dead husband. “He liked the Steelers, too?”
She nodded. “He preferred baseball, though.” Glancing around, she leaned in close and lowered her voice. “He was a Yankees fan.”
Only a foot separated them, a mere twelve inches between him and those lush curves, that perfect mouth. His brain screamed at him to retreat, his body told him to get closer. He didn’t move. Couldn’t. “That’s a bad thing?”
“Hey, I didn’t make the rules. You either love the Yankees or hate them.”
He couldn’t help it. He grinned. “But you still married a Yankees fan.”
She sighed dramatically, but couldn’t hide her own smile. “Everyone has their flaws. That was Beau’s. Luckily, I’m a very tolerant and forgiving soul.”
“He was a lucky man.”
Staring at her daughter, she rubbed her thumb over the base of her wedding rings. “I was the lucky one.”
He hated the sadness in her eyes, the thickness of her voice as if she was fighting tears. Hated that she’d been so hurt, that she still dealt with that pain. He had no clue what to do, how to act. He felt useless and more tongue-tied than usual, afraid if he opened his mouth, he’d say the wrong thing. Make everything worse.
But she was sad. And that wouldn’t do.
“I’m sorry,” he said, hoping she understood what he truly meant.
I’m sorry for your loss. So sorry your daughter will never know her father, that you have to live the rest of your life without the man you so obviously loved.
“Thank you. It was hard. Some days it’s as hard as the day he was killed. Others...” She shook her head. “Others it’s as if he’s been gone forever. Almost as if he never was a part of our lives.�
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“He’s still a part of it,” Eddie said softly. “He always will be.” He nodded toward Cassidy, who was talking a mile a minute to a patient Max.
Harper followed his gaze then looked back at him. “Wow. Who would’ve guessed behind all that—” she waved a hand at him vaguely “—stoic silence, were such deep, insightful thoughts?”
She was teasing him again. He could handle good-natured ribbing. He had two brothers who excelled at it, a sister whose tongue was as sharp as a blade.
But he didn’t like the idea of Harper thinking he was some dim-witted fool, someone who kept his peace because he didn’t know what to say.
Even if there were times that assessment was correct.
He stepped closer to her, noted the small frown that formed between her eyebrows, the way her throat worked as she swallowed. “I don’t say every thought that pops into my head,” he told her, his words low, his tone mild. “If I did, I would’ve told you, as soon as you opened the door, how pretty you look today.”
She flinched as if he’d slapped her instead of complimented her. “I...you...”
He grinned. He liked that he could make her stutter, could make her speechless. “I would have said,” he continued relentlessly, “that I like your hair pulled back because it shows off your neck and reminds me of when you used to cheer at the football and basketball games. It seemed every time I happened to glance your way, you were smiling. Laughing.” He dropped his gaze to her lips. “I used to dream about your mouth.”
She inhaled sharply, took a quick step back.
Shoving his hands in his pockets where they couldn’t get him into trouble— like his mouth probably had—he met her eyes again. “Those thoughts deep enough for you?”
* * *
IT’S THE QUIET ones a girl has to watch out for.
Dear, sweet Lord, but she’d hit the nail smack dab on the head with that one.
Harper’s scalp prickled, sweat formed between her breasts as if the air temperature had suddenly shifted a good forty degrees or so. Two minutes ago she’d been perfectly fine, calm and cool. Comfortable and at ease with quiet, shy Eddie Montesano. Teasing him a bit, being her usual oh, so witty self, saying—as he’d put it—every thought that had popped into her head.