by Lisa Plumley
“And you’re going to open a dance school here. To train up all the hot new showgirls.”
Ah, that explained it. “Not exactly.” She smiled at his crestfallen expression. “But once I find some students, I’ll be teaching all kinds of dance.”
“Cool.” Satisfied, TJ went back to his coffee.
“Hey, aren’t you happy for me?” Josie asked Luke. She nudged him, confused by his silence. She wanted a reaction. “I realize this means a lot of work for both of us. But you were already going to be painting and shingling and repairing stuff, right? And I can do the cleaning myself. That’ll be my specialty, since I don’t know squat about fixing up old houses.”
She laughed, feeling her usual assurance return. “Then there’s the dance studio, of course. We’ll need to get mirrors and a ballet barre, and we’ll have to polish the floor and put in a sound system. The usual. But after that, it’ll be great!”
“Hey, I’ll help you!” TJ volunteered, looking just as swept up in the excitement of it all as Josie was. “What the hell, I’m here anyway. I might as well keep busy.”
She was touched by his generosity. “Aww, that’s so nice of you. But you barely know me, TJ. And I practically maimed you as an introduction.”
He waved off her concern.
She did need all the help she could get. If TJ was serious…. “Are you sure?”
“You bet. I’ll just—”
“He can’t,” Luke interrupted, his expression stony. “He’s just visiting.”
“I’ll stay longer.” TJ shrugged. “No prob. There’s plenty of room.”
“You’re right about that,” Josie agreed. “And don’t worry, TJ, I’ll pay you. Tallulah’s lawyer gave me a small allowance. I guess Tallulah thought I’d want to redecorate or something.”
“Tallulah? Luke’s aunt, Tallulah?”
“Aunt?” Surprised, she glanced at Luke. He sat with his arms crossed, tattoos practically pulsing with resistance to her plan. “You never said Tallulah was your aunt, Luke.”
“It never came up.”
“Yes, it did. I’m pretty sure—”
At that moment, Josie realized the truth. Poor Luke. He was stuck doing menial labor at his wealthy aunt’s overlooked estate, probably for a pathetic salary. No wonder he hadn’t talked about it. He was probably embarrassed.
She vowed right then and there not to mention Tallulah again. She didn’t want to make Luke feel any more like the family black sheep—something Josie had lots of experience with—than he already did.
“Anyway,” she said brightly, changing the subject, “that doesn’t really matter. I’m going to stay and TJ’s going to help.” She gave him a smile. “You can be Luke’s handyman assistant.”
“Luke’s handyman assistant.” TJ chuckled. “Believe me, I can hardly wait.”
“See?” Beaming, Josie patted him on the shoulder. “That’s exactly the kind of attitude I’m looking for.”
Luke grunted. The spoilsport.
“I don’t get it,” she said, squaring off with him. “Last night you gave me such a hard time for quitting. Now I’m staying and suddenly you’re Grouchy McGrouch. I thought you’d be happy. So what gives?”
“Grouchy McGrouch?” His lips quirked in a small smile.
“That’s better. You look slightly less constipated.”
His smile vanishing, Luke got up to refresh his coffee. He glanced at the clock. “You’d better get started. In another hour or two, it’ll be time to change your mind again.”
Josie gaped at him. That was a low blow.
She didn’t understand it. She’d expected Luke to be supportive…at least now that he’d gotten to know her—and her miniskirt—so much better.
But nobody pushed her around.
“Oh, yeah?” She scraped her chair back and grabbed her crutches, finished with trying to convince him. Actions spoke louder than words anyway. “Well, in another half hour or so, you’ll be too busy nailing down roof shingles to care about the state of my mind. So there.”
She turned, ready for a good huff out of the kitchen.
Her crutches tripped her up. Rats. They’d make storming out a little tricky. But Josie wasn’t one to be held down by circumstances. She raised her chin and levered herself out anyway, with as much attitude as she could muster. It would have been a grand exit—except for feeling Luke’s gaze pinned to her backside the whole way.
Stupid miniskirt. Nobody was going to take her seriously as long as she looked like a showgirl, Josie realized. That was another thing that had to change around here. And she knew exactly the way to do it.
The minute the whap, whap of Josie’s crutches faded from earshot, TJ turned to Luke with a mile-wide grin on his face.
“Great girl. I can see why you’re so crazy about her.”
“I’m not crazy about her,” Luke muttered. “She’s a pain in the ass.”
“Yeah. But what an ass.”
“She can’t make up her mind for more than two minutes at a time,” Luke complained, staring into his coffee cup. “She’s bossy and pushy and ass-high in delusions about what it’ll take to fix up this place.”
“Yeah. But what an ass.”
“When she got here, I let it slide,” Luke said, feeling his shoulders tense. He didn’t know what was the matter with him, but he didn’t like it. “I thought, what could it hurt? So she thinks she owns the place. Big deal. She doesn’t. She won’t hang around long. No harm, no foul.”
“Yeah. But what an—”
“Watch it,” Luke warned. “Not another word about her ass.”
“I knew it! You’re smitten.” TJ grinned like a goon. “You’re in loooove. Wait till old man Donovan gets an earful of this.”
Luke gave him an evil look. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
“Not a chance, dude. Nobody’s getting me out of here now. I’m a free agent, remember? I’ve got permission from Señor Donovan to hang around Arizona for as long as I need to. Now that I know you’ll be taking orders from Josie, I need to hang around for a long, long, loooong time.”
“Bite me.”
“Luke the Handyman. Handyman Luke. Hmmm.” TJ gazed at a crack in the ceiling plaster, looking thoughtful. “Sounds like a kids’ TV show. You’re the new Teletubbies.”
“The hell I am.” Whatever that was. It didn’t sound good.
“You’re in love with the boss lady. You’re in love with the boss lady.” TJ got up and grooved around the kitchen, punctuating his chant with several grotesque hip thrusts and a shit-eating grin. “You’re in love with the boss lady.”
“Knock it off,” Luke said. “I am not.”
“Crap.” TJ froze in mid-gyration. “I think I just dislocated something.”
“Probably a few brain cells.”
“Come on, Grouchy.” TJ limped back to his chair. “Play it straight with me. You can put on that game face all you want, but I know the truth. You fell for this girl the minute you saw her.”
“Bullshit.” At the skepticism in TJ’s face, Luke reconsidered. “Maybe I felt sorry for her. But that’s it.”
“Right. Sorry enough to drag her into the hallway for a make out session.”
At the memory of that, Luke reconsidered some more. He remembered the feel of Josie in his arms, the sound of her husky moan as he’d kissed her, the softness of her long, barely dressed body pushed against his. They’d fit together.
“Yeah, that happens to me all the time,” TJ continued, his smart-alecky tone firmly in place. “I meet a girl, realize how pathetically sorry I am for her, and then make out like crazy.”
“It was just a kiss.” But it had felt like more….
“What I don’t get,” TJ mused, “is why you don’t just tell her who you are. I mean, women go for the rich tycoon type.”
“I’m not the rich tycoon type. Not anymore.”
“You could be, if you apologized to your dad.”
Luke frowned. “No woman’s worth that.�
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“Whatever. All I know is, you keep a secret, women find out. They’ve got lie detectors built into their tits or something. Sooner or later, Josie’s going to know the truth.”
“If you don’t shut up, she’ll know right now.”
“When she finds out you lied to her about who really owns Blue Moon, she’s going to be pissed.”
“There’s no point telling her something that’ll only cause trouble for us both. Besides, it doesn’t matter. She’ll never last that long.” Luke thought of the reception Josie had received in Donovan’s Corner and felt sorry for her all over again. “She’ll give up and go back to Vegas.”
“And leave you heartbroken?” TJ leaned forward, both hands on his Spidey shirt in a gesture of puppy-dog misery. He mimed blinking back big tears. “No way. You’ll never let her go.”
Luke ignored him. He’d been caught off guard by Josie’s announcement, that was all. But now he realized—he could afford to be nice to her. He could even afford to help fix up Blue Moon for her.
After all, it wasn’t as though Josie was going to wind up with Blue Moon in the end. The estate would always be his. Tallulah would make it up to Josie with a different, better property. Josie could start her dance school somewhere else. In the meantime, she needed someplace to stay, right?
Right. Besides, he’d been planning on making those repairs anyway. He needed to, in order to sell the place for top dollar. What difference did it make if Josie thought he was fixing up Blue Moon for her and her doomed dance school?
Luke stood. “Come on. We’ve got shingling to do.”
“Huh?” TJ looked up, comfortably sprawled with his feet on a neighboring chair. “Shingling?”
“That’s right, assistant. Shingling. And I hear the boss lady is tough. So get your ass out of that chair and start assisting.”
Chapter Nine
For the next two weeks, Luke worked harder than ever before. He reshingled the porch and parts of the main house. He fixed the rotting staircase, forced the heating system up to code, and started laying new antique-style floorboards in the parlor. He hammered and sawed, hauled and plumbed and caulked. Most of the repairs were basic—necessary because of neglect and the house’s long vacancy—but there were a lot of them.
Anybody who saw him would have sworn he was working for Josie. Luke knew there was more to it than that. With every crack in the wall he replastered, he imagined Blue Moon’s asking price going up. With every rain gutter he cleared and every broken pipe he soldered, he imagined taking the cash he’d make from the estate and converting it into the motorcycle repair shop he’d dreamed of.
Most often, he pictured the look on his father’s face—the look Robert Donovan would wear when he realized that Luke had as much vision and determination as any other Donovan…and that he’d created the means to satisfy that vision with his own two hands—not his former trust fund.
The whole time TJ stayed at Blue Moon, munching corn dogs and asking Josie about showgirls. Sometimes he worked. Occasionally he mowed the weeds, started water fights with the garden hose, or followed Josie around to make sure she wasn’t overdoing it while her sprained ankle healed. The rest of the time he concentrated on being his usual smart-mouthed self—and on getting in the way, preventing Luke from getting to know Josie in the way he’d have preferred to get to know her.
Intimately. Physically. Carnally.
Instead, Luke was pushed into a crash course on Getting to Know Josie—the “G”-rated version. With TJ constantly underfoot, Luke and Josie talked over coffee in the mornings. They talked over bologna sandwiches—the extent of their combined cooking expertise—in the afternoons. They talked, talked, talked over takeout pizza and beer in the evenings. Then the whole cycle started again the next day, punctuated by hammering and sawing and the smells of Lysol and Windex.
The weird thing was, despite his initial pissed-off objections to TJ’s presence and the hands-off getting-to-know-Josie routine that had been forced on him, as time went by Luke found himself kind of enjoying it. He liked getting to know Josie in a different way…a way he didn’t typically get to know women until much later. She was funny, he discovered. A little raunchy. And smarter than she looked.
Not that there was anything wrong with the way she looked. Hell, no. To Luke’s eye, she looked terrific—even while wearing something as non-showgirlie as cutoff denim shorts, a tank top, and a pair of elbow-length, yellow vinyl cleaning gloves.
“I think I’m developing a kink for cleaning ladies,” he told her, seeing her headed his way one afternoon with a bucket in one hand and a definite sway in her sneakered stride. “The minute you snap on those gloves, I get hot all over.”
“That’s the thought of me making you pick up a mop,” Josie replied with a grin. “It’s Cleanaphobia.” She kept on going.
At that moment, seeing her smile and her sassy little march in the opposite direction, Luke would have sworn he felt something special for her. He might even have paused to consider it—if not for TJ’s irritating “you’re in love with the boss lady” jig from the other side of the room.
Despite Luke’s expectations, when it came to the cleaning she’d promised to do, Josie acted less like a spoiled showgirl and more like an ordinary woman. An ordinary woman who got excited over Swiffer Dusters and wet-‘n’-dry shop vacs, sure. But definitely a regular woman.
“I can’t believe you’re so cheerful about cleaning,” he told her one day as she scrubbed the banisters. With vigor. “Most people hate it.”
“‘Most people’ meaning you?” she’d asked knowingly. But then she’d only shrugged and gazed at the results of her work with a smile. “I don’t mind. I’ve never owned anything before. Now that I do, I want to take care of it.”
She did, too. Every day Josie cranked up her boom box and carried it from room to room as she worked, often—once her ankle healed—dancing along with the music.
Luke didn’t think she realized she was doing it. He guessed dancing was so much a part of her, Josie couldn’t hear any rhythm without moving. She two-stepped while vacuuming, wiggled her ass like J.Lo while washing windows, swiveled her hips in a sexy cha-cha-cha while carrying out the trash.
Once Luke even caught her tapping her toe to the beat of his hammering floorboards. He paused, deliberately changed his rhythm and started again. Josie’s toe-tapping changed, too—and she added a head bob while she mopped. He didn’t admit it to TJ, but he thought it was cute as hell.
Less endearing was her habit of ducking anyone who came to Blue Moon. The mail carrier, the meter reader, the newspaper boy—it didn’t matter who. Josie didn’t want to be seen. Luke couldn’t blame her, especially after the way Luanne and the people in Donovan’s Corner had treated her…and continued to treat her, whenever she ventured into town. But after a while, it got to be a problem. The doorbell rang and Josie bolted, leaving a trail of HandiWipes and Lemon Pledge behind her—and leaving Luke to pick up the pieces.
At first he didn’t mind. Most of the time, whoever was at the door—the mail carrier, the meter reader, the newspaper boy—was there to see him. Plus, answering the doorbell himself gave Luke a chance to keep his “handyman” cover story intact. But then everything changed.
Josie’s family tracked her down.
“Tell her I’m not here!” Josie yelled, scurrying upstairs the first time Nancy Day appeared on the front steps in her megawatt jewelry and fancy Realtor’s suit. “Tell her I went back to Vegas!”
Luke cracked open the door. He gave Nancy a bland look. “Josie says she’s not here. She went back to Vegas.”
Nancy Day smiled patiently. “I’ll come back another time, then. Poor Josie never was very good at confrontation.”
Luke doubted it.
“She’s always been terribly stubborn, too. I’m afraid it’s a bit of a family failing.” Nancy sighed. Her gaze flitted over his shoulder. “By the way, did I hear the estate will be on the market soon?”
He eyed the an
ticipatory way she examined the foyer, as though measuring it for a real estate brochure. “You didn’t hear it from me.”
“Oh. Well. My mistake, then. This place would fetch a pretty penny, though. Do keep me in mind if the owners decide to list it!”
She pressed another business card in his hand, then tromped down the porch steps in her high heels. In the driveway, she shaded her eyes and gazed unerringly to the second floor window where Josie must have been peeking out. Nancy frowned, so briefly Luke thought he might have imagined it. Then she turned, waved gaily to a pine-needle-raking TJ, got in her Caddy, and drove away.
“She wants the listing,” Josie said from behind him. She raised on tiptoes and gazed over his shoulder as her mother left. “The real estate listing for Blue Moon. That’s all she comes out here for, you know.”
Luke wasn’t so sure. “Maybe she comes out here to see you.”
“Hmmph. Not when I haven’t got free show tickets and comped passes to Celine Dion at Caesar’s Palace to give her, she doesn’t. My mom loved it when I worked in Vegas.”
“She might love having you in Donovan’s Corner, if you give her a chance.”
“No way. First I give her a chance. Then the next thing I know, I’ve got my whole family out here visiting.” Josie shuddered. “No, thanks.”
“Why not? How bad can they be?”
“Let’s put it this way. There’s a reason I moved two hundred miles away.”
“You didn’t move two thousand miles away,” he pointed out. “You had to go to Vegas to become a showgirl.”
“The distance involved was a definite perk, believe me.” Deliberately, Josie dragged her gaze away from the empty driveway. She cocked one hip. “You don’t believe me? How about this. You know those gross, chest-bursting creatures from the Alien movies?”
“Yeah.”
“Compared with my family, they’re pussycats.”
Luke couldn’t help but grin. “Isn’t that a little harsh?”
“Oh, please. It’s not.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I mean, come on. Do you get along perfectly with your mom?”
“My mom died when I was seven.”