Handyman Special

by Pamela Browning

  A bright searchlight flashed into the car. Sage tensed and drew in a sharp, startled breath. Adam started to lift his head, but quickly, thinking more clearly than he was at the moment, Sage pressed his head down again, hard. The light penetrated the breath-frosted window of the Lamborghini to pick out the glossy highlights of Adam's hair. As the two of them shrank even further below the level of the windows, Adam's hot breath burned her bare stomach.

  "Who..." he managed to say.

  "I don't know," she whispered, panicky now. He pulled her nightgown up over her breasts as she huddled deep into the comforter. Scenes flashed through her mind: a robber, snatching open the car door and rasping, "Your money or your life." Another friend of Ed's, stopping by to relate a progress report. The paper boy, curious about the strange and expensive car in the driveway.

  Then, just as Sage began to believe that not just one but all of her fears were real, the light miraculously and slowly slid away from the front of the house and was switched off. They heard the motor as a car idled slowly down the street.

  Cautiously Sage clutched the gown to her breasts and sat up to rub a small circle in the steamy window. "A police cruiser—Donald Tate, the town's only police officer. He was just checking to make sure everything was all right. But, oh, Adam, the whole town will know tomorrow that your car was parked in my driveway at all hours of the night."

  "All hours of the morning," he corrected her. He gestured at the golden glow spreading through the eastern sky above the skeleton branches of the trees across the street.

  They looked at each other, all at once overwhelmed by the preposterous situation, and then they both snickered.

  "I feel like a teenage boy caught parked with the high-school homecoming queen," he confessed sheepishly.

  "Worse than that. Just the local handyman." She grinned at him impishly.

  "And that lone policeman managed to interrupt a perfectly wonderful handyman special," he said with a glint in his eyes.

  Sage giggled; she couldn't help it, Adam's terminology struck her as so funny. And to be caught necking in a car at the age of twenty-seven!

  "Oh, Adam. My reputation is surely ruined." She was only half-serious. "You've compromised me. In the old days, you'd have had to marry me." About marriage, she was joking. She thought he'd know that.

  "I suppose so," he said, thoughtfully and too seriously, putting an end to their lighthearted mood.

  Slowly Sage opened the car door and got out, clutching the comforter even more tightly around her. Damp dead leaves stuck to her bare feet, and she had to stop once to brush one of them off against her ankle. Adam followed her, seeing her safely to her door.

  On the porch, Sage turned to him. "I'm glad Ed is going to be all right, Adam," she said.

  "So am I," he said, sounding tired. She opened the front door and glanced back at him over her shoulder.

  "Get some sleep," she admonished. She smiled at him.

  "I will," he said. When she went inside, he managed to slap her halfheartedly on her comforter-cushioned rear before the door closed. In a moment the blue Lamborghini disappeared slowly up the street into the soft morning mist, trailing a white plume of vapor from its exhaust.

  Sage mounted the stairs to her room, deep in her own thoughts. She had learned a lot about Adam tonight, both spoken and unspoken. He was clearly a complex man with a complicated history, and dealing with him would never be simple or easy. There were depths and convolutions to the personality of Adam Hracek that she could not begin to fathom.

  She wasn't sure, at that point, that she even wanted to.

  Chapter 6

  "Is it serious?"

  Sage stared at Ralph, momentarily lost for words. She had stepped out on the front porch to keep Ralph company when she'd spied his cigarette glowing outside the living-room window. It was unseasonably warm for early November, and a soft breeze soughed through the remaining leaves on the sycamore tree. She hadn't been prepared for such a sudden question.

  "Serious? I haven't known him long enough for that." She forced a laugh, trying to sound lighthearted. She didn't think she could fool Ralph, though.

  He was quiet for a moment, then stubbed out his cigarette. He leaned forward in the rocking chair, elbows on his knees.

  "I played poker last night with Donald Tate," he said. "He told me about Adam's car being parked outside the house. Just thought you'd want to know that people are watching and talking."

  "In Willoree," Sage said with a touch of irony, "people are always watching and talking. I'm used to it. Anyway, that was the night of Ed's heart attack. Adam stopped by to tell me that he was all right. Then he went home." She hoped she sounded convincing.

  "It's your life, Sage. You can do what you want. But Adam Hracek—well, he's a different kind of a guy. Not the type you usually find around Willoree. You'd be better off sticking with home folks, Sage, if you're looking for a steady boyfriend." Ralph's eyes were serious. He cared about her, and she appreciated that.

  "I had a beau from Willoree," Sage reminded him with a lilt to her voice. "Remember Mike Vickery?"

  She'd started to date Mike about a year after Gary left. Mike owned a thriving landscape business, and she'd met him through her work when she'd bought plants to enhance the looks of some of her handyman specials. She'd considered marrying Mike, especially after he dropped a few cautious hints that he was tiring of bachelorhood. Then, after eight months of a steady relationship, he'd regretfully told her it was over. He couldn't take on the responsibility of a wife and a handicapped child, he'd said. Later he married one of the Whisnant girls.

  "You and Mike—well, it wasn't meant to be. And you and Adam? He's a mite exotic for Willoree. Think about it, Sage. Don't go into it with your eyes blinded by his glamour."

  Good old Ralph, Sage thought fondly. He took his role as the head of this family very seriously, and as such, he couldn't help handing out fatherly advice.

  Sage stood up abruptly. She bent and kissed Ralph on the cheek. "Don't worry about me," she said more confidently than she felt.

  She stepped back inside, but the fact that the taciturn Ralph had even brought up the subject of Adam Hracek lent Adam himself a new importance.

  * * *

  Reports on Ed Sheedy were encouraging, and Sage went to visit him in the hospital one night. The Sheedys had been unfailingly supportive when Joy was born and Sage was learning to cope with the idea of rearing a Down syndrome child, and again when Gary deserted her. Lyndell had sat and cried with her when Sage realized that her husband was never coming back, and Ed had convinced her that she was better off without Gary and his abuse. Now there was a chance for Sage to repay their kindness by offering her own support.

  Ed had lost weight—"A hard way to lose it!" he said—but his color had improved and his prognosis was still good. He viewed his next few weeks in a rehab center as an opportunity to get back to normal.

  "Ed would worry a lot more about Wilpacko if Adam weren't doing such a good job of running the plant," Lyndell confided over coffee in the hospital snack shop. "With Adam there, Ed can concentrate all his effort on getting well."

  Sage was happy that Ed was recovering so rapidly, and she was pleased to hear that Adam was doing a good job. As for Adam himself, he'd been so busy working from dawn until midnight at the plant that she'd only seen brief glimpses of him at Kalmia Hill, usually when he stopped by to change clothes or grab a bite to eat.

  After the night when they had almost been caught in incriminating disarray in his car, she would have liked to see him if only to test her reaction. She found herself thinking about Adam as she went about her job of scraping and painting and supervising the work of the electrician and plumber at Kalmia Hill. She not only thought about the way Adam looked but the way he talked and the way he thought. It was easy to daydream as she painted. Too often she pulled herself back from erotic scenes that involved her and Adam. She chided herself about such forceful imaginings, but she kept having them anyway.

>   As for her work on Kalmia Hill, it progressed despite the contrariness of her assistant, Stanley Garth. He was a born complainer who was still sulking over Sage's dressing down about the mismatch of Olene Peterson's wallpaper, and he'd grown even surlier since they'd begun work on Kalmia Hill.

  Sage not only had Kalmia Hill to worry about. Her regular small jobs, such as broken-window repair or the putting up of storm windows for winter, kept trickling in, and Stanley irked her to the point of almost firing him when he refused to cooperate with the simplest requests. He angered her when she sent him over to put up Mrs. Gray's storm windows, a job Sage had handled every year since she'd been in business, and Stanley never showed up. Later Sage found out that he had taken her pickup, parked it on a cul-de-sac near the lake, and curled up on the seat to take a nap.

  After the sleeping incident, Sage wanted to fire Stanley, but firing him would leave her shorthanded when she needed all the help she could get. So, reluctantly, bolstered by Ben's unremitting cheerfulness, she kept Stanley on.

  Such was the state of affairs one afternoon when she sent both Stanley and Ben—with Ben going along mostly to see that the job got done—to clean the gutters and downspouts at the Strayhorns' house.

  It was getting late, she thought, leaning in near exhaustion on the wide push broom and looking around the big foyer. She had begun to direct Ben and Stanley in the long, tedious process of tearing out the partitions in the immense hall, and she was overwhelmed with the amount of work in store for them. Besides, what a mess! Dust choked her throat; plaster crunched underfoot. She summoned the strength to finish the sweeping job and attacked it forcefully, knowing that if she didn't remove the plaster chips immediately, she was taking the chance of someone stepping on the hard plaster nuggets and scarring the beautiful old walnut floor. Feeling grubby and out of sorts, she had paused once more to catch her breath when Adam came vaulting up the curving front steps, then stopped short as soon as he saw the disorder.

  Days of not seeing him had left her unprepared for the jolt she felt in her solar plexus when she laid eyes on him. Adam fairly crackled with energy. He still wore the starched white shirt he always wore to the plant, but he had removed his tie and unbuttoned the top button so that tufts of dark hair on his chest were exposed. There was something innately sexy in his bearing, and she couldn't help smiling at him.

  He grinned back. "Well," he said ruefully, taking in the chaos. "I guess this isn't the time to tell you I'm expecting company." His eyes were so black that she could see the shimmering reflection of her own bright hair in their depths.

  "Company?"

  "I've invited some Italian mechanics to stay at Kalmia Hill, and..." He shrugged and pursed his lips. "But they won't be here for a few days."

  She couldn't believe what he was saying. Italian mechanics! Couldn't he see for himself how disorderly this renovation had become? Didn't she have her hands full without the intrusion of a bunch of Italian men looking for la dolce vita at the renowned Kalmia Hill? Her happiness dissolved in a wave of annoyance.

  "How many of these Italian mechanics will be staying here?" asked Sage, who was ready to engage in what Willoree locals referred to as a hissy fit at the very idea of Adam's adding any more residents to Kalmia Hill. All she needed was more people around, she reflected grimly to herself. That ought to provide all the confusion she'd need to really botch the job of restoring the foyer of Kalmia Hill to its original grandeur.

  "Only two men," Adam said quickly, clearly trying to placate her. "It's a huge house, Sage. I don't see how two men could possibly get in your way."

  Sage shook her curls back off her face and placed her hands on her hips. Did she look shrewish? Probably, but she didn't care.

  "You're not around enough to realize how difficult it is for me to avoid disturbing your things. Do you know how hard it is to keep the dust from drifting into the living room? Do you know that I have to cover everything with drop cloths before I begin work in the morning and then remove them before I go home at night? And that I vacuum the living room every single evening so you won't have to live with the mess?" Her eyes flashed with a dangerous yellow light.

  Adam rested his hands on his hips and regarded her with a certain wariness that he'd never displayed before. "You haven't told me any of this. If you had, I could have assured you that it wouldn't matter in the least if you left the drop cloths on the living-room furniture overnight. If only you'd mentioned—"

  "Mention? How am I supposed to mention? I haven't even seen you, Adam!"

  "There's email, there's texting, there's calling me on the phone," he said.

  "If I had your email address. If I had your cell phone number."

  "Is that the problem?" He whipped a pad of paper out of his shirt pocket and wrote a couple of lines on one of the sheets, which he then ripped off and handed to her. "Get in touch with me any time. I should have made sure you had my contact numbers long before this. My bad. Sorry."

  He noted that her chest beneath the baggy white painter's overalls rose and fell with emotion, and suddenly Adam knew in a flash of perception what was wrong. It wasn't the addition of two extra people to the household. It wasn't cleaning up every evening before she went home. The problem was that she hadn't been seeing him. He'd missed her, too, even though his time was tightly scheduled, but he had been wary of letting her know. Her transparency, so unwittingly ingenuous, touched him.

  He let out a long, slow breath and took her hand in his. He led her back through the hall, past heaps of jagged torn plaster, around a loaded wheelbarrow and beyond a stepladder into the huge kitchen.

  "Sit," he said.

  She did, on a chair at the table. It felt good to get off her feet.

  Adam sat down across from her. "Sage, I've been overwhelmed with the work load at the plant every day with Ed gone, and I know I haven't been around much."

  His eyes were so apologetic that Sage felt ashamed of herself. For the first time she noticed the tense line bisecting his forehead and deep creases at the corners of his eyes. He was busy and worried about both Ed and Wilpacko Industries, and she had added to his burden by complaining. She felt thoroughly contrite.

  "Well, back to the matter of the Italian mechanics," she said with a sigh.

  "We'll talk about that in a minute," Adam promised. He opened the refrigerator and scooped a bottle of beer from the shelf. "Want one?" he asked her.

  She nodded, conscious of his nearness. He deftly popped the tops off two bottles of Heineken and poured each into a tall pilsner glass.

  "Let's take these outside," he suggested.

  He slid a proprietary arm around her shoulders, noting how slim and fragile she felt beneath the coarse blue work shirt she wore under her overalls. To him, Sage still seemed like the last person to be doing the physically demanding work involved in home renovation. If he hadn't occasionally caught glimpses of her actually performing the tasks, he wouldn't believe that she really was capable of them. Yet Sage not only directed the work of her assistants, she also adeptly climbed ladders, pulled out nails with a vengeance, and hammered them in with equal vigor. He admired her for all that she did, and the thought crossed his mind that she would be a good life partner for anyone who was lucky enough to marry her.

  But that wouldn't, couldn't be him. His previous foray into marriage had convinced him that he wasn't the marrying kind.

  Outside, they sat beneath a tall loblolly pine and leaned back against its rugged bark, gazing out across the gently rippling surface of the lake. For the first time in days, Adam felt an easing of the tension inside him. He'd been putting in such long hours at the Wilpacko plant that he'd felt wound up tight. The peace of the scene before him made him feel loose and relaxed.

  "You repaired the fence beautifully," commented Adam after a long pull at the beer in his glass. "Where your truck went through it, I mean."

  "It was easy. No big deal, but I wish I hadn't gone through the fence in the first place." She sighed. "It's a charming
view, isn't it?"

  "The prettiest place in the town of Willoree," claimed Adam. The grass was brown now, but it blended with the gray cross-hatching of the rustic fence, and beyond lay sparkling blue water mirroring a bright, cloudless sky. It was mid-November, and the day was sunny and bright. The weather was so warm that neither of them wore a jacket.

  Adam leaned back on an elbow and admired the bright gleam of Sage's hair in the sunlight. Her coloring blended with the autumn landscape so well that she might have been painted into it, despite her incongruous dusty overalls. She sat with her legs folded up under her, the glass with the beer in it cradled in one hand, her wrist crooked elegantly at a graceful angle. The look of her had a devastating effect on him.

  "Sage," Adam said seriously, "I need those Italian mechanics. We have problems with the machinery at the plant that I can't handle without them. You see, Ed ordered machinery from the Italian manufacturers on my recommendation. They installed the machinery here, but the local mechanics didn't know how to perform the proper maintenance. Now the machinery is down much of the time, which slows production. Luigi and Vito have agreed to come here to train our mechanics."

  "And, of course, they can't live at the Willoree Hotel," supplied Sage. Even she could see that.

  "Of course not. And since there's plenty of room at Kalmia Hill, I've invited them to stay here. I'll give them rooms on the third floor. They won't be in the way."

  "Not in your way, anyhow," said Sage wryly before taking another sip of beer.

  "Or yours, I promise."

  "Mr. Hracek, your arguments are very persuasive. And since I know as well as you do that our lease agreement does not specifically prohibit your being visited by Italian mechanics, you know I can do nothing but give my reluctant permission."

  He twisted his head toward her, smiling lazily. "That's worth a kiss. Maybe two."

  "Maybe not," she said shortly, swiveling her own head away. "Say, do these Italian guys speak English?"