Plain Jayne

by Laura Drewry

  Awhile later Nick wandered out of his room, freshly showered, and wearing only his jeans again.

  Seriously.

  “Whatcha reading?” He dropped a file folder on the table before taking the other side of the sofa.

  She held up the book for him to see, then lowered it again, knowing full well she was going to have to go back to page one. Did the man have so much as an ounce of fat anywhere? And since when were bare feet sexy?

  “Is it any good?”

  Jayne shrugged. How the hell would she know since she couldn’t remember a single word of what she’d already read five times?

  “Work?” She cleared her throat and nodded toward the file folder.

  “Yeah, Martin’s on my case about the Schwanns’ expenses.”

  For a while, the only sounds came from Nick shuffling his receipts back and forth. She might be wrong, but it didn’t look like he was doing anything with them, just moving them from one hand to the other and then back again. Jayne finally gave up trying to read her book and tossed it on the cushion next to her.

  “Come on, Duke,” she said. “Wanna go outside?”

  He pushed to his feet with as much speed as his poor hips would let him, and wagged his tail. They went into the backyard where Duke sniffed every blade of grass as though it was all new to him, and Jayne sank into one of the Adirondack chairs and stared up at the crescent moon.

  After all Nick had done for her, the last thing he needed was her going all “girl” on him; he was probably happy to be rid of her. By this time tomorrow, she’d hopefully have the thumbs-up from Hague and then she could move into the apartment and they could all move on.

  And that was a good thing.

  “Yeah,” she whispered as she leaned down to rub Duke’s silky ears. “That’s a good thing.”

  Back inside, she reached over the back of the sofa, grabbed her book, and tapped Nick on the shoulder with it.

  “I’m going to bed.”

  She was almost to the kitchen doorway when his voice stopped her.

  “You could stay, you know.” Elbows resting on his knees, Nick turned his head ever so slightly to look at her. “Just sayin’. The room’s available.”

  He turned back to his receipts, but he didn’t move, he just sat there, staring at the pile in his hands.

  A giant gaping hole opened in Jayne’s stomach. She gripped the door frame for balance and swallowed hard. Every part of her being wanted to scream yes, to curl up on the end of that sofa again and stay there forever. Or at least until she needed to feed him again.

  Instead, she took a deep breath and forced a smirk into her voice. “In case you missed it, Nick, I’m obviously suffering from some kind of hormonal imbalance, and we both know if you start being nice to me right now, it’ll only make me cry, and neither one of us wants that.”

  “Right. Sorry. Lost my mind there for a second.” With a flick of his wrist, the receipts flew across the table, some landing on the folder, some on the floor. He pushed up from the couch and started toward her, his mouth twitching up into a grin. “How soon can you be out?”

  He wrapped his bare arm around her shoulder and steered her across the kitchen.

  “If you’re lucky, you could be rid of me by lunchtime tomorrow.” Amazed that her voice held without a single crack, Jayne walked into the bedroom, but Nick stood at the door, his arms braced against the frame.

  “Noon? Not any sooner?”

  She didn’t want to look at him because she knew what she’d see. His mouth would be curled in that sexy little grin and his eyes would be all warm and crinkly, yet there’d still be that look; the one that told her he’d been serious.

  She could stay as long as she wanted.

  After a moment, she did look up, but refused to meet his gaze. “I can shoot for eleven, but that might be pushing it.”

  She could feel his eyes on her as his quiet laugh floated between them. “What if I helped you pack?”

  “Lisa already offered, but thanks.”

  His only response was to slap his hands gently against the frame before he turned away and disappeared down the hall. Jayne closed the door behind him and leaned back against it. After a moment, she slid down until she was sitting on the floor, her knees bent up to her chest.

  * * *

  Nick stood in his office, staring blindly at the piles of papers and loose receipts scattered across his desk.

  For Jayne to work up the nerve to show any kind of emotion was big, but for her to say something like that out loud was huge. And though she’d tried to make it sound like she was joking earlier, he saw those big fat tears sitting in the corners of her eyes, waiting for her to let them fall. She never did.

  She was going to miss him and even though telling him was probably the hardest thing she’d done in a while, at least she’d done it. He, on the other hand … well, he was an idiot.

  Nick wandered into his room, pulled off his jeans, and flopped down on his bed in his boxers, staring up at the ceiling. Maybe it was a good thing she was moving out; it would put everything back to normal. It would give him and Lisa more time together and it would give him time to finish the Schwanns’ house. Theirs was the first job he’d taken on that he would have happily handed off to another contractor. He wouldn’t, of course, but he’d like to.

  After a half hour or so of tossing and turning, he gave up and went back to collect his receipts from the living room. If he wasn’t going to sleep, he might as well do something useful.

  Back in his office, he pushed the piles on his desk to the side and opened the Schwann folder. One pile of receipts for materials, one for the trades jobs, and another for payroll. When the piles were organized, he scanned everything and saved it on his computer, then slid all the originals into an envelope for Martin. Slowly but surely, the piles began to shrink until the last of them had been paid, filed, shredded, or redirected to Martin.

  “Would you look at that,” he muttered. “There’s room to work now.”

  Duke whined softly from the doorway.

  “Really?” Nick glanced at the clock. Three o’clock.

  As quietly as he could, he slipped on his boots in the dark and grabbed the first jacket he could reach. He got one arm about halfway into the sleeve of the jacket before it got stuck. In his fumbling around, he’d grabbed Jayne’s pink hoodie, so he hung it around his shoulders and stood freezing his butt off as Duke took his sweet time sniffing and snorting his way back toward him.

  Nick gave the dog’s head a quick scratch as he opened the door to the kitchen.

  “Nice outfit.” Jayne stood at the sink, grinning over a glass of water. Her long white pajama bottoms brushed the floor, but her tiny purple pajama top with its skinny spaghetti straps barely reached her belly button.

  Nick opened his mouth, hoping something brilliant or witty would fall out, but all he managed was a choked laugh as he looked down at what he was wearing: brown work boots and green tartan boxers that didn’t hide anything. He yanked her jacket off his shoulder and held it in front of himself.

  Sweet Jesus! What was he, sixteen?

  He didn’t dare look at her, and if she noticed, she didn’t let on.

  “I’m … uh …” He kicked off his boots and left them there in the kitchen. “I’m going back to bed.”

  Without so much as a backward glance, he all but ran back to his room with her jacket clutched in front of him.

  “Idiot,” he groaned into his pillow. “Stupid, stupid, stupid idiot.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Donger’s here for five hours, and he’s got somebody. I live here my whole life, and I’m like a disease.

  Samantha Baker, Sixteen Candles

  Jayne followed Art Hague and his clipboard through every inch of the inspection. He didn’t have a whole lot to say, but he certainly did a lot of hmming and nodding as he marked things off his checklist.

  Minute by minute, room by room, everything was scrutinized beneath the inspector’s bifocals; he
knocked on walls, measuring the distance between studs, checked every light switch, every outlet, every faucet.

  More than once she had to remind herself he was just doing his job, nothing more. After a final rush of scribbling, he took a long time going over all the pages in the stack. He frowned, reviewed them again, and then a third time, making sure there weren’t pages stuck together.

  With his mouth set in a grim line, he handed her a copy and sighed. “You’ve done an amazing job here, Miss Morgan.”

  “But?” After everything they’d done, what could they possibly have missed?

  “You need a lit or reflective exit sign downstairs at the back door and a fire extinguisher in the store, somewhere with easy access. And it needs to be inspected regularly.”

  “I can have those up in an hour.” Jayne held her breath, waiting, as he tucked his pen in the inside pocket of his suit and handed her the sheets he’d ripped off.

  “I’m sure you can, but they’re not my main concern.”

  “Then what?”

  “An electrical inspection wasn’t done before you put up the drywall. I can’t pass you without one, and there’s no way you’ll—”

  “What? Wait … are you sure?”

  He went through the stack of papers again, one by one, shaking his head slowly. “There’s nothing here. I’m real sorry, Miss Morgan. I wish there was something I could do, but my boss is already breathing down my neck for giving you the extra couple of days.”

  Mr. Hague huffed out a breath and started toward the stairs.

  “But … wait.” Jayne chased after him, desperate for any idea. “There has to be something I can do, someone I can talk to.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She stumbled after him to the door, speechless as it swung shut behind him. How was she going to tell Nick? They’d failed the inspection, and in all the years he’d been building, that had never happened.

  With feet of lead, she climbed into her car and drove straight to his job site, but once she got there, it took her a couple minutes to work up the courage to go inside.

  “Hey, Jayne.” Kyle grinned from where he was bent over the shop vac. “Boss is upstairs.”

  “Hey, how’d it go?” Strapped onto metal stilts, Nick clomped his way out of the living room and towered over her, his smile collapsing into a frown. “What’s wrong?”

  Jayne crossed her arms, uncrossed them, and stuffed her hands in her pockets. “The electrical inspection. There was supposed to be an inspection … I didn’t know … I should have—”

  “There was an inspection,” he said. “I set it up myself.”

  “When?”

  “Last week. Wednesday … hang on.” He lifted his head and bellowed for Kyle and Todd, but only Kyle came running.

  “Todd’s not back from T-Squared’s yet,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “The electrical inspection, that was Wednesday, right?”

  Kyle flicked his hair out of his eyes and half nodded, half shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “Where’s the report?”

  The kid’s eyes grew wider as each second passed. “I, uh, I dunno, Boss. The guy gave it to Todd. It passed, I know that much.”

  Jayne’s breath came out in a whoosh, but Nick didn’t look even a little bit relieved. Instead, he pulled out his phone and clomped into the next room as he spoke.

  “Don’t worry,” Delmar said quietly. “Nick’ll sort this out.”

  Kyle ducked his head and winced. “Yeah, but maybe we should call Todd and warn him.”

  “Todd?” Jayne frowned. “What do you mean? Don’t the inspectors file the reports?”

  “Depends,” Delmar said. “They will if you ask, but you know Nick; he’s got to be in control of everything, so they leave all this kind of stuff to him. He files all the paperwork himself or has one of us do it, that way he knows it’s been done and hasn’t been left sitting on some suit’s desk.”

  “But what if we can’t find the report?”

  Nick clomped back into the room, looking relieved, but not smiling. “It’s done.”

  “How?” Jayne asked, but Delmar and Kyle only nodded and went back to whatever they’d been doing.

  “I called the guy at the Safety Authority and he faxed a copy to Hague while he had me on the line.”

  “He … really?” She waited for Nick to say something else, but he was too busy glaring out the window at nothing. “So does that mean …?”

  Finally a smile, small as it was. “You passed.”

  “We did?” she squeaked. “Are you sure?”

  “I told you we’d do it.” His eyes softened, his smile widened. “But Art says to make sure you get the extinguisher and the exit sign up today.”

  Jayne tried to contain the burst of joy that ruptured through her, but couldn’t. She threw her hands in the air and danced up and down in place. “Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes! Thank you!”

  If he wasn’t up on those stilts, she would’ve hugged him, right there in front of anyone who cared to look. Passing an inspection might be an everyday thing for these guys, but it was monumental for her and she was ready to celebrate.

  “Let me buy you and Lisa dinner tonight to celebrate since last night didn’t exactly work out.”

  “She’s in the city until tomorrow.”

  “Oh.” Jayne frowned, then smiled at Delmar as he came in and started strapping stilts onto his legs, too. When Nick didn’t say anything else, she looked up at him. “What about you? You have to eat.”

  There was a slight hesitation before he answered, which could well have been because he was working while they talked, but somehow it seemed different; awkward.

  “Aren’t you meeting your friends for drinks tonight?”

  “We could meet there after that. Say seven?”

  Another hesitation. “Um, yeah, sure. Okay.”

  Jayne shot a glance at Delmar, hoping he would take his stilts and go somewhere else, so she could ask Nick what was up, but no such luck. Delmar secured the last buckle around his calf and got to work on the opposite side of the room, without so much as a glance at either Jayne or Nick.

  Something was definitely off. Delmar, who’d been friendly and chatty the last time she’d stopped by, now seemed intent on avoiding eye contact, and Nick was just … weird. The only thing Jayne could figure was that somehow she had outstayed her welcome and now needed to remove herself without making the silence in the room any more awkward.

  “Great,” she finally managed. “I’ll see you later.”

  Todd was coming in the door as she left, but she was too focused on getting away as fast as she could, so she missed what he said. In her car, she glanced back through the living room window and saw Nick pointing his sander toward Todd, who’d just walked into the room, and though she couldn’t make out what was being said, Nick was clearly furious. Delmar stood between the two, blocking Nick from moving forward.

  Nick shoved Delmar’s arm away, but the other man held it up again, and when Nick moved to the left, Delmar moved with him, shaking his head.

  Ooh, boy. Maybe dinner wasn’t such a great idea tonight. She’d give him a while to cool down, then suggest via text, because she was that much of a coward, they do it another time.

  She drove to Nick’s house and started loading her stuff back into the car. Whatever that had been between Nick and Delmar, she couldn’t shake the feeling she was somehow involved, and she’d already been more than enough of a problem for him.

  A thin stream of anxiety worked its way up Jayne’s spine, dragging with it every insecurity she’d spent her whole life trying to run from. Growing up, she’d been nothing but a pain in Gran’s butt, a burden the old woman neither wanted nor deserved. Had Jayne become that to Nick now, too? Had she been so caught up in her own stupid self that she hadn’t noticed before?

  With her trunk and backseat full, Jayne drove to her place and started unloading. Six trips up and down the stairs and she was done; guess it was a good thing her whole l
ife fit in the back of her car—it made for easy moving. She was just setting down the last box when her phone buzzed with a text from Nick.

  Sorry about before. See you @ 7

  Jayne read it twice before she tucked the phone back in her pocket. Typical Nick. She’d obviously caused some kind of weirdness between him and his workers, and he was the one apologizing.

  She pulled open the flaps on one of the large boxes and lifted out the shorter flat box inside. Very carefully, she eased out the top layer of packing paper and there it was: the dandelion necklace Nick made her so many years ago. She’d worn it every day until it started to fall apart, then she’d pressed it between sheets of wax paper in the biggest book she could find in the store.

  When she left town, Gran wouldn’t let her take the book, so she’d gone to the dollar store and found the nicest frame she could afford. Looking at it now, so many years later, it might seem ragged and faded to anyone else, but to Jayne, it was just as beautiful as the day Nick gave it to her.

  She smoothed her fingers over the glass, proud that she let only one tear fall.

  With the frame in one hand and her tool belt in the other, she wandered upstairs and down, searching for the perfect place. Above the front door? Across from the sales desk? In the living room? Pros and cons to each spot but after a while, she gave up and left it on the kitchen counter while she went to unpack other things.

  The closet had room to spare, even with her entire wardrobe hanging in it, and when the dishes had been stacked in the kitchen, she still had empty cupboard space.

  A few minutes before six, she locked up and walked down to Chalker’s. Ellie and Maya were just sitting down when Jayne arrived, so she flagged the waitress. “I’m buying.”

  “Oooh, I like that,” Ellie said. “What’s up?”

  Jayne slid into the seat next to her. “Passed inspection today so we’re go for launch.”

  “That’s great!” Maya said, her smile much less forced than last week.

  “With all the people you’ve had in and out of there this week,” Ellie said, “you could have rebuilt the entire place from the ground up.” She smiled a little guiltily. “Yes, I was watching.”