by Petrova, Em
How could someone be that damned attractive?
“Yeah, just… stuck.” She felt stupid, trapped in her floor, caught by this man. Man wasn’t enough. With the halo of sunshine, he looked more like an avenging angel of mercy coming to put her out of the misery of her embarrassment.
“Are you in love with these floors? Can I pull more of it up?” That voice, though. Maybe it wasn’t embarrassment flaming in her gut. Pure heat. That’s what was flaming in her gut, spreading to her nether regions in an effort to humiliate her further. Next thing she knew, her nipples would rise to the occasion and say hello, too.
Realizing she was staring at the guy, she swallowed down some of her mortification. “Sorry. No, I’m not in love with these floors. They’re trying to eat me.”
He chuckled low in his throat as one enormous hand wrapped around her leg to protect it from more shards of wood and the other one pulled on the rotten boards. It was a nice sound, one which came from deep inside him. She wanted him to chuckle more. If his voice made her tummy flutter, she wasn’t about to admit how his chuckle affected her. And then there were his hands…
His touch on her leg was gentle but all too brief. The shock of heat racing up her leg to the apex of her thighs was alarming as he pulled the boards away and freed her foot, lifting it out of the hole in her newly-swept floor. Resting it on the floor next to her other foot, his hand immediately let go and rubbed the back of his neck in a jerky up and down motion. It was cute and made his hair stand up in the back.
She wanted to smooth it but thought that might be a bit much, so she refrained.
“So, I guess new floors are on the list?” he asked her with a small smirk curling the corner of his lips. She decided the only word to describe that smirk would be—delicious.
“Thanks. Yeah, I guess. There are bigger things that have to be done first, though,” she said, trying to decide if she could walk or not.
“Are you okay? Do you need me to carry you downstairs?”
“Shit, no! I can walk!” She could barely handle the guy looking at her. If he carried her? No way.
A raised eyebrow was her only response, so she tried to be nicer. “I think I can, anyway. I would die if you carried me.”
“Why? You don’t look like you’d weigh much, even soaking wet. You’re itty-bitty. Like, five-foot-nothing.” Dude was killing her with his double-entendres. She was already soaking wet, but he had no clue. She stifled her snicker.
It’s not that she didn’t think he could carry her, but her reaction to those arms around her wasn’t likely to be attractive, and she’d rather just not go there. Besides, she might be short, but she had ample curves, and didn’t want to listen to him grunt and groan. So, she simply said, “I’m fine. Just help me up, please.”
His giant hand dwarfed hers as he grasped her outstretched hand, and she was so proud of herself for mostly ignoring the tingle racing up her arm at the contact. His hand was warm and dry, rough, and reminiscent of corduroy rasping against her skin. Of course, her own hands were sweaty and filthy, and she was mortified her thoughts wouldn’t stay clean.
“I’m Linc Ward. You met my sister, Sam, yesterday?” He offered with a smile. “I’m the one you called last night.”
“Uh… yeah. Vanessa. Vanessa Power.” God, she sounded like an idiot. Why did she sound like such a moron?
If she wasn’t careful, she wouldn’t be able to work with him without embarrassing herself.
To his credit, Linc seemed completely unaffected. He lifted her and let go as if he didn’t want her to rub against him like a feral cat at all. Pfft. Disappointing.
“Do you have a first-aid kit?”
“Downstairs, packed up somewhere,” she replied, really not wanting him to go through her stuff. Vanessa was pretty sure her first-aid kit was packed with her nightstand items and she definitely didn’t need him seeing her toys.
“I’ve got one in my truck. You need to wrap that. It’s bleeding.” He pointed to her calf, where, sure enough a thick trickle of blood was turning her sock bright red.
Blood was a problem. Vanessa had never done well with it. Waves of darkness trickled into her vision and grayed everything out. She heard Linc mutter a curse before grabbing at her. With the sensation of his grip at her waist and darkness bleeding in through her peripheral vision, she was down for the count.
***
When Vanessa woke up, she was lying on her mattress, her leg propped on a pillow covered with a towel, and Linc was wrapping it with gauze. Nice. He’d carried her anyway. And she’d missed it.
“You need to get a tetanus shot. I think you must have scraped against a nail.”
“Had one about six months ago.” His raised eyebrows over his crystal-blue gaze asked the question his lips didn’t. “I stepped on a nail in a parking lot, and yes, I passed out then, too,” she muttered dryly. For some reason, she felt like someone was stroking her forehead, but the cool, smooth hand she felt wasn’t Linc’s. He was standing three feet away, watching her, his hands firmly planted on his hips, not stroking her at all. It must be her imagination. Or wishful thinking.
She rubbed her forehead to dislodge the sensation, remembering the incident with the nail. Ian hadn’t been nearly as accommodating as Linc was being, but she wasn’t about to talk about that. In fact, he’d been pissed. But whatever.
“You want me to come back tomorrow? Or take you to the hospital?” Neither. She wanted him to stay here and take care of her, but we can’t always get what we want. That’s what her mama always said. Come to think of it, the Rolling Stones said it, too.
“No, I have plans later. Stay, and let’s do this.”
“Samantha’s little book club?” He ignored her hackles rising and continued wedging his foot down his throat. Vanessa allowed it because he had no idea he was bashing her livelihood, what little she had. “You don’t read that crap, do you?” His mouth made a stern line across the bottom of his face. Not only did she read it, but she wrote that crap, too. And had spent many hours defending it.
“Romance is not crap. It’s about validation for women. Their needs and desires. It helps them get over traumatic experiences. It gives them an outlet from their daily lives, much like sports and porn do for men.” Her voice rose with conviction. Sadly, this was an argument to which she was accustomed.
Oddly, a cool hand caressed her forehead… again. It was odd because Linc was still over there, sitting on a box next to her bed, not reaching for her at all. Vanessa froze, looking around for the culprit, but Linc was oblivious, continuing on with his tirade.
“Exactly. Porn. That’s all it is. Just with a pretty little bow on it.” His eyebrows crunched together, and his mouth was a stern line across his face. He didn’t feel a cool hand touching him? Vanessa told herself, yet again, the weird sensations were her imagination, and ignored it. She was in the middle of proving a point.
“You’ve never read any, have you?”
“Of course not.”
Swinging her legs over the bed, she did an inventory, and everything felt okay. The weird spectral hand had stopped touching her. She even stood, and nothing bad happened, but when she made a move to walk to the other side of the room where the box of her promo stuff was, Linc pushed her back down on the bed.
Okay, that was way hotter than it needed to be.
“What do you need? I’ll get it,” he said gruffly.
“That box over there that says Book Show stuff.” She pointed to the box she needed while she sat on the edge of the bed, crossing her legs and sitting with a primness she wasn’t feeling.
He nodded and walked over, hefted the box in one arm, and dropped it at her feet.
She dug around and brought up one of her paperbacks. “Here. Read this. Tell me what you think.”
He looked at the cover and a rude noise came from the back of his throat as he looked at the headless torso of the man holding a rose on the cover. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.” Crossing her arms
over her chest, she jutted out her chin. That was her ‘I mean business’ face and he apparently caught it. His face softened into resignation and with a heavy sigh, he put the book in his back pocket. She didn’t particularly want it folded up like that but couldn’t help but feel a little envious of the book and its proximity to Linc’s butt.
He cleared his throat and looked awkwardly around the room. “Just sit here a minute. I’ll be right back.” He stalked out the door like he was angry about something, but Vanessa couldn’t figure out what, unless he hated the sight of her blood, too, and couldn’t wait to get away?
He came back in, not two minutes later, with her ice chest tossed over his shoulder like a football, and set it on the floor at her feet. Her stomach let out a loud rumble at the sight, and he quirked an eyebrow at her. He’d carried in her box of food, too. She watched, silently enthralled as he made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and handed over the jug of milk.
“Eat. Low blood sugar will make you pass out like that.”
“Apparently, so will the sight of my own blood,” she deadpanned. “There was an awful lot of it.” Still, she managed to take a huge bite of the gooey sweetness and chewed, washing it down with milk. This made her feel like a little kid—being cared for like this—but it was a good feeling and she enjoyed it.
“Yeah, but you’ll live. So… you want me to walk around and check things out? Or do you already have a list made up?”
Pointing to the boxes serving as a nightstand, Vanessa said through a mouthful, “I’ve got a list there, but feel free to walk around and see if I missed anything. Obviously, some flooring needs to be fixed. But I’d rather have locks on the doors first.”
He picked up the legal pad and read over her list, flipping pages. “I’ll get started on this and walk around and take pictures. I can have a written bid sheet for you tomorrow and start working whenever you like.” He pulled out his phone and used his thumb to swipe things on it. “I’ll put the locks on first.” He looked up at her for confirmation before concentrating on his phone again. “You’ll need the electric company to come put a new meter box out here for me to connect to. I brought my generator for you to use in the meantime.”
A generator meant power. It was official. Linc was her favorite person in the universe. “You mean I can make coffee now?”
He barked a laugh, and Vanessa watched with fascination at the way his neck elongated when he tossed his head back and his face lit up with the smile. “Yeah, sure. I’ve also brought you plenty of gas. I’ll set it up on the porch here in a minute and show you how to use it.”
“Awesome.” That was going to do a lot to make the house less scary at night. She wasn’t about to admit to Linc that she might need a nightlight, but she was beginning to think she would. At least until shit got less creepy.
He walked around the house, taking pictures and making notes while Vanessa finished her sandwich and made another. Meanwhile, she just admired him as he worked.
He was physical perfection, and she wondered idly what he would look like with no shirt, clutching a woman in an embrace for the cover of Cole’s next book. She was pretty sure if she cut his face out, he would be perfect. Cole was a swarthy, dark-complected man. Linc was golden-boy delicious. It seemed a shame, though, to cut off those good looks…
He worked in silence, ultra-professional. He was efficient and didn’t dally with his proceedings. Still, as he compared the list to whatever notes he made, it seemed to take an hour before he came back to where she sat.
“Is there anything in particular you want me to start with, after locks on the doors and windows?”
“I’d really like to have running water.”
Vanessa hoped she hadn’t sounded too desperate but thought she’d failed when he grinned at her. Of course, when he grinned, she didn’t care what she sounded like as long as he would do it some more. Pretty sure that made her desperate.
“I’ll come back tomorrow, then, and be ready to start on the plumbing while I wait for glass to come in for the windows. After you get electricity hooked up, I can start on that a room at a time, so you don’t have to wait for the whole house to be finished before you can use anything.”
“Awesome. Um… Can you sort of teach me as you go? So I can help some? I was hoping that might defray some of the costs.” She didn’t want to offend him, even though it sounded like she wanted to hire him but not pay him what he was worth. Which was shitty.
Instead, his grin widened, looking genuine, which sent her tummy swirling into somersaults. “Sure thing. That sort of sounds like fun.”
Wait. Was that a flirt? Did he just say something to her that wasn’t a criticism or about business?
She ran with it.
“I can be fun.” Vanessa smiled her brightest, flirty smile at him, and his faltered a bit. Well, so much for that.
“Come here. Let me show you how this generator works.”
Chapter Six
Samantha’s house was an older home—probably built in the fifties—in one of those neighborhoods where everyone knew each other. Vanessa pulled into the driveway of the well-manicured house, imagining all the men mowing the yards at the same time on Saturday mornings before they fired up the grills to visit over the hedgerows as they made their hamburgers. Man, the Jell-O salads this neighborhood must have seen…
She was early, having gotten permission to use Sam’s shower. The woman and her effervescent cheeriness had reminded Vanessa that yesterday hadn’t been a fluke. They had a connection.
Her bathroom was small but clean, and pink. There was pink everywhere—the tile, the shower, the toilet—which sort of leant itself to the whole fifties, all-American vibe one got from the entire house. She absently wondered if Samantha was one of those people who was into all things retro but didn’t see it as really mattering much. She was a nice girl, already opening her home to Vanessa.
Vanessa felt so much better after her shower and fresh clothes. Thankful for the favor, she still hoped she had a shower of her own soon. While it was kind of Samantha, it was a lot of trouble to have to drive into town to get really clean. On the plus side, the cut on her leg wasn’t that bad, now that it was washed. If it had needed stitches, it was only a couple. She’d pasted a bunch of Band-Aids on it to keep it from reopening and bleeding all over Samantha’s place but didn’t see the need for a hospital. And it didn’t hurt at all.
She was smoothing lotion on her skin, when the lotion bottle suddenly flipped onto the floor off the countertop. Vanessa stared, mildly shocked, as she hadn’t touched the thing. When a depression formed in the side and lotion oozed out onto the floor, she sprang into action with a small squeal. It was making a huge mess all over the floor.
Great.
Grabbing the bottle, she mused about it. It was like someone had stepped on the bottle, squeezing the lotion out, but nobody was there.
She cleaned up the mess with her towel and finished dressing in a hurry.
Voices stopped her when she came out of the bathroom, and she was struck with a sudden case of nerves. She was about to meet a bunch of women, and as the new girl in town, she was the automatic outsider. Samantha seemed nice, but her level of nice was unnatural. Vanessa couldn’t count on the rest of the women being that outgoing.
Forcing herself into the kitchen, she pasted a cheery smile on her face.
“Thank you, Samantha. That was the best shower I’ve ever taken. I had a little oopsy with my lotion bottle, but I think I cleaned it up.” Samantha turned toward her, mid-conversation with a stunning woman who looked like she’d just come from some sort of charity function at the lake. She screamed casual elegance in her linen pantsuit. Vanessa felt inferior in her jeans and t-shirt, but at least she was clean.
“Well, you certainly look half-dozen shades lighter,” Samantha said with a bright smile Vanessa swore the woman probably slept with. “Come in and meet the bitches,” she giggled.
Vanessa was led around the kitchen, having food served
and wine poured by various women, all who had welcoming smiles. By the time they were finished, they were all in the living room and Vanessa’s plate was piled high with sandwiches, cookies, chips, dip and some sort of hot finger food with water chestnuts and bacon.
Kristie was the debutante, petite and dark blonde, makeup perfectly applied to emphasize large brown eyes, a wide, straight nose, and small, prim mouth. She was classically gorgeous and exuded not only elegance but a strength that shone. Instead of being intimidating, though, like Vanessa would assume, she was friendly and warm, if not a little obnoxious.
Melanie was dressed professionally in a skirted suit that fit well, even though it wasn’t designer or anything. She gave off an air of being some sort of assistant in a very professional office, like a lawyer’s secretary, or maybe she worked in the courthouse downtown. She seemed very officious, as if she was having a hard time separating her personal life and her professional one. With dark hair and eyes, and an open, honest face, she was attractive, and Vanessa felt an instant pull to her.
Wren also had dark hair and eyes and was almost as short as Vanessa. She was built like her, too, except she was blessed with enormous boobs and curves to match. Vanessa watched her wryly and had to admit she was gorgeous. With strong features—Greek or Mediterranean maybe—she was dressed in a short, denim skirt and cowboy boots.
Vanessa made a mental note to wear her boots to the next meeting.
Last but not least was Tiffany, a tallish, thin woman who was still wearing her wrinkled diner uniform and looked harried, to say the least. On first glance, Vanessa would say this meeting was the woman’s only time away from working. She moved quickly as if she was used to having to hurry all the time, which was a sign of a waitress, but also the sign of a mom. She ate fast, drank fast, and moved with furtive, bird-like movements. What struck Vanessa, though, was the blue tips to the platinum blonde hair. Tiffany was celebrating her differences, or clinging to her youth, or something. On closer inspection, Vanessa noticed some flashes on her face, too—modest piercings in her nose and eyebrow. It looked cute, and Vanessa wished she had the guts.