“Morning, Sug,” Freckles hollered—there was really no other way to describe the woman’s cheerfully brash voice—as she patted the Bronco emblem near the driver’s-side door. “Ain’t she a beaut? My second husband, Earl Larry, had one just like it back in ’73. We hitched an Airstream to it and cruised all over Mexico.”
She brushed her aunt’s weathered and heavily rouged cheek with a soft kiss as Freckles wrapped her in a bear hug that threatened to crush several ribs. Julia was still accustoming herself to the woman’s hearty displays of affection. “Whatever happened to Earl Larry?” she asked, always interested in hearing about her aunt’s series of past relationships.
“His grandpappy died and left the family business to him. Earl Larry went corporate on me, and after that Forbes report came out with him on the cover, I told him I wasn’t made for that kind of life. I couldn’t stand being married to some stuffy old three-piece suit, no matter how many capital ventures he sank our RVing money into.”
It was hard to imagine anyone named Earl Larry wearing a suit, let alone having a grandpappy who left him a company that would be featured in a well-respected financial magazine. Of course, it was just as difficult to imagine seventy-eight-year-old Eugenia Josephine Brighton Fitzgerald of the Virginia Fitzgeralds wearing orange cowboy boots, zebra-printed spandex pants and an off-the-shoulder turquoise T-shirt emblazoned with the words Cowgirl Up Café—We’ll Butter Your Biscuit.
“Whose car is this?” Julia asked.
“It’s Kane’s,” Freckles said. “I saw him pulled over on Snowflake Boulevard, and he said he’d eaten something that hadn’t agreed with him. I told him he just needed some fresh air, and since I’ve been itching to take this old Bronco of his for a spin, he agreed to let me drive it so he could walk the rest of the way. It’s only a couple of blocks, so he should be here any sec.”
Julia had yet to meet Kane Chatterson, the contractor Aunt Freckles suggested she hire to remodel the house. But if this derelict hunk of junk on wheels was any indication of the man’s rehab skills, her once-stately Victorian abode was in serious trouble.
Of course, if her overzealous impromptu CPR skills back at the restaurant were any indication, Julia’s medical career as a Navy surgeon might be in serious trouble, as well.
“Would you like to see the inside of the house?” Julia asked.
“You bet,” Freckles said in her mountain drawl.
“I have only an hour before my shift at Shadowview, so I might ask you to give Mr. Chatterson the tour if he isn’t here soon. I can email him some of my notes and suggestions later.”
What Julia didn’t say was that it would certainly be a load off her mind if she could just skip all this formal meet and greet business and fire off a quick note to the guy. Especially after the disastrous morning she’d already had. But Aunt Freckles’s quick shake of her dyed and teased peach-colored hairdo was enough to suggest Julia shouldn’t keep her fingers crossed.
“Kane’s a good boy and dependable as sin. He’ll get here in time. Besides, I’m holding his baby ransom.” Freckles dangled the metal keys above her head. “And men have an unnatural attachment to their cars. If you ever took the time to go out on a date with a decent fella, you’d find that out for yourself.”
Julia rolled her eyes, a practice that she never would’ve dared in the presence of her parents when they’d been alive. But, seriously. Her aunt referred to every male under the age of sixty as a boy and never missed an opportunity to suggest Julia’s social life was too date-free—at least by the older woman’s standards. Freckles liked men almost as much as she liked sequins and comfort food.
“I’m in and out of surgery all day, and when I do get the occasional time free, I usually spend it swimming laps or sleeping at the officers’ quarters near the base hospital.”
“You work too hard, Sug,” Freckles said, rubbing her niece’s shoulder. Julia, who normally tried to remain as reserved as possible, had difficulty not leaning in to the comforting motion. “And you gotta eat sometime. In those blue hospital scrubs and that cardigan, you look like you haven’t got a curve to your name. Isn’t there a nice doctor or admiral or someone you could go out to dinner with?”
“I don’t need a man to take me to dinner.”
“Hmph.” Had her aunt just snorted? “I don’t know if I mentioned this yet, but the town of Sugar Falls puts on a big to-do at the end of the year to raise money for the hospital. Since you’re one of the new surgeons and an official resident of Sugar Falls, the committee is going to expect you to be there as a guest of honor. With a plus-one, if you know what I’m saying?”
Guest of honor? A plus-one? Julia’s stomach twisted and her forehead grew damp, despite the fact that the early November sun still hadn’t peeked out of the clouds. She was pretty sure her aunt was suggesting she’d need to find a date, which was much easier said than done. Besides, Julia never wanted to show her face in the town of Sugar Falls again.
“Oh, look,” Freckles continued. “Here comes Kane now. Smile and try not to look so dang serious.”
Julia’s insides felt tighter than a newly strung cello as she turned around to await the contractor who would be doing the remodeling work on her new home—if his estimate was reasonable. Yet before she could formulate her plan to refrain from shoveling out piles of her inheritance to someone in order to avoid the hassle of negotiating, she recognized the familiar gray flannel shirt, and her heart dropped.
Oh no. Please, no. This can’t be happening to me.
The man hadn’t seemed quite as tall when he’d been sitting in that booth back at the Cowgirl Up Café, but his broad shoulders and chest looked just as muscular as they’d felt twenty minutes ago. He moved with long, purposeful strides that ate up the sidewalk, and Julia didn’t know whether she should meet him halfway and beg him not to mention the choking incident to Freckles, or whether she should hide in the overgrown azalea bush.
In the end, she was too mortified to do either. Her aunt motioned the man up the uneven cement path and onto the porch. “Kane Chatterson, meet my favorite grandniece, Dr. and Captain Julia Fitzgerald.”
The pride in her aunt’s voice blossomed inside Julia’s chest, nearly shadowing the lingering shame. Or was that just her elevated heartbeat?
“I’m your only niece,” Julia said, trying to lighten things up with a joke, but she succeeded only in making her nerves feel more weighed down. She cleared her throat and looked at Kane. “We weren’t formally introduced earlier.”
God, she hoped this man didn’t spill the beans to her aunt. His sunglasses shaded his eyes, and he certainly wasn’t smirking now, making it impossible for Julia to figure out if he was annoyed, amused or biding his time until Freckles left and he could tell her that she and her contracting job weren’t worth the trouble.
But Kane Chatterson simply gave her a brief, unsmiling nod before asking, “Do I call you Doctor or Captain?”
“Call me just Julia. Please.” She reached out her hand to shake his, and he gripped her fingers quickly, his warm calluses leaving an imprint on her palms. As a medical professional, she had no rational or scientific explanation for the shiver that vibrated down her spine. As a woman, her only explanation was that this new sensation was most likely the result of her aunt’s fresh lecture on dating. And possibly the fact that she hadn’t been this attracted to a man since...ever.
“Just Julia,” he replied. But still no smile.
She looked at her watch. She’d be out of here in ten minutes. Surely, she could pretend to be a normal, successful woman for another ten minutes.
“What do you mean, you weren’t formally introduced earlier?” Damn. Aunt Freckles didn’t miss a thing.
“We, uh, spoke briefly at the Cowgirl Up Café when our orders got mixed up this morning,” Kane told her aunt. The faint dusting of copper-colored stubble on his square jaw mad
e it too difficult to tell if the man was actually blushing.
“Yeah, I figured the new waitress I hired wasn’t quite ready for me to leave her on her own,” Freckles replied, then turned to Julia and gave her a wink. “Seems like lots of people are getting stuff wrong this morning.”
“Here.” Julia handed the cell phone to her aunt, determined to prove that she hadn’t made a mistake. Or at least two of them. “It says right here on my calendar app that we were supposed to meet at the café.”
Since Freckles was busy tapping on the screen and Mr. Chatterson’s attention was on the yellow paint chipping off the wood siding of the house, Julia stole another look at his dour face. She’d been trying to save his life back at the café. Surely he couldn’t be irritated with her over that—unless the laughter she’d heard as she left the restaurant was directed at him. Maybe the guy’s ego had taken a hit. Or maybe his feet were cold and tired from walking all this way from the restaurant.
Julia glanced down at the scuffed cowboy boots. No, that sturdy, worn leather looked like they’d been walked in quite a lot. So his stiff demeanor most likely wasn’t the result of sore feet. She allowed her gaze to travel up his jeans-clad legs, past his untucked shirt and all the way to his green cap with the words Patterson’s Dairy embroidered in yellow on the front.
That funny tingling made its way down her spine again.
What was wrong with her? She didn’t stare at unsuspecting men or allow her body to get all jumbled full of hormones, no matter how good-looking they were. Julia reached up and tightened the elastic band in her hair, hoping he wouldn’t look over and catch her checking him out.
“Sug,” Aunt Freckles said, holding up the smartphone. “Somehow you managed to program the Cowgirl Up Café as the location for everything in your calendar this month—including five surgeries, two staff meetings, a seminar on neurological disorders and the Boise Philharmonic’s String Quintet.”
“Oh. Well, I haven’t had time to go over the new software update. Yet.” Julia waved her hand dismissively before powering off her screen. That wasn’t a real mistake. She had much more important things to accomplish than mastering some stupid scheduling app—like getting this tour underway if she wanted to report for duty on time. She pulled a key from the pocket of her cardigan sweater, the one Aunt Freckles said did nothing for her coloring or her figure, and asked Mr. Chatterson, “Would you like me to show you around inside?”
“I could probably figure it out on my own,” he said, then used the top step to wipe his boots as she unlocked the door. “But it wouldn’t hurt for you to tell me some of your ideas for the place.”
Well, wasn’t he being generous?
“Shouldn’t you grab a notepad?” Julia gestured toward his run-down truck-vehicle thing.
“Why?”
“So that you can take notes?”
“Don’t need to.”
“What about measurements? Surely you won’t be able to remember every little dimension.”
“No, ma’am. I probably won’t. In fact, there’s probably a lot of stuff I won’t remember. But I’ll get a sense of the house and what it needs, which is something no tape measure can show me.”
“But how will you give me an estimate?”
“If I decide to take the job,” he said, looking up at the large trees, their pine needles creeping toward the roof she was positive needed replacing, “I’ll come back and take measurements and write it all down neat and tidy for you.”
“Sug,” Freckles interrupted in a stage whisper. “Kane here knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t come into the operating room and tell you where to cut or how to dig around in someone’s brain.” Then, as if to lessen the rebuke, Freckles turned to the brooding contractor. “Julia’s a neurosurgeon in the Navy. Smart as a whip, my grandniece. Did I mention that?”
“I believe you did. Should we get started?” he asked, wiping his hand across his mouth. Then, without waiting for a response, he walked through the door as though he couldn’t care less about Julia’s abilities in the operating room or her whip-like intelligence. Not that she wanted the attention or expected him to be in awe of her, but it was one of the few times somebody hadn’t been impressed with her genius IQ.
The guy strode into her front parlor as though he owned the place, and Julia resented his take-charge attitude and her unexplainable physical response to him. However, he was the expert—supposedly—and she was intelligent enough to know that this old house needed much more than her surgical skills.
The trio made their way from room to room, and Julia lost track of the amount of times she had to tell Aunt Freckles that she didn’t love the idea of glitter-infused paint on the walls or a wet bar added to each of the three floors. When they finished the tour in the kitchen, Julia was already in jeopardy of being ten minutes late for her shift. Unfortunately, she didn’t trust her aunt not to suggest something outlandish in her absence.
“I say you get some of those cool retro turquoise appliances and redo all these cabinets with pink and white paint.” Freckles waved her arms like an air traffic controller. “Then you can do black-and-white-checkered tile and give it a real fifties’ vibe. If you knock out this wall, it will open up the kitchen to the family room.”
“Which room is the family room?” Julia rubbed at her temples before tightening her ponytail. Again.
“I believe that’s the room you referred to as the study,” Kane told her. His smirk gave off the impression that he was laughing at her for some reason. Again. “Or was that the informal parlor?”
“Either way,” Julia said. “I don’t want a fifties-themed anything in my house. Besides, remodeling the kitchen is my last concern.”
It was difficult to not startle at Freckle’s loud, indrawn breath. “Sug, no, no, no. The kitchen is the heart of the house. That should be the first thing Kane works on. How’re you gonna cook or eat if you don’t have a decent kitchen?”
“I don’t intend to do much cooking here. I eat most of my meals at the hospital, and as long as I have a refrigerator to store all the leftovers you give me, I should be just fine.”
The woman tipped her head back, then rubbed her fingers over her eyes. Julia feared her aunt was going to smear her purple eye shadow. “It’s just that with the Pumpkin Pie Parade coming up and then ski season right after, I’m going to be so busy at the café. I worry about you being all alone, not eating right and withering away to nothing.”
“I assure you, I value my health too much to allow myself to wither away,” Julia said. “But I know you worry about me, and if it makes you feel any better, I’ll buy a cookbook and teach myself some basic recipes. After all, how hard can it be?”
“Sug, I know most things come easy to you,” Freckles said, wrapping her thin arm around Julia’s waist. “But there’re a lot of things in life you just can’t learn from a book.”
Unfortunately Julia knew the truth of that statement all too well. Freckles was her last living relative and the reason Julia had transferred duty stations and moved to Idaho. If it would ease the woman’s mind to know that her only niece would have a fully functional kitchen, then Julia would give Sexy Flannel Shirt permission to start tearing out the old rotting cupboards today.
Julia leaned into Freckles’s one-armed embrace. She didn’t even have to look at the contractor’s estimate to know that no matter how absurdly high his price might be, she would end up hiring him just to appease the affectionate woman.
“Fine,” Julia said. “First things first, though. I need my bedroom to be in habitable condition. Then Mr. Chatterson can start on the kitchen. But no turquoise appliances or checkered floors. All design ideas need to be approved by me.”
“Of course, Sug.”
“Now I really need to get to the hospital,” Julia said, glancing at her watch. “Take your time looking around.”
“You want me to lock up afterward?” Kane asked after she hugged her aunt goodbye.
“That would be great, if you don’t mind. Do I need to sign anything?”
“Not until I send you the estimate. Like I said, I haven’t decided if this project is something that will fit into my schedule yet.”
Julia collected her leather satchel on her way to the front parlor, then glanced out of the glass-paned entryway toward his old car parked in her driveway. His schedule was probably chock-full of appointments involving lots of smirking and consultations on how to give strangers the silent treatment. Unfortunately for her, that kind of work likely didn’t pay his bills. Which meant she’d be stuck convincing herself that she could easily handle this unexpected attraction to her new contractor.
Chapter Two
Kane let out a long breath, feeling some of the nervous energy leave his body. This was exactly the kind of job he loved—taking something so run-down and bringing it back to its former glory. But Dr. Captain Julia Fitzgerald was exactly the kind of client that he most assuredly did not love.
He’d first noticed the blonde woman the second she’d sat down at the counter of the Cowgirl Up Café. It was hard not to notice a pretty face like that, despite the fact that she’d kept mostly to herself and didn’t make eye contact with any of the other customers.
Not that he’d been in a real friendly mood himself these past two years. But before he knew it, the woman had her arms wrapped around him, her small, firm breasts pressed up against his back, and suddenly he hadn’t cared about the vegetables he’d accidentally bitten into because all he could think about was his desire for her clasped hands to travel downward. He’d reacted so quickly, almost knocking his head into her face, that he wasn’t quite sure what they’d even talked about after that. He’d seen a flush of embarrassment steal up her cheeks, and she’d pointed at something in his teeth before the entire restaurant broke out into laughter. Then she was gone before he could find out who she was.
The Makeover Prescription Page 2