by J. K. Coi
He gently nudged her aside before letting her go and opening up the door of the linen closet in her face.
She let out a chuckle. He tried not to care that it sounded more relieved than disappointed when he pulled out a towel, wrapped it around his waist, and tucked the end so it wouldn’t fall down.
“If you’re, ah…finished in there, I need to jump in the shower, too,” she said.
He frowned. “Why aren’t you using the en suite?”
She paused. “I noticed a few cracked tiles in the shower, so I don’t want to get it wet until I can have someone come and take a look at it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? That shouldn’t be hard to fix.”
He started forward to go check it out, but her hand shot up. She flattened her palm against his chest again, but this time she left it there to stop him. “No, Leo. I don’t need you to take care of it.” She took a deep breath. “I need to learn how to deal with these things on my own. I’ve already called a guy. He’ll be here on Monday.”
His body tensed. “This is still my house, too,” he said, jaw clenched. “And you don’t get to make those kinds of decisions without me.”
“Leo, it’s just a—”
“I’ll get dressed and take a look at it,” he continued stubbornly. “There’s coffee on the kitchen counter when you’re finished with your shower.”
After examining the shower in the master en suite and cataloging the supplies he would need to replace the cracked tiles, Leo turned to find Bria watching from the bathroom door. “Well?” she said.
“It’s not that big a deal. It’s definitely not worth taking a day off work to wait for someone to come in, and forking over a hundred and twenty bucks an hour. We have extra tiles in the basement. I can have it replaced this afternoon, and once it’s re-grouted, you can use the shower again in a day or two.”
She bit her lip. He could see the wheels turning in her brilliant head. She wanted her bathroom back as soon as possible, but she didn’t want him to do the work. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
He’d spent an entire summer helping Mr. Russo and Jason retile the kitchen at the restaurant the year he graduated high school. “I want it done right just as much as you do, Bria. I wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t think I could do it properly.”
She nodded. “Okay, I’m sorry. So, what do we do?”
He swiped his hands on his jeans. “I’ll run to the hardware store and get what I need, then it’s just a matter of chiseling out the tiles and popping the new ones in.”
“I’ll get my coat. I’m coming with you.”
He shook his head. “There’s no need. You probably have work to do.”
“I want to learn,” she said stubbornly, crossing her arms. “Besides, I’m not giving you an extra weekend just because this one got sidetracked. You wanted to spend time doing things that normal married people do. Well, home repair falls under that category, right?”
“Are you sure? You’ve never even used a drill or a monkey wrench before.”
“I’m sure I can figure out how to do those things, too,” she said, determined to learn so that she wouldn’t need to ask for help from him, or anyone, ever again.
“I have no doubt that you can.” He grinned. “All right, but you might want to change your clothes. Home renovations are rarely tidy.”
She looked down at the tights and comfortable sweaterdress she’d slipped on after her shower and nodded. “I’ll meet you downstairs in five minutes.”
When he left the room, she let out a deep, shuddering breath, trying not to stare at his ass in those jeans before the door closed behind him. Last night when she’d finally fallen asleep, she’d dreamed of him. Of skin and sweat and moans and sighs. She’d dreamed of his lips melting away her regrets, his teeth and hands bringing her back to life and vanquishing her fears.
She’d gone running this morning to try to burn off the hunger she’d awakened with, the need that had been building with every evening she’d spent with Leo this week, so that she could stick to her guns when faced with the prospect of an entire day with him.
She changed into jeans and a T-shirt and met Leo downstairs. He handed her a cup of coffee. “I reheated it for you,” he said, taking a swig from his own cup.
She took a sip. It was perfect, but that was no surprise. He knew exactly how she liked her coffee. He also knew that she liked cinnamon on her pancakes and ketchup on her eggs. He knew she thought getting up before nine on weekends was akin to torture, that she was a sucker for online cat videos, and that she’d wanted to go to Hawaii ever since seeing South Pacific on television last year.
He knew her.
She knew him, too. She knew that he hated her pot roast but would never say a word, that after law school, he’d gotten job offers from the biggest firms across the country but had wanted to stay close to support his mother, so he’d done the unthinkable and started his own firm, busting his ass to make it a quick success. And she knew that Mr. Russo had taken him under his wing and shown him what it meant to be part of a big family, and he’d been desperate to have that for real ever since his mother died the year before they were married.
They took their coffees with them in the car. At the hardware store, she grabbed a cart because she wasn’t sure what they were going to need. Leo’s eyes lit up at the sight of all the aisles. Lumber. Plumbing. Electrical. Flooring. He seemed to find something in each department that made his grin wider. When they’d first moved into the house, most of the work had already been done by the previous owners, so this was a side of him she hadn’t seen before, and she bit back a surprised chuckle.
“What is it?” he asked, examining the cordless drills.
She shook her head. “I’m suddenly wondering why you became a lawyer, when this is obviously your calling.”
He laughed. “I seriously considered it, but when it was time to make the decision, I went to law school because arguing gave me the same release that boxing does…only on an intellectual level.”
She picked up a hammer from the rack and tested its weight. “They both certainly encourage your competitive side,” she said, thinking about their case and the aggressive settlement demand she’d gotten from him on Friday. “But I can see how the physical challenges of this kind of career would have made it a close second for you.”
Her gaze sought out the way his arms and pecs stretched the light cotton of his T-shirt, honed from years of working out and boxing. He may not have gone into construction work, but that certainly hadn’t kept him from seeking out physical challenges in addition to intellectual ones.
They filled the cart with supplies, and then he called Mr. Russo to see if they could stop by on the way back to borrow a few other things. “He’s got a few tools that I don’t.”
“It must have been a long time since you’ve done this sort of work,” she said, not for the first time.
He grinned. “It’s beginning to sound like you don’t trust me.”
She bit her lip. “I’m just saying there’s no shame in letting a professional—”
“Why don’t we make this a little more interesting?”
“What do you mean?”
He flipped a trowel end over end and caught it again. “You’re going to replace the tiles.”
“What?” Was he crazy?
“I’ll bet that I can take you through it step by step, and when we’re all finished, it will be so good that you won’t even be able to tell which ones were broken.”
She crossed her arms and gave him a skeptical look. “Not only do you think you’re all that, but you’re also willing to wager that you know enough to teach someone who’s never even used the tools before to complete this project that perfectly?”
He nodded. “Exactly.”
She raised a brow. “What are we wagering? And keep in mind, you’re already into me for half a house.”
He snorted. “How about an extra day? If you win and the job isn’t perfect, then I�
�ll credit you one agreed-upon evening free from our agreement without penalty, but if I win, then you give me one extra day.”
“And we each get to decide which day? If I want to cancel one evening in the next two weeks, any time, you won’t call foul?”
He nodded. “And the same goes if I win. I can claim you for an extra night of my own choosing, and you can’t say no.”
She didn’t even hesitate. Bria had never even used a screwdriver in her life. “All right, you’re on.”
…
Leo was covered in grout. The entire bathroom was covered in grout. Bria had it in her hair and across her cheek. There was still dust floating in the air from grinding out the original tile. It coated the fixtures, and when he looked in the mirror, it had turned his hair gray. Stray tendrils had come free of Bria’s cute little ponytail, and she was bent over the floor on hands and knees with a sponge washing the tiles, while he sat behind her and tried his best not to indulge his caveman fantasies as her ass taunted him.
One time he’d suggested that maybe she should slow down and let him do some of the more labor-intensive work, still worried that she might have lingering discomfort from her stay in the hospital. She’d given him such a dirty look that he’d backed right off, but when she had moved to lift the heavy box of tiles they’d found down in the basement, he’d intercepted and dared her to say anything about it. He behaved similarly when the bucket of grout needed to be opened.
She was trying, but Leo had never quite met anyone with such a complete and total lack of coordination as his haunting, beautiful, intellectually accomplished wife. It was something he hadn’t really known about her before, and her frustrated grunts and huffs as she struggled to chisel out the old mortar and painstakingly laid the new tile made him want to chuckle…but he valued his life, and so he’d kept it to himself.
The entire day had been a strange combination of new revelations and the familiar. He was used to working with Bria, but not like this. At the office, they’d had four years to fall into a routine. They’d each known what the other excelled at and divided the work accordingly. A hundred times this afternoon, he’d wanted to step in and take over, but that hadn’t been their deal.
“That’s good. I think we’re done,” he said now, swiping his hand over the new tile with a grin, but when he remembered that ultimately she’d been learning this skill in anticipation of the day he moved out of the house and left her alone for good, his smile faded. “Now we just let the grout dry, and tomorrow, we’ll sponge it down again.”
She looked doubtful. “It still looks cloudy. What if we wipe it a little more?”
“After it’s dried. Too much now, and you’ll wash the grout we just laid right out of the grooves.” He shuddered to think what she would do to this house if left to her own devices, but when it came to this particular project, he was still going to win.
“You did good,” he murmured. Even though the day had turned out much different from any Saturday they would have spent together before the miscarriage, he still felt like he’d gotten a little piece of his wife back today. “We could have hired someone to do this, but how fun would that have been?”
She glanced down at the floor and grinned. “I did do pretty awesome, didn’t I?”
His fingers grazed hers as he took the sponge away before she could get scrub-happy.
She glanced up, her breathing quickening ever so slightly. He noticed because he noticed everything about her. He couldn’t stop noticing, like her essence had been shot right into his bloodstream. Her cheeks flushed with the sudden awareness of him as well. She looked down at his hand on hers and didn’t jerk away. They were crowded into the en suite bathroom, kneeling together on the floor closer together than they’d willingly been in weeks, and Bria was smiling up at him.
“Bria,” he murmured, swiping his thumb across the gray smudge on her cheek and the line of her stubborn jaw.
She closed her eyes, and he slowly bent and pressed a whisper-soft kiss to her lips. When her mouth opened under his, he groaned silently but used every ounce of his control to hold back, drinking up her sighs like honeyed nectar and letting the both of them simply feel the kiss without pressing for more, until she leaned into him the littlest bit.
His hand instinctively curved to the back of her neck, but she stiffened and clasped his wrist. She didn’t push him away but wasn’t encouraging him, either. He stopped and their gazes met. Her eyes were like liquid glass, and he winced at the vulnerability and pain there. He saw himself in her eyes. Frustrated and angry and fighting not to be broken. He fought to control his own feelings.
Her fresh, uncomplicated scent teased him, a reminder of sunshine and flowers, and better times. When this was all over and she was gone, would that scent continue to haunt him for the rest of his days?
Maybe, but if she was haunting him, he was determined to haunt her, too.
Chapter Six
After that kiss, Leo left her alone in the en suite bath, suggesting they both get cleaned up before dinner. She was tired, but their deal was for an entire day during the weekend, so she couldn’t back out and spend the rest of the night hiding out in her room.
She’d awakened this morning dreading having to spend the whole day with Leo. The fact that it hadn’t been what she expected left her reeling. Being with him hadn’t dredged up the painful feelings of failure and remorse that always seemed to want to drown her. Instead, she’d felt pretty normal. She’d had a good time.
He’d kissed her, and…she’d wanted him to. She’d wanted more than one kiss, if she was being honest.
But wanting or not wanting, that had never been the issue. Bria wanted him. He wanted her… But he also wanted a family. He’d never made it a secret that he wanted children, lots of them, and now she feared she could never give him that. And she was so afraid that their marriage—which had started out as happy and full of promise as her mother’s once upon a time—would end in heartache and failure.
She’d tried explaining her fears, but instead of listening, Leo had always just told her not to worry, with that closed-off, stoic look on his face…and then run off to his boxing club. If he’d even once let her see that he was afraid, too, then maybe they could work things out. But she couldn’t bear to open up to him and be the only one, again.
She knew she was right to walk away, but that didn’t change the fact that her mouth still tingled from that whisper kiss when she went downstairs an hour later to the sound of salsa music blaring from the stereo in the living room, and pots clanging in the kitchen.
She stood at the small island, her lips twitching with amusement despite herself as he opened the freezer and took out a whole chicken, then frowned, obviously wondering what to do with it. Powerful athlete, intimidating counselor, and amateur handyman, yes, but a cook Leo was not. “What are you going to do with that?” she asked.
He turned and lifted the chicken toward her. “How long will this take to thaw out?”
She crossed her arms. “It should be good in time for dinner…tomorrow.”
His face fell. “Damn it.”
She stepped forward. “I can make something else. It’s—”
He put his hand on her shoulder and pushed her down onto the barstool, then took out his phone. “No, I saw something on the internet, and it looked totally easy. If I’m going to be a single guy, I had better figure out how to cook at least one thing, right?”
“Didn’t Mr. Russo teach you anything all those years working at the restaurant?”
“I was the hard labor. Lifting crates, stocking the freezer, cleaning up. I think he knew better than to let me near the ovens.” He grinned.
She looked at the frosty bag of chicken. “And what is this recipe you thought you should try?”
“Soup.”
“Soup,” she repeated, doubtful.
“Sure. It’s hearty. There’s rice and corn and—do we have corn?” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s soup. I’m sure it will be
good with whatever. How hard could it be to throw a few things into a pot and add water?”
“There’s a bit more to it than that.” She looked at the time displayed on the panel of the stove. “We can thaw the chicken in a sink full of water, but traditionally, you wouldn’t use a whole roasting chicken in a pot of soup.”
He frowned and looked down at his phone. “You probably have work to do, so I’ll just figure this out and get something put together. I’ll call you when it’s time to eat.”
She raised a brow. “How about I give you a hand, and then while it’s cooking, we can start to go through the house contents like we were supposed to do today?”
His expression tightened, but he nodded. “If that’s what you want.”
She got up and stepped around the island, holding out her hand. “I think we have some chicken thighs in the freezer that won’t take so long to thaw. I’ll get them, while you start chopping the vegetables.”
Once everything was ready, they stood at the stove together, and he asked questions. She found herself giving him a few pointers about the types of foods that went well together and the building blocks for a really good soup. Every time he shifted to grab something, he brushed her arm or her hip, or he reached around her for the salt shaker, and she was enveloped by the subtle, familiar scent of him. She was warm, but it wasn’t the heat from the stove putting the flush in her cheeks.
“Where did you learn this stuff?” Leo asked, swiping sliced carrots and celery from the cutting board into the big pot. It was funny that this was yet another thing they hadn’t really spent much time doing together since they’d been married, but they were doing it today. With their busy schedules, they’d mostly eaten takeout or at Russo’s because it was quick and easy, and when Bria had cooked, she’d usually pushed Leo out of the kitchen to go and work because she’d said it didn’t make sense for both of them to waste the billable hours.
“While my mother was studying for her CPA when I was a kid, she pretty much raised me on peanut butter and jelly and mac and cheese, but when she married Frank and decided to stay home, she learned to cook, and I guess I learned mostly by watching her,” she said. “But I’ve always wanted to take some classes, actually.”