by Karen Rock
“Depends on if he’s hot or not. Go look.”
“You just told me to leave,” Joey half whispered, half yelled.
“You can leave, but find out if he’s hot first.”
“Okay... I’m going up. If my phone dies and/or you hear the sound of me screaming, hang up and call the cops.”
“What if he’s not murdering you, but you’re screaming because it’s such good sex? Do I still call the cops?”
“I’m not a screamer.”
“If he’s the right guy you will be.”
“I’m going to go up and see what he’s doing.” She glanced out the kitchen window and saw a large green Ford pickup parked behind the house with the words Lost Lake Painting and Contracting on the side in black-and-gold letters. Okay, not an ax murderer, then. Just the guy she should probably thank for doing such a good job on the house.
“I’ll stay on the line,” Kira said. “If you think he’s going to murder you, say, um, ‘I’m on the phone with my best friend, Kira. She’s a cop. And she’s sleeping with a cop. No, two cops. Cop threesome.’”
“I’m just supposed to work that into a casual conversation with a possible murderer?”
“And if he’s sexy and you want to bang him, just say, ‘Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?’”
“It’s the Pacific Northwest. In October. It’s forty-eight degrees out and raining.”
“Just say it!”
“You are the worst friend ever.”
“You’re welcome. Now go check him out. Try not to get murdered.”
Joey crept up the stairs and found they no longer squeaked like they used to. The rotting middle board they had to step over was gone. Someone had replaced the old stairs with beautiful reclaimed pine from the looks of it.
“You still there?” Joey said as she made it to the top of the stairs.
“I’m still here,” Kira replied. “You’re not dead yet?”
“Not dead. Yet.”
The upstairs of the cabin consisted of two small bedrooms with a full bath between them. And whatever magic had been done on the downstairs had wended its way upstairs, too. New bathroom fixtures of brushed copper. The grimy tub had been replaced with a new and huge bathtub inlaid with stone tile. Somehow this Lost Lake contractor had managed to make the house look both old and authentic and yet brand-new at the same time.
“Hello?” she called out.
“I’m in the master,” the male voice answered.
“I heard his voice,” Kira said over the line. “Good voice. Calm and manly. He’s probably comfortable hugging his guy friends and telling his dad he loves him.”
“You got that much from four words?” Joey asked.
“I’m very intuitive.”
Joey shook her head and walked down the narrow hallway to a partly open door. This had to be the master bedroom, not that she’d ever thought of it like that. Master bedroom sounded imposing, impressive. The “master” bedroom she remembered had a tablecloth for a curtain and a mattress propped up on a sheet of plywood and cinder blocks where her parents slept.
“I’m going in,” Joey said under her breath, her phone still plastered to her ear.
She eased the door open...stepped inside...looked up...
There on a step stool stood a man, a much younger man than she expected. All contractors were forty and up in her mind but this guy looked no more than late twenties maybe. He had dirty-blond hair cut neat and a close-trimmed nearly blond beard. He was looking up, concentrating on the wiring above his head. He wore jeans, neither tight nor baggy but perfectly fitted, and a red-and-navy flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, with a fitted white T-shirt underneath.
“Hey, Joey,” he said with a grin. “Good to see you again. How’s Hawaii been treating you?”
He turned his head her way and grinned at her. She knew that grin.
“Chris?” This Chris was that Chris?
“Chris? Who’s Chris? You know this guy?” Kira rasped in her ear.
She knew this guy. It was Chris, wasn’t it?
Oh, my God, it was Chris.
Chris... Chris Steffensen. Dillon’s high school best friend. The skinny, scrawny, long-haired, baggy-pants-wearing, Nirvana wannabe even a decade after Nirvana was an appropriate thing to be obsessed with at their high school... This was that Chris? That Chris she wouldn’t have trusted to screw in a lightbulb, and now he was wiring up a ceiling fan? And seemed to be doing a very good job of it.
“Did you...did you fix up this whole house?” she asked, rudely ignoring his question about Hawaii.
“Oh, yeah. I’m doing some work for Dillon and Oscar these days. Long story. You like what we did with the place?”
He grinned again, a boyish eager grin. She couldn’t see anything else in the world because that bright white toothy smile took over his face and her entire field of vision. Damn, he was pretty. When did he get so pretty? And he was taller than she remembered. He must have had a bit of a post-high-school growth spurt. Taller and broader. Those shoulders of his...well, there was only one thing to say about that.
Joey hoped Kira was still listening.
“Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
Copyright © 2016 by Tiffany Reisz
ISBN-13: 9781488000362
HIS TO PROTECT
Copyright © 2016 by Karen Rock
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