Her Man Upstairs

by Dixie Browning

  She took a deep breath, trying her best to ignore the hint of aftershave, laundry soap and something essentially masculine. Dammit, you’d think an aching back would be enough of a distraction. “I only wanted to help.”

  “Don’t. I know what needs doing, I know how to do it. What I’m not good at is having my concentration broken every few minutes by questions.”

  She felt like telling him he was fired, but she didn’t dare. They had signed a contract…sort of. Besides, if she were honest with herself—and she always tried to be—she didn’t want him to leave. He was her last hope. He was also…

  Well. That was irrelevant. He was her employee, period. They’d settle later which one of them was in charge.

  She was backing toward the stairs when the phone rang. It was still sitting on the floor in the bedroom she’d just vacated. Bending at the knees rather than risking further injury to her back, she scooped it up, keeping one eye on Cole Stevens, who was tapping walls just a few feet away.

  “Oh, hi, Faylene.” With a sigh, she leaned against the wall, resigned to listening as the long-winded friend who had also, until recently, been her once-a-week housekeeper, described the yacht that had recently berthed at the marina just south of Bob Ed’s place.

  “Two men’s all I seen, but we could have us a boatload of ’em. If they’re still here for Bob Ed’s party Sunday night, I’m thinking ’bout askin’ ’em over.”

  Marty made some appropriate response, which wasn’t really necessary. Once Faylene got the bit between her teeth, she was off and running.

  “She’s one o’ these fancy yachts with the kind of old-fashioned woodwork you don’t see much anymore. You think I should invite ’em to the goose-stew?”

  The goose-stew. Once the holidays were over, stews, fries and candy-boils constituted the main social events until box-supper season. “Why not? No point in wasting a yacht-load of men,” she said jokingly.

  “That’s what I thought. How’s your man working out?”

  “My—? Faylene, he’s not my man!”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. If the one I sent you don’t work out, maybe we can gaff you one of these.”

  Marty sighed heavily. “Invite them all, married or single. It’s up to you.” Just so you leave my carpenter alone, she added silently.

  She listened for a few more minutes while Faylene speculated about all the things an unmarried yachtsman might have in common with either a bookseller or an accountant, most of her ideas being gleaned from various soap operas. Faye was as bad as Sasha when it came to dishing and conniving.

  Leaning against the bedroom wall, Marty held the phone away from her ear while she absently rubbed her burnt fingertips together. All the boxes of books she’d shifted from one bedroom to the other still had to be hauled downstairs again. She’d have left them in the garage, but dampness was a book’s worst enemy.

  When Faylene paused for breath, Marty said, “Okay, hon, invite the entire crew and let the games begin.” She hung up quickly before her friend could launch another barrage.

  After Daisy had moved, the housekeeper had slipped into the matchmaking trio as if she’d always been a part of it. Actually, she had—even after their misguided effort to match her up with the mechanic, Gus Mathias, had failed so spectacularly.

  Rather than risk her back by bending over again, Marty pulled the phone cord from the wall. Was there a jack in the spare room? If not, she needed to have one installed.

  Glancing up, she caught Cole watching her, his expression guarded. “I’ve got some errands to run,” she said. “I’ll just put the Shop-Vac at the bottom of the stairs and you can get it whenever you need it, okay?”

  He might never win any Mr. Congeniality awards, she told herself on the way to the supermarket, but he was hers, bought and paid for.

  Or if not bought and paid for, at least signed and delivered.

  Four

  Cole waited until he heard her go downstairs before taking down the rest of the crown molding and setting it inside the bedroom she’d recently vacated. The room still carried that subtle fragrance he’d quickly come to associate with the woman. Not polyurethane and fried cinnamon. Nothing overt, like Paula’s, but something that reminded him of the kind of flowers you might catch a whiff of while cruising in the tropics on a hot summer evening.

  This is Muddy Landing, you jerk. It’s January, so cut it out and get back to work.

  Replaying her phone conversation in his mind, Cole thought, that was fast work. Some poor guy ties up at a marina and already the local ladies were swarming like sirens. Maybe he should stop by and pass on a word of warning, one sailor to another.

  Or maybe he should mind his own business.

  What was it she’d said? Let the games begin?

  He hated to think Marty was involved in that kind of game, but it was none of his business. His job was to do what he’d contracted to do, collect his wages and move on to the next marina, the next job—maybe the next country.

  He heard a door shut downstairs as he unscrewed another switch plate and set it aside. He had already taken down one section of plasterboard.

  He figured her bungalow for late fifties or early sixties, several decades older than the other houses in the development. Back when this one was built, two bedrooms and a single bath were enough for most young couples. If the family outgrew the original floorplan, they usually built on an addition. That was before the days of starter homes.

  But it was her house. She could do what she wanted with it, including turn it into a bookstore. Just because he’d moved out of a five-bedroom, four-bath plastic palace into a boat so small you had to go up on deck to change your mind—

  Time to quit thinking so damn much about the house and its owner. Time to do the job he’d been hired to do, then move on.

  Before he’d married the boss’s daughter and graduated to a corner office where he’d been anchored to a damn desk, Cole had done just about every kind of construction work there was, starting with the boatyard where he’d landed his first summer job. But it had been years since he’d done any hands-on carpentry other than helping Bob Ed with those windows, and the hours he put in on the Time Out.

  Maybe this had been a mistake. Maybe he should have moved on, waited for more time to pass. He was permanently immunized against sophisticated high-maintenance women who used their sexuality as bargaining chips. But when it came to the kind of beauty that didn’t rely on paint and polish, he might be just a tad susceptible.

  What do you bet, he asked himself, amused, that underneath those baggy clothes she’s wearing plain white cotton underwear?

  The next few hours passed quickly while he measured, marked and cut, his thoughts occasionally straying from the job at hand. Funny how quickly he’d gotten comfortable with her after that near calamity he’d walked in on yesterday. He usually took his time getting to know people. Even before his career, not to mention his personal life, had imploded, he had never been known for his sociability.

  Don’t get too attached to the place, he warned himself. He happened to like solid, unpretentious houses, and he appreciated those same qualities in a woman—but this was just another job. That was all it was.

  Still, she was solid and unpretentious, and more. Intelligent but without making an issue of it. If those crazy little stick figures were any indication, she had a sense of humor. He’d never realized what a turn-on that could be. Sharing a few laughs with a woman made you want to get closer, to see what else you could share. It was almost as if they’d been friends for years, but had just never gotten around to meeting until now.

  Or maybe his judgment wasn’t as sound as he’d thought.

  Yeah, well…he’d pretty well proved that, hadn’t he?

  By the time Marty heard Cole head downstairs in the middle of the day she had set out sandwich makings, a pitcher of iced tea and a pot of freshly made coffee. So far as she knew, he hadn’t brought anything with him for lunch. If he took time out to drive
to the Hamburger Shanty, it would just put her that much more behind schedule. During the hours when she had him, she wanted all of him.

  The thought had wings. Before she could turn off her imagination, a mental image began to take shape. She groaned. There was definitely something missing in her life.

  Passing him in the hall, she avoided looking directly at him, still miffed at being invited to stay out of his way. “Lunch is on the table. If it won’t upset you too much, I’ll just run upstairs and do some cleaning while you eat.” Okay, call her a neat freak. At least it gave her the excuse she needed not to sit across the table and stare at that sexy mouth, those enigmatic eyes.

  He said, “Look, I’m sorry if I was a little abrupt, okay? I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “Abrupt? Not at all,” she dismissed. “You made your position perfectly clear, and believe me, I understand. If I let every part-timer I ever hired start telling me how to run things, I’d be out of business by now.” Well, she was, wasn’t she? “You know what I mean,” she muttered.

  Upstairs, her irritation evaporated as she took in the wreckage. The exposed skeleton of a wall and the dust and debris that coated every surface. Clean it up, clean it up quick before someone sees it!

  And just like that, she was a kid again, trying her best to be perfect, hoping against hope that someone would like her enough to adopt her so that she could quit trying to be on her best behavior every minute of every single day, year after year after year. Surely somewhere there was a kind, loving couple who would notice how neatly she kept her few belongings and how perfectly she made her bed every morning. Someone who would recognize that underneath her gawky, homely disguise there was a little girl who was smart, pretty and obedient, who would make them a perfect daughter.

  She blinked twice and she was back to the reality of the mess that had, until a few hours ago, been her neat upstairs hall. She’d been so busy looking beyond this particular stage to the result that she’d failed to consider what happened between the Before and the After.

  Okay, so now she would deal with Between.

  Peeling a trash bag from the roll, she began picking up the big pieces and wondering whether to sweep or vacuum the rest. Was it safe to plug her vacuum cleaner into the wall socket? There were wires showing between the studs or rafters or whatever those two-by-fours were called.

  So much for her pretty yellow walls. Once there’d been an elegant little parquet table and an arrangement of pictures on the wall. The table had long since disappeared. Beau had given it to her the first year they were married, bragging that it was just a small part of his heritage. The only time he’d taken her to his home outside Culpepper, her reception had been cool to the point of intimidation. On the way back to Muddy Landing he’d explained everything she’d seen—the house, every stick of furniture, plus all the paintings—were family heirlooms. It went without saying that anything that came from the Owens family couldn’t be considered joint property, even if he’d given it to her as a birthday or Christmas gift.

  At least her first husband had given her a home. Alan had signed the deed over to her shortly after they were married, almost as if he’d known he had only a few more years to live. She would like to think she’d risen to the challenge of juggling a full-time job with a full-time marriage, because even before he’d been diagnosed with MS, Alan had required considerably more energy than her first bookstore. Not because he’d been particularly demanding, but because she’d been so anxious to be the perfect wife.

  But then he’d fallen ill and she’d spent the next few years on automatic pilot. With the bills piling up, she hadn’t been able to afford to close down. Instead, she’d hired someone to mind the store while she’d stayed home with Alan.

  After he died, she had forced herself to set her grief aside and resurrect what was left of her business. Gradually over the next few years, she had started breaking even, slowly moving into the black—but then the recession had hit. Her landlord had raised her rent, claiming increased property taxes, and by that time the online booksellers had started selling used as well as new. The rest, as they say, was history.

  Now, unless this plan of hers worked out, she might as well go back to square one. As tired as she was, both mentally and physically, she might not make it to square two.

  With renewed resolve, she plugged in the vacuum cleaner and, when nothing blew up, picked up the wand and promptly knocked over three short two-by-fours. “Well, crud!”

  From downstairs, Cole heard the Shop-Vac start up and stop. He heard something clatter to the floor, heard her exclamation and shook his head. Who was this woman he’d signed a contract with? He’d thought he had her pretty well sized up until he’d heard her talking about some guy’s yacht, inviting the crew to some party and letting the games begin.

  What games?

  A few minutes later when they met on the stairs again, Cole stepped aside to allow her and her bulging sack of trash to pass. “I put the leftovers away,” he said, amused at the belligerent set of her delicate jaw. Skin like thick cream…color and texture. He wondered idly what it would taste like. “Thanks for lunch. I didn’t figure in meals when I made that estimate.”

  “No problem,” she said airily. Dropping the sack at the foot of the stairs, she clutched her back.

  “Got a problem?”

  “Nope,” she said brightly. “Not a one.” Aside from the fact that she was freezing, having turned off the furnace earlier when she’d seen him prop the door open to bring in supplies.

  She watched him lope up the stairs, his feet barely making a sound on the oak treads. Those shoulders were made for carrying stacks of lumber. As for his long, muscular legs…

  Oh, shut up and get to work, Owens!

  The phone rang again just as she opened the door to take the lumpy sack of trash outside. She paused, then decided whoever it was, she wasn’t in the mood to talk.

  “Want me to get that?” Cole called after the fifth ring.

  Probably a telemarketer. “Suit yourself,” she called back. Or it could be Sasha, wanting to talk about Faylene’s new hot prospects down at the marina. As if she didn’t have enough on her mind without getting involved in another matchmaking project. Personally, she’d rather indulge in a small panic attack, brought on by hiring a sexy itinerant carpenter to tear her house apart on a gamble that stood less than a fifty-fifty chance of paying off. A few quiet little screams, a minute or two of beating her head on the garage wall—that should get it out of her system.

  In her more rational moments, which admittedly were few and far between these days, Marty was forced to conclude that reading was no longer a favorite pastime. Even for those who still read, there were too many competing sources for books. Flea markets and chain stores, thrift shops and libraries, not to mention the Internet. If only half of her old regulars bought two paperbacks a week from Marty’s New and Used, that would mean…

  “Oh, shoot,” she muttered. Maybe she should have opened up a tattoo parlor.

  The next time she saw her carpenter he was gray-haired. She couldn’t think of anything she’d said or done to cause it. If he’d torn everything up only to change his mind about the job, she was miles up the creek without so much as a pair of water wings, much less a paddle.

  She should have insisted on references. Just because Bob Ed had recommended him—just because he had Faylene’s approval…

  Oh, boy. To challenge or not to challenge. Only time would tell, but time was exactly what she didn’t have.

  She decided on the oblique approach. “Who was on the phone?” she asked, closing the front door behind her.

  “It didn’t say.”

  “It?”

  He shrugged. “Must have been one of those ‘If-a-guy-answers, hang-up’ calls.”

  Oh, great. Now she was getting hang-up calls.

  At four-thirty, when Marty bundled up to give Mutt his afternoon run, Cole was hauling out the last stack of broken plasterboard. “Dog walk?” he asked.


  “Yep. Will you be here when I get back?”

  When he glanced at his watch, she caught herself staring at the way the muscles in his forearm moved under a film of dust. “I’m at a good stopping place, but I’d like to get some material upstairs, ready to start putting up your new walls tomorrow.”

  Well, that sounded promising. She held the door open for him, then watched as he stacked the trash and covered it with a plastic tarp. There was something endearing about a man who took such pains with trash. Alan had left newspapers and clothing scattered throughout the house. Beau, after the first few months, hadn’t stayed home long enough to litter.

  Cole watched her tug on earmuffs and a pair of thick knit gloves. Her nose and cheeks were already reacting to the cold wind. A complexion like that—Scottish or Irish ancestry, most likely—was the next best thing to a lie detector. Not that he thought she’d lied to him, but after Paula he was conditioned to expect any woman to lie if the truth happened to be inconvenient. With Paula, lying had been a catch-me-if-you-can game.

  After a while he hadn’t bothered to try.

  “Want me to lock up when I leave?” he called as she was about to climb into her minivan.

  “Not unless you’re worried about your tools.” Without waiting for a reply, she backed out onto the street just as a gray Mercedes pulled out of a driveway three houses down the street. It waited for her to pass before heading in the same direction. He noticed the car only because it was a few decades old—a nicely restored classic, in fact. The truck he drove now was one of Bob Ed’s rent-a-junkers, but he could definitely appreciate a fine piece of machinery.

  Mutt was excited to see her. “I guess he’s bored,” she said to the part-time attendant, a kid with a blue Mohawk and a gold earring, while she struggled to attach the leash to the dog’s choke collar. She felt a little embarrassed to be using the thing, but Annie had told her it didn’t hurt him at all—it helped to slow him down when he saw something he wanted to chase.