by Linda Kage
She nodded, her knuckles going white as she held everything in place while I drilled a screw through wood.
Henry moved curiously closer. “It’s really coming along,” he murmured with a note of surprise. “Looks professionally done, too.”
“That’s because Shaw is a perfectionist,” Isobel announced, sending me a glance with a bit of censure but also pride in her teasing gaze. “He usually redoes a single piece five times before he’s satisfied with it.”
“I’m not that bad,” I immediately argued, only to flush when she sent me an arch stare. “Okay, I might be that bad.”
“You’re totally that bad.” She laughed before turning to her dad. “We’ve made it to this point three times already, only for him to insist we start all over again.”
Shifting uncomfortably because I was sure Mr. Nash would get upset over how much lumber and supplies I’d wasted by doing that, I glanced up at my boss, only to see him gazing strangely between the two of us.
“Well,” he murmured quietly, “it seems like whatever he’s doing is paying off, so I say he should keep up the good work.”
The meaning in his gaze was clear. Henry wasn’t talking about bookshelves.
I glanced at Isobel and cleared my throat, worried she’d catch on to the silent message her father was trying to convey. After the past few days, I’d actually forgotten what my main purpose here was. I’d been too eager to see Isobel, spend the day with her, and work on our project together. Being reminded why I’d originally been brought to Porter Hall soured the beauty of the moment.
“It looks as if you’ve turned into quite the assistant, sweetheart.”
Isobel sent her dad a pleased but tired smile. “He probably needs about five assistants, but we’re getting it done. Slowly.”
Taking that as a cue that he was excused now, Henry shifted a step back. “I guess I’d better let you two get back to it, then.”
I snorted as I pulled a screw I’d been holding between my teeth and plugged it into the end of the drill. “What a friendly snub to your own father that was.”
Isobel flushed guiltily before sending me a scowl. “I couldn’t help it. I wanted to get this done tonight, and he was slowing us down.”
With a laugh, I shook my head and drilled the next screw into place before she could accuse me of slowing us down.
An hour later, we had the first shelf pieced together and standing upright. The next step was anchoring it to the wall.
“The stud wall should be right here,” Isobel murmured, marking an X on the wall with a pencil as her stud sensor beeped.
“You sure?” I asked, approaching with a tape measure.
She swept out her hand, inviting me to find out for myself. “Well, why don’t you drill a hole and see if it hits a stud?”
The idea had me startling to a stop, but Isobel continued. “Can’t hurt anything since all this space is going to be covered by bookshelves, anyway.”
I shrugged. Good point. “Okay.” I put the tape measure away and retrieved the drill. But as I pressed the bit to the wall directly over the small pencil mark, I froze.
Staring at my hand I had braced against Sheetrock, I couldn’t seem to make a hole.
“Okay, you can start,” Isobel said behind me.
Could I? Really? I wasn’t so sure. This suddenly felt big.
“Anytime now,” she added, only to huff a second later. “Seriously, Hollander, you don’t have to wait.”
“I know,” I muttered, still not getting to work.
“Then why aren’t you?”
“I will.” I held up the hand I’d been pressing against the wall, hoping to quell her impatience. “Just give me a second.”
“A second for what? You know how to use a drill, right?”
“Yes!” I spun to nail her with the full impact of my indignant glare. She knew I knew how to use a drill; she’d been watching me use one all damn week. Then I realized she’d been heckling me on purpose, trying to get a rise out of me, and I scowled.
Lifting her eyebrows to meet my scowl, she set her hands on her hips. “Just what is the problem?”
“I told you…” It was hard to say from between clenched teeth, but I managed. “Give. Me. A. Second.”
“And I asked… For. What?”
“Oh my God!” I lowered the drill and backed away from the wall, losing my cool. “For…for… You know, you are the most annoying woman on the planet. Can you not even wait ten goddamn seconds for me to deal with this and let the gravity of it actually sink in?”
She blinked a moment, before more quietly asking, “The gravity of what?”
“The…that!” I motioned toward the bare wall. “This. Everything. It’s all finally hitting me. These shelves are going to be permanent.”
She sniffed out a degrading sound before nudging my arm and grinning through a teasing eye roll. “Don’t be so sure about that. I give them a couple weeks. In fact, I predict we’ll be calling a real carpenter in here within the month to fix your mess.”
“Wow,” I muttered. “Thanks for your vote of confidence.”
She shrugged, even though her eyes sparkled with her tease.
“It’s just…” I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair. “This is the first thing I’ve ever made that’s going to last. And it’s going in this house, this huge, amazing grand house where freaking millionaires live. Long after we’re both gone, these shelves will still be here, a piece of history.”
She made a sound in the back of her throat and wrinkled her nose. “Again, debatable.”
I ignored that, needing to get this feeling off my chest before I could start drilling anything. “It’s like I’m making my mark on the world.” My chest filled with a sense of purpose. “I mean, I’ve always loved archeology stuff and the history of things, learning about cultures. Studying that had always been my big passion, but this…today…it’s like I’m the one actually providing a piece of my own life for future archeologists and it’s…well, it’s pretty freaking cool. I wonder if someone hundreds of years from now will look at my shelves and comment on them, maybe speculate on why I made them the way I did or wonder about the life I lived. It’s almost…humbling.”
Isobel blinked at me.
I blinked back, realizing how much I’d just exposed. A sense of alarm filled my gut. After Gloria and even kind of my mom had belittled my passion for artifacts, I’d always pushed it down and tried to hide it, thinking it was stupid and trivial. I fully expected Isobel to make fun of me for getting so sentimental and weird, too.
But she just studied me with the oddest expression before turning to look at the bare wall as well, as if never having seen it before.
A second later, she spun away and moved off. I gazed after her, wondering what that meant, what she thought of me now, and where the heck she was going. She paused at the study table and pulled open the drawer under it before riffling around and coming up with a thick black permanent marker.
“What…?” I wrinkled my nose, confused, as she returned to me.
She didn’t say a word, just stopped in front of the wall, lifted the marker and started to draw in huge block letters:
Isobel was here.
A slow grin spread across my face.
When she turned back to me and arched a lofty eyebrow, I nodded my approval and thanks. She hadn’t made me feel like a freak; she’d joined me, making her mark as well.
Biting my lip, I took the marker from her and wrote above her phrase, adding:
Shaw and…
She snorted and pressed a hand to her mouth, holding in a laugh. “Now you have to change my was to were.”
I looked up, reread everything, and flushed. “Oh yeah.” Lifting the marker again, I marked out the a-s after the w and added e-r-e above it.
When I stepped back to check out the result, I winced. “Oh, great. Now it looks like total shit.”
“Yeah,” Isobel agreed, nodding. “Maybe you should put those shelves up to cover
it.”
I shook my head at her dry sarcasm, even though I was still amused by her witticism. “Smart-ass,” I muttered, biting my lip to hold in the grin.
Then I lifted the drill, and bored a hole through the wall of Porter Hall’s library.
chapter
FOURTEEN
Weeks passed, the library transformed, and a routine sprouted between Isobel and me. We’d run, I’d take my dream shower—I was becoming increasingly spoiled by those showers—then we’d eat breakfast together after everyone else had eaten and cleared out of the kitchen, and after that, it was off to the library for renovation time. In between the woodworking part, we painted the walls a glossy eggshell color and installed more lights.
I asked Isobel if she wanted me to find some professional painters and electricians to take care of that part, but she’d admitted she liked this do-it-ourselves thing we had going on. It made it more meaningful to her. That had me grinning until she added, “Besides, you’re such an anal-retentive perfectionist, I’m sure you’ll do fine.”
So I read more books and learned about wiring, and it ended up I only electrocuted myself twice before all the new lights were installed.
We were finishing the last bookshelf one Tuesday when Kit skipped merrily into the library, calling my name, except it sounded a lot more like he said Saw because of his missing front teeth. “Mom said to tell you—”
But then he caught sight of Isobel on the other side of the room, adjusting the space between shelves, and he ran out again.
I huffed out a breath and set my hands on my hips. “That kid pisses me off. I hate the way he acts around you.”
“Oh, give him a break,” Isobel chided, not even looking my way as she lowered the shelf another inch. “I’d be afraid of me too if I were him.”
Shaking my head, I stared at her as she worked, amazed she could defend someone who never treated her right. “Has anyone actually ever forced him to get to know you so he can realize you’re perfectly normal?”
She finally glanced my way and lifted a mockingly insulted eyebrow. “Only perfectly normal, huh? How depressing.”
I sighed and then grumbled, “You know what I mean. He shouldn’t be allowed to treat you like that.”
“It’s fine, Shaw. Leave it be.”
“No. Not unless you can look me in the eye and one hundred percent tell me his behavior doesn’t bother you.”
She turned to look me straight in the eye, only to frown. After a sniff, she muttered, “I said it was fine.”
“He’s creepy, if you ask me.”
With a laugh, she shook her head. “Creepy? Because he’s scared of a scary-looking woman?”
“You’re not scary-looking, and yes, creepy. The first day I met him he was drawing a dead animal with blood pouring out of it with sidewalk chalk on the patio outside the kitchen.”
She shrugged. “Sounds like a typical little boy to me.”
I sent her a get-real scowl. “I never drew pictures of bloody things.”
“I have a feeling you weren’t a typical little boy, either.” That was true, but it disgruntled me to think of how accurate it was. “I think I remember a couple gruesome drawings by Ezra a time or two.”
I opened my mouth to keep arguing, because typical or creepy, the fact of the matter was he kept hurting her with his behavior, and I wanted it to stop. But Kit’s mother strolled into the room, all grins, followed by a scowling Lewis. Each carried a tray laden with food.
“Woohoo,” Mrs. Pan called cheerfully. “I sent Kit to tell you lunch was ready, but he said you were both hard at work, so I decided to bring you trays so you both will remember to eat sometime today.”
“And she forced me to be her servant boy,” Lewis muttered, following her to the table where they each set down their trays.
“Thanks, Mrs. Pan.” I abandoned the bookshelf I’d been anchoring to the wall, because the mention of food made my stomach growl. A quick check at the time revealed it was after two in the afternoon.
Damn, Isobel and I really had gotten lost in the project, hadn’t we?
“It was our pleasure.” The cook beamed at me, clasping her hands to her middle before she elbowed Lewis in the side, making him mumble something not so pleasant under his breath. Then she turned to take in the room. “I wanted to get a peek at your progress, anyway, and I must say, wow. You two are doing an amazing job.”
“Thank you.” Isobel neared the food as well, looking about as hungry as I felt. “I think it’s coming along nicely.”
“It doesn’t look like the same room at all. You can’t tell which ones are the old shelves and which are the new.”
Isobel and I shared a glance, pride glazing our eyes. We really had kicked ass on the room. I could point out a dozen mistakes I’d made, but overall, yeah, it looked fairly awesome.
“Didn’t there used to be a door over there?” Lewis asked, pointing toward a wall full of nothing but shelves.
Before we could answer, Mrs. Pan whirled toward him, scowling. “Shh!” she hissed. “It’s rude to ask a question like that.”
The old man only blinked at her before scratching his head. “It is?”
I chuckled. “It’s all right. And yeah, the door’s still there. Check this out.” I hurried toward the bookshelf so I could pull open the hidden doorway and reveal the other room to the cook and groundskeeper.
They were suitably impressed. Lewis even gave a whistle of awe. Then Mrs. Pan praised the rolling shelf ladder we’d installed the day before, right before she smacked Lewis’s hand when he reached for a grape sitting on one of the lunch trays.
“Don’t you dare steal their food, you old fart. You already had your lunch.”
“But you didn’t give me grapes,” Lewis whined.
Huffing, she grabbed hold of his ear and twisted, making him howl as she marched him from the library. “You want grapes, I’ll give you grapes. But you won’t be stealing them from either Miss Nash or Shaw. Do you hear me…”
Their voices became indistinguishable as they moved further down the hall. I stared after them, shaking my head and grinning. “They’re kind of like oil and water, aren’t they?”
Isobel shrugged as she popped her own grape into her mouth and took a seat at the table. “Love is a strange and curious thing.”
She lifted the lid off the tray that sat next to her bowl of grapes. The steaming mashed potatoes and sliced pot roast slathered in brown gravy made my mouth water, so I instantly sat across from her, even though her comment had me blinking out my confusion.
“Love?” I said.
She picked up her fork, only to pause and glance at me as if I was being the confusing one. “What? Isn’t it obvious? They’re totally crazy about each other.”
I pointed toward the opening of the library where Mrs. Pan had just dragged Lewis from the room by the ear. “We’re talking about the same two people, right? The cook and the groundskeeper.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I know exactly who we’re talking about.” Then she plunked a forkful of mashed potatoes into her mouth.
I was too busy gaping at her to dig into my own food. “But they hate each other. They’re always at each other’s throats.”
Isobel finished chewing, swallowed, then took a long drink of iced tea. As she sat the cup down, she answered, “I don’t know what to tell you; I guess that’s just how their relationship works. But Lewis has had a crush on Mrs. Pan since he came to work here. And she’s been trying for the last five years or so to hide her own feelings in return for him.”
I glanced down at my food and blinked some more. “Really?” All the while, I wondered why I’d never gleaned such things from them myself.
“I wonder if she feels guilty about falling for the next man who filled her late husband’s position here,” Isobel mused, her voice full of sorrow and sympathy. “Mr. Pan was such a warm, wonderful man. It can’t be easy for her to move on and love again. And it must be equally hard for Lewis to stand back a
nd wait until she’s ready. I feel bad for both of them.”
Lifting my face to watch her as she ate heartily, I stared at yet another version of Isobel I’d never seen before. This intuitive, empathetic side was a wonder. But the more she explained Lewis and Mrs. Pan’s plight, the more it really did make sense why they treated each other the way they did.
It made my chest ache for them. If the two were in love, it only seemed right that they should be together. Needing this to happen, and needing it with a fervency that was strong and totally foreign to me, I sat up straighter and announced, “We should set them up.”
Isobel finally stopped eating to blink at me. “What?”
“Let’s…I don’t know.” I sat forward, growing more eager the longer the idea brewed. “Let’s force some contact between them that creates an opportunity for them to, you know…develop into that stage where they can finally be together. Make one of them take the first step.”
I’d meant it to sound like we were only providing an opening for Lewis and Mrs. Pan to do what they already wanted to do, but my explanation kind of reminded me of some of the things Mr. Nash had said about Isobel and me when he’d hired me. I glanced at her, wondering—
But, no. He’d specifically said he didn’t want to buy her friends. So there was no way he’d been trying to buy her a boyfriend.
Was there?
A split second of fury hit me, wondering if that thought had ever even crossed his brain. His daughter was a beautiful, amazing woman. The idea that he might even consider forcing some man to pretend to have feelings for her was not cool.
But, no, that wasn’t what he’d been trying to do, so I calmed my heels and shook my head. When I focused on Isobel, she was gazing at me as if I’d gone insane.
“How do we create an opportunity?”
I shrugged. Romance was not my forte. “I don’t know. How do couples usually hook up?” It’d been too long for me to remember the dating world.
Her eyebrows arched in a silent, You’re asking ME this question? Really?
Which got me wondering how many romantic encounters she’d had. If she’d sequestered herself into this house since the accident, she would’ve only been seventeen when she’d basically abandoned the dating pool. It didn’t seem right. She should’ve gotten the privilege to have men fight for her, woo her, romance her, make her toes curl. She deserved that. She deserved the flattering attention from an interested pursuer, the heady rush of desire, the anticipation and thrill. It wasn’t right that she hadn’t gotten to experience any of that for the last eight years.