“Need a minute.” He led Sarah inside Stone’s smaller inner office and shut the door.
“I’m okay.” She hiccupped and grabbed a tissue from the box on Stone’s desk. “R-really.”
“Yeah, not buying it. Try again.”
“Seriously. This isn’t your concern. Just give me a few minutes in here. I’ll get myself together.” She jerked away from him, but he caught her by the elbow and turned her toward him. The same energy he’d tried to ignore again and again surfaced as it did every time he touched her. A jolt of electricity coursed through him because every time he touched Sarah he got a one-two-punch reminder he was a man. And she was a hot woman. Beautiful. Smart.
But not his.
“Tell me.”
Her green eyes, now red-rimmed, found their fire again. “Why? So you can try to fix this for me? I don’t need your help.”
Good. He had pissed-off, fighting Sarah again. He could deal with her. What he couldn’t handle was falling-apart Sarah because she only made him want to haul her into his arms and kiss her until she forgot her name.
“Something happened out there, and it didn’t have anything to do with coffee.” He leaned back against Stone’s desk and folded his arms across his chest.
She slapped her forehead. “Of course it didn’t have to do with coffee! This has to do with the fact that I’m an idiot. I trusted a man. I paid him good money, and he didn’t deliver!”
At this, he was sure he’d lost a couple of brain cells. He didn’t speak for a moment, clearing his throat as he tried with a Herculean effort not to picture Sarah paying for a gigolo’s services. But that’s exactly what it sounded like even if he knew it couldn’t be true. Still, his imagination was enjoying this little side trip. Maybe a little too much.
“Oh my God! Wipe that look off your face. I hired a contractor. Somebody up there must really hate me because I picked the loser of contractors. I picked the guy who leads the police on a car chase and gets arrested on national TV!”
Crap. “That was your contractor?”
“It’s him.” She slumped into one of the chairs. “We were all watching. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t him, and that it could be someone who looked like him. I don’t know what he did, but the man got himself arrested. He hasn’t returned my calls and now I know why.”
“Great. How much did you pay him?”
“Too much. I gave him a deposit, and there hasn’t been much labor. He could never seem to finish a project. Always had to run to the store to get another nail or another stud or God knows what.”
“Where did you hear about this guy, anyway?”
“Eloise’s List. He had plenty of good reviews so either the people were being blackmailed into leaving them or he’s recently changed his work ethic.”
There had to be something else, though, or she wouldn’t be this upset. “No worries. I’ll find someone else for you. I’ll check him out first.”
“No.”
He cocked his head. “No?”
“You heard me. Unless you know anyone who works for free, I can’t afford them.”
“You run out of money?”
“You could say that. I planned on selling soon and flipping the house.” She groaned and rubbed her temples. “This is so much more complicated than on those home improvement shows.”
Those reality shows were filled with so much...fantasy. Find a fixer-upper for two hundred dollars, pour in some “sweat equity” and sell for a cool million. He didn’t know where these scenarios happened, but so far as he could tell it wasn’t planet Earth. He’d tried, of course, to warn Sarah about buying the house from Stone. To say the house needed a facelift was an understatement. Even Stone had tried to talk her out of the remodeling.
Initially Matt had believed Sarah might stay, but then she’d made it clear she would flip the house and move back to Colorado. So she’d be leaving, and he’d be staying. He only had a few more years left with his son, Hunter, before he turned eighteen. Only a few years to make a difference in his life.
He liked Sarah, but he also didn’t need the drama. Especially when she was only here in Fortune a while longer. But he wasn’t done torturing himself, nor would he stand by while Sarah lost everything. He squatted down in front of her chair, and put one hand on each of her jean-clad legs.
“I work for free.”
* * *
“FREE?” SARAH ASKED, distracted by the way his forearms connected powerfully and gracefully to the big hands on her legs. They were great forearms. Great hands, too. Great everything. Damn him. He was balanced on the balls of his feet in front of her, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the previous comment she’d made. The one he’d misunderstood so completely.
Or more than likely he was only teasing her with the fully sexual look he’d pinned her with a moment ago. She could almost see the moving frames of the porno movie playing in his mind. Why he continued to play with her like this she’d never understand. Oh yeah, that’s right, but she did understand. He was a man.
“I know my way around a hammer. I’ll help.”
She shook her head. “No. I can’t let you do this.”
“Yeah, you can.”
“No, Matt. You have enough going on in your life.”
“And I can handle it.”
If she hadn’t been trained for her work as a forensic artist back in Colorado, she might not have noticed the tells of the eyes. Matt’s were obvious to her, which made everything between them so confusing. His eyes consistently told her one thing and his words another. Right now the breath-stealing eyes said he was tired, tense, frustrated and something else she couldn’t put her finger on. Was it desire? Pity? Oh please, not pity.
Stop it. Stop trying to analyze everyone.
The problem was she knew too much about Matt Conner to believe him right now. When Matt had moved on from the Air Force, Stone offered him a full-time position piloting flights at Mcallister Charters. It had been time, Matt had said, to settle back in his hometown. The teenage son he’d had with a high school girlfriend lived nearby and Matt had been trying to reconnect with Hunter after many years of living abroad. As far as she could tell, the reunion wasn’t going well.
She did know a little about teenagers and their anger and resistance to absentee fathers.
Matt also looked in on his father, who had retired early and lived nearby. Then there was the hellish landlord she’d been hearing rumors about lately. Matt was looking for another place to rent in the area, preferably a home where he could have his son visit every other weekend. How could she, in all good conscience, take any more time away from a man who already had far too many demands on him?
“Matt,” she said slowly, drawing out his name, and peeling his warm hands off her legs.
“Sarah,” he repeated, allowing it, but giving her a slow and devilish grin that reached into her heart and gave it a little twist.
“Forget it.” She stood up, smoothing down her jeans and taking a deep and sexually frustrated breath.
She couldn’t have Matt around every day fixing her house. A woman only had so much self-control around a man like Matt. She figured within three days of him at the house, working in a tool belt and no shirt—at least in her fantasies—she’d attack him and make