“Don’t take that ‘there’s a sucker born every minute’ tone with me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered her schoolmarm tone of voice.
But she wasn’t fooled. Not even a little bit. “You think my new hammer is funny. I can tell.”
It probably wasn’t a good thing that she was getting so good at reading him.
“No, no, it’s not funny.” Despite saying that a snort of laughter escaped him. And then another. Then he couldn’t resist. “When are you building a house?”
“A house?” she asked, flabbergasted.
And he dissolved into laughter. He had not laughed, it seemed, for a very long time. Oh, little chuckles had been taking him by surprise here and there. But it had not been like this. A from the belly, caught in the moment, delight-filled roar of genuine laughter.
It felt good to laugh again. Maybe too good. It almost made him forget he had other worries tonight, like Ace and her new little pal, who could at this moment be gooping on makeup, or eating popcorn in front of an unblocked Playboy channel.
“A big hammer is called a framing hammer. It’s used for framing a house.”
“I’m sure it can be used for other things.”
“Yeah. If you can lift it. And swing it. Have you seen house framers? They have wrists nearly as big as your thighs.”
Shoot. Was she going to guess he’d been looking at her thighs? Maybe not, because she suddenly seemed distracted by his wrists. She licked her lips. He decided it might be best to avoid mentioning body parts from now on.
Or looking at them. For a prim little schoolteacher, she had lips that practically begged to be kissed, full and plump.
He wasn’t going to be held responsible for what happened next if she licked them again.
“You don’t buy a hammer you can barely heft,” he said, a little more sharply than he intended. His sharpness had nothing to do with her hammer choice, not that she ever had to know.
She reacted to the tone, which was so much better than lip-licking. Rather than looking educated, she looked annoyed. Annoyance was good!
“I like that hammer,” she said stubbornly.
“Really?” he challenged her. “What do you like about it?”
She hesitated. She looked at the hammer. She looked at him. She looked at her toes. And the fallen Christmas tree. It was written all over her that she wanted to lie, and that she was incapable of it.
“The color,” she finally admitted, giving him a look that dared him to laugh. It was a look designed to intimidate six-year-old boys and it was effective, too.
Or would have been effective if she hadn’t started laughing first. He liked it that she could laugh at herself, and then they were both laughing. Laughing with her, for the second time in just a few minutes, was a worse temptation than sneaking peeks at how those prisonissue sweatpants hugged her thighs.
Because it invited him back toward the Light. Nate was aware he was walking way too close to the fire.
He reined himself in. “I’ll just put up the coat hangers now,” he said. To himself he added that he would put up the coat hangers—that was what he had come here to do—and go. Immediately.
“Show me how to do it,” she said, setting down the cocoa she had brought in. “Next time I need something done, you might not be here.”
Not might not, he corrected her silently. Won’t. A week ago, he would have said it out loud…Why not now? Because, despite his vow to stay away, he kept coming back to her, magnet to steel.
Because there was something about her that was funny and sweet and even a hard man such as himself could not bring himself to hurt her by tossing out carelessly cruel words.
“Come on then,” he said gruffly. “I’ll show you.”
It was a surrender. Because putting up a few coat hangers should have been the simplest thing in the world. It should have taken five minutes.
Instead, because of his surrender, half an hour later the reclaimed barn board was finally up. His hand had brushed her hand half a dozen times. Their shoulders had touched. He was aware of her lips and her thighs and her shoulders and her scent.
He was amazed he’d managed to get that board level, the coat hooks spaced out evenly.
Morgan was glowing as if she’d designed a rocket that could go to Mars as she surveyed their handiwork.
“It looks so good.”
“Except for the additional hole,” he pointed out wryly. She had put the huge hammer through the drywall when she had missed the nail he was trying to teach her to drive.
He had supplies to fix it, since he’d come prepared to fix her previous holes in the wall. He taped the hole, stirred the drywall mud and began to patch.
“I want you to promise you’ll return the hammer.” Then, he heard himself promising that if she did, he’d help her pick out one that was better for all-around household use and repairs.
Even though he knew darn well Harvey could help her. Harvey had been handling the hardware department at Finnegan’s since time began. Nate could even go in and warn him to offer her a little advice on her purchases, before he actually let her buy them.
Whether she wanted it or not.
But she probably wouldn’t, and for some reason he thought she might listen to him a little more than she would listen to Harvey.
Thought that meant something.
She was coming to trust him.
Oh, Nate, he told himself, cut this off, short and sweet. Wouldn’t that be best for both of them?
“The cocoa’s gone cold,” she said, oblivious to his inner war. She took a little sip and wrinkled her nose in the cutest way. A little sliver of foam clung to the fullness of her lip. “I’ll go make some more. Let’s take a break.”
Which meant she thought he was staying, and somehow, probably because of the damn foam on her lip, he could feel short-and-sweet going right out the window.
Well, Nate rationalized, he couldn’t very well leave her with her Christmas tree sprawled across the floor, with a stand that was never going to stand up, could he?
Yes.
But he’d said he’d fix it.
He trailed her to the kitchen and watched her make cocoa. Since she was going to the effort, he’d drink that. Then he was leaving, tree or no tree. He had a kid he hired to help him sometimes, he’d send him over tomorrow. He could look after having it fixed without fixing it himself. But then would it be done right?
Her kitchen, like her living room, made him aware of some as yet unnamed lack in himself.
Everything was tidy, there was not a single crumb on the counter, no spills making smoke come off the burners as she heated the milk. She reached for a spice and the spices were in a stainless-steel container that turned, not lined up on top of the stove. The oven mitts weren’t stained and didn’t have holes burned in them.
He could feel that horrible longing welling up in him.
Leave, he told himself. Instead of leaving as completely as he would have liked, he left the kitchen and went and worked on the stand. So it would be done right.
By the time she came back in, he had the stand modified to actually hold up a tree, and had the tree standing back up.
“This is a foolishly large tree,” he told her.
She smiled, mistaking it for a compliment. “Isn’t