“I don’t lean,” I retort, then I remember my shoulder pressing on something warm. Me and Alex leaning together watching an excavator being unloaded out front. “Oh, I did lean a bit.”

“He worships you.” Tom has affection in his voice as he glances up at the house. “He reminds me so much of myself at that age.”

“Worshipping me?” I accidentally defy Jamie’s direct order and immediately gloss over it. “Well, that’s cute. The one I really want to worship me is that old bastard Colin. I want him to kiss my boots by the end of this.”

“Should I be jealous?” Tom answers his phone. “Hi. Yes, drop them around. Before four.” He hangs up. This is what our conversations are like lately. Everything is interrupted by that goddamn phone. I don’t know how he’s keeping it together.

“Jealous or not, it has nothing to do with me.”

“I forgot, I did come in here to yell at you. Who were they?” Tom means the girls who left twenty minutes ago. “You can’t just let people walk through a building site.”

“They were models.” I click through the images. “I just did a shoot for Truly. Funny, Tom. Last time we had a proper exchange, I got the impression that you needed me to stay out of your hair. And yet, here you are.”

“This is my site and you’re doing a photo shoot in the middle of it.” Tom leans sideways to look at the computer. He’s lip-pursed Mr. Perfect. “You should have told me. There’s safety issues with people on-site who aren’t inducted. If they hurt themselves—”

“Okay, I screwed up again. Don’t get grouchy, or I might not give you your present.”

“A present?” Behind me, the computer chair squeaks.

“Do you deserve one?” I’m stalling, because I don’t know how he’ll receive this tiny olive branch. It’s been made abundantly clear that he doesn’t need or want my help.

“I had to get a dead rat out of the wall cavity in the kitchen. I do deserve a present.”

“Dead rats are Alex’s job. You’re a boss now.” I click through my photo files, trying to feign nonchalance. “You’re sitting on your present. I made you a desk. I noticed it’s getting harder for you to work inside.”

This is my way of apologizing for putting a coffee ring on a fairly important report for the county. “And that apple crate down there is for Patty.”

Tom swivels and looks at the desk again. It’s just the old kitchen table, a lamp, and a jar of pens, but he runs his hands on the tabletop in a lustful way. “I was just about to start working out of my car.” He flips the lamp on. “Thanks, Darce.”

“I’m not trying to lure you in here for any nefarious purpose.” Ugh, why did I say that? I swivel around on my stool in a way that probably looks ominous.

Tom ignores my blunder. “Oh, I’m lured all right.” He gets up and leaves, appearing again with his laptop and a bulging folder. Business cards flutter mothlike in his wake. “There is no way I’m passing up a desk.”

He leaves a second time, returning with an armful of samples: tiles, carpets, laminates. Patty hops into her new bed and watches Tom, her big bug eyes lit with their usual worship.

I’m right there with you, Patty. I think I could sit here and watch him for hours, stacking bathroom tiles with that serious tilt to his head. He always was like this: a tidy boy with a straight spine and a neat desk.

Scratch that. Fast-forward things.

I could sit here and watch this gorgeous man forever, the glints in his hair and those big careful hands. The lamplight pools in those brown eyes and turns them to honey. He breathes, even and easy, under the lead-gray weight of my stare, and makes three piles of paperwork.

He finds the old trash can under his desk with the toe of his shoe and smiles to himself.

“You thought of everything, Darcy Barrett,” he says to me without looking over, and I realize he has always been aware of my staring, dazzled by the light shining through him. He’s probably felt this stare for most of his life. I am intensely grateful for how he’s erasing that one moment of insanity in the kitchen.

I’m not going to lose him. If I just stay laser-focused and careful, we can walk out of these three months as friends and part with a handshake.

If I can keep my mouth shut and not say things like, Get in me.

“This is really going to help. I can get organized.” Right on cue, his phone rings, and he grabs at a pen.

As he writes himself a note and looks up at the house, biting his lip, thoughtful and lovely, I think about how much he needs to get in me. And not just into my body. I want more than that. I want him to get in my head. I think that’s what I meant.

Unzip me, climb into me, don’t come out.

When he hangs up and looks over at me, I pretend I was just looking up at the house.

“It’s getting hard to think in there during the day.”

“Twelve weeks is a crazy time frame,” he says with apology in his voice. He looks back around at my room and smiles. “I feel better about you being in here now. Very cozy.” He looks down the long narrow space. It only takes up a quarter of the floor space, but the room feels like it is brimming full of bed.

I turn back to my laptop.

“I’m snug as a bug. Sorry, but Truly’s got a meeting with a brand consultant and she has to have a lookbook to show them. She’s going to be turning up any second, saying, Hi, are they done? So, off you go.”

“I haven’t seen her for years. How is she?”

“Fucking adorable as usual.” I scroll and try to squash down the panic when I look at the clock. “She thinks I have way more graphic design skills than I do.”

“That’s a big-deal meeting for her, isn’t it? So these are Underswears.” He ambles over to my workbench and laughs. “Who wears the word dipshit around on their butt?”

I prickle up defensively. “I do, every day of the year. Best underwear on earth.”

“I’m going to be intrigued about what yours say, every day of the year.”

“You couldn’t handle what’s written on my underwear.” It’s hard to ignore him when he’s leaning against the bench, probably looking down at the back of my neck. I can feel the warmth of his body, and out of the corner of my eye I see that his T-shirt is layered across his abdomen like fondant icing.

He makes it harder when he lifts a hand and touches my skin.

Chapter 13

Do you do all this for free?” He touches my shoulder and pulls my tank strap back into position. It immediately slips back off and his defeated sigh gusts across my skin. “Just stay there,” he says to my tank in irritation.

“I get paid in underwear and candy. In this economic climate, alternate currencies are required. Jamie would lecture me about charging what I’m worth. But who cares. If this is how I can help her, then I’m doing it.”

“You’re a good friend,” Tom says with such admiration in his voice that I look up, startled. “You’re so generous, Darce.”

“Oh, sure.” I look back at my screen. This is getting too hard. He pulls me close with fang-and-claw intensity, then expects me to sit here like a sister. I’m a kitchen-trashing psycho, but at least I know it, and I’m consistent.

The problem with Tom is that he doesn’t know what he is. Not really. The question, who do you think you are would be really interesting to ask him, because I know he’d get the answer wrong.

“I want you to know, when I was going to renovate the house under Aldo’s business, I was planning on doing it for free.” I see his big fingers twist together out of the corner of my eye. “I feel real bad about taking the five percent.”

“You’re worth every penny,” I tell him, just like my mom used to. “Don’t sweat it, Tiger.” I tack on Dad’s nickname for good measure. Still, the reminder of my parents doesn’t work. He doesn’t recoil away from me like I thought he might. “Do you need to get back to work?”

He confides, a little playful, “I don’t want to go back out there. Alex is right. Things are always more interesting where you are.”