I came out of my thoughts, looked around and immediately realized my mistake at letting my mind wander.

We weren’t outside Capitol Hill where the brownstone was located, we were somewhere else. A clean, tidy, well-established, family neighborhood with clean, tidy, well-kept houses with clean, tidy, well-kept lawns and moderately-priced vehicles lining the street.

“Where are…?” I started, my head turning toward Hector but he was out of the Bronco and rounding the hood.

Blooming heck!

He opened my door.

“Where are we?” I asked the minute he did.

He grabbed my hand and with a firm tug he pulled me out of the car. He dropped my hand, I fell into his waiting ones, he swung my around, set me on my feet on the sidewalk and twisted to slam my door. Then he took my hand again and charged up the sidewalk.

I walked double-time to keep up with him all the while pulling at his hold. “Hector, where are we?”

He didn’t look back when he answered, “My place.”

Blooming, blooming, heck!

“Why are we at your place?” I asked when he stopped at the front door.

“Privacy,” he replied, unlocking the door, shoving it open and before I could make a run for it he had a hand in the small of my back and he was pushing me in.

I entered and stopped.

I was standing on a two step up, dark wood platform, half walls to either side made of the same wood and columns at the end of each. Straight ahead, down the two steps and about five feet away was a wall, along its side, a set of dark wood stairs and matching banister.

On the left side of us was a room that held a jumble of furniture and boxes but also a beautiful, tiled fireplace that looked like it had been scrubbed, the wood of the mantel sanded and refinished to a warm sheen. The walls looked freshly painted in a dusky gray-blue and the floors were obviously refinished. There were closed French doors I couldn’t see through at the other end of that room well down from the wall that separated the room from the stairs.

On the right side of us was another room, filled with paint cans, brushes and tools (hand tools as well as big, heavy power tools with lots of cords). The fireplace in that room looked grimy and as yet untouched but refinished, it’d be gorgeous. Beyond that room was an open doorway which led to a kitchen.

Hector’s hand at my back guided me down the steps and we stopped. He headed left, I heard the rustle of plastic and I turned to watch him.

He was uncovering a big, overstuffed armchair covered in midnight blue twill. Once uncovered, he dragged it into the empty but renovation implements room and positioned it in the center.

On the way back, he shrugged off his jacket and threw it on the banister. Then he came to me, walked around me, pulled off my trench, tagged my purse, threw my coat on his and hooked my purse straps around the newel post.

After doing all of this, he grabbed my hand, strode to the chair, sat and then tugged my hand again sharply until I went off-balance. His hands went to my waist and he guided my body until I was seated in his lap.

I didn’t protest any of this not because I didn’t want to but because I was coming to terms with the fact that, obviously, Hector was fixing up his own house.

This affected me deeply, for two reasons.

First, for as long as I could remember, my father had a personal groomer who came to the house every two weeks. She trimmed my father’s hair, gave him a clean shave and finished off with a manicure. My father’s fingernails were perfectly clipped and shone so brightly it was almost like he was wearing a coat of clear polish. As far as I knew, he never picked up anything but a fork, a pen, a book or a golf club in his life. Never a hammer or a paint brush. Never. He’d also never operated anything with a cord except, perhaps, his razor (though, I must admit, I’d not familiarized myself with his personal hygiene).

In fact, most every man of my acquaintance was much the same.

Second, because of the above, when I was seventeen or eighteen I had this stupid, silly, girlish, in the very, very back of my mind daydream that one day I’d find a real man. A man so unlike my father as to be his antithesis. A man who was strong enough to take me away from my horrible life living in my beautiful but cold ivory tower with bad people swarming around me like killer bees. We’d fall in love and he’d whisk me away, we’d buy some junker bungalow that we’d fix up, intermingling our renovation efforts with having and raising a plethora of children who we would spoil rotten and love to distraction. Often we’d cease our duties, laughing at each other, paint dabs on our cheeks and dust in our hair, while our children frolicked amongst our jumble of restoration paraphernalia.

A jumble that looked an awful lot in my head like the house I was sitting in at that very moment.

That dream died ages ago; in fact until just then, I’d forgotten I’d even had it.

“Sadie?” Hector called.

I gave my head a little shake and looked at him.

“What?”

“You looked miles away.”

I wasn’t miles away, I was right there.

In fact, my whole life, I never felt as right there as I did at that exact moment.

“Are you fixing up your house?” I couldn’t help but ask.

He looked around at the abundance of evidence of this very fact obviously scattered around us, his mouth twitched and his eyes came back to me.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“Oh,” I said softly, not knowing what else to say but for some reason I could feel my heart beating in my throat.

One of his hands slid slowly up my back, the other arm came to rest across my lap.

“You okay?” he asked, his eyes doing a scan of my face.

No. No, I was not okay. It hit me that I didn’t even know what “okay” felt like. I’d never actually felt “okay”.

At that precise moment, however, what I felt like was asking Hector if I could paint his living room. And that, I figured, was probably seriously not okay.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Sadie,” he said softly.

I focused on him, noticed he was watching me closely and I wondered what he saw.

“What did you think of me when you first met me?” I asked before I could think better of it.

His fingers were warm on my neck and he gave me a gentle squeeze.

He didn’t hesitate with his answer. “I thought you were beautiful and I thought you were cold.”

This didn’t offend me, a lot of people thought that way because I wanted them to think that way, so I nodded.