“I’ve got them,” Jamal said. He pulled out an armful of the long wooden pieces and carried it into the garage.
Well, she was not going to just stand here and watch him do all the work.
Jamal eyed her as she carted several strips of molding into the garage. He carried the remaining pieces in and stacked them with the others, then he turned to her, his expression still dark with anger.
“I apologized for the room, Phylicia. What else do you want me to do? Rebuild it?”
The fact that her father had built the room for her mother made it special. His rebuilding it would mean nothing.
“I don’t want you to do anything, and that includes apologizing. I already told you, you have nothing to apologize for. It’s your house.”
“You’ve pointed that out already. Stop pretending as if that’s the only thing that matters here.”
“Itisall that matters,” Phil said. “You hired me to work on the house. I’d lost sight of that. What happened today reminded me of what my objective is.”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe this.” He stared at her, accusation and anger heavy in his eyes. “So, what does this mean? Does this mean I’m getting in my truck and going home?”
Phil swallowed a hard knot of emotion and nodded. “I have work to do.”
The fury emanating from Jamal was a living, breathing thing. He stared at her for so long, it took everything Phil had in her not to flinch under his glare. She waited for him to blast her with another accusation, but after several more uncomfortably long moments, he turned and stalked back to his truck. He yanked the door open and climbed in, revving the engine and peeling out of her driveway like someone trying to win a drag race.
Phil had to take several deep breaths before she could even think of moving from the spot where she stood.
She’d let it happen again. She had allowed herself to get caught up in the romance of good sex and good conversation, knowing all it would do was muddle her brain and make her lose sight of her real agenda.
At least this time she’d reined it in before things got too far out of control.
Right. As if rolling around in the grass while letting the man have his way with her naked body was anywherenearbeing in control of the situation.
“Lesson learned,” Phil murmured. “Again.”
But this time, the lesson would stick.
Jamal stared at his cell phone for a solid minute as he watched the time switch from nine fifty-nine to ten a.m.
Phylicia was two hours late, which probably meant that she wasn’t going to show up at all.
Probably?
From the minute he’d sped out of her driveway, something in his gut told him this would happen. She was going to quit working on the house, would probably avoid him like the plague whenever she passed him around town. How in the hell did he go from licking every inch of the woman’s body to this?
He cast a derisive glance at the spot where her mother’s painting room once stood.
What else could he do to convince Phylicia that tearing the room down had been one humongous mistake?
Probably nothing. From the way things had ended between them yesterday, Jamal wasn’t sure if he should even try.
“Damn that,” he spat.
He tossed the miter saw onto his worktable and shut off his Bluetooth speaker. He didn’t even bother telling the work crew that he was leaving. He just climbed into his truck and took off, his mind’s focus on one thing.
He pulled into Phylicia’s driveway, having a hard time recalling a minute of the fifteen-minute drive that brought him here. Her blue pickup was parked where it had been yesterday, which meant she was probably home. Jamal went to the front door and rang the doorbell, but after a couple of minutes with no answer, he headed for her workshop.
The door was unlocked, as usual. He entered and immediately spotted her toward the rear of the room, her back to him. She stood before a huge armoire, sliding the flat end of a putty knife up the front of it.
Wynton Marsalis streamed through her speaker. Jamal’s gut clenched at the memory of that song playing just two nights ago as they’d made love in her bed. He stopped a few feet behind her and waited until she’d stripped a smooth, uniform band of old varnish from the armoire before tapping her on the shoulder.
She gasped and turned, the putty knife slipping from her fingers.
