“Stop arguing, Eleanor,” he said. “It’s no big deal. I’ll drive the stuff over, help you put it up, and then I’ll come back.”
She didn’t know how they’d gone from him offering to deliver her purchases to offering to help her install them, but he was glowering at her in a forbidding way that dared her to justtryto object.
She drew in a deep breath and summoned her manners.
“Okay, well, thank you, then,” she said. “I would very much appreciate the assistance.”
She didn’t think she was mistaken in assessing that Garrett looked pleased that she’d given in.
He quickly locked up the store, indeed leaving a note that simply said,Back soon. Call if you need something. She again didnotthink about his muscles as he loaded the window and doors into the back of the car and competently buckled them down so they wouldn’t shift around while he drove.
“You’re good at that,” she observed.
“You know, it does come up every now and again in my line of work,” he said dryly.
She gasped. “Teasing! Teasingagain!”
His smile was swift and fleeting, but she’d been right. Itwasbrilliant.
Drat him and his handsome features.
On the short drive back to her house, Garrett’s car just a few lengths behind her, Eleanor sternly lectured herself aboutkeeping cool and not ogling this nice man who was offering to help out of the goodness of his heart.
Once she finally banished her admiring thoughts about the hardware store owner, however, Eleanor found that there was another worry that sprang to her mind. What would Garrett think of the renovations she’d started? He hadn’t exactly been full of praise when she’d tried to fix her kitchen…
She fiddled nervously with her keys as she got out of her car and walked up to the front porch, the picture window’s destination obvious in the tarp-covered window frame.
“Listen,” she said. “This is absolutely an in-progress type of thing, so just temper your expectations…”
She opened the door, wincing a little at the drop cloths lying in one corner and the paint rollers propped up to dry on a spare piece of newspaper. She had always prided herself on keeping her home orderly. It had been something that had become more important to her as Jeremy had grown more independent and her days as a stay-at-home mom had grown less hectic. In retrospect, she also knew that she’d worried about keeping the house just so because Brian had expected it, had treated her housework not as an accomplishment but as a given.
Her ex-husband, she knew, would have been horrified by the current state of Eleanor’s home.
Garrett, however, was giving the space a thoughtful, appreciative nod.
“Huh,” he said. “I like the colors. Makes the space feel bright and open.”
Eleanor’s nerves flitted away. She grinned. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “You could… well. Don’t let me stick my nose in your business.”
“Oh no!” she exclaimed when he shook his head a little sheepishly. “Please. Stick your nose in my business. I am totally out of my depth with the renovations and you’re the expert.Having your advice is way better than learning all my home improvement information from YouTube.”
She thought he might have paled a bit when she revealed that she was learning from internet videos, but it was hard to tell.
“Okay,” he said carefully. “Well, you can take down some of the doors that separate the rooms. You probably won’t want to use them much, and it will give you a little more space. Plus, this little section here?” He indicated a section of the wall that jutted out into what had been the house’s entryway before Eleanor had begun her conversion. “I’d check first of course, but I’d bet my hat that piece isn’t load bearing. You haven’t painted it yet, so you could knock it out, if you wanted. Give yourself a little more room.”
“Breaking down walls might be a bit beyond my skills, YouTube or no,” she admitted sheepishly.
He shrugged. “I could help, if you wanted. Or you could leave it. Having it there makes the spaces more distinct, which can be good. There are definitely times I wished I could break the sections of my store up a bit more. It’s just one big square, though. A house like this offers a lot more possibility…”
He trailed off, sounding almost wistful.
“Have you ever worked on this kind of building before?” she asked, sensing that she needed to tread carefully. “For yourself, I mean.”
For a moment, Garrett didn’t answer, instead busying himself with propping the bundle of glass and wood securely against a wall. Eleanor worried that she’d overstepped. After a few more seconds, however, he cleared his throat.
“I almost did… or I guess I did the reno, yeah, but then never got to live there.” He squared his shoulders as if gathering his courage to speak again. “I was supposed to get married, about ten years back. But my fiancée decided she didn’t want to go through with it. With me, I guess.”
