The decision was made before she even realized it. Excited, and with a new energy to her movements, Cadence crossed the street and skipped happily into the hair salon.
“Why?” Eleanor asked her oven, fully aware that she would havewaybigger problems than a malfunctioning appliance if the oven actually answered her. Still, after nearly an hour of tryingto figure out why the heck, out of nowhere, this darn thing had stopped working, her options were to put her hands on her hips and scold it or kick it, and the latter seemed likely to cause more problems.
“Why?” she demanded again. “Why are you suddenly not working? You’re a big metal box that gets hot. Get hot!”
Just in case this reprimand had worked, she tried the dial again. The electric coil at the bottom of the oven remained dull and inert.
“At least it’s electric, not gas,” she reminded herself for the umpteenth time. “So the only thing I’m risking is a cold dinner, not blowing myself up.”
Small mercies, she supposed.
Even though she knew, that now that she was in her forties, her back would not thank her for it later, she slumped on the kitchen floor, defeated, glaring at the appliance.
“I don’t like you,” she told it sullenly. It sat there, unmoved… because it was an oven.
Living alone, Eleanor was learning, was an adjustment.
She spent a few more minutes scrolling through her phone, trying to see if any new tips and tricks would appear to magically solve her problem. As she had continued her work getting the bookstore in order, she’d found that there were certain websites that were a lot more reliable and useful when it came to home improvement advice, but she’d already tried everything they’d recommended.
If all that fails, one of the top commenters had written,call a professional.
It was time to admit defeat, Eleanor decided. She had to call in the cavalry, so to speak.
She tried to ignore the little trill of excitement that accompanied that decision. There was only one person in Magnolia Shore who she knew to ask about this kind of problem.
Not, she told herself,just because I want to see Garrett.
Or, at least, not that she wanted to see him for any other reason than because he would likely know exactly how to fix her problem. She definitely did not want to seek him out because he’d been intriguingly vulnerable the last time they’d spoken. She wasn’t eager to see him because he was ruggedly handsome… and she suspected, even more so beneath that beard.
Nope. Not a chance. No sirree.
The denials weren’t convincing even in her own head.
Even so, Eleanor decided that she would ask for his help. She wanted to get the bookstore up and running as soon as possible, didn’t she? And if it occurred to her thattechnicallythe oven was part of her apartment, not part of the bookstore, well, that didn’t matter that much, did it? She couldn’t have customers in a building where something was on the fritz. What if it turned into a more robust electrical problem and she had to close up shop?
No, it was far more reasonable to deal with the potential issue now, before she got any further.
And if she fluffed her hair twice in front of the mirror and made sure that she didn’t looktoosweaty after her exertions before she left the house? That was just common behavior, to be sure. Nobody wanted to go out and about looking less than their best. It had nothing to do, nothing at all, with her desire to peel back the layers of the mysterious hardware store owner.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Every so often, Garrett would get what he calledthe bug. It was a sort of itchiness, a desire to work with his hands more than he got the opportunity to do during the regular day-to-day running of Nut and Bolts.
He had opened a hardware store because he liked building things. It had been a practical measure too, for sure. He’d needed to make a living and there hadn’t been a hardware store for miles. And nobody wanted to drive for forty-five minutes just to get a screw or two when they were in the middle of a big project. His gamble had paid off too. The people of Magnolia Shore had embraced him, and several larger organizations had pledged to get their supplies through him, rather than through the big box companies that operated out of town. This meant that, even though his shop wasn’t usually a bustling hotbed of activity, he kept his doors open without too many lean periods.
It wasgood. It was.
It also meant that he spent more of his time doing inventory and filing paperwork than he did actually building. This too, was mostly fine.
Until the bug got him.
This round of the bug, he decided, was Eleanor Ridley’s fault. She’d been so happy and excited about her big project that it had reminded him that he loved that kind of work, loved transforming a space from one thing into another. He’d thought about her renovation, then thought about it some more. He’d strictly reminded himself that he was interested inher project,not in the woman herself.
And if that was true, which he told himself some more that it was, then this itchiness in him must have more to do with his desire to build and create than it did curiosity about a woman.
So, he’d taken up whittling again. He wasn’t a master at it, wasn’t nearly as accomplished in this art as he was in various other fix-’em-up projects. But you couldn’t put up drywall while you were standing behind the counter at the shop. You could, however, whittle a little bird out of a scrap piece of wood. Garrett would give it to his nieces when it was done. They always treated his clumsy carvings like they were the most delightful sculptures.
He frowned down at the vaguely duck-like blob of wood. The itchiness wasn’t going away.
