On Sunday, Jackson prepared the scuffed and grubby walls in the back hallway for painting, filling cracks and screw holes and removing rusted picture hooks. Even on a bright day, the old color—a heavy mustard yellow—sucked all the light out of the enclosed area. While he waited for the filler to dry, he shut off the power at the circuit board in the basement and swapped the single ceiling pendant for a five-bulb chandelier he’d ordered online, a flashlight held precariously between his teeth.
“Hey, Jackson.” Leah poked her head around the study door. “How many mystery writers does it take to change a light bulb?”
“Tell me,” he mumbled indistinctly, thighs astride the top of the stepladder.
“Two. One to screw it almost all the way in, and the other to give it a surprising twist at the end.” He could hear her snickering to herself all the way to the kitchen.
Jackson’s lopsided grin wobbled the flashlight between his lips. He finished what he was doing and turned the power back on, satisfaction easing through his chest. When he sloped into thekitchen to grab a sandwich, Leah was mixing something light and fluffy in a bowl. The air smelled sweet and homely.
She wiped at a smudge on her sleeve and spoke over her shoulder. “Powdered sugar—the baking equivalent of glitter. It gets everywhere.”
Jackson raised one eyebrow toward the cake on the side.
“Carrot,” she told him, turning off the beaters. “Want a piece with your lunch?”
“Please.” He gathered what he needed for a peanut butter and banana sandwich—ignoring Leah’s fake gagging—and pulled out one of the stools at the breakfast bar. She began to frost the cake with more enthusiasm than precision. For a few minutes, the silence felt almost restful.
“Have you always liked doing home improvements?”
Jackson swallowed his mouthful. “Yes, but I rarely have the spare time to do much of it. I’m usually more likely to hire someone.”
Leah smoothed the frosting around the sides of the cake. “I always imagined fancy-schmancy boys like you were far too busy sipping cocktails at your beach houses to get your hands dirty.”
The easy teasing was light enough that he didn’t feel defensive. “Getting someone in to decorate doesn’t make me privileged.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But having a surname first name does.”
“A surname first name.”
“Yep.” She looked over. “Do people ever shorten it?”
“I’m sorry?”
Leah pressed on. “Do you have a nickname?” Her quick, clever eyes narrowed. “What do your friends call you? Jack. Jay. Haley. Jaxminster. Jaymeister.” She looked as if she could go on forever. “J-Man.”
For a single, long moment, he stared at her. “J-Man?”
Leah shrugged and held out one of the beaters she’d used for the cake mixture. Shaking his head to remove her painful suggestionsfrom his brain, he took it. When she leaned against the countertop and began to lick the second beater, Jackson was glad he was sitting down. Her lips were watermelon-pink and as plush as a pillow. They looked velvet-soft. She wasn’t trying to be suggestive. He could tell by Leah’s concentration the thought hadn’t crossed her mind. But her nimble tongue flicking between the curves of metal set his own thoughts racing. And they went places they had no business going. Jackson wrenched his eyes away.
“Best part about baking.” She waved the beater in his direction. “We weren’t allowed to do this in Home Ec. They said we’d catch salmonella from the raw eggs. It’s a grudge I’ll never let go of.”
Jackson grunted and took a taste, ambushed by a sudden memory of his grandmother offering the beaters to him and Dom on their last visit to this kitchen. Shaken, he spoke without thinking. “I tried to boil an egg in the microwave once when I was about eight. No water. Just the egg.”
“What happened?”
“The explosion scared the shit out of me. The mess was unbelievable. My brother thought it was hilarious, my parents not so much. He took the blame and said it was his idea, although it wasn’t.”
“I thought brothers spent all their time giving each other wedgies.”
“Not my brother.”
He didn’t want to talk about Dom anymore. Somehow Leah got him opening up before he was aware of it; he didn’t know how she did it. Jackson stuck his plate and the beater into the dishwasher but paused in the doorway.
“Leah?”
She looked around. “Yes?”
“I will never answer to J-Man, but we do have a beach house.” He wasn’t sure if he was being playful or setting the record straight. He was many things, but playful was rarely one of them.
