There she was, her hair tousled as if she had just gotten out of bed, her complexion rosy from her efforts. She caught his eye, and he forced out a cheery, “Looking great!”
She smiled back. “You, too!” She blushed a charming red, and added quickly, “The porch.”
He laughed. Could she be thinking…no, he would not go there. Not till she was ready.
He cleared his throat as he looked around, trying to display the calm assurance of the professional whose only thought was the job. “At the rate we’re going we can have this porch done in a couple days. Have you thought about whether you want it rough or smooth? The floor. The porch floor. Varnish. In which case it’s not necessary to sand, or painted, in which case we’ll smooth it. For painting.”
Oh, nice going, Alejo, nothing suggestive about that.
He fired up the saw to hide his groan.
EIGHT
WENDY
Have you thought about whether you want it rough or smooth?
That soft, slightly raspy voice, the lock of hair curling on his brow, oh crapballs, she was reading sex into everything.
She bit her lip hard against yodelingI’d like it rough or smooth, as long as it’s you dishing it, and managed to get her voice under control. “It was white in my parents’ day, but my mother was always fretting about footprints, and the weather put cracks in the white paint no matter how many layers we put on. Maybe vanish? And leave the blue for the railing, and the white for the walls?”
“Sand is rough on paint,” he said. “Varnish sounds like a great compromise. We can get at it whenever you’ve decided.”
It was a relief when he turned back to sawing planks, leaving her to get a grip on herself.
The day had started as a total trash fire. Wendy had woken with a stress headache that had threatened to become a full-blown migraine by the time Sam had lagged his way into readiness. “Why do I have to go?” he whined. “It’s going to be boring. It’s better when he talks on the phone all day and lets me playAnimal Crossing.”
“He is your dad, and he and your grandparents deserve to have a chance to get to know what a wonderful person you are, Sam.”
“He doesn’t think I’m wonderful. He thinks I’m a dork,” Sam grumped.
“It’s only until tomorrow,” Wendy said. “Try to have fun if you can. And tomorrow, when you come home, you can have whatever dessert you want. And you can watch whatever movie you want.”
“All the way to the end? Even though it’s a school night?”
“All the way to the end,” Wendy said.
The headache worsened at the long blast of that car horn, and Bill’s loud voice. But just when she was afraid she’d lose the two bites of breakfast she’d forced down, there was Alejo, and somehow all the tension drained away, taking the headache with it.
She had meant to make herself sit down and write in spite of the disastrous attempt to go to the writers’ group. In the light of day, she had to laugh at herself. She should have known how it would be. Nobody knew Bill better than she did. The fact that he was still writing that same awful story meant that the agent he’d found within three months of sending queries (How many years did YOU take? It took me three months to find an agent, Wendy. That says something! You should listen to ME! I know what good entertainment is ...”) had made no progress in selling it. Wendy had suspected that he was a fly-by-night, even a scam agent. Scam agents charged their clients, though Bill insisted those thousands of dollars were good business sense, for professional evaluations.
But the thought of facing that laptop had made her head pang all over again, and so she gave in to temptation and accepted Alejo’s offer to work together. After all, it was her house! She ought to be working on it, rather than moaning internally about what a wreck it was. And painting was something she could do.
Have you thought about whether you want it rough or smooth?
She tried not to watch Alejo instead of her paint brush. But he was just so, so…Alejo. If only she could draw, she’d love to get on paper that entrancing curve from his shoulder inward to those narrow hips. Why were men’s arms so sexy? Well, not all men. Why were Alejo’s? What was it about muscles? He wasn’t bulky. Hulking bodybuilders did nothing for her. He was more like a lion. Yes, that was exactly the right image, a prowling lion, all graceful, lean, powerful limbs. His strength seemed to come so easily.
She forced her eyes back to her job, but even the act of stirring that thick paint, and then laying those straight lines with the brush, made her wonder what it would be like to run her hands over his back, and press her palm into that hollow below his hip. Then run her fingers along the curve of his quads, and then, oh, so softly, bring her fingers to the tender skin inside his thigh…and her lips…
The brush slipped out of her hand. She lunged forward to catch it—and clonked her forehead against the rail—luckily on the bit that had yet to be painted.
“Hey, you okay?” Alejo called, no accusation, no scorn in his voice. Just quick concern.
“I’m good, I’m good,” she sang out. “Brush just slipped.”
“Okay. Just let me know when you want to knock off for a while, so we can do justice to that lunch I hear calling my name.”
Argh, he was just so…decent. And that made him even more attractive, like a lion a person could trust. She knew she shouldn’t be letting her thoughts go there. He was going to return to Kentucky sooner than later. But she had thought these kinds of feelings dead forever.
