“Oh. Thanks. Again. Um, good night.” With an awkward final smile, she slammed the door shut and hustled inside, grateful for the warmth of his coat and the brightness of his headlights until she was safely on the elevator. As soon as the doors dinged shut, she dropped her perky-girl act and sagged against the wall.
For better or for worse, she was the one woman in Beaucoeur that Aiden Murdoch never even considered going home with.
Two
Aiden Murdoch woke up on Saturday morning, alone in his bed and with a clear head.
Still a little weird, but it was all part of the plan.
He rolled over and blinked up at the ceiling, frowning when he noticed a crack that had appeared in the far corner near the wall. The heir to Beaucoeur’s premiere construction and renovation business couldn’t possibly let that stand.
He added it to the day’s mental to-do list, then rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom. The mirror over the sink confirmed that the tan he’d picked up on his beach vacation last month had mostly vanished under his usual February-in-Illinois pallor. Unlike most Saturday mornings over the past several years, his eyes weren’t bloodshot and he hadn’t kicked aside a used condom wrapper on his way across the room, but his expression was grim, and his hair was shaggy and in need of a cut.
“You’re killing it,” he muttered at his reflection before turning away from the mirror.
He snapped on the shower and contemplated stepping under the icy water before it’d warmed up, just to shock the self-pity out of his system, but steam obscured the gray-and-black-tiles almost immediately thanks to his beast of a water heater. Masochistic shower foiled by good home maintenance. He stepped under the spray and let the hot water drum away every other thought for a few minutes before he soaped up, rinsed off, and toweled dry, glad he’d dropped the money to install heaters in the new bathroom flooring. No one living in Beaucoeur would regret warm tiles under their cold, wet feet in February.
Twenty minutes later, he was dressed and behind the wheel of his truck, on his way to his buddy Dave’s with a travel mug of coffee riding shotgun. His phone dinged with an incoming email alert, and he immediately turned it to silent. Not even weekends were safe from some new work crisis. A promise his dad had made to a client but forgotten to tell him about or some new backhanded dig from his perpetually pissed-off brother. It would all be there waiting for him on Monday.
When he arrived at the Chiltons’ two-story brick house, Dave opened the door before Aiden had a chance to knock. His friend resettled his glasses on his long nose. “Rough night?”
“Late night.” Aiden stepped inside and shrugged off his jacket. It was the one with the varnish stain on the sleeve since Thea had his good one. He’d basically had a whole conversation with her eyebrows last night because the rest of her face had been swaddled in his far-too-big coat.
“Late night, huh?”
Dave’s speculative tone made him bristle. “Nothing like that. Thea Blackwell had a flat, so I helped her out.”
“A flat in that cold last night? Poor kid.”
Unexpected heat twisted in Aiden’s stomach. “I wouldn’t call her ‘kid’ to her face.”
Knowing Thea’s porn preferences shouldn’t be that weird. Knowing that she watched pornat allshouldn’t be that weird. She wasn’t the eight-year-old living across the street anymore. Still, the thought of Thea, all wholesome pink cheeks and perky smiles, typing in search terms and hitting Play on a video while her hand crept down to her—
“You with me, dude?”
Dave’s words jolted him back to reality, and he self-consciously cleared his throat. “Yeah. Yep. Let’s hit that last wall.”
This was his third weekend in a row helping Dave finish his basement to turn it into a playroom for his kids, and Aiden took a great deal of professional pride in the fact that the work was right on schedule. The last of the drywall would go up today, they’d spend next weekend painting, and then Dave could move in whatever furniture the kids might want to destroy just in time for his wife to give birth to Chilton Child Number Three.
“Actually,” Dave said as he weaved around the toys scattered across the living room on the way to the basement stairs, “I was wondering if we could focus on the bathroom today. Ana’s been complaining about how dingy the floor in there is, so I’d love to put down something fresh.”
Aiden almost tripped over an abandoned toy fire truck that Dave had neatly sidestepped, and the wail of the little electronic siren followed them as they descended the basement stairs. He could lay tile with his eyes closed, but the timetable he’d built for the project didn’t account for bathroom work. Time to treat Dave the way he would a client who made a suggestion that didn’t quite fit inside the project parameter: with a winning smile and a polite misdirect.
“How about we finish up the walls today, then I’ll take measurements and shoot you some flooring options on Monday for you to consider?”
“Sure thing. You’re the expert,” Dave said easily.
He started shuffling his schedule around in his head as he and Dave laid out the drywall supplies. If he swung by some night during the week, he could get started on the paint job, which would open up some time next Saturday for the tile while still keeping the end date on track. He was supposed to meet his buddy Daniel at the gym after work on Tuesday, so maybe Wednesday would work to start painting. Yeah, that could be good.
“So you really didn’t pick up a girl after the show?”
Aiden’s mental schedule rejiggering slammed to a halt.Christ, this again?
“Really.” His fists clenched around the drywall screws in his palm.
“No offense.” Dave gave a typical laid-back shrug. “I just figured if you were going to backslide, it’d happen on a Moo Daddies night.”
“That makes two of us,” he muttered, snatching the electric drill as he braced for yet another conversation on this godforsaken topic.
