Meryl continued to scrub the inside of a wall cabinet. “Morning. Coffee’s ready.” She turned just as he walked through the doorway and caught the look on his face as he saw her.
He smiled, and her stomach did a flip. “You’re spoiling me.”
“I’m being practical,” she said, putting down her cleaning cloth and handing him a mug. “Caffeine makes you work faster.”
“Is that so?” His fingers brushed hers as he took the coffee, and the contact sent a thrill of electricity up her arm, as it had every time he touched her. She’d never experienced it before. But there was something about him that always made her react. No, it ran deeper than that. As if they shared a connection. She had felt it the first time they met, that day on the porch. At first, she’d put it down to the intense gratitude she felt toward him forhelping her. But as the days passed, she was beginning to think it was something more.
She just didn’t know what. Or if he felt it too.
Spencer held her gaze, and in that moment, she was sure he felt it too. But then he turned away and nodded toward the living room. “You’ve been working hard.”
Only then did she remember she’d been working in the living room before she was distracted by his arrival.
“Yes. I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know if it’s the birdsong or the light being so different up here,” she began. “So I got up and started stripping wallpaper. I also took down the curtains and cleaned the fireplace.”
He moved aside as she stepped around him and then followed her into the living room without a word.
The room was still a mess, but it was a better sort of mess now. One wall stood mostly bare. The faded floral paper on the next hung in damp strips. Without the curtains, the morning sun streamed in, illuminating the handcrafted fireplace surround that had emerged from beneath years of soot and dust, leaving the mantel at last looking like something worth keeping.
Spencer set his coffee down and ran his hand over the cleaned stone, then the trim she had scrubbed back.
“Meryl.” He looked at her properly. “You’ve done a fantastic job in here.”
She felt the heat rise into her face. “You mean that?”
“I do. You didn’t gouge the plaster, and you stopped where the paper was still holding instead of tearing at it just to get it done faster.” He touched the mantel again. “And this was worth uncovering. The whole room feels different now. You can really start to see what a warm and welcoming room this will be when it’s finished.”
Meryl folded her arms, mostly to keep herself from smiling too much. “I thought so, too. I’ve even been giving some thought to paint colors.”
He turned and smiled. “I can’t wait to see what you have planned. That’s the knack, seeing what something can be, not what it is right now.”
“Well,” she said, aiming for dry, “I am learning from a man with tools and opinions.”
That made him laugh softly. “Dangerous combination.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m beginning to notice.”
For a second, they stood there looking at each other in the half-stripped room.
Then Meryl nodded toward the porch. “Come on. If we stand in here admiring my wallpaper-removal skills much longer, nothing else is getting done.”
“Wouldn’t want that.”
They went back outside. Spencer set his coffee on the porch rail and opened his toolbox. Meryl pulled on her gloves and handed him the pencil she had been using earlier. He took it without comment, as if that was just how things were done now.
Maybe it was.
He checked the measurements she had marked on the next boards and looked up. “You did these already?”
“I thought it might save time.” Although her need to rush through this job was starting to fade.
“It will,” he agreed, and then they got to work.
For the next hour or so, things went as they had the day before. Spencer cut. Meryl held boards in place, checked the fit, and passed him what he needed. They spoke when they had toand fell quiet when they didn’t. It was good work, and there was comfort in it. That’s what had surprised her the most.
That was why the interruption hit so hard.
Spencer levered up another stretch of old porch boards near the far corner, then stopped.
