And if history was any indication, it wouldn’t be Austin.
With the almost hysterical need to inject some semblance of normalcy, however absurd, into the moment, I dredged up what I hoped was a light joke.
“Well!” I chirped, my voice sounding unnaturally bright and wobbly even to my ears, like a badly tuned ukulele. “That was, erm, unexpected.” I gestured vaguely toward the wagging siding, then back to the space between us. “I, uh, feel much more… settled now. Crisis averted?” I even managed a nervous laugh that possibly sounded more like a strangled chicken.
Austin didn’t respond. He didn’t even look at me. Instead, his gaze, still wide and slightly wild, zeroed in on the disastrously hanging siding as if it were the only thing in the universe that made any sense.
With a rough sound that might have been him clearing his throat, or possibly just him trying to remember how to breathe, he muttered, “That siding needs to be secured. Now.”
With a few brutally efficient movements, he grabbed the hammer I’d dropped, found a couple of straight nails amidst my scattered, pathetic supplies, and vaulted up the rickety ladder. With a series of precise blows that echoed like gunshots in the sudden stillness, he securely tacked the loose siding into place.
Though probably not a long-term fix, it was no longer an immediate, head-lopping hazard at least. He worked with a focused, almost desperate energy. His movements were stiff, his jaw locked, every line of his body screaming his urgent need to escape the invisible, crackling weirdness that now enveloped us.
When he was done, he climbed down and stood back, still not looking at me. His chest continued to rise and fallin short, jerky motions. “That’ll hold it for now. I need… need to check on my rod. Fishing rod! The epoxy.”
He turned even more crimson, whether from the rod reference, or his flimsy excuse, I wasn’t sure. Then he all but scurried back to his yard, disappearing inside the house without another word or a backward glance.
Leaving me standing there, bewildered, heart still pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I raised my fingers to rub my lower lip where the memory of his kiss, and the surprising, not-at-all-unpleasant roughness of his scruff, tingled with a life of its own.
The next morning,Saturday, dawned bright and deceptively cheerful. I was up before the sun, a bundle of nervous, restless energy. Every creak of Heron House’s ancient bones, every rustle of palm fronds in the pre-dawn breeze, sounded like an accusation. I ran my tongue over my lower lip while my coffee brewed. The memory of Austin’s mouth on mine, surprisingly, searchingly soft, then hard and demanding, was a vivid, full-color replay in my mind.
I kept looking out the grimy kitchen window, my gaze fixed on Austin’s neat, quiet conch house.
Expecting… what?
For him to emerge, rake in hand, and deliver a stern lecture on inappropriate neighborly conduct? For him to perhaps wave, a small acknowledgment of the previous day’s events? Or maybe I was searching for a sign that the earth-shattering, world-tilting kiss hadn’t been a figment of my over-stressed, sun-addled imagination.
But it wasn't just the kiss that replayed in my mind. It was the moments just before it. The wobbly ladder. Theunwieldy weight of the siding in my aching arms. The panic as I realized I had bitten off a mountain’s worth more than I could chew. I had been alone, failing, and on the verge of either giving up or getting seriously hurt.
Then Austin was there.
He hadn't hesitated. He hadn't stood on his perfect lawn and yelled at me to be more careful. He had walked right into my disaster, taken control of the situation, and gotten me safely to the ground. He hadn't mocked my incompetence or lectured me—much. He had simply seen a problem and fixed it.
He had shown up.
And maybe that was why I had kissed him. It had been a desperate, overwhelming surge of gratitude and relief. In a moment of genuine crisis, when the man I’d hired had abandoned me, Austin Coleridge had been the one to climb into the wreckage and pull me out.
That knowledge was, in its own way, far more unsettling than the memory of the kiss itself. It was one thing to be attracted to a handsome, grumpy neighbor. It was another thing entirely to suspect that beneath the scowls and the silence lay a man who might be something more. Something that felt like a safe harbor in the middle of my storm.
But as I stared at his neat house, it remained stubbornly silent, as if hunkering down against further incursions from the lady next door.
And more pressingly, there was no sign of Mick Riley or his crew, despite him saying they’d be back today. He hadn’t really meant to leave that siding half-hanging all weekend, had he?
“Of course not. That would be completely unprofessional.”
The hours ticked by with agonizing slowness. Eighto’clock. Nine. Ten. Still no familiar rumble of Riley’s beat-up truck, no clatter of tools, no booming, off-key singing from his uninspired workforce. My initial annoyance began to curdle into a stomach-twisting unease.
I tried calling his cell. Straight to voicemail, a cheerful, generic recording that now sounded infuriatingly smug. I left a message, trying to keep my voice calm, professional. “Mick, it’s Iris Holloway. Just wondering about your ETA today? You said you’d be here this morning.”
Another hour crawled by. No call back. No truck. No crew.
“Oh Mylanta!” I exclaimed to the empty, dust-filled expanse of the Starfish Suite, where I’d gone to try and distract myself by measuring for curtain rods, a task that now felt ludicrously optimistic. “Where is he? He can’t just leave that siding job half-done after practically running away yesterday.”
Austin’s muted, almost reluctant warnings about Mick’s history and his tendency to take the path of least resistance echoed in my head. He was right. My contractor was a first-class, gold-plated weasel with the work ethic of a narcoleptic sloth.
Full of restless energy and a mounting sense of anxiety that was like a flock of angry terns dive-bombing my insides, I did what I always did when the world went sideways.
I baked.
