“Mm-hmm.” I climbed down from the chair, still trembling. “Spill it. What does this one mean?”
“I kinda like the idea of letting you figure it out.”
I glared at him and wanted to ask him where he learned Spanish, but I was too heated not to address the jab he’d taken at me first. “I wouldn’t be living in this dump if it wasn’t absolutely necessary, you know.”
“You could rent a place in town,” he suggested almost nonchalantly.
“You think if I had the money to rent a place in town that I’d be staying here?” The sight of him trying to subdue a smile only made me more agitated.
His grin grew. “Well, the diamond tennis bracelet on your wrist tells a different story.”
My mouth fell open. “I—it’s—not—” I stuttered, realizing I was, in fact, wearing my Tiffany bracelet my mother bought me for college graduation.Nice job, Hope. Nothing says financially struggling like wearing a diamond bracelet.
I could probably sell it and rent a place in town for a few months. But I wasn’t trying to burn down all the bridges in my life since I’d already obliterated ninety-five percent of them. Or maybe I was just telling myself that because, deep down, I liked the bracelet and it brought back good memories from a different time before hygiene school. Before the incident.
“You don’t understand,” I finished lamely.
His smile softened to something gentler, and an odd thrill ran through my veins. He wasn’t buying that I was some poor new girl moving into my brother’s cabin next door. He was clever and a bit flirtatious too, in a way that I had to watch out for.
“I’m sure I don’t,” he said, not an ounce of judgment in his voice. “But I’d like to.” He glanced back at the compressor, and I could breathe a little better without his gaze on me. “I’ve learned most things are more complicated than they seem on the outside.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, and when I didn’t say anything, he moved right along. Finishing up with the compressor, he carried it back to the fridge to reinstall it, and within minutes, it was running again.
“Wow, thank you. That was fast,” I said, staring at the now humming fridge in slight awe.
“No problem,” he said. “Where’s the AC?”
I led him into the closet with the AC, and he worked on it for a while in silent concentration. When he finished that, he moved to the furnace—rearranging parts and dusting off copper wires.
Not long after, I heard the whoosh of the air vents sending cool air into my cabin for the first time since I’d arrived.
“Seriously, thank you. I can pay you for your services once I get a job—” I started to say.
He shook his head and gave me another smile. “Don’t worry about it, really. Should we do some yard work while we wait for it to cool down in here? I brought tools for that too.”
“Is it hard for you to live next to a crappy cabin? Is its disgruntled appearance disrupting your perfect forest scenery?” I was pretty certain no one would do this amount of manual labor for free. There had to be a catch.
“Not at all,” he grinned, and I felt that tiny spark of electricity go through me again. “Just want to be neighborly. I know how hard fixing up a place can be.”
“Well, if you’re so insistent, I guess we can start on the shrubs that are basically eating my front entryway,” I said.
Somehow, Jay already seemed to know a little too much about me, and yet I felt like I knew almost nothing about him. Whatever subtle guessing game we were playing, I was clearly behind, and now was my time to get ahead.
“Perfect. Sounds like a plan,” he said, as if to say he was accepting the invisible challenge going on between us.
“After you,” I said.
CHAPTER 8
Every trimmer, rake, and shovel he pulled from the truck gleamed in the sunlight. The metal was so shiny I had to squint.
“I feel bad. My yard’s going to ruin your tools,” I said, shielding my eyes as the hedge trimmer tossed a glittering flash of light across my face.
He waved a hand like I was worried over nothing. “Don’t worry about it; they won’t get ruined. This is what they’re made to do.”
Before I could argue, he was already attacking the shrubbery with practiced ease that definitely indicated he’d done this before.
I picked a rake because anything with a motor felt like a weapon I couldn’t be trusted with.
