Page 70 of Barefoot Lake

She has no clue how tightly she’s already got me wrapped around her finger.

“Yeah. What do you say?”

“I say ‘yes.’”

She nuzzles against my shoulder again and adds, “I can’t wait to get all the dirt on you from Eli.”

It’s possible I didn’t think this through fully.

Once we get back home, Alice hops out to move her car so I can back the truck up close to the garage. By the time I get out, she’s already in the open garage, unfolding two plastic tables in the center of the open space.

She comes to meet me at the back of the truck a moment later.

“Are you sure you don’t need to go to work?”

I remember what she said about Reid always putting her at the bottom of his priorities, well below work, and I assure her again.

“I’m positive. I’ll go in tomorrow, but for today, the team can call me if they need me. Like you once said, ‘everything in this town is only five minutes away,’ or something like that.” I bump her shoulder.

She smiles, but it doesn’t touch her eyes.

Again, I find myself wishing I’d hit Reid harder for making her think so little of herself. I silently promise I’ll do whatever I can to make sure she never questions her worth again.

“It’s about balance, Ace. You’re a priority here. I promise I’d tell you if something came up.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She takes a breath to reset and focus on our job.

“I figure we can prime and paint them tonight and put them up tomorrow.”

I don’t know if it’s her easy use of “we” or the fact that she’s taking charge of the project, but something about the whole situation is extremely attractive. She grips the handle to lower the tailgate.

“Yes, ma’am.” I see a pleased smirk play on her lips at the title. I’ll gladly play second fiddle for her any day.

We unload the doors together and place them on the tables. Thankfully, we were able to find pre-drilled doors that matched the measurements we’d taken of the existing door frames, so we don’t have to deal with that nonsense.

Alice holds up the can of quick-dry primer and two small rollers. “One door each?”

I nod in agreement, and we get to work.

Alice does home improvement projects just as I’d imagined she would, by dancing to music from her phone and seemingly following a plan of chaos. But even though she jumped around from section to section on the door, the color covered evenly. Maybe there’s a method to the madness.

After what feels like no time at all, the doors are painted and propped up to dry.

I look over at Alice, about to congratulate her on a job well done, when I see that there’s little of her not splattered with paint. There’s even a large stripe in her hair, like she pushed it out of her face with a fully loaded paintbrush in her hand.

I think about it for a second. That’s almost certainly exactly what she did.

“Ace, what the heck happened?”

She looks down at herself before grinning broadly, quite pleased with herself and entirely unbothered with the paint on her body, jeans, and long-sleeved top. The brush she used is still in her hand.

“I painted!”

I stand before her and shake my head.