Page 30 of The Heartbreaker Next Door

He gave the porch a once-over, then looked me up and down, brow raised.

“Morning!” I chirped, like I hadn’t just been objectifying him with my subconscious all night. “You’re up early for a Saturday.”

“You weren’t kidding about the YouTube,” Dean commented as he surveyed the situation, his eyes lingering on my laptop screen, which still blared a chipper DIY influencer showing off the “Ten Porch Repair Hacks Every Homeowner Must Know.” His tone was mild, but the undertone of “what fresh hell is this” didn’t escape me.

I raised my chin and met his gaze. “I am fully certified by the University of Watching Internet Strangers Who Know What They’re Doing.” I swept aside a cascade of wood shavings with my foot, which only made it more obvious I’d made little headway and possibly a bigger mess. I doubled down. “If you could get a college degree from watching tutorials, I’d have a master’s. Two, even.”

He didn’t laugh, which tracked. Instead, Dean set down the baked goods and drinks and tilted his head at the splintering spindle I’d been wrestling. “What happened to our agreement?” he asked, voice clipped but not unkind. “You’d let me oversee anything with a blade or a motor.”

I didn’t think he was trying to be condescending, but I still felt myself getting defensive. “I agreed to let you supervise. I never agreed to hand over the drill,” I pointed out.

Behind his gorgeous, whiskey-colored eyes was a war. I could tell he wanted to take over the project but didn’t want to offend me. The truth was, for all my independence, I needed help, and I wasn’t too proud to admit it.

I surrendered the drill with all the enthusiasm of a woman handing over her firstborn.

“Fine. But if you strip the screw, I’m taking it back.”

His mouth twitched in amusement.

I stepped around him…or tried. The toe of my boot caught on a loose board, and I pitched forward.

His hands caught me before the porch did.

One arm locked around my waist, the other on my hip, leaving me plastered against a chest that had absolutely no business being that hard.

For one humiliating second, I forgot how lungs worked. His hands were big and solid, and the press of his palm against my back was more stabilizing than any porch rail ever made.

His eyes dropped to my lips, and I felt my mouth water as he asked, “You okay?”

“Yep.” I swallowed the rush of saliva that had just flooded my mouth and tried to make a joke. “This is why I don’t accept help.”

His eyebrow lifted.

“I hand over one power tool, and suddenly I’m a damsel in distress,” I joked, but I didn’t move away, not right away.

The air between us was suddenly charged in a way that had nothing to do with static electricity or faulty wiring. I thought about the dream again—Dean’s hands everywhere, his mouth at my ear—and had to squeeze my eyes shut for a hot half-second.

He must have sensed some internal short-circuiting, or maybe he just picked up on the energy crackling between us, because he steadied me and stepped back. “We should get to work.”

“Sure, um, yeah, right, um, yeah, good.” I fumbled over my words as arousal spiked in me.

I’d already been attracted to Dean from the moment he showed up on our doorstep the day we arrived in Valentine’s Bay. But now, after the real-life kiss and the fantasy dreams, and seeing him at the ranch with his animals, and his family, and my son, my attraction to him was out of control. I needed to push it down, smother and suffocate it. Giving it any room to grow was a bad idea. A very bad idea.

We set to work in a rhythm that was less adversarial and more complementary than I’d expected. Dean was not a talker, but he was an efficient partner. He’d hand me a clamp before I even realized I needed it, and he never once rolled his eyes when I dropped a screw or miscounted a measurement. He didn’t call attention to my mistakes, but he also didn’t let me get away with YouTube shortcuts.

After I’d managed to reattach two spindles without catastrophic failure, I risked a glance over my shoulder at him. “How did you get so good at this stuff?”

I knew he loved numbers, but the contracting stuff seemed so different.

Dean shrugged, pausing mid-drill. “Growing up at the ranch, before Mom was able to turn it into what it is now, it wasn’t really an option. My dad travelled a lot for work, so it was just Dawson and me. When things broke, you fixed it and fixed it right. It wasn’t just our home, it was our livelihood.”

“That’s a lot of pressure,” I said.

He didn’t look up. “Pressure makes people useful.”

As much as I wanted to follow-up on that mindset and ask more questions, I had a feeling if I did, he would retreat into himself. So, instead, I focused on aligning the next spindle, but my mind wandered.

Dean was so… functional. Dependable. Everything about him ran on order and routine, but it wasn’t coldness, exactly. It was like he’d learned to ration his warmth the same way you rationed propane out on the prairie—use only what’s needed, save the rest for emergencies.