Honeymoon For Hire

Hayley looked around at the sunny yellow walls and thought it had possibilities. If only this were going to be her house, too, and not just Dillon’s, she thought wistfully, aware she was already falling in love with the place, envisioning the way it could and would be. “I’d like to bring my own, if it’s okay. Except for the brass bed. It’s really nice. Unless you have other plans for it—”

“Not a one.” Dillon shot her a wicked grin, as if the mention of a bed, any bed, brought all sorts of thoughts to mind. But then, to her relief, he merely shrugged his broad shoulders laconically.

Hayley fought a blush and averted her eyes. “Then I’d like to use the frame.” Hayley lovingly ran her palm across the curved top of the bedstead. “I always wanted a brass bed,” she confessed. “That or an old-fashioned canopy bed.” She’d always thought them so romantic. Funny that she would be getting one now, when there wasn’t so much as a chance for romance in her life. And yet, she thought wistfully, it would be so easy for her to imagine her and a lover in that bed. A lover as sexy as Dillon.

“You didn’t have one when you were a kid?” Dillon watched her methodically strip the bedspread and the sheets.

“No,” Hayley said quietly, irritated with the direction of her thoughts. She knew better than to fantasize like that about an employer. Thankful Dillon couldn’t read her mind, she continued, “I didn’t.” But she didn’t want to think about that. Her childhood years had been rough enough without dwelling on them.

Dillon circled around to the opposite side of the bed. The corners of his sensual mouth pulled down into a frown. “The mattress and box springs are in terrible shape. Look. You can even see the coils sticking through.”

“I’ll bring my own,” Hayley said, absently, still preoccupied and faintly disturbed by the unusually erotic line of her thoughts.

His frown deepened. “The frame looks a little tarnished.”

“I can fix that easily enough,” Hayley said confidently. “All it will take is a little polish.”

What wouldn’t be so easy to fix, she thought, was her continued physical reaction to Dillon. Every time he got within three feet of her, her heart sped up. Her breathing became more shallow. Her palms started sweating. And her thoughts…her thoughts!

She wanted this job and wanted it badly. It was perfect for her and her baby. But could she live with the tension she was feeling now for the whole next year? She supposed, as she tried as unobtrusively as possible to blot her hands on the wool gabardine of her blazer, she would have to.

* * *

DILLON HEARD the tap-tap-tap the moment he walked in the door. He followed the noise to the kitchen. Hayley was on her hands and knees. She had a hammer in one hand, a chisel in the other. She was clad in sapphire blue stretch pants, a matching tank top and a striped man’s shirt, worn open to the waist. High-top white and blue running shoes were laced tightly up over her trim ankles. He stared at her raised bottom and slender thighs incredulously, unwilling to admit to himself what the sight of her, stretched out that way, did to him. She was his housekeeper, he reminded himself firmly. And she had been for the past two incredibly long weeks.

He had no business thinking of her in this way. No business imagining what her thick and wavy honey blond hair, which was caught up in a youthful ponytail on top of her head, would look like if it were down, falling gloriously around her slender shoulders. Or how she would react if he gave in to his baser impulses and knelt down on the floor beside her, took her in his arms and kissed her senseless.

He wasn’t lord of the manor. These weren’t feudal times.

Before he had a chance to speak, a floor tile went sailing past him, into the trash.

“Hi, Dillon,” Hayley said, without missing a beat.

“Where’s Christine?”

“Asleep for the night in her crib.” Hayley pointed to the baby monitor on the counter; it was blissfully silent. Tap-tap-tap. She was already working on the next tile.

Dillon forced his eyes away from her and stared at the exposed cement floor with its gobs of old dried glue. “I thought my house looked like hell before you got started,” he said dryly.

Hayley sat up breathlessly. Her face was flushed, her chest heaving with exertion. “Very funny.”

“What the devil are you doing? Or shouldn’t I ask?” It looked as if she was a one-woman demolition crew, busy tearing the hell out of his kitchen. Not to mention the rest of the house, which looked worse, day by day.

“I’m taking up the tile,” Hayley answered him, exasperated. “What does it look like?”

“If I knew I wouldn’t have asked.”

Hayley wrapped her arms around her bent knees. “It’s easy enough to do.”

Dillon knelt beside her. His gaze roved her mussed hair and bright green eyes. Damn, but she looked beautiful tonight. “Do you have any idea how late it is?”

“Midnight or a little after. Why?” Hayley stripped off her rubber gloves and laid them on a dry patch of floor beside her. She sat with her back against the cabinets, one leg stretched out flat, the other bent at the knee.

“Where’d you learn to do this?”

“One of my uncles was a construction worker whose firm specialized in remodeling jobs. I spent a summer as his apprentice.”

“That’s how you know plumbing, too, I guess.”

“No. I learned plumbing from one of my cousins when I was in high school. His dad was a plumber. The two of us used to assist him on jobs, both for the knowledge—plumbing’s a handy thing to know—and for spending money.”

“I see.” He wished like hell her tank top were cut just a tad higher, so he couldn’t see the shadowy cleft between her breasts. And he wished her matching pants were a tad looser. They hugged her cute body and sensually outlined her long lissome thighs and curvaceous calves.

“I suppose you want dinner,” Hayley guessed.

Dillon leaned against the kitchen counter and told himself it wasn’t her beauty that kept him from firing her on the spot but his faith that she would eventually make some sort of order out of all this chaos, chaos that seemed to get worse every day. “Is there any?” he asked hopefully, aware just how hungry he was, and that there was a disturbing lack of homey cooking smells in the kitchen.

Hayley shrugged. “Not unless you count the leftover broccoli from last night.”

Dillon’s hopes of a hot, hearty meal faded fast. He knew he should have grabbed something from the machines at work. Or ordered in. Now, because he was living in the suburbs where everything closed down much earlier, it was too late.

He climbed over her and headed for the refrigerator. Hayley was not turning out to be much of a housekeeper. She never had any food fixed for him. And though his clothes were usually clean, they were never ironed. “You know I thought the house would be taking shape by now. Instead it just seems to be getting more torn up.”

“All the remodeling getting to you, huh?” She grinned and bounced up off the floor. “Thought so. Well, I’ve got a surprise for you. You’ll never guess what came today!”

“The water heater guy?” he guessed hopefully.

“No, sorry,” she said, her eyes fastening for a moment on the scar that ran from his wrist to his elbow and was visible beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his navy blue shirt. “The plumber can’t get here until tomorrow. But we’re still getting enough hot water to take a shower, so don’t worry.”

Dillon didn’t deny that the excess of cold water had done him some good the past few days. He never should have told her she could dress however she wanted. Of course, how was he to know that she’d look sexy as hell in literally everything she chose to wear? “How long a shower?”

“Five minutes, maybe.”

“And how long before you can take another?”

“Hard to say. At least an hour. Probably a little more. It depends on how hot you like the water.”

Or your women. Now where had that thought come from? Struggling to keep his mind on the conversation, he wiped a bead of perspiration from his upper lip and said, “I’m surprised you’re not more frustrated.” He sure as hell would’ve been. He hadn’t nearly the patience of Hayley, who was more and more beginning to look like a saint. Or even worse in his estimation—a born suburbanite.

“It’s been fun, getting started on the house,” she said with a reassuring smile. “Which brings us back to what I was trying to tell you a few minutes ago. Your furniture from Riyadh arrived today. I had the movers put it in the study.” She started off in that direction and inclined her head, willing him to follow.

Dillon followed her through the formal dining room, into the hall, and then to the study at the rear of the house. He couldn’t believe she had done so much in so little time. Boxes of books had yet to be placed into the built-in shelves on either side of the stone fireplace, but the cherry colored leather sofa and matching armchairs, his desk, lamps, and end tables had been arranged. A Persian rug had been rolled out over the slate gray carpet in the paneled room. The only thing missing was suitable drapes for the windows. He looked around, feeling remarkably content, even if he, a confirmed city dweller, was now living in suburbia. “This is really great,” Dillon said.

“I figured you needed one room in the house where you could relax. Though I eventually intend to tackle this from the bottom up, too.”

Dillon was barely able to stifle a groan. He could only imagine what havoc she’d wreak in here when she got ready.

Briefly her white teeth scraped across her lower lip. “But in the meantime, it’ll stay as is, your haven against the ongoing remodeling in the rest of the house. Is the furniture how you wanted it?”