The Bachelor's Sweetheart

Josh stared at his older brother. “I can handle it.”

Jared might have the money to throw around to help people, but he didn’t have an exclusive on giving.

Chapter Three (#ulink_e78435a8-4f0f-5b8c-abff-f41f2471c9db)

The apartment was in worse shape than Tessa had expected. It looked like she had a good couple of hours’ work clearing junk out before she even got to scrubbing off the years’ worth of grime on everything. At least the appliances were in good condition, or they should be. Her grandmother had bought them from Jared and Becca last fall when they’d remodeled their kitchen, with the thought she might rent out the apartment.

She opened a box blocking the way from the kitchen to the living room. A combination of dust and mold tickled her nose. “Achoo!”

“God bless you.”

Tessa spun around. “Josh, what are you doing here?”

“I had to pick up a few things at the grocery store, so I thought I’d swing by and see my new place.” He weaved his way around the boxes and crates into the living room and peered into the bedroom. “Not much room for my furniture.”

“Funny. When Grandma and Grandpa had the attic in the house insulated and sealed off to cut their heating costs, they moved everything that had been in the attic up here.”

Josh stood in the middle of the living room, the top of his head almost touching the swag light that dangled from a hook in the ceiling. “It has potential.”

Tessa followed his gaze around the place. “You’ve been reading real estate ads again. Looking for another house to flip?”

“Not this summer, not with the work you want me to do on the theater. And Hope asked me to build her a castle in Jared’s backyard.”

“A castle?”

“A playhouse that looks like a castle—I checked. We’re still working out the details. And...” He hesitated. “With my degree almost finished, I’m hoping to have a project manager position with GreenSpaces lined up somewhere else by the end of the year.”

Although Tessa knew Josh’s ambitions, the thought that he could be leaving the area in a few months knocked the wind out of her.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I don’t see anything coming along before we get the theater work done.”

She sucked in a breath. “It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

Was the man that thick? “I’ve gotten used to having you around, irritating as you can be, especially since almost everyone else I know is coupled off now.”

He walked across the room and tugged a piece of old wallpaper that was curling down from the ceiling. “You don’t have to stay around here.” Josh pulled the wallpaper off in a long strip. “Say the word, and I’ll put out feelers for any civil engineering jobs with GreenSpaces, or elsewhere. I’m always looking.”

“Yeah, I know.” She pushed a couple of strands of hair that had fallen from her topknot out of her face. It shouldn’t bother her that he didn’t say he’d miss her when he left. But it did.

“Want me to stick around...”

Yes.

“And give you a hand here this afternoon?”

Tessa laid her finger along the side of her face as if she was thinking deeply. “I could use your brawn to move stuff out to the Dumpster behind the theater.”

“Ah, saving my brains for the paid project.”

“Right. I wouldn’t want to use them all up before I got my money’s worth.”

“Ha! There’s not enough money in the US Mint to buy all my smarts. Where do you want me to start?”

She tapped her foot against the box she’d been opening when Josh arrived. “This box can go downstairs for the Dumpster. It says ‘for library sale,’ but I don’t know what year. The books smell moldy. I’m sure no one would want them.”

“Are they old? Maybe you could find collectors online looking to buy some of them.”

Tessa usually appreciated Josh’s creative ways of making a few extra dollars, but not today. The musty stale air of the apartment was giving her a headache, and everything Josh said or did bugged her.

Josh strode over and lifted the box. “Whew. Cancel that thought. I’ll take this downstairs, out in the fresh air. You can open some windows. There’s a nice breeze that will blow some of the smell out of here. We’ll regroup when I come back.”

She watched him heave the box to his shoulder and head back out. Regroup. Yeah, that’s what she needed to do. She’d become too dependent on her friendship with Josh. It was enabling her to hang back and not try to establish other friendships.

Josh burst back into the apartment a couple of minutes later. “I’m back. Point me in the direction of the next thing you want trashed.”

Several hours and countless boxes later, the natural light in the apartment was growing too dim to continue working. They’d stashed the things worth keeping in the crawl space storage area that ran behind one wall of the living room. Tessa didn’t have a clue why they hadn’t been put there in the first place. The rest was in the Majestic’s Dumpster.

Tessa tossed her cleaning cloth on the kitchen counter. “We’d better call it a night before it gets too dark to find our way out. I’ll call the power company tomorrow and have the electricity turned on.”

“No, I’ll put it in my name. I didn’t expect the free rent agreement to include utilities, and...” He grinned, emphasizing the smudge of dirt on his cheek. “The contract doesn’t include them.”

“Since when are you such a stickler for rules?”

“Since my getting paid depends on your financial success. Don’t want to cut into your seed money.”

Her chest tightened. He didn’t have faith in her. And if he, her best friend, didn’t, who would?

“Hey, lose the long face. I’m teasing. If you have an extra key you can give me before I leave, I’ll stop by after work tomorrow and see if I can open those two windows that are painted shut.”

But tomorrow was the first Monday of the month, the evening Josh usually came over with pizza or Chinese to view promotion clips of upcoming movies so she could choose what to order. A hollow grew inside her. This was Josh. Of course, business would come before fun—and friendship?

She dug in her jeans pocket for her key ring. “Right here.” Tessa wound the key off the ring.

He took the key. “I can’t give you much other help finishing the cleanup here until next weekend. But don’t worry about having the place ready for me to move in on Thursday. Connor said it would be fine for me to stay at the parsonage while he and Natalie are away.”

“Sounds good.”

“Then pack up whatever you’re taking with you, and I’ll drop you at the house.”

“No, you go ahead. I’ll walk. I need some time out in the fresh air to clear my head of the smell of Mr. Clean.” And of other things, like the fear that our business partnership isn’t the brilliant idea I thought it was.

* * *

Tessa pressed the latch to the front door of the house, only to find it locked. She’d forgotten that Grandma was going to dinner and then a musical prayer concert at the Camp Sonrise Conference Center Auditorium with Josh’s grandparents and Marie Delacroix. After she unlocked the door and let herself in, she dropped into the closest chair. Maybe Josh was right. Maybe the theater was a lost cause, and she should start looking for an engineering job. Opportunities here were slim, though, and she hated to leave her grandmother alone.

She pushed herself out of the chair to see what she could rummage up for supper. Her grandmother’s words about Mrs. Delacroix inviting her to share her house ran through her mind. Grandma wasn’t alone. Her roots were here. She had friends here. Grandma didn’t need Tessa living with her any more than her parents needed her at the mission in Lesotho or, self-pity crept in, Josh needed her presence in his life. He couldn’t seem to be with her lately without telling her about how he was out of here as soon as he found the right job opportunity or that she should look for an engineering job somewhere else.