Meant To Be Mine

“Sorry,” she apologized. “My brain doesn’t usually kick in this early in the morning.”

“Early?” he echoed in amusement. “You think this is early?”

“I don’t think,” she said, followed by a yawn she couldn’t stifle. “I know.” She started for the stairs. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the man with the toolbox wasn’t following her. “The bathroom’s upstairs.” She pointed for emphasis.

“Wait,” he called out, bringing her to a halt. The woman was either way too trusting or simply naive—and he had to admit that she didn’t look to be either. Especially if she turned out to be who he thought she was. “Don’t you want to see my credentials?”

Tiffany yawned again, not at his question, but because her body desperately yearned to go back to bed and she couldn’t.

“You’re driving what looks like a service truck, you’ve got on coveralls and you’re carrying around the biggest toolbox I’ve ever seen. Those are credentials enough for me.”

Besides, she added mentally, knowing my mother, you probably already got the third degree before she hired you.

“What about my estimate?” he asked. They hadn’t talked about what he was going to charge her for the work. He didn’t plan to overcharge her, but she didn’t know that. “I haven’t given you one because I need to see the bathroom first.”

Tiffany waved away his words. “I don’t need to hear it,” she told him as she began to walk up the stairs. “My mother insisted on paying for this remodel, and after arguing with that woman about everything else under the sun ever since I could talk, I thought that this one time I’d just give in and say yes.

“Your bill,” she told him as he followed behind her, “will go to her, and trust me, if you try to fleece her, you will live to regret it—immensely. My mother’s a little woman, but she’s definitely a force to be reckoned with. None of my brothers-in-law will go up against her. They’ve learned that if they want to keep living, they need to stay on her good side,” she concluded as they reached the bathroom he was going to be remodeling.

The door was standing open and she gestured toward the interior. “Here it is,” she said needlessly. “Knock yourself out.”

And with that, she turned on her bare heel and walked away.

This had to be the most unorthodox job he’d ever been called to. “Wait, don’t you want to tell me what you want?” Eddie asked, calling after her retreating back.

Tiffany only half turned in his direction. She wanted nothing more than to get dressed and then collapse on the bed in the guest room for a few hours. She assumed that the man her mother had sent didn’t need any supervision. He appeared competent enough.

“I want a bathroom,” she told him. “One where everything works, 24/7. And it would be nice if everything matched.”

“Well, of course it’s going to work,” he told her. That’s why he was here, and he wasn’t about to do a shoddy job. But her answer didn’t begin to address his question. “What about the style? And the color?” he pressed.

There was something familiar about his voice, but like his smile, she couldn’t place it and she wasn’t up to thinking right now. Her brain was foggy. Maybe it was just her imagination.

“Style and color would be good,” she replied, nodding as she began to walk away again.

Eddie took a breath. He realized that the woman with the gorgeous legs and the football jersey wasn’t being flippant. She apparently still wasn’t fully awake.

She shouldn’t have answered the door half-asleep. He couldn’t help thinking that she really was in need of a keeper.

Eddie tilted his head a little, trying to get a better look at her face. Her shiny, long, blue-black hair kept falling into it. His curiosity was becoming more aroused, but he really didn’t need to have it satisfied in order to do a good job.

It would just be nice to know what his client actually looked like.

And then she turned slightly in his direction and it hit him like a ton of bricks. It was her, the Tiffany he knew in college. The Tiffany who was so different from the little girl whose sweater he’d buttoned all those years ago.

He wanted to tell her, then thought better of it. Now wasn’t the time. He’d tell her after the job was done.

Pushing back that thought, he tried to pin her down again—at least a little bit. “What do you like? Modern? Antique? Classic?”

The words he tossed her way seemed to circle around her head, even though she tried to visualize the styles. Tiffany had a feeling he wouldn’t give her any peace until she made some kind of a choice.

So she did.

“Modern,” she told him.

Heading back toward the stairs, she heard him declare, “Well, that’s a start.”

Feeling she needed to acknowledge his response, she nodded. “Yes, it is.” Then, just to keep things civilized, she added, “If you want coffee, help yourself. There’s a coffee machine in the kitchen. It’s on a timer.”

Having reached the banister, she ran her hand along the sleek light wood as she made her way down the stairs. When she reached the bottom, she quickly hurried to the back bedroom, flipped the lock on the door—just in case—and arrived at her real destination: the guest room bed.

A sigh of relief escaped her lips as she collapsed on the mattress.

The last thought that floated through her mind was that there was something vaguely familiar about the man who had come to remodel her bathroom.

The next moment, it was gone.

* * *

Tiffany felt like she had been lying down for only a few minutes when the noise suddenly started.

It was loud enough to have her bolting upright, abruptly terminating what was beginning to be a pleasant semisleep.

Glancing at the clock on the nightstand, she saw that she’d actually been asleep for half an hour, but that was far from enough. Especially since the noise turned out to be steady enough to keep her from putting her head back on the pillow. And it was definitely irritating enough to keep her from falling asleep again.

“He’s actually working,” she muttered incredulously. “Who does that as soon as they arrive?”

The noise gave no sign of abating. For the second time that day Tiffany got out of bed. But this time, rather than heading for the door and the annoying doorbell, she went in search of the source of the teeth-jarring noise.

Hanging on to the banister, she half walked, half dragged herself up the stairs, all the while struggling to finally wake up—permanently. There was no point in even thinking that she could go back to sleep again. That ship had definitely sailed.

Once on the landing, Tiffany made her way toward the source of the noise, which was growing louder with every step she took. It was emanating from just beyond her bedroom, she discovered. Specifically, from her master bathroom.

The noise seemed to vibrate right through her chest.

Standing in the doorway, Tiffany looked accusingly at the culprit behind her shattered morning’s sleep. “Why are you destroying my bathroom?” she asked.

Covered in dust and wearing a mask over his face to keep from breathing it in, Eddie looked for a moment at the woman whose bathroom he was remodeling, before setting down the sledgehammer he’d been wielding. He pushed the mask to the top of his head and answered her question.

“Well, for one thing, I can’t put the new fixtures in without getting the old ones out,” he told her. He gestured around the bathroom. “That includes your bathroom tub, sink, medicine cabinet and commode.”

Commode? That certainly was a delicate way to talk about the toilet, she thought, somewhat surprised.

Tiffany blinked, and for the first time since she had let the man into her house, she actually looked at him. Not through him, around him or over him, but at him. And now that she did, even though her brain was still just a wee bit foggy and out of sync, she realized that there really was something vaguely familiar about the man standing in her bathroom, effectively making rubble out of it.

Where did she know him from? Nothing specific came to mind, though a memory seemed to play hide-and-seek with her brain, vanishing before she could get hold of it.

The next moment, she let it go, focusing on the more important question for the time being. “You do know what you’re doing, don’t you?”