Final Score

She shook her head. “It’s a chandelier. For the bedroom. Serena bought it for me as a housewarming gift.”

“Awesome. That will look great upstairs.” Then he narrowed his gaze. “And why do I have a feeling that my housewarming gift will involve putting it up for you?”

She chuckled. “Because you are so very smart and intuitive.”

He shook his head at her as he walked by and she turned to watch his all-too-amazing back view as he disappeared through the door.

She took the box upstairs, and then pulled out the bag containing the calendar. She felt so foolish having the firefighter calendar at all, and now it was in her bedroom. There wasn’t anywhere to hide it. Everything was still in boxes except her chest of drawers. She opened her T-shirt drawer and shoved the calendar in there. Then ran back downstairs.

He was bringing in tile boxes three in a stack, which caused his arm muscles to delineate so she had to drag her gaze away.

She managed two boxes in a stack, but she wasn’t striding along as if they were a couple of feathers.

She followed his lead, stacking the boxes in the front hall beside the stairs. There was the kitchen tile, tile for both bathrooms, wall tile, shower tile, tile for the shower floors. She’d had no idea there was so much involved in remodeling a small house. She didn’t have the kitchen backsplash yet because she wanted to get her counters first. But she had some ideas, and new magazines seemed to get published every week with new layouts and even newer products.

It was getting so bad that she was beginning to dream of tile and appliances. And maybe a certain guy who was good with an ax.

* * *

“OKAY, HERE’S THE DEAL,” Dylan said, standing with his hands on his hips and looking around Cassie’s bedroom with a practiced eye. “If you want the chandelier put up, then I’m going to paint that ceiling first. And if we’re painting the ceiling, we might as well get the walls done at the same time.”

She looked early-summer ripe in snug denim cutoffs and a sleeveless blue shirt, her curly hair dancing when she nodded. “Makes sense.”

“I’ll tackle the ceiling while you do the walls.”

She nodded but didn’t look exceptionally confident. She’d finished scraping the walls and he could see the places where she’d filled holes. Her pretty hazel eyes seemed as big as the kitten’s when she gazed at him. There was a sprinkle of freckles across her nose that he hadn’t noticed before.

He might as well know the worst. “What’s the last thing you painted?”

“I helped my dad paint my bedroom when I was—” She stopped to think. “Twelve? Thirteen?”

He wondered if he’d gone too long without a woman from the strong way he reacted when she gave him that look. The half-humorous one, as though she were laughing at herself and inviting him to share in her amusement. He had no idea why he found that so sexy, but he couldn’t keep the grin off his face. “So you’re an experienced bedroom painter, then.”

“I might need a refresher course in the finer details.”

At least she was keen to get involved, which he liked to see. “Okay, put on some clothes you don’t mind getting paint all over and we’ll have a lesson in painting 101.”

“Okay.”

“Great.”

He cranked open the stepladder he’d brought upstairs with him. She was hovering in front of her dresser. He prepared to climb the ladder. “Aren’t you changing into your grubbies?”

“Uh, I was waiting for you to leave the room.”

She hadn’t seemed that shy. He felt as though he’d blundered into one of those female areas that always confused him. “Can’t you change in the bathroom?”

“I—um, my—” She glanced at the dresser, looking embarrassed, then back to him. “Could you give me five minutes?”

And suddenly he got it. She probably kept her sex toys in her dresser along with her clothes. Didn’t want him getting an eyeful. He hopped off the ladder, trying really hard not to imagine what kind of toys were in that secret drawer. And trying even harder not to picture the two of them playing with them on that big comfy bed underneath the chandelier he was about to install.

6

HE RAN DOWN the stairs and grabbed some paint cloths and plastic sheeting, a roll of painter’s tape and rollers, brushes and both the ceiling paint and the wall color. He took the time to give both cans of paint a good stir. When he’d allowed ten minutes to pass, he gathered the painting supplies into a box and pounded back up the stairs, giving her plenty of warning that he was on his way.

Still, he knocked before he walked into Cassie’s bedroom. She was fully dressed in jeans that weren’t even close to grubby and a long-sleeved T-shirt advertising fish food. She was already unscrewing the old beige plastic switch plate covers from the walls. Excellent. She didn’t turn around when he came in, just kept working.

He climbed back up his ladder and tackled taking down the cheap old fixture that had probably been hanging up here for the entire life of the house. Who looked at something that ugly every night for fifty years? Right before they went to sleep?

Which sent his mind skidding back to those images again. The atmosphere in the room was different. Charged. Heating up. He suspected it was him thinking about what secrets were hidden in her sex-toy drawer. He told himself to stop. He was working for her, not sleeping with her. But like the proverbial elephant, the more he tried to stop wondering what was in her secret stash, the more his imagination conjured up every toy he’d ever seen, heard of or dreamed up.

He took down the light fixture—dead flies, old cobwebs and all—and carried it downstairs in a large box to add to his growing trash pile.

Back in the bedroom, he found Cassie was unscrewing the last of the outlet covers. A neat pile of them sat in a corner, all the screws gathered together. He liked the orderly way she worked.

“Okay,” he said, “when you’re done with those, we’ll cover everything up and then I’ll paint the ceiling while you...?”

Together, they pulled her bed away from the wall. He didn’t have to tell her how to lift, he noted. She bent from the knees and lifted like a pro. They moved her dresser away from the wall and not for one second did he allow himself to think about what was inside that dresser. Nope. There definitely wasn’t a pink vibrator in there. Stop it. No fur-lined handcuffs. He wasn’t even thinking about the possibility. No blindfolds or massage oils. He was relieved when they finally had the room cleared of boxes and the bit of remaining furniture away from the walls. He left Cassie draping plastic over her bed while he prepped the ceiling for painting.

Since he was painting the ceiling the same white as before, he contented himself with giving it a good rub with a dry cloth, removing old cobwebs and any loose dirt or dust that might adhere to the wet paint. He moved the ladder around, doing a quadrant at a time.

He got Cassie washing the walls down so the paint job would look professional. He could hear the soft splash when she dipped her sponge into the water and the swishing sound as she washed the walls.

He worked fast, wanting to get to the painting. Not that he loved painting ceilings—it always gave him a crick in his neck—but he held on to the image of the completed room and that helped him get through the tedious parts.

She hadn’t put on music and he didn’t want to impose his choices on her, so they worked in silence. He said, “How’s it going down there?”

“I’m sick at how dirty this water is.”

“This whole room’s going to be clean and fresh by the time you go to bed tonight.”

“Good.”

“You might want to sleep in the other bedroom tonight, though. It will smell like paint in here.” What was the matter with him? Could he mention her and beds in the same sentence a few more times?

“Good idea,” she said. “I’ll get the guest room made up.”

“I saw a bunch of diving stuff in your garage. You’re a diver?”

“I am. I’ve been diving since I was a kid. I grew up in Southern California, so the water was a lot warmer. I spent every second I could in the water. Surfing, diving, swimming. Still do.” He heard the slosh as she dunked her sponge and squeezed it out. “Though up here I’m in a wet suit most of the year. How about you? Do you dive?”

“I’ve tried it. But I’m more of an aboveground kind of guy. I play hockey, basketball, stuff like that.”

He imagined living in eternal sunshine. “Do you miss it? California?”

He heard the sponge stop moving, as though she were contemplating the question. “I do sometimes. I miss the weather and my family. I moved up here for the job, but once I got used to all the rain, I really came to appreciate the green. The forests and mountains. I still go back a few times a year, but this is home for me now. Especially now that I’ve bought a house.”

“A house is only as permanent as you make it. I buy and sell houses all the time. Fix them up and move on.”