Fix You (14 page)

             
“It’s gonna bite you,” he warned.

             
“Not if I throw it on
you
.”

             
She might have been an animal lover, might have adored all living creatures, but when she reached the bottom of the back steps and her Timberlands touched grass, Jo flung the possum. It landed, hissed, rolled onto its feet and waddled off toward the trees as fast as any possum had ever waddled anywhere.

             
“Oh, damn,” Mike said behind her, voice touched with laughter.

             
“What?”

             
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to, because her gaze left the retreating possum and went to the driveway, just in time to see her father deck Dylan.

11

             
L
ack of creativity notwithstanding, Kitchen World was indeed a world devoted to all things kitchen. Jess let her fingertips hover above the arch of a curved faucet and had trouble biting back her bitter fury at Dylan’s insistence on dragging his feet with the settlement. She wasn’t tempted to splurge on impractical things, but it didn’t mean she didn’t long for them. If Dylan had signed the papers, if things were sorted and distributed, she might have been able to hope for the best, maybe even take some pleasure in the restoration of her new house.

             
“See something you like?”

             
Chris had wandered off to ask an employee about floor tiles and she hadn’t heard him approach her again; she snatched her hand back from the faucet, head whipping in his direction. Like he kept doing, his simple act of being
not her husband
shocked her. She couldn’t get used to seeing him beside her and she hated how jumpy she was. She
was not
a jumpy, flighty female.

             
As she watched him, trying to gain control of her wits, a grin tugged at one corner of his mouth and his brows lifted. “Take that as a yes?” he asked, and she realized, with a hot flush, that he thought that
he
was the something she liked.

             
Giving him a scowl, she turned back to the faucet display in front of her. “Nothing I can afford.”

             
“Lemme see.” He sidestepped into her personal space, smelling of laundry detergent, Speed Stick and just a faint hint of cologne. Jess took a half step back as his arm passed in front of her nose and he turned the price tag hanging off the faucet around so he could read it. He had big hands, she noticed. Like Mike and Walt and her dad; not like Dylan’s slender, manicured fingers. Big wrists. His bicep was thicker than both of hers put together. She catalogued the details away for reasons she didn’t understand.

             
“You could afford this,” he said, and she shook away her haze of observations.

             
“No. It’s not on budget.”

             
Chris snorted and stepped back, retracted his arm and slanted her a sideways look that left her frowning. “You need to scrap the budget, Goldilocks.”

             
She heard the insult to her budget first – bowed up with a retort – and then she registered the nickname. She knew her eyes were livid and flashing, but he just grinned.

             
“Sorry. But you’re making this way harder than it has to be.”

             
“I - ”

             
“I do this for a living,” he cut her off, still smiling, but in a patronizing way, his voice firm. “I’m not gonna screw you over, I promise. Tell me what you want your kitchen to look like, and I’ll make it happen.”

             
Jess smoothed her hands along the crown of her head, willing herself some patience. “Ellie,” she said in an acid tone, “is too generous in her opinions of people. She married
my brother
, and she swears by your professionalism.”

             
His smile dropped away and with it his congenial goofball persona; with him suddenly serious and standing this close to her, Jess studied the planes of his face and felt a warning whisper through her. “I haven’t given you anything you haven’t asked for,” he said, voice even and not unkind. “You hired me to redo your house, and you can be as particular as you want about it, but I do know what I’m doing. And I don’t deserve this passive-aggressive bullshit.”

             
Passive-aggressive? She was anything but. She was honest and blunt and harsh, yes, but she wasn’t…

             
Her eyes found his; they were dark brown and unforgiving.

             
She was being passive-aggressive.

             
With a sigh, and a forced self-control that made her teeth ache, she nodded. “Fair enough.”

             
Chris nodded too; his smile returned, and just like that, he’d made his point and was happy to move along. “Okay, so lay it out for me.”

             
They walked from one end of the warehouse to the other, and Jess pointed out each and every little detail she felt necessary, working off her mental sketch of the white-on-white-on-white kitchen she’d always wanted. Chris made suggestions that would cut costs, but mostly, he jotted notes on his clipboard.

             
She came to a halt, hands on her hips, in front of a long row of professional grade ovens and squared off from him. “Now what?”

             
“Now,” his pencil went behind his ear, “we go order all this and schedule delivery. And Monday, we demo.”

             
The list he’d composed was long, and just looking at it gave her a headache, but she said, “Okay,” and followed him up to the register. Not trusting her newfound passive-aggressive urges, she slid her credit card through the reader and left everything else up to him, following silently back to the truck afterward.

             
He walked around to the passenger side, presumably to open the door for her (how chivalrous after calling her behavior “bullshit”) but paused with his hand hovering over the handle. She stared at his belt buckle until she realized she was going to keep staring at it, and then lifted her gaze to meet his.

             
He was smiling again – a sideways, knowing, possibly exasperated smile. Jess was slapped with the sudden knowledge that her husband had never, in their ten years together, smiled at her as much as this guy had smiled
today
. “Are you giving me the silent treatment now?” he asked. “You pissed at me?”

             
She didn’t know what she was, only that she’d anticipated a much more formal relationship with her contractor. “You remind me of my brother,” she told him, and watched his smile catch, a wince tugging at the corners of his eyes. “The big dumb one,” she clarified.

             
He opened her door. “Glad you’re being honest now,” he said wryly.

             
She lifted her brows to say
you asked for it
as she climbed up into the truck.

             
He lingered in the open door a moment, watching her. “You hungry?”

             
She’d skipped breakfast. “Maybe a little.”

             
“You wanna grab lunch?” he asked, still watching her profile with an attention she could
feel
.

             
Jess thought about the falling-apart house that awaited her, and her busy, bustling, driving-her-crazy family that was occupying it at the moment. “If you want.”

**

              Chris went on a lot of first dates. He went on a much smaller number of second dates, even fewer thirds, rarely ever a fourth, had been only serious about a girl once – and that had been before the Army – and had never been in too much danger of loving anyone. He supposed he and his brother were more alike that he wanted to think, in that respect. But the first dates he had down to a science; even if lunch with his employer wasn’t a date, per se, he’d never had so much trouble buying a woman a meal before. She’d fought him tooth and nail about paying for her salad and Coke until he’d bluntly reminded her how much change she’d dropped at Kitchen World just twenty minutes before.

             
She was still sore about the comment, he figured, as they sat in their window booth in not so companionable silence.

             
Summer sunlight came through the plate glass window and turned Jessica’s honeyed hair to molten gold, her eyes to bright emeralds. She picked at her salad with dainty bites and watched the cars inching through the drive-through line, not paying him a bit of attention.

             
Grappling for something benign to say, because she looked too lovely and forlorn across from him to leave alone, he finally decided her sister would be the least offensive topic. “How’d you talk your sister into all this?” he asked, and the glittering jewels of her eyes came to him.

             
She was not, he saw, upset. Her expression, a touch guarded, was otherwise relaxed. There was no animosity sparking behind the expertly-crafted, fine china face she presented to him. She started to smile, but didn’t. “Jo put up a fuss about it, but she was looking to get out of the nine-to-five grind anyway. She wants more kids and Tam’s got a decent job now…” She shrugged and glanced away from him, a frown threatening like she thought she’d said too much.

             
Chris wasn’t ready to give up, though. How could he at least not try when she sat there looking like she did? All flawless face and long legs and calculating green eyes. He’d reached an age at which the women he attracted were either his age or older – divorced with teenage children – or much too young and stupid as a box of rocks. It was rare that a beautiful thirty-year-old had lunch with him. Even rarer to be so blunt with a woman – like he had been back at the store – and it not blow up in his face.

             
“She’s younger than you, right?” he asked.

             
“By five years,” she said to the window.

             
“But you guys are close.”

             
Slowly, her head turned and her gaze came to his face, the barest hint of a humorless smile touching her perfect bow lips. “You do get that she has a husband, right? And they are nauseatingly in love with each other. So…” She lifted her pale brows and the meaning was clear: back off.

             
Damn
. Not the direction he’d been headed. “Oh, no, I know,” he said quickly. “No. I’m
not
chasing after your sister.”

             
He swore she looked straight through his skull and knew exactly who he
was
chasing after; her smile stretched, laughter creeping into her eyes. “Good. Tam would
murder
you.”

             
He thought of Jo’s black-haired, blue-eyed husband; the guy was probably about six feet even, but of average build. Chris wasn’t afraid for his life. “Take a swing at me maybe,” he countered, “but murder? Nah.”

             
Jess’s eyes moved over him and he knew she was sizing him up, pitting his six-two frame against her brother-in-law. Her smile twisted in a direction he didn’t follow. “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, you know,” she quoted the old adage.

             
With a silent grin he reached into the throat of his Polo shirt and withdrew his dog tags on their long chain.

             
Jessica’s tightly controlled smile gave way to blank shock, her brows jumping. “It does make a difference if the dog has tags, though,” she said, and dipped her head. “You win.”

             
“I’m not after your sister,” he said again, tucking the tags away, “I swear. I was just trying for a line of conversation that didn’t get you all mad at me again,” he admitted, and softened it with a smile.

             
Like back at the store, the bluntness bounced right off of her without appearing to offend her in any way. “Touché.” She stabbed at her salad, spearing a tomato. “Okay, then. So…you’re ex-military?”

             
“Army Ranger.”

             
“I’m impressed.”

             
“Tell that to my old man and big brother,” he said with a snort. “They were in the Corps.”

             
“There’s a freakshow in every family,” she said with another smile that was really just a hint of one. “I’ve just gained that title in my family, so you’re in good company.”

             
“I would have said that anyway,” he said, knowing it was cheesy. He was right, though.

Her elegant little nose scrunched up as she said, “
That
wasn’t dorky or anything.” And Chris made a mental note to buy Jordan Walker a really nice bottle of Scotch to thank him for introducing him to his “not cool,” completely infatuating sister.

**

              Despite the fact that she felt it inappropriate to have a casual lunch with her contractor – she was half convinced he had a crush on her at this point – Jess enjoyed herself. She quizzed him about his time in the army, learning that he’d gone into the military at twenty-two and finally been deployed to Afghanistan, serving both there and Iraq before a knee injury had forced retirement. She liked the matter-of-fact way he talked about his service, not bragging or making it sound like anything more than a job – a job he’d probably done well and with great initiative. His super quick and efficient approach to renovation made much more sense now. By the time they climbed back in his truck, Jess had decided she thoroughly approved of her new contractor – on multiple levels.