Fix You (17 page)

             
“What are you doing?” Her voice sounded hysterical, and it brought his head around, his eyes finding hers.

             
“I gotta pull it out. You’re stuck in your shoe otherwise and we gotta clean it up.” His voice was even, calm, soothing. “It’s gonna hurt like a bitch, but it has to come out, sweetheart.”

             
Sweetheart
got lost on its way to the rational parts of her brain, drowned out by the thumping pain and the dizzy rush of seeing the screw lodged deep in the tread of her shoe. He was right, she knew – it had to come out – and since it was her foot and no vital organs were involved, there was no danger involved in removing it themselves. Except it was going to hurt like a mother.

             
He watched her, dark eyes flecked with gold in the sunlight, waiting for her to give him the go-ahead. She nodded.

             
“Close your eyes,” he instructed, but she didn’t, instead went light-headed as she watched him take the head of the screw between thumb and forefinger and draw it out in a slow, straight line.

             
Jess ground her teeth together, fighting nausea and a fresh glazing of tears, fingers clenching tight on the step until she felt splinters biting into her palm. The threads of the screw – and it was a long damn screw – were bloody. The yard spun before her and she tilted sideways, colliding with Chris’s shoulder and not able to pull away. She detested feeling helpless, but she sat, impassive, as he unlaced her sneaker and eased it off, hooked a thumb in her bloodied sock and drew it down to her toes.

             
She blinked away the tears and her eyes went to the wound. It was a jagged, weeping red puncture as big around as a pencil eraser. The pain, already terrible, was amplified by the perfect, gory knowledge of what had happened to her foot. For a woman who’d given birth, she felt horribly weak to be brought so low by a screw.

             
“I shoulda made sure you had boots,” Chris said, his voice moving through her where she touched him. “You need boots with a steel shank,” he explained, “so that won’t happen.”

             
“I didn’t know,” she groaned.

             
“I know. I should have told you.”

             
Hurried footsteps came across the drive, crunching in the gravel. “Jess!” her sister called. “What’s wrong?”

             
Jess forced herself upright and turned her head to see that Ellie had arrived – her Explorer nosed up behind the Tahoe – and that Jo was rushing toward them, wearing the exact sort of boot that would have prevented Jess’s current predicament.

             
“She stepped on a screw,” Chris said as Jo reached them. “It went all the way through her shoe into her foot.”

             
“Ew,” Jo said, pulling a face, but she bent her head over Jess’s foot and inspected it. She was – or had been – a vet tech, after all. Blood didn’t bother her. “How’d you manage that?”

             
“Dunno.” Jess was, for some reason, mortified. For Jo to see her leaning against their contractor, helpless, felt pathetic. “Just a clumsy stupid oaf, I guess.”

             
“Nah.” Chris bumped his shoulder lightly into hers in a comforting gesture. “Happens to the best of us. Except most of my guys bawl like babies when it does.”

             
She hurt too badly to tease with him, instead looked up at Jo. “Do you have the first aid kit? I guess I need some peroxide and gauze - ”

             
“And a tetanus shot,” Chris said, to which Jo nodded.

             
“No. I’m not going to the hospital.”

             
Jo opened her mouth to protest, but Chris beat her to it.

             
He chuckled. “Yeah. Like we’re gonna listen to that. You know you have to have one, so you might as well not argue about it.” She twisted her head to look at him and found a seriousness shining in his eyes, despite his smile. “I’ll throw you over my shoulder and put you in the car if I have to.” And he meant it, too.

             
“What about the kitchen?” she asked. “We have to clean up all that mess - ”

             
“I’ll get started while you two run to the ER. You can help when you get back.”

             
Jess frowned. “That’s a big job.”

             
“It’s what I do for a living, remember? I can handle it.”

             
Jess kept frowning. For a little while in there, she’d forgotten that she’d hired Chris; as they’d worked, it had felt like he’d wanted to be there.

**

              He made close to a hundred trips from the house to the big dumpster that had been delivered and set back off the driveway between the mansion and the cottage. The cabinets he hauled out by hand, but the finer debris he put into orange Home Depot buckets that he lugged out two at a time. It was on one of these trips that Ellie came out to see him, Tyler and Jo’s little girl, Willa, safely visible at the sandbox behind her. He saw her from the corner of his eye; she folded her arms over her distended, pregnant-with-twins belly and watched him as he dumped the contents of both buckets into the dumpster.

             
“Do you regret that I gave out your card yet?” she asked when he turned to her.

             
She was a pretty girl; he’d thought so from the moment they’d met at her front door, right before she’d turned and puked into the front bushes, turning pink as she’d hastily explained her terrible morning sickness. Today her dark hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, her bangs and dozens of loose wisps curling in the humidity, gray eyes the color of mercury out in the sun. She was a little too young and sweet-looking for his tastes, but he liked her; he wasn’t sure how anyone could escape forming a fondness for her. Jordan absolutely doted on her.

             
“Nope,” he assured. “I’m thinking of making you my head of marketing if you find me another job like this.”

             
Her eyes went to the house and a smile touched her lips. “Another house like this?” she asked, and then her gaze returned to him. “Or another
homeowner
like this?”

             
Chris wanted to laugh, but was too startled to hear the guess come from her, of all people.

             
Her smile stretched knowingly. “My hubby says I’d make a great spy because I look like I’m fifteen and couldn’t possibly understand ‘adult’ motivations.”

             
He did laugh at that. “Sweet guy.”

             
“Oh, he is.” Her smile became a little wistful. “But seriously. Delta thinks you have eyes on Jess. Do you?”

             
He kept his tone congenial enough, but said, “I’m not answering that.”

             
She heaved a little sigh and her mouth twitched to the side. “So I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’”

             
“And I’ll take that to mean you’ve been gossiping about me.”

             
Her eyes narrowed, but not in a threatening way. “I think very highly of you, Chris, but I –
we
- are all worried about Jess.” She let the statement stand on its own, the rest of her concern unvoiced.

             
Had anyone but Ellie Walker been hinting at a threat, he would have told them to shove it. But Ellie, pregnant before she was able to drink legally, the baker of the best white chocolate macadamia nut cookies he’d ever tasted, had always spoken of the family she’d married into in such glowing terms. She was being protective and not meddlesome.

             
“I’m not gonna do wrong by your sister-in-law,” he told her, and knew it was true. If one thing led to another, he was damn sure going to jump on the chance, but he had no intentions of doing anything to hurt Jess on purpose.

             
He watched Ellie relax, her narrow shoulders dropping. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business,” she said, “but I just felt like I had to say it.”

             
“I get it.”             

             
She nodded, smiled.

             
“But since you brought it up - ”

             
Her brows slipped up beneath her bangs.

             
“ – what’s the story with the ex?”

             
Her eyes narrowed again. “That’s
really
none of my business.”

             
“Come on,” he prompted. “I saw the new girlfriend on Saturday.”

             
Ellie snorted. “’Girlfriend’ is being kind. His little
trollop
.”

**

              Four hours, one tetanus shot and a whole spool of gauze later, Jo parked the Tahoe in front of the mansion and killed the engine. Jess’s foot still throbbed and wept, and she couldn’t put her full weight on it; she had to walk up on her toes and it looked ridiculous.

             
“I still can’t believe I did that,” she grumbled as she slid down to the gravel, standing on her good foot. “I wasted half the day being a clumsy idiot.”

             
“Oh, but we had such fun in the ER,” Jo deadpanned as she came around to offer an arm. She grinned. “And you got the prince charming treatment from Chris.”

             
“Ugh.” Jess shut her door and refused her sister’s offered help. “
That’s
what I need: him thinking I’m a damsel.”

             
Keeping pace beside her as they headed for the house, Jo gave her a curious look.

             
“He’s obnoxious.”

             
Jo twitched a strange little smile, then said, “I’m gonna check on Ellie and the babies. I’ll come find you in a minute,” and branched off toward the cottage.

             
Jess told herself that Chris’s “obnoxious” kindness wasn’t anything she needed as she hobbled up to the house, turned up the back steps and hopped, one-footed, to the kitchen door that stood wide open. Then she banished the thought.

             
The trash heap that had been the room before she left for the ER was completely empty and free of all debris. The plywood sub-floor had been picked and swept clean. The space looked cavernous. And Chris was busy fitting new insulation between the wall studs.

             
He paused when the afternoon sun threw her shadow – long and skinny – across the floor. Still holding the strip of insulation with one hand, he lowered the stapler he held with the other and his gaze came to her face, smiling. “She’s alive.”

             
“You did everything,” she said in a blank, uncomprehending voice. For some reason, she felt a little robbed of the chance to clean up the mess she’d made. She wasn’t used to relinquishing responsibility; it was a miracle she let her sister and sisters-in-law watch her kid.

             
“No,” he disagreed. “I’ve gotta finish what I’m doing and my guy’s coming to drywall tomorrow so we actually have something to hang your new cabinets on.” When she didn’t respond, he asked, “How’s your foot?”

             
Her right sneaker was unlaced and she was resting the leg, just her toe touching the ground. “I’ve got a round of antibiotics to keep it from getting infected.”

             
He grinned. “I meant, how does it
feel
? Does it hurt?”

             
“It’s fine,” she lied.

             
He watched her a moment, clearly not believing her, then returned to stapling up insulation. “Come in and see what you think.”

             
She limped toward him, head revolving on her neck as she took stock. “The electrical is okay?” she asked. “The plumbing?” When she finished her inspection and her eyes latched onto his face, she was expecting a frown, and not the impressed look he was giving her.

             
“Crossing all your Ts?”

             
“I have to.”

             
He nodded, his smile approving. “Pete says the plumbing was updated probably early nineties – it’s all copper and PVC and up to code.”

             
“Small miracles.”

             
“Yeah. Arturo’s coming by first thing in the morning to make sure the wiring’s good, then the guys and I’ll close up the walls. Does that work?”

             
It wasn’t like she had a choice; she couldn’t
force
them to work any faster. But she appreciated that they seemed to be on the same page when it came to efficiency. “Yes.”