Читать книгу The Majors' Holiday Hideaway - Caro Carson - Страница 13

Chapter Four

The contractor was so hot. Like...lava hot.

Helen hadn’t even dropped a hint about that. Maybe she’d thought India would be heartbroken over Gerard-Pierre. She hadn’t sounded heartbroken when they’d chatted, had she? But fresh from a breakup or not, a woman would have to be dead not to notice that contractor. And he’d flirted with her.

She curled her toes into the plush carpet of the master bedroom. She felt great. She’d slept without the sounds of a TV coming from another room. She’d slept without having her service uniform all laid out on the chair by her bed, a fresh white blouse and sheer nude hose ready to make their demands the second her alarm clock went off. India wriggled her pantyhose-free toes. Without setting an alarm, she’d slept until seven in the morning in this time zone. Fifteen blissful, uninterrupted hours.

That would probably not happen again, though. She had to get the dog back from the neighbor’s today. She was no expert on dogs, since she’d never owned one, but she doubted any dog would let her sleep for fifteen hours without needing to go out. She wandered into the kitchen, where Helen had left her a long note with all the information she’d thought India might need. Wi-Fi password—check. Veterinarian’s phone number—check. Neighbor’s phone number—check—followed by a list of the workers that had already been scheduled before Helen had said it was fate that they could swap houses.

Helen had left the general contractor’s name and number as the person to call if anything went wrong with the house. Nicholas Harmon. The boss. Nicholas practically oozed testosterone. She had no doubt he could keep a bunch of subcontractors in line with ease. He was probably former military. He had that posture. The haircut, too.

Nicholas had the dark coloring of many Italians, the square jaw and strong bone structure that made her think of Germany, but he was unmistakably American. There was something about Americans that she’d never been able to put her finger on, but she could always spot a countryman without hearing their accent first. She herself was rarely mistaken for any other nationality anywhere she went, although she couldn’t say what, exactly, made her look American.

In short, he was perfect, this Nicholas. When Helen had said your man, this guy had been who India had imagined. Helen had also said, It’s like fate.

India felt her stomach twist.

She needed food. There was half a loaf of bread in the ginormous new pantry. She put a couple of slices in the toaster and pressed the lever. She glanced around the brand-spanking-new kitchen with its brand-new appliances, then she turned back to the toaster and stared at the bread. There was nothing else to do, nothing to distract her from her thoughts.

From thinking about the way he’d laughed. That wink.

Her stomach twisted a little more.

Fate seemed kind of heavy. It was more like a wish that had come true. A fantasy had materialized in her friend’s garage. A sexual fantasy, no mistake about it, which had awakened parts of India’s body and brain that she’d been content to let hibernate while she’d fallen into an undemanding, platonic routine with Gerard-Pierre.

Her body was making demands now. She wanted to see Nicholas again.

And then what?

Good question. She was only here for a week. On Christmas Eve day, she was going to drive three hours to San Antonio to a bed-and-breakfast. Helen had booked it for herself and Tom, and she’d insisted India use their reservation. San Antonio was a great little tourist town, Helen had assured her, with the Alamo to visit and the River Walk to mosey along for shopping and dining. The morning of the twenty-fourth, the contractor was having some polyurethane work done on the floors and grout, and they’d need to leave the windows open to let out the noxious fumes, even though it was winter. India would be warm in the B&B instead.

India would be stir-crazy after a week of isolation, anyway, and Helen had known it.

But first, India would be here for a week. A week wasn’t long enough to develop a relationship with a man. India didn’t sleep with a man unless she was in a committed relationship.

Really? Because you were in a committed relationship, but you still weren’t sleeping with Gerard-Pierre.

Things had cooled off with Bernardo after she’d met his family, too. And Adolphus? They’d slept together, of course, after a few months of coffee conversations in bookstores. He preferred Saturdays, when he could spend the night without worrying about making it on time to work the next day. They’d had some nice Saturday nights, but frankly, he’d been more excited about exploring the possibility that she was his intellectual soul mate than he’d been about actually being a bedmate.

It had been okay. Sex was not the most important part of a relationship. India was certain that was true, but...

She’d had enough relationships without any sex. What would it be like to have sex without a relationship?

Knock first. I’ll let you in.

Promise? He’d winked at her, six feet of masculinity with a wicked smile.

India stared at the toaster for a few more seconds before she realized it wasn’t toasting anything. Feeling ten kinds of stupid, she plugged in the toaster.

Nothing happened. She moved the toaster to the other side of the stove, where there was another outlet. That one was dead, too.

She went into the garage and took a quick peek at the fuse box. None of the switches had been tripped. That meant the electrical outlets were dead for some other reason, and the problem was going to require a professional to take a look at it. Like, say, the general contractor.

What a perfect twist of fate.

India went back into the kitchen and dialed the contractor’s number. Oh, Nicholas? Come over and knock on my door.

A woman answered, but she sounded like a secretary. Please be a secretary. “Could you ask Nicholas to stop by 490 Cedar Highway today? The electrical outlets in the kitchen are dead.”

Then India abandoned the cold bread in favor of a hot shower and fresh clothes and a touch of makeup, because her outlets might be dead, but her libido no longer was.

* * *

Fabio was trying to kiss him.

No—he was trying to make out with him, hot breath and slobbery tongue dragging Aiden out of his sleep.

Aiden pushed away the dog’s head. “No means no, Fabio.”

The dog backed up a step on the mattress but kept staring at him, panting.

“Don’t look so hopeful. I’ve never had a thing for blondes.” Hadn’t he been dreaming of a brunette? Aiden squinted at the clock by his bed. Nine o’clock?

He stared at the numbers a moment, as if they couldn’t be right. Aiden hadn’t slept until nine o’clock in...hell, in at least four years. Even when he was stationed stateside at a staff job, as he was now, the army required him to be up at an earlier hour. He was awake, dressed in his PT uniform and ready for PT—physical training—by six on most mornings. If there was no PT, he was in the office by seven. On the days he was off, Poppy and Olympia were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed by seven o’clock, too, clambering onto his bed and chattering about whatever they were thinking about that minute, perhaps wondering if a teddy bear could be rainbow-colored or if Daddy could make pink grapes instead of green grapes. I don’t decide what color grapes can be.

Why?

They grow on vines. Daddy can’t make vines do things.

Why?

Because I’m not the boss of plants. Let Daddy brew some coffee.

Nine o’clock.

He’d forgotten about sleeping in. He hadn’t known his body was still capable of it—but it sure was. He rolled onto his back and ruffled the dog’s ear. It was the first silver lining of this week of enforced bachelorhood: sleeping late. He wouldn’t set an alarm for a week. He’d take the dog back to the neighbors’ house today and see if he slept later than nine tomorrow.

The neighbors’ house. India. Beautiful, gray-eyed India.

An awareness traveled over his skin, crossing his chest, his stomach, lower. He could call it lust, but it wasn’t anything as base as simply getting hard. It was a sense of electric anticipation, a sizzle of energy washing over all of his skin, waking up every inch of his body—his fingertips, his eyelids, his scalp. It was as if the image of her in his mind’s eye had all his senses reaching out, all the cells in his body searching for her.

He caught his breath at the foreign sensation. Too electric. Too aware. He sat up and pushed off the sheets.

The dog jumped off the bed and faced him, tail wagging in excitement.

“Let’s just call it lust, okay?”

Aiden could handle that. That, he remembered how to do. He’d taken a woman he’d known for a while to Dallas for a weekend...when? Months ago. She liked to say they were friends with benefits, but he’d still insisted on paying for the tickets to the Aerosmith concert. The dinner. The hotel room. Lust was basic—he could definitely handle that.

The dog barked once in approval. Aiden had sat up, so the dog wanted him to stand up. “I hear you, boy. Let’s get you fed and walked, and I’ll take you to meet your new house sitter.”

If anticipation prickled down his spine, touching each and every vertebra, it was simply lust.

He could handle it.

* * *

India was beside herself with anticipation.

She was on alert, ears tuned with almost painful eagerness to any sound in the driveway, until, at last, she heard the low sound of an engine, the slam of a door. Wait for it...

When she heard the metallic sound of a tailgate being lowered, she hit the button to open the garage door. Why make the man walk up the bricked path to knock on the formal front door? He was parked by the garage, and she was already certain he was going to want to test her fuse box. The question was, would she test her courage and flirt her way to a little more? A lot more? Would she? Could she?

The garage-door opener turned a heavy chain. The door lifted slowly, its new wheels rolling smoothly in their tracks. India hastily gave her hair one last fluff and tried to strike just the right pose: casual, yet sexy. She was wearing jeans, yet her hoop earrings were sized to be stylish, not subtle.

I can do this. Why not? Consenting adults, safe sex. I’ll never see him again after a week. No embarrassing scenes with a former lover. No awkward evenings avoiding each other at an embassy dinner. No running into him at a café as he dated the next woman. A perfect holiday fling, if Nicholas was willing and able.

The rising door revealed the toes of cowboy boots, then denim that bunched a little at the ankles. More denim—up, up, revealing that hot body inch by inch. The man had certainly looked able yesterday.

I can’t do this. Wasn’t this how porn movies started? The electrician came over and the lonely housewife greeted him at the door, her hair fluffed up and her lip gloss on? Oh, dear God, I’m imitating a porn movie. I can’t do a porn movie.

India held her breath. Flirting. She was just going to flirt a little, see where it went. That, she could handle.

As the garage door rose, the denim got a little wider at the waist. The shirt covered a little bit of a paunch...

Wait. No.

The rising door revealed narrow shoulders, a weathered face and a white beard. A friendly smile. “Mornin’, ma’am. I’m Nicholas Harmon. Pleased to meet you.”

“Nicholas Harmon,” she echoed, her voice a little high-pitched as arousal and disappointment stretched her nerves to the limit. “Of course. Nice to meet you, too.”

“Let’s see what’s going on in the house.”

Nothing.

Glumly, she followed him into the kitchen after he pulled a toolbox out of his truck bed. It was a good thing she hadn’t been trying to recreate a porn movie; she would have given the man a heart attack if she’d been standing there in lingerie.

Lingerie. Good one. She didn’t own any lingerie. She wore skin-tone bras with lightly padded cups to ensure her nipples never showed through the white business shirt of her uniform.

The memory of a lacy, teal bra sent a little lick of anger through her system, shaking her out of her glum state.

Nicholas stuck some kind of metal probe into the outlets, informed her they were dead—yes, I’m well aware of that—then started unscrewing outlets.

India leaned against the marble kitchen island and read Helen’s note again. A landscaper was coming two days from now to plant a pair of cypress trees, one on either side of the front door. That couldn’t be her man; hers had been working on bookcases. The same day, a shower door was going to be installed in the hallway bathroom—allow three hours. A gutter hadn’t been installed correctly on the west side of the house. They were coming to reinstall it three days from now. Helen had written that India didn’t need to be home for that one.

India ran down the list, frowning. There was no mention of bookcases, no trim carpenter scheduled to spend a day this week. Maybe he was supposed to have finished yesterday, before she’d arrived.

After Nicholas fixed the wiring and screwed the outlets back into the wall, she walked him out to the garage and gave her best nonchalant nod to the stack of planks. “When does the carpenter come out to finish the bookcases?”

“I don’t know anything about bookcases. There’s nothing in the plans about built-in bookcases.”

“But the carpenter was here. Yesterday.”

“He wasn’t one of my subcontractors.” His friendly face got a little less friendly. “I’ll be calling Tom and Helen about that. There aren’t supposed to be any workers in here that I didn’t hire. That’s very clear in the contract. I hire all the subcontractors.”

Great. Some house sitter she was, getting the general contractor all riled up so he’d call the homeowners on their honeymoon. “They must not be built-ins. That was my assumption. I’m sure Tom and Helen didn’t hire anyone to work on the house behind your back.” Then she pinned him down with her don’t-screw-with-me glare. She was, after all, an army officer. “Tom and Helen aren’t the kind of people who’d dishonor a contract with you, are they?”

He looked away first. “You’re right, you’re right. Well, I’ll be off now.”

“Thank you for coming out so quickly.”

Nicholas left.

India returned to the kitchen.

The silence settled in, broken only by the hum of the fridge as it cycled on. A kitchen clock with an art deco pendulum ticked steadily.

She sat on a bar stool at the cool marble countertop. Thank goodness she hadn’t laid out a little Bloody Mary station here. She’d considered putting out the Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce that she’d seen in the fridge, the tomato juice and the vodka, so the hot bookcase man could make his drink as hot as he liked it.

Oh! Do you like Bloody Marys? I was just going to make myself one when you drove up. Help yourself to whatever you want. In her mind, she sounded like a seductress. Show me what you like.

In reality, she wasn’t that kind of seductress, and she knew it. Fortunately, before Nicholas had arrived, she’d decided to put away the two glasses she’d placed rather obviously by an outlet. At least she hadn’t had to awkwardly offer a glass of tomato juice to a general contractor who resembled Santa more than a hot guy in a tool belt.

The clock kept ticking.

India had already unpacked. She’d showered. She’d eaten. She had time on her hands, time to be alone with her own thoughts. It was what she’d thought she wanted, but now it didn’t seem like much of a holiday. A holiday was supposed to be a change from one’s normal life, something different, something exciting to explore. But she was alone and, as she stared out the kitchen window at empty land, she realized that was nothing new.

Brussels was such a lively city, it was easy to feel like she was connected to people. She was surrounded by people. She ate at sidewalk cafés that jammed little chairs so close together, she sat shoulder to shoulder with people. She went to the market with a crowd of people. She crammed into the elevator with other people at NATO headquarters. She had a boss. She had subordinates. She even had a boyfriend.

But she’d been alone, just as alone as being the only human for miles, sitting in an empty four-bedroom house on acres of empty land. She had no one to share her thoughts with here, but she didn’t share her thoughts with strangers at sidewalk cafés, either. The only thing she talked about at the market was the price of endive. At work, she addressed her superior as “sir.” Her own team called her “ma’am.” Her boyfriend was awake while she slept, and now she knew that when he slept, it was with someone else.

Her stomach churned.

Was she so desperate for a human connection that she would have offered sex to a stranger this morning? A total stranger?

She dropped her face into her hands and wallowed in her own foolishness for a moment.

Foolish—but she’d been undeniably excited as she’d waited for him to arrive. So alive with hope for...something.

Whoever he was, he’d said he’d come back to finish before Christmas. He might not return until Christmas Eve day, when she’d be on her way to San Antonio and the house would be full of cold air and noxious fumes. Nicholas had said the workers wanted to get started by seven in the morning, so they could finish by lunch, what with it being Christmas Eve and all, ma’am.

The week stretched ahead of her, six more nights. Helen had warned her there would be nothing to do here, hadn’t she? It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours yet, and India was already feeling stifled in a house big enough to hold four of her apartments.

She supposed she could start perfecting her own Bloody Mary recipe. Sure. Drinking alone wouldn’t be depressing at all. She could add some salty tears in there for flavor. Ha ha ha.

Outdoors, the weather was about ten degrees warmer than Brussels, but the sunshine was ten times as bright. Texas was known for blistering hot summers, but that meant it had sunny winters, too. India checked the coat closet and found Helen’s red, double-breasted peacoat.

She might as well go out and be lonely in the sunshine.