Читать книгу Tangled Sheets, Tangled Lies - Julie Hogan - Страница 10

By four o’clock the next afternoon, Lauren was so frustrated she wanted to cry. She peered over the top of the dog-eared, grease-stained piece of paper at the two potbellied brothers sitting on her antique settee who were, unfortunately, only the latest marchers in the parade of inexperienced candidates who’d come to apply for her job. But these brothers were different. While the others had been merely amusingly underqualified, these two were downright offensive.

From the moment she’d answered the door fifteen minutes earlier, she’d felt their oily gazes as distinctly as if they were touching her. Luckily, only a few minutes after they’d arrived, Cole had come in to change the lock on her front door. And though it pained her to admit it, having him there was reassuring.

As she pretended to read the Beer Boys’s list of references, she glanced over at Cole. He was entirely too sure of himself—and probably getting a good laugh out of this, she thought, her gaze lingering on him for a moment as he worked with graceful efficiency. Sitting before her was graphic proof that Cole Travis was the best man for the job. And let’s face it, she told herself, when it came to everything she was looking for in a man…er, handyman, these two lumps weren’t even in the same galaxy as Cole.

Suddenly, as if he could hear her thoughts, Cole looked over at the brothers and a deep frown settled in between his brows. Even in profile, his posture and demeanor were intense, ready.

In spite of a little voice inside her that tried to assure her with, “I can take care of myself, I always have!” she felt a warm sense of ease settling over her as she lowered the paper.

“So, ummm…” She looked back down at their “resume.” “Bobby, Johnny.” She looked up at them. “All the people you have listed as references seem to have the same last name as you do.”

They grinned at each other, displaying crooked teeth yellowed, she assumed, by chewing tobacco. “Yeah. We been working around our daddy’s place all our lives.”

“I see,” she said as an image from Deliverance flashed through her mind. She glanced at Cole again before trudging on with the interview. “And what kind of work do you know how to do?”

“We can do anything you want us to do,” Bobby said. Beside him, Johnny wiggled his eyebrows at her and added suggestively, “And then some.”

And even as the meaning behind his words sank into her consciousness, she saw Cole shoot to his feet, a muscle working in his jaw like a two-ton piston. When he spoke, there was a dangerous timbre to his voice. “I think the lady is asking if you understand the most basic things about construction. Like repairing lath and plaster walls?” Their expressions were blank. “Or glazing windows? Replacing tongue-and-groove flooring?” Their faces were as unresponsive as monks in a deep trance. “How about something simple, like hanging and taping drywall?”

After several long moments of silence, Lauren heard Cole make an impatient noise that sounded almost like a snort before going back to work on the lock, now with a little more vigor. Annoyance at Cole’s interference warred with amusement at the idiocy written on the Beer Boys’s faces as they exchanged nervous glances.

“Who’s he?” Bobby asked, looking over one sloped shoulder at Cole.

“I’m the interim handyman,” Cole said in a loud growl.

The brothers went cross-eyed as they struggled with the word “interim.”

“He’s doing the job temporarily,” she interpreted.

“Oh,” they said in unison. “Okay.”

She stood up. “Well, I think I’ve got all the information I’ll need. I’ll call you if you get the job.” Or if you’re the last men on earth, whichever comes first.

Moments later, Lauren watched the two men amble out the front door and wondered how one little town could have so many inept handymen. Her hopes for getting Simpson’s Gems ready on time were beginning to wane.

If she wanted the job done she was going to have to hire Mr. Tempting. She knew it, but it still bothered her—because hell, he still bothered her. But as she turned to face Cole, the words, “you’re hired,” died before they could be uttered. His thunderous expression was enough to stop her cold.

“What were you thinking?” he demanded, his lips drawn into a tight line.

For a moment, Lauren could only stare. What was his problem? “What are you talking about?”

“Those two, that’s what. What were you thinking inviting those two losers into your house?”

Her temper flared up then, and she narrowed her eyes and straightened up to her full five foot nine. “Thinking? I was thinking of hiring a handyman, Mr. Travis.”

“The name’s Cole,” he said, a muscle jumping at his jawline. “And if you were really looking for a handyman, you would have seen that there’s one standing in your living room right now.”

“I think I made it clear that I’d be interviewing before I made a decision. And I don’t require your help with the interviews, by the way.”

Cole’s laugh held not a single ounce of humor. “Well, it sure looked like you needed help with those two.”

Lauren planted her fists on her hips. “I was handling it fine, Cole. Believe me, I’ve been handling that type for a long time.”

“It sure didn’t look that way to me.”

Pure, unmitigated exasperation made her blurt out, “Then maybe you shouldn’t be looking.” She took a deep breath before she spoke again, cooling her voice by at least twenty degrees. “Besides, don’t you have work to do?”

His eyebrow arched up, questioning her. “Are you saying I’ve got the job?”

Cole watched Lauren’s straight white teeth bite softly into her lush lower lip, the mere sight of which sent a streak of heat whooshing through him so fast, he felt like he was a match and she was the striking plate.

Several long tense moments hung between them before she said, “I have several other people coming today.”

“Really?” He leaned his shoulder against the doorframe with an ease that he didn’t come anywhere near feeling. “Another high school boy, like the one this morning? Or,” he said with a twist of his head toward the porch, “more victims of inbreeding like those two?”

She let out a little hiss of annoyance. “I have a very qualified man coming any minute.” She tipped her chin up in a way that he now recognized as a sign of stubbornness. “And I’d appreciate it if you weren’t underfoot when he gets here.”

Underfoot? He’d never been underfoot in his life. Granted, he had stepped over the line with his spontaneous interview of the two liquored up, would-be handymen. But what she didn’t know was that he’d heard them talking about her as they’d gotten out of their truck. And what he’d overheard had been enough to make him grab the first project he could find and head inside.

If he hadn’t been there, how far would those beer-soaked pinheads have taken their drunken ramblings? It didn’t really matter, of course. The fact was that he had been here when they’d undressed her with their eyes and he’d seen her reaction. And that’s when he knew he had to get this job for another reason: whether Lauren liked it or not, he was going to make sure nothing happened to her or to Jem—at least until he found out what he needed to know.

Cole put his own anger on ice, knelt down and began to put his tools away. “How long are you gonna keep this up?”

“Until the pool of applicants is exhausted,” she said, her worn-down voice lacking the conviction of her words.

“They looked pretty exhausted to me.” He tossed her the new keys to the house and she caught them handily. “C’mon, Lauren, you know I’m the best man for you.”

As her eyes darkened and her lips parted in surprise, Cole felt another flash of heat pass between them for the briefest moment. Just a moment, but long enough for him to glimpse a vision of her beneath him, her moan of pleasure, her long legs tangled with his—and then she composed her face into that damned serene expression she’d obviously developed for the cameras long ago and the image was gone.

“You really do have the most awful ego, Cole.” She shook her head in wonder and the action spilled her dark hair around her bare shoulders in a fluid drape.

Although he had a sudden urge to reach out and touch that silky mass of hair, he managed to dredge up a laid-back smile, the one he used when he told one of his subcontractors that their bid was out of line with reality. “Thank you. One of my many strong suits, I assure you.”

She was smiling, but as her chin tipped up again in defiance, he realized just how much he was enjoying their sparring. He was still anticipating her return volley when the doorbell chimed with a sad, mournful clunk. He put the doorbell on his mental list of projects and reached for the crystal knob.

“The next man must be here,” he said, smiling. “I’ll get it.”

“Don’t you dare!” She swept down on him, grabbing his hand where it was wrapped around the doorknob.

And then she froze right there, practically holding his hand. Searing heat bulleted up his arm as he breathed deeply of the sweet scent of her, but he, too, seemed incapable of movement.

Finally, after what seemed like a hundred years of silence stretched out between them, he managed to rally his vocal chords. “Lauren,” he said, “let me be a gentleman.”

“You, Mr. Travis,” she said as she let go, “are no gentleman.” She was smiling again, but he saw her eyes burning with the same fire that continued to rage inside him.

With a Herculean effort, he turned away from her, opened the door—and saw a nervous, pimpled teenager, his baseball cap turned backward, his baggy jeans hanging low on his hips.

Cole smiled widely. “Good afternoon,” he said, relief filling him at the certainty that he was one step closer to the job. He turned to Lauren. “I believe your next applicant is here.” Then he leaned toward her and said in a whisper, “And I think it’s going to be okay to leave you alone with this one.”

By the time the sun had begun to hang low in the mottled-orange western sky, Lauren was at the end of her rope. And it had been a surprisingly short trip.

She stood up and showed her final applicant to the door. “Thank you for coming by,” she said as she shook yet another teenage boy’s slim, soft hand.

“Thank you, Miz Simpson,” and his voice was so uneven she thought it must’ve changed just last week.

As the eminently unqualified boy walked down the driveway, she saw Cole working on shoring up the ram-shackle barn doors in the dim light of dusk. Her pulse sped up as he turned around, and gave her a half smile that had “why on earth are you making this so hard?” written all over it.

Why, indeed, she thought to herself as she watched Cole turn and lift one of the huge doors off its hinges and carry it inside the barn. The references he’d slipped under her door before he’d left the previous night had checked out beautifully. The four people she’d called had been so rhapsodic in their praise, she’d thought perhaps he’d written their scripts himself. But even if that were so, she’d already seen what he could do. He was a good worker, and he was fast. At the rate he was going, he could have the barn and the house fixed up in plenty of time for her grand opening, then he’d fire up his beater of a truck, scoot out of town and her life would return to normal.

Or at least what she imagined was normal, she thought as she turned to go back into the house. After all, she was only just starting to get her life back together after her highly publicized breakup with Miles Landon, the man who’d finally broken her Jerk-O-Meter—not to mention her heart—with his betrayal.

Lauren sat down on the antique sofa she’d bought for a song at a tag sale in Maine and pulled her legs up beneath her. The broken heart was her own fault, of course. Growing up as she had, she’d always been wary of close relationships, but when she’d met Miles, the lure of his personality and magnetism had been undeniable. Like an idiot, she’d let her guard down and taken the chance. And then, predictably, it had all gone to hell.

Miles was a Rock Star—with a capital R and a capital S—and even though he’d been on the road or in the studio much of the time, she’d thought they’d loved each other. Then, two hundred and twenty-two days ago, while standing in line at the grocery store, Lauren had read all about Miles’s infidelity in People. She’d found out in a glossy, two-page spread that Miles, who was supposed to be recording in London, was living right there in Hollywood with a wispy, redheaded A-list actress.

That was Day One of Lauren’s yearlong sabbatical from men. Three hundred and sixty-five days of no distractions, of peace and quiet to spend with her son, building a new life and a thriving business.

Lauren straightened and gazed out at her front yard that lay beyond the living room’s ancient leaded glass windows. Where in heaven’s name had her control gone? Where was that familiar, dependable control that had practically been her shadow since she was about Jem’s age, living a chaotic life in home number five with that hardhearted alcoholic couple? Her experience with them had been awful, but it had taught her to be pleasant, even-tempered and totally in control, no matter what life threw at her.

Don’t get too close and don’t rely on anyone. Those were her rules. Unfortunately, she’d broken them not only for Miles, but also for a few other handpicked jokers—and she’d lived to regret it. Oh, they’d all seemed normal at first but each and every one had turned out to be jerks or philanderers, and one had been struggling with his sexual identity. When she was twenty, it was a photographer; at twenty-one, she’d taken a chance on a much older magazine editor; at twenty-three, it’d been a fashion designer and a professional baseball player; then, at twenty-five, the coup de grâce, Miles.

And now there was Cole Travis. She had to hire him, even though when he smiled at her, or argued with her, or basically stood within ten feet of her, she felt so damned powerless she wanted to run into the streets screaming. He was a man who threatened everything she’d worked so hard to reconstruct—and he was a man who was leaving in six weeks, she reminded herself sternly, and she’d best remember that every time she got her priorities mixed up.

It was time to get some real advice, she thought as she grabbed her car keys, got in her enormous, brand-new SUV and drove to pick Jem up from his playgroup at the Bouchard’s house a few blocks away.

As she strapped the seat belt over him, she asked, “You want to go check the sign with me before we go home, honey?”

“Yeah!” he said, clapping his hands.

She smiled and tousled his unruly mop of hair. Never in her life had anyone supported her eccentricities the way her son did. And this quirk of hers, in particular, was a pretty hard one to swallow.

Lauren looked for signs. Not the mystical, “Ooh, I think that’s a sign!” kind of sign, but actual, real signs that bore messages for the masses. In the course of her life, she’d found them at shopping malls, car dealerships, churches, restaurants, high schools and civic centers. Sometimes they were old-fashioned signs that were changed manually by a human being and sometimes they were electronic signs that were changed every day—which made things so much easier because some of the most important decisions in her life had been resolved by signs.

In fact, the reason she’d known that they had to settle in Valle Verde was that the local ice-cream shop, the Frosty King, had a nice, old-style sign. And the first day they’d driven into town, it had had a message that read, Put Down UR Baggage. Home Is Just Where U R. Underneath it had said, Double Dips, 99 Cents, and she and Jem had taken advantage of both pieces of advice. And when they were done with their ice cream, they’d driven straight to the real estate office.

“Can I have a Rainbow Bar, Mom?”

Lauren signaled and made a left turn onto the main street. “You haven’t even eaten dinner yet, mister.” She looked over at his crestfallen expression and chuckled. What an actor.

As they approached the Frosty King, the familiar fluttering in her stomach revved up. When she went to look for a sign, she usually knew what she wanted it to say. But today, she had no idea. She told herself she wanted it to say, Don’t Give Up, but deep down in her bones she knew it was more like, The Answer Is Right Under UR Nose.

Suddenly the sign came into view and her heart sank and soared simultaneously at its advice. Don’t Waste UR Energy, it read. Take The Path Of Least Resistance.

She stopped the car on the road’s graveled shoulder and gripped the steering wheel so tightly she thought it would snap in two. Was Cole Travis the path of least resistance?

Jem peered out the windshield, then looked over at her for an explanation. “What’s it say, Mommy?”

“It says,” she answered, her eyes still fixed on the huge red-and-white sign, “that we have found our handyman.”

As she prepared dinner that night, Lauren sighed and sliced the three-inch high lump she’d baked in her new bread machine. She was still trying to expand her very small cooking repertoire and the loaf was a bit flat, but she’d improve. The sign had said as much a few weeks back when she was deciding whether to hire a full-time housekeeper. Do It URself, it had said. Pride Is In The Accomplishment.

She smiled as she threw the bread in a basket, then called Jem and her future handyman—who she’d asked to stay for dinner—to come inside. In five minutes, the three of them were gathered around her big, nineteenth-century farmhouse table.

Cole had changed into a clean denim shirt and his collar lay open at the neck, revealing only some of the dark-golden curls that lay beneath it. She tore her gaze away but not before her pulse had kicked up to a hot, salsa rhythm. What was it about this guy? she thought as she continued to fill her son’s plate and her own. A denim shirt and a peek at his chest hair was all it took to raise her blood pressure? Get a grip, Lauren.

As they passed the food around and Jem chattered away, she noticed that Cole asked questions and answered them in language her son could understand—something Miles had never quite mastered—and she wondered with a sudden flash of concern if her son might grow attached to Cole. Jem hadn’t mentioned Miles in ages, so maybe not, but she added it to her growing list of things to worry about anyway. She’d just have to make sure that attachment didn’t happen. And she’d start by making sure she didn’t get too close to Cole herself even though just having the man at her dinner table was making her feel melty in all the wrong places.

Cole hefted a forkful of the very tasty but very lumpy potatoes and, as he chewed, thought about how much his mother would love to pass on a few bits of potato lore to Lauren. But that wouldn’t happen because his mother was never going to meet Lauren, he reminded himself. And he’d do well to remember that before he complicated this thing further.

The dinner passed quickly in a buzz of companionable chatter, mostly stemming from Jem. Cole was amazed by how the smallest things in Jem’s day—catching a pollywog, finding a really nice stick to hit rocks with, rolling lemons from their tree down the street—took on a mythic quality in the boy’s retelling.

But as the narration went on, Cole couldn’t help but reflect on his own life—and what might have been if Kelly hadn’t left him one rainy Seattle morning with nothing but an envelope full of divorce papers to show for their marriage. If things had been different, he thought as the familiar tension tightened inside him, perhaps they, too, could have brought up a child like this.

The possibility that Jem might be his son overwhelmed Cole for a moment but he snapped out of it quickly when the boy’s face lit up in rediscovery of something that he’d forgotten.

“I found a snail shell by that big tree!” He fixed his excited gaze on Cole. “Wanna see it?”

“Sure I would,” Cole said as he laid his napkin beside his plate.

Lauren reached over and touched her son’s arm and her hair, that silky curtain that kept tempting Cole to bury his hands in it, swept forward over her cheek. “Why don’t you bring it downstairs in a few minutes, honey. Cole and I have something to discuss.”

“’Kay,” he said, slipping out of his chair and running up the stairs.

When Cole followed her to the living room, Lauren sat down where she had earlier when she’d interviewed the Brothers Grim, so Cole took a seat on the fancy old couch across from her. His curiosity about what she wanted to discuss pricked at his mind, but an alarming amount of his concentration was caught up with the sinful way her low-slung jeans hugged her curves.

Lauren twisted her slender hands together before folding them in her lap. “I’d like to hire you,” she said in a rush of breath.

The ever-present spring inside him relaxed a bit and a wide grin spread across his face. “No!” he said with mock surprise. “And with so many other qualified candidates?”

She delivered a quelling look, then spoke again. “In addition to the work on the house, the barn must be completely renovated in six weeks, with the fixtures built, display cases installed and security system operational. If I don’t open at the start of the Summer Festival, I’ll miss the biggest influx of tourists for the entire year.” She looked up at him, a tentative smile peeking through her mask of worry. “I’d like for you to take the job, Cole. You’re very talented.”

He almost said, “I’d like to show you just how talented I am,” but instead dipped his chin to hide a smile and waited patiently for the “but” he could hear in her voice.

Her expression took on an earnest hue before she said, “Cole, I need to know right now if you can commit to completing this job. From the little you’ve told me about yourself, it seems that you are the type of man who may wake up one day and, for whatever reason, decide to take off.”

Even though there was no way she could know who he really was, the idea that he, Cole Travis, the Rock of Gibraltar, was having his level of commitment questioned made him more than a little crazy. An awful bitterness he’d thought long since rested in peace began to smolder within him. But since nothing of his current situation was her fault, he buried it and answered her civilly. “Nothing could stop me from completing this job,” he said. “I promise you.”

Her face creased into a sudden, brilliant smile. “Good. Thank you.” She sounded relieved, which made him almost feel bad about what he wasn’t telling her about himself. And what he still had to say.

“Now.” He leaned forward and planted his forearms on his thighs. “About room and board.”

As he’d expected, her smile faded to a faint shadow. What he hadn’t expected was the slight but unmistakable blush that rushed in to stain her smooth cheeks. “Room and board?” she repeated weakly.

“The hotel I stayed in last night is the closest one I can afford. And it’s forty miles of winding country road from here. I’ll be able to start earlier and finish later if I stay here. I’d be willing to take something off my pay, of course, since you’ll be cooking for me.”

Her lips parted as surprise touched every feature on her beautiful face. “You did taste my cooking tonight, didn’t you?”

He tore his gaze from her sweet, bow-shaped mouth, nodded soberly and went on. “I worked out a simple plan while I was in the barn today. I’ll need to use a bathroom in the house for a week or so while I build your customer washroom, but I can fix up the loft as a bedroom right away.”

She kept trying to get a word in, making her look like a cute little guppy.

“Don’t you have a wife at home who might object to this plan?”

He shook his head. “No wife.”

“And you want to sleep in my barn.” It was a statement, but she sounded as if she’d run out of arguments.

Even though he shrugged like he didn’t care one way or the other, the truth was he suddenly realized it felt like his whole life was hinging on this one conversation. “Only if you want me to finish this job on time.”

Her eyes narrowed. “That sounds like blackmail.”

“I call it practical,” he said, shrugging with a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “But it’s your choice.”

She looked around the room, from the cracked floor-boards to the broken newel post to the fading paint. He tried not to feel satisfaction in the fact that she really had no choice at all. Finally, she looked at him and said, “Okay,” infusing her voice with none of the word’s meaning. “You can sleep in the barn.” Then she rose fluidly from the chair, held out a hand and smiled at him unsteadily.

He grinned, came to his feet and wrapped his big palm around her warm fingers. “Congratulations, you just hired the best pair of hands west of the Mississippi.”

She rolled her eyes at his cocksure statement. “Prove it, Cole. Just prove it.”

His gaze roamed her face, from her famous green eyes down to her famous full lips, and couldn’t help himself. “Oh, I will,” he promised and wondered how long he was going to be able to keep his secret from Lauren—or keep the best pair of hands west of the Mississippi off the most beautiful woman on the planet.