Butterface(14)

“You’re right,” he said, the words coming out fast but true.

She nearly choked on her righteous indignation. “Excuse me?”

“I shouldn’t have assumed. You’re right.”

Her brain was on a loop of what the hell, what the hell, what the hell as she tried to figure out what play he was making with this quick retreat. Whatever game he was running, and he had been doing so since he sweet-talked her into letting him park his cute ass on her couch, this acknowledgment of her competency was part of it.

She glared at him through narrowed eyes. “What’s your move here?”

“No move.” He shook his head. “I just wanted to help.”

“Next time, ask first. This is my business, and it might not seem like much to you, but I’m going to build this company into something great and lasting—but first I have to go maneuver Donna and Scott into the yellow so their invites don’t look like birth announcements.”

She stalked over to the door, and her hand was on the doorknob before his voice stopped her.

“I have no doubt you’ll make it happen.”

The unexpectedness of his words was what made her pulse kick up. It wasn’t because of the look in his eye when he said it, as if he really believed it. What he thought didn’t matter to her. Still, her heart was thrumming when she walked back into her office and suggested the yellow to Donna and Scott.

…

“Come on, swing it like you mean it.” Ford stood back and watched as Gina lifted the sledgehammer and let it come crashing down against the wall in the hallway. Her plan was to take out the wall and open it up to the library, which was filled with bookshelves and huge windows that looked out into the backyard and brought in the most sun during the day. They would take care of the demolition, and a guy who specialized in old home restorations would come in and complete the new arch where the wall had been.

It was a good plan, and it meant that he got to watch Gina go after the drywall like a woman on a mission.

Something about the way she set her full lips into a straight line and let out a deep breath before she swung away made him forget a little why he’d been camping out on her uncomfortable couch for the past two days in the first place.

That spring that poked him right in the lower back was what was keeping him up late at night. It sure wasn’t wondering what Gina was doing upstairs when he followed the soft patter of her footsteps across the ceiling, or trying to imagine what she was wearing as she slipped between her sheets, or contemplating if her dreams kept circling back to that night in the hotel. There was no way his desperate need for a vat of coffee every morning was because of that. It was the spring jutting up to jab him in the kidney.

He took a drink of the sanity-maintaining brew and watched as Gina brought the sledgehammer down on the non-load-bearing wall, leaving a gaping hole.

“Should I even ask who you’re picturing on that wall?” he asked.

Gina sat the sledgehammer down on the dusty hardwood floor and grinned at him. “Probably not.”

“So, what happened to the fourth handyman you hired to help?”

She’d been telling him about three handyman nightmares since they started working on the wall. The woman had the worst luck.

“Sylvia?” Gina said, her voice thick with disgust. “She split with the deposit money for parts unknown.”

He picked up the sledgehammer and positioned himself in front of the wall. “Did you file a police complaint?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, but it was five bills. Your brothers in blue aren’t going to be knocking themselves out to track her down.”

“And that’s when you said fuck it, I’ll do the demo myself?” He swung the sledgehammer, slamming it against the wall with a satisfying blow that may have had more than a little to do with his lack of satisfaction in other parts of his life. He was a detective, not a spy, and this undercover stint was starting to make him twitchy.

The Luca brothers were planning something, a move of some sort, and if he could just figure it out then he wouldn’t have to be lying to a woman he was genuinely starting to like. Gina had been cracking him up over the past few days with her self-deprecating sense of humor, and she was smart, the kind of person who could judge running her own company and taking on a massive home renovation project. Plus, she had legs he couldn’t stop watching.

“Nah.” She shook her head as she reached up and pulled her hair into a ponytail, the move giving him a great view of her tits as they pressed against the T-shirt, which today featured a sloth doing yoga. “I gave up on hiring a handyman for demolition after Julio.”

“What happened with him?”

“He came in, took one look at the place, and gave a quote so outrageous that I knew he just wanted to walk away from the place and never look back.”

Ford took another couple of swings with the sledgehammer before setting it down on the floor. There were now enough started holes that it was time to move on to the reciprocating saw to cut out large pieces of drywall. Taking out an interior wall wasn’t difficult, but it could be time-consuming. And messy.

“Too much work?” he asked before taking a swig from his coffee.

She shook her head again, sending her pulled-back wavy hair swinging in a way that had him wondering how it would look fisted in his hand as she was naked beneath him. Shit. What in the hell was wrong with him? She was the job, not a possibility. There were rules, and he didn’t break them.

“Something about these old houses freaks most folks out,” Gina said, seemingly oblivious—thank God—to where his thoughts had gone. “I was lucky to have gotten Juan to sign on for the real renovation work. His waitlist is a million years long for an older home like this. He’s the best and he knows it.”

He plugged in the reciprocating saw, needing something to do to keep his hands busy so he’d stop thinking about how much he’d like to be touching Gina instead. “If it’s so difficult, why bother with it at all?”

“Her bones are strong.” She ran her hand over the detailed scrollwork on the staircase banister. “She just needs some touch-ups.”

“It’s a makeover story, huh?” He smiled.

“No way.” She handed him a dust mask and grabbed one for herself. “She’s perfect just the way she is, she just needs someone to love her like she deserves.”

“You sound like my sister Fallon with her car.”

Gina’s eyes went wide with excitement. “What’s she got?”

“A 1970 Pontiac GTO convertible.”

“Ohhhh, that just sounds sexy.”

Sexy? He liked the way she said the word.

“You like cars?” he asked, and suddenly he was searching his brain for any tidbit of knowledge he had about cars, which was pretty much nil beyond where to put the gas in and the number of his mechanic.

“I don’t really know anything about them, but I know what makes me stop and say damn yes I will have some of that.” She punctuated the remark with an exaggerated wink and slipped on the dust mask.

And Ford shifted his stance because he knew exactly what she meant, but he sure as hell wasn’t thinking about the house or a car.

…

Gina had held out as long as she could—there was just something about working alongside Ford that made even something as tedious as refinishing the stairs enjoyable—but when she swore she heard her stomach over the sound of the sander, she had to give in to the inevitable. “Okay, that’s it,” she said after she clicked off her sander and took off her dust mask. “I need food.”

He slipped his mask off and stepped closer to her. “Sounds like a plan.”

Ford reached over and tucked a stray hair that had slipped from her ponytail behind her ear. He probably didn’t mean anything by it, but it sent a shiver of awareness across her skin. Then he stepped back, lifted the hem of his T-shirt, and brought it up to wipe his face, exposing the hard planes of his abs and sending her thoughts to the four corners of the earth for the three-point-two seconds it took him to let his shirt drop back down in place.

“There’s just one problem,” she said, struggling to remember things like breathing and—oh yeah—eating. “I haven’t been to the grocery store this week.”

He gave her his cock-eyed grin that she’d gotten a little too used to seeing over the past few days.

“Pizza or Chinese?” he asked, taking the sander from her hand and walking it over to their makeshift supply table.

“I think they should combine both,” she teased, finding her bearings now that his pheromones weren’t close enough to whisper sweet nothings in her ears. “I’d scarf down a General Tsao’s thin and crispy.”

The look of pure horror on his face had her giggling so hard that she didn’t pay attention to where she was stepping on the stairs, and her foot landed on the wrong spot on the third step from the bottom. The wood did a weird shimmy as it creaked and sank underneath her. Her scream was barely to her lips when Ford’s strong arms wrapped around her. In the next heartbeat, she was pressed up against his chest. Would it really be that bad if she just melted into him? Or nibbled his ear? Or—

Regina! Snap out of it.