"Wait, Cooper?" she asked, blinking in disbelief.
"The one and only." He gave her a lazy grin, and even with stubble on his jaw and a smudge of sawdust on his cheek, that smile still wiped all her anger from her mind.
"The last time I saw you, you were . . . shorter." She managed to recover in time. That was saying something. She remembered a gangly kid, constantly tormenting her with bugs and boogers and lord knows what else.
Now, Cooper Nicholson was all man.
"How have you been?" she asked, still stunned. "What are you doing these days?"
"I'm good. I stayed around town, started a business fixing up old houses," he replied, then gave her a look. "At least, when I don't have nosy neighbors interrupting me."
"I'm sorry," Poppy exhaled. "I've just been travelling all night, and I'm so tired I could cry. Is there any chance you could keep it down, just for a couple of hours?"
"OK, OK." Cooper seemed to soften. "Wait here."
He disappeared back into the house, and Poppy tried to catch her breath. Who knew Cooper, Spitball King of Sweetbriar Cove, would grow up to be so . . . so . . .
Delicious.
After a moment, Cooper emerged with something in his hand. "Sorry about the noise." He flashed her a wide, easy smile. "This should take care of it."
Poppy looked down.
Earplugs.
The man had kept her up, taunted her, and now presented her with two tiny knobs of bright orange foam like that was any help at all.
"You're not going to keep the noise down?" she asked, exhausted.
"Sorry, pipsqueak," he said, sounding anything but apologetic. "Just count yourself lucky you got a lie-in today. Usually my crew starts at six!"
Before she could say anything, he turned back to his saw. The high-pitched whine started up, and Poppy turned on her heel and fled.
So much for small-town neighbor charm. It looked like she was on her own.
Cooper Nicholson watched Poppy hightail it back across the yard. She was pissed, he could tell.
Pissed, and cute as hell.
He remembered her from the summer she'd spent at her aunt's. Back then, she'd been a tiny thing, with bright red glasses almost bigger than her face. Not that you ever saw it, she was too busy with her nose stuck in a book. She could be out on the beach, surrounded by ballgames and playful dogs, and a dozen splashing kids, and nothing would ever shake her fascination with whatever she was reading that day. And to a mischievous ten-year-old like Cooper, that was like waving a red rag in front of a bull.
He chuckled, remembering all the ways he tried to distract her. Most of them involving spider crabs, seaweed, and spitballs. No wonder she gave him such an icy glare when he called her by her old nickname, "pipsqueak." But what could he say? Something about Poppy Somerville made him want to get under her skin.
He turned back to the workbench and started sawing again, but this time, he felt a twinge of guilt. She looked like she hadn't slept in a week-but he was on a schedule here. She couldn't just come waltzing over and demand he put all his plans on hold for her to get some beauty sleep.
Not that she needed it. Even stressed, stained, and sleep-deprived, Poppy still looked effortlessly beautiful. She must have hit a growth spurt somewhere along the way, because she sure wasn't a scrawny little girl anymore.
The saw hit the bracket with a screech.
Focus.
He was barely a few weeks into this project, and had another month left, at least. More if the dry weather didn't hold and they got their usual spring rainstorms. He knew the house didn't look like much now, but under the sawdust and rotting shingles, there were great bones, and he was determined to restore it to its former glory.
Renovating the historic houses along the Cape had started out a hobby, but it had grown into a thriving business for him. Most developers wanted to tear the older homes down and use the prime ocean-front plots to built new, modern mansions, but Cooper had always loved the history in buildings like this. He studied old craftsman techniques and researched the original materials, and soon the word spread about his skill and classic architectural designs. When a reporter from New England Quarterly had featured him in an article about historic preservation, his phone had started ringing off the hook and hadn't stopped yet.
But this project was special. He'd had his eye on the house for years. When he was a kid, they'd always cut through the yard down to the beach, and as a teenager, he'd gotten up to all kinds of mischief in the woods backing onto the edge of the property, but it was the house itself that appealed to him now. A classic colonial saltbox, it was built in the 1800s and was one of a disappearing breed on the Cape. It had sat empty for years, falling into disrepair, until finally Cooper had finally been able to track down the owner's family after digging through old land records in the dusty archive at the town hall. He'd sunk his life savings into the crumbling foundations and acre-plot of beachfront land, but once it was finished and sold to some lucky buyer, the proceeds would set him up right for a long time. The view alone was worth a million dollars: nothing like the gentle curve of the bay and the sparkling blue ocean stretching out to the horizon.