She was imagining pouring herself a drink and doing exactly that. Should she ask him to join her? He’d rebuffed her last time. Well, what the hell. “I plan to—with a bourbon. You’re welcome to join me.”
For a second she thought he was going to say yes, but then his face changed. Went blank, just like it had in his truck last weekend.
He said the same words, too. “I can’t.”
Jake had strong legs. He had strong everything, thanks to a combination of genetics, the physical aspect of both his jobs, and a penchant for canoeing, often with a portaging element. So he wasn’t used to his legs crapping out on him.
But that was exactly what they started to do after he nailed the last board into place and walked across Nora’s new deck with the intention of reversing his response to her invitation. With every step he took, his legs felt shakier, but for some damn reason he kept moving them in her direction.
His arms joined the weak brigade when he raised the right one to knock on the sliding glass door, which was open a crack. It sort of felt like it might keep floating up, farther than it needed to, up into the sky until he lost control of it altogether.
“Come on in.”
If his arms were floating up into space, Nora’s were firmly grounded—in the sink, where she was trying to wash off the black paint one of them had been coated with earlier.
They both spoke at the same time. He said, “Thought I might take you up on that bourbon after all,” and she said, “Had a bit of a painting disaster at the clinic today.”
Then they did it again. She said, “Great!” and he said, “What happened?”
She laughed. If he’d thought before that she looked otherworldly, with her white-blond hair and her icy blue eyes, that laugh went a ways toward unraveling that interpretation. It was low and throaty and…earthy. Very much of this world.
It was an interesting combination.
“I’m glad. It’s been a long afternoon, and I could use the company. But I hate to say it, but I think I need to take a shower first. This”—she nodded toward the sink—“isn’t cutting it.”
“You need soap.”
“Which I don’t have out here, because I am a monster. But I do have it in the shower!” She looked around. For a towel, maybe? There didn’t seem to be any in the kitchen, but there was a roll of paper towels just out of her reach. He grabbed them, pulled off several, and handed them to her.
“Thanks.” She dried her hands. “All I have is bourbon. I have bourbon but no dish towels. Imagine your stereotype of a gross bachelor pad, and this is it, except without the bachelor.” She lifted her arms. The black paint had smeared into a midtoned gray, and somehow it was all over both arms now as well as one of her cheeks.
A laugh burbled up, but he stifled it—and when was the last time that had happened?
“Anyway, bourbon is in the cupboard over the fridge, glasses to the right of the fridge—I have glasses!—so help yourself. I’ll be right back.”
She disappeared down the hall, and he got down two glasses and poured a couple fingers of bourbon into each of them. Took a sip of his and took in the small, shabby open space that made up the dining-living area of the house. Or would have, had it contained any furniture.
What the hell was he doing? He should just go. He had trout marinating at home, and the deck here was done. Although what she needed more than a deck was a plumber. He went over and examined a puddle of water at the foot of the dishwasher.
He was surprised to hear the shower turn off. She hadn’t been kidding when she’d said a quick shower.
“Jake?”
She was calling him from the bathroom. “Yeah?”
“I forgot I have no bath towels, either. But I did buy some of those today. There should be a shopping bag near the front door. Any chance you can bring it here?”
He retrieved the bag. The bathroom door was open a crack. Her hand snaked out. “I’m so disorganized with this move, I got in the shower without the new towels or any fresh clothing on hand. I had this one gross threadbare towel in here that I’ve been using since I got here, but I threw it in the laundry today, so now I’m stuck.”
She had only opened the door an inch, but there was a mirror behind her. Her shower had been so fast, there wasn’t any steam. The mirror was not fogged.
He could only see a slice of her, but it was a nice slice. The back of her body, from shoulder dipping down to lower back, then rounding out again to a small, pert ass fit for a pixie. Dr. Pixie.
He was going to hell. He averted his eyes and handed her the bag.
Five minutes later, she reappeared barefoot. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts and a Detroit Tigers T-shirt. Not the same one she had worn the day of the emergency birth.
He nodded at it. “You weren’t kidding about being a Tigers fan.”
“Nope. My grandma went to medical school at the University of Windsor, and she became a fan. I guess I got it from her. In fact, when I decided to leave Toronto and do a stint practicing somewhere else, one of the things that appealed about here is that it’s two hours from Detroit.” She snorted in a way that seemed self-deprecating. “I say that like I’m actually going to go to games.”
“Too busy?”
She started to answer but paused with a contemplative look on her face. “I was going to say yes, I’m kind of a workaholic, but I don’t actually know. This is supposed to be a new chapter.”
“You should make this a chapter that includes Tigers games.”
She smiled—really big, in a way that almost caused a hitch in his breath. Smiles like that also helped unravel the air of otherworldliness she sometimes had about her. They made her seem fully, viscerally human. “Yeah. I should.”
He handed her a glass of bourbon.
“Thanks. I hope you don’t like it on the rocks, because I don’t have any ice.” She spun slowly in place. “I don’t have anything, actually. As you have probably observed.” She was still smiling in a way that seemed at odds with her pronouncement.
He thought back to what she’d said at the salon, about looking at your life and all the crap in it and not recognizing it. He lifted his glass. “To new chapters.”
She clinked her glass against his and strolled over to the door and peered out. “But now, thanks to you, I do have a deck. Honestly, I can’t believe Harold was advertising that pile of junk as a deck.”
“Yeah, Harold Burgess isn’t known for…” He wasn’t sure how to put it.
“Being house-proud?”
He chuckled.
“I was really bummed about the deck situation. Like more bummed than was probably called for. But then you fixed it. But…” She did a slow pivot. “This place is a dump, isn’t it?” She kept turning. “I rented a dump.”
She had. It appeared Harold hadn’t treated his own home any better than his rental properties. The paint on the walls was peeling, and the cracked linoleum in the kitchen had to be forty years old if it was a day. To be fair, the house would probably look better if it wasn’t empty. But there was a general air of shabbiness everywhere.
“Did you not come to look at it?” Toronto was over a three-hour drive, which wasn’t nothing, but when it came to where you were going to live, he personally would have come to check things out.