Stephen pushed off the table. “I’ll have a fresh squeezed orange juice, please.” He sniffed at Wes’s coffee. “Some of us want to live long, healthy lives.”
“Then I’d stop trying to piss everyone off.”
His old boss barked a laugh. “You’re in a mood.” He drummed casual fingers on the counter. “Maybe you want to talk through your renovation plans?”
Wes tilted his head. “Now, Stephen. You wouldn’t be asking me for inside information on the competition, would you?”
“Please. Like I need help winning.” Stephen unwrapped a straw and attempted to pop it into his orange juice cup, missing the hole several times. He stopped trying with a withering sigh. “I do need help with something, though.”
“What’s that?”
“What else? Kristin. She’s been leaving me these notes around the house.” He waved the piece of paper still wedged between his knuckles. “There’s some kind of significance to them, but I can’t figure it out.”
Wes held out his hand. “Want me to give it a read?”
Stephen hesitated. “As long as you don’t tell anyone the contents. Especially my sister,” he stressed. “Not that I can even decipher the contents, but still.”
“Not surprised. You still think women powder their noses.” Wes took the note and read the handwritten lines.
Things are going to change. Yes, sir. You can count on that.
Signed, your steadfast wife
Wes kept his features schooled. He was seriously regretting his promise not to tell Bethany the contents of the note, because he knew she’d get a kick out of them. Her sister-in-law was definitely as crazy as Bethany claimed. She was obviously hinting at the fact that she was pregnant, but instead of outright telling Stephen, she’d decided to terrorize him first. After that snide comment about Bethany, Wes couldn’t resist getting in on the fun.
He handed the note back to Stephen on a blown-out breath. “I don’t know, man. Sounds like she’s mighty unhappy. You been giving her problems?”
Stephen paled. “No. I-I . . . I mean, I don’t think so. You never know with Kristin. One minute she’s smiling at me like I hung the moon. The next, she’s watching me and chopping onions in this kind of focused, bone-chilling way . . .”
“Sure. Sure.”
“You don’t think she means things are going to change for the better?”
He was now Jim from The Office messing with Dwight. If only there was a camera lens he could shrug at sheepishly. “I don’t know, man. If I know one thing about women, it’s that you can always tell when they’re happy,” he said, pulling from his total lack of experience. “But when they’re suffering in silence? That shit creeps up and bites you.”
Stephen’s head bobbed. “You’re right about that, my friend.” He carefully folded the note and tucked it into his pocket. “I have some work to do.”
“Sounds like it.”
Wes contained his chuckle until Stephen left the coffee shop. He started to follow, but went back and bought a brownie with pink sprinkles for Bethany, rolling his eyes at the sappy gesture. Which was exactly the reaction she would probably give him, too. If he was trying to scare her off, tokens of his admiration ought to do it.
Fifteen minutes later, he arrived at the jobsite. He left Bethany’s brownie wrapped in a paper bag on the sawhorse and brought his coffee outside to get started on the framework. For the next two hours, he went back and forth, inside and out, using the table saw inside since construction couldn’t legally begin until eight o’clock in the morning and he didn’t want the neighbors complaining. He was so focused on his task that he barely noticed when people started to arrive, glancing around from behind his work goggles to find the film crew setting up.
Ollie and Carl were there, too, carting in the insulation and Sheetrock he’d asked them to pick up. They still had a couple of days before they could utilize those materials, since the plumber and electrician were set to arrive today. If they got the all-clear—and that was a pretty huge if—they’d keep on schedule, but Wes was pretty sure the electrical would need to be upgraded, to say nothing of the leaky pipes.
The sound of Bethany’s voice in the distance broke into his thoughts. Eager to lay eyes on her, Wes pushed his goggles back on his head and crunched through leaves and broken-up concrete on his way around the side of the house. Familiar voices reached him before he got to the driveway, one belonging to Bethany. The owner of the other one was Slade.
Something sharp drilled into his gut. Instead of making himself known and telling the cheesy host to get lost, he forced himself to wait and listen.
“You look beautiful today, Bethany,” Slade said.
Wes ground his teeth.
“Thanks. You look nice, too.”
He ground them harder.
“So listen, I was thinking . . .” Here it came. Slade was making a move. “I’m staying in town while we film and I don’t know any of the local spots. Would you be interested in showing me the best place to get dinner? My treat.”
Wes turned and braced his hands on the house, his gut a lake of fire, and it was in that moment he realized there was no turning back. He was invested in this thing between him and Bethany. Like, send-a-motherfucker-to-the-hospital-for-looking-at-her-twice invested. Their mouths and bodies had been in perfect sync last night, but there was more here. He didn’t just like her. Or lust after her.
He was falling for her.
This feeling wasn’t a fleeting one; it was sticking around.
Did that mean . . . he was considering sticking around?
His throat grew tighter while he waited for Bethany’s answer.
It finally came. “That’s a great offer, but . . .”
“But?”
Don’t push her, Slade.
“Are you involved with your foreman? That might have been insinuated, but I just couldn’t see the fit. If I’m being brutally honest.”
Wes ground his fist into the wall of the house.
“Um . . .” Bethany again. “‘Involved’ is a strong word. But it’s definitely complicated, I guess you could say. With Wes.”
He threw up a victorious fist. It’s complicated. She’d said it was complicated.
He’d fucking take it.
“I see,” Slade said. “Well, if something changes, I hope I’ll be the first to know.”
“Sure,” she said with a smile in her voice.
Footsteps moved in Wes’s direction and he arranged himself in a casual lean against the side of the house, ankles and arms crossed. Bethany entered his line of vision with two to-go coffee cups in her hands and stopped dead, flushing to the roots of her hair. “How much did you hear?”
Wes rubbed his jaw with the backs of his knuckles, unable to subdue his grin. “Exactly how complicated is it, darlin’?”
She put her cute nose in the air and breezed past him. “I hate you.”
“You do not,” he said, hot on her heels. “Who is that second coffee for, because it sure as hell ain’t for Slade. He’s off somewhere right now trying to piece his balls back together, baby. That was poetic.”
“Your epitaph is going to be poetic once I strangle you.”