“His namesake is the infamous Mr. Finn, in case you’re wondering.”
A man who named his dog after a literary character? Could Jeremy be any sexier?
“Excellent choice,” I said in my best professorial tone.
“I also have a cat named Tom Sawyer around here somewhere.”
I glanced around, suddenly a bit panicked. “Allergic to cats,” I admitted.
“I’m just kidding. I don’t have a cat.” He brushed a bit of the sawdust from his shoulder.
“Oh, okay. Great.” I tried to laugh.
“Yep, it’s just Huck and me.”
I leaned down to pat the dog on the head. “Who’s gonna watch him when we’re in England?”
Jeremy pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “My neighbor’s a great lady. He loves her. He’s going to go stay over there.”
Unexpected jealousy bubbled in my chest. “Your neighbor?”
“Yeah, Mrs. Timms is about eighty,” he added. “But still spry enough to take care of Huck. She says he keeps her young.”
“Ah, sounds perfect.” Why was I inordinately pleased to hear that Mrs. Timms was eighty? “Show me around the place?” I said before my courage fled. I needed to see how bad the hoard was.
“Sure. Let me just go brush off this sawdust. I was working in the shop just now. Make yourself at home. I’ll be right back. Huckleberry, stay.” Jeremy disappeared down the narrow hallway, presumably into a bathroom.
I’d noticed that he had his shoes on, and since I wasn’t wearing any socks and wasn’t in any hurry to reveal my hobbit feet, I kept my flats on.
I dropped my purse on the wooden table next to the couch and stared at Huckleberry. “Are you a good boy?” I asked the dog, returning his smile.
Huckleberry flapped his long furry tail against the wooden floor. Thump. Thump. Thump. Other than that, he didn’t move, obviously taking his master’s last words quite seriously. He continued to smile at me and pant, however. Both were endearing.
I walked to my right and peered inside what appeared to be a sunroom. Three of its walls were filled with large windows. The room was empty except for a big, cushy outdoor chaise and a small wooden table next to it. Hmm. The hoard must be in the bedrooms or perhaps whatever he called ‘the shop’.
“Where it is, boy?” I asked Huckleberry in a whisper. “Where’s the hoard?”
“Ready?” came Jeremy’s friendly voice.
I cleared my throat and spun around, guilty for asking his dog about his hoard and peering into his sunroom without permission.
“Yep.” I grabbed my bag from the table.
Jeremy turned in a circle. He seemed the slightest bit flustered, which I found adorable. “Looks like you already saw the sunroom. This is the living room.” He walked over to the room that adjoined the living room on the other side and flipped on a light. I followed him. “This is the dining room.”
The dining room consisted of a medium-sized wooden table and four chairs. The furniture fit perfectly into the space, as if it... “Did you make this? This table and these chairs?”
He turned to me and grinned. “Sure did. Took me damned near six months, but I’ve gotten a lot faster since then.”
I stared at the perfect lines of the Mission-style furniture, my mouth open a little. “It’s amazing. How do you know how to make all this stuff?”
“Self-taught, mostly. I’ve been to some workshops up in New England, but you can learn a lot of it from YouTube actually. Plus, there’s this great blogger called The Wood Whisperer.”
“Wow,” was all I could say.
“I made the tables in the living room, too.”
“What?” I glanced back into that room, still in awe. The tables were equally impressive. “So, do you own this place?” Great Meg. Way to be overly nosy.
“Yep. The house isn’t much, but there was great land in the back. I was able to build my shop out there.”
“So you made all these things out of some wood with your own two hands? That’s amazing!”
“Well, some wood, my own two hands, and a boatload of really expensive tools. I built the shop myself too. Wanna see it?”
“Sure.” I hesitated. “What exactly...is a shop?”
“It’s what a woodworker calls the space where he works. Basically, it’s where I keep all my tools and machinery. It takes a lot of stuff to have a complete shop. I’m still outfitting mine.”
“That’s what you need the money for, right? Luke mentioned something about it.”
Jeremy pet Huckleberry’s head. “Yeah, for a band saw. I already have one, but I want to get the Rolls Royce of band saws.”
I laughed. “I didn’t know Rolls Royce made band saws.”
“They don’t. An Italian company called Laguna does.” He grinned at me. “It’s pretty sweet. The one I want is a little under six Gs.”
“Wow. That better be one nice band saw.”
“Trust me. It is.” He led the way through the dining room into the small, but perfectly appointed and completely not-hoarded kitchen, through a tiny back porch that obviously served as a laundry room in that it housed a washer and dryer and smelled deliciously like fresh clean soap, and out the back door onto a wide wooden deck. Huckleberry trotted behind us.
“Don’t tell me,” I said, gesturing at the deck as we crossed it. “You made this too?”
“Yep.” Jeremy stopped and dipped his hands into his back pockets. He rocked back and forth on the deck slats. “What do you think?”
“Just wow.” I shook my head. “Harrison probably couldn’t make a pencil holder. Or a pencil, for that matter.”
“He’d need a lathe for those.” Jeremy pulled his hands back out of his pockets and turned toward the steps that led down to the lawn.
“What’s a lathe?” I asked, following him.
“I’ll show you,” he called over his shoulder.
We walked across an expanse of green lawn to a medium-sized building across the way, about the size of a two-car garage but without the garage door. It had a quaint off-center front door with a small roof hanging just over it and flowerpots on either side filled with red geraniums. It looked like the set of a movie.
When Jeremy opened the door, the smell of fresh wood hit my nostrils. The three of us stepped inside. The shop was a wide space, completely open with tools nearly everywhere. It was filled with machines and cabinets and some big, tube-like contraption that ran along the roofline. “That’s for collecting sawdust,” Jeremy explained, following my gaze. “There’s a whole air filtration system in here.”
“Nice,” I said, to be polite because I had no earthly idea what I was looking at.
Huckleberry took a seat atop a comfy-looking gray dog bed that sat near the door. He circled around in it two or three times before settling into it.
“Here’s the lathe,” Jeremy announced, distracting my attention from the dog.
Jeremy stood next to a shiny, metal machine near the wall that looked a lot like a black and silver sawhorse. “It’s for making anything round. Bowls, pencil cases, pencils.”
“So this is what I should buy Harrison for Christmas to get his pencil-making business off the ground?”