Page 41 of Restored By You

Twelve hours. That’s all it’s been since I stood on his porch and decided to stop talking myself out of him. And, gosh, I’ve thought about little else since, honestly. The way he carried me down the hall like I weighed nothing. The rasp of his voice and the way he took his time like we had all of it, when we don’t.

I shove the final thought down where it can’t ruin a perfectly good morning.

“Found ‘em.” Tyler thunders down the half-restored stairs, headphones triumphantly in hand. Rhett and I spring apart with the guilty speed of teenagers—which is rich, considering the actual teenager in the room is the one who just caught us. He looks between us. “You guys are so obvious, it’s kind of sad.”

I scoff, “Rude.”

“Just film the post,” Rhett grumbles.

“That depends, are y’all done being weird?” He lifts the camera and gets back to filming, but I catch the corner of his mouth twitching. Approval, from Tyler, remains the rarest currency I know.

“Did you just say y’all?” I gasp dramatically. “Sounds like a pretty Whitetail native is rubbing off on you, Mr. California.”

Tyler blushes a furious shade of red but ignores me.

“Ewww, gross,” Rhett teases, and I burst out laughing, earning a smirking eye-roll from the singular film crew.

We fall into an easy rhythm after that. Rhett working, me handing him what he needs. An hour slides by, then two before the staircase starts to look how I imagined it did eighty-plus years ago.

It’s late afternoon when Rhett finally sets the drill down for the day. He wipes his hands on a rag, and asks, “You two got plans tonight?”

I glance up from where I’m sweeping and fight back a smile. I don’t want to assume what he’s about to ask me, but… Who am I kidding? I smile. “None. How about you?”

“There’s a dinner party tonight,” he says, packing up his drill and miscellaneous tools. “Ma does a dinner every Sunday, the whole family. Non-negotiable, been that way my entire life. I was hoping y’all would come.”

“Sure. I’m down,” Tyler speaks, answering for the both of us as he packs away the camera.

My brow furrows slightly, however. “If your mom does dinner every Sunday, then why is tonight a dinner party? Wouldn’t it just be a Sunday dinner?”

Rhett just grins at me. “It’s a surprise.”

I eye him skeptically. “Why do I feel like you’re not telling me something?”

He zips the tool bag. Calm, cool, collected. And I call bullshit. “Nothin’ else to tell, sweetheart. It’s just dinner.”

“You said it’s a surprise.”

“Did I?” He shoulders the bag, the picture of innocence, which on a man his size is frankly absurd. He drops a kiss on my forehead on his way to the door. “Six-thirty. I’ll pick you both up.”

Tyler throws me a look that clearly says just go with it, which is a deeply unsettling thing to receive as guidance from a fifteen-year-old.

I look back at Rhett, filling my doorway with that maddening smirk, and I realize I’m going to say yes to whatever this is. Whatever he wants, really. “Fine,” I sigh. “Six-thirty. But if this is some kind of small-town hazing ritual, I’m putting it in the pilot.”

His grin is the last thing out the door.

The Montgomery place sits at the top of a quarter-mile drive already lined with trucks, a big white farmhouse with black shutters and a wraparound porch facing west, where the last of the sunset is bleeding orange and pink behind the tree line. Smoke curls from the chimney, every window glows. It’s something off the front cover of a Country Living magazine.

“Woah,” Tyler says from the backseat, and for once there’s no sarcasm in it.

“This is it.” Rhett kills the engine and glances at me. “Ready?”

“That depends entirely on what the surprise is.”

“Mm.” He’s already out of the truck.

Infuriating man.

He comes around and opens my door before I can, offers a hand down and doesn’t let go once I’m on my feet. Tyler falls in on my other side, and we make our way up toward all that warm light and the sound inside reaching us before we’re halfway there—music, voices, a baby shrieking with laughter, a dog barking, the roar of a house with too many people in it.