Page 112 of Key West Homecoming

Emma smiled before she could stop herself. She’d spent most of the morning telling herself she wasn’t going to think about Jake, which had turned out to be a good way to think about almost nothing else.

“I should warn you that I have no construction skills. I can build a spreadsheet.”

“If you can do that, you’re overqualified.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

She was still smiling when she ended the call.

The night before, she’d gone to bed thinking about Jake’s hand holding hers at the gate and wondering what might have happened if neither of them had decided it was time for her to leave. She had been glad they hadn’t kissed. After everything he’d shared about Nora, anything more would have felt wrong.

This morning was different.

Emma closed Gloria’s notebook and carried her cold coffee to the sink. She stood there looking through the window at the palms outside the bungalow.

She was going to see Jake because he needed help with the pergola.

That was true.

It was also becoming increasingly difficult to pretend it was the whole truth.

She wanted to see him. She wanted to know how he was after the night before, and she wanted to sit with him again without grief between them. More than that, she wanted to find out whether the feeling she’d had at the gate was still there in the light of another day.

Emma had spent years being careful about the things that could complicate her life. Jake was beginning to feel like exactly that kind of complication.

She went to change her clothes anyway.

When she reached Hibiscus Lane, the gate was open. She walked around the side of the cottage and found Jake in the back corner of the yard.

The pergola had changed since the day before. Four cedar posts now stood beneath beams along two sides, and the clean new wood gave off a scent Emma could smell before she reached him. A folded blue tarp lay nearby with a cordless drill, a framing square, two levels and a small metal cup filled with screws.

Jake stood on a low wooden stool with one end of a beam resting against the top of a post. He looked over when he heard her, and smiled.

“Good, you’re here.”

“Put me to work.”

Jake showed her where to hold the beam while he adjusted the other end and checked the level. Emma followed his directions, although his idea of lifting something “a hair” turned into a short argument over exactly how much a hair was.

Apparently, she lifted it too far.

“That was a hair,” she told him.

“That was at least two.”

Emma laughed. “I don’t have a lot of hair calibration in my job.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed that about you.”

She lowered the beam until he told her to stop.

Jake drove two screws through the wood and stepped back. When he told her she could let go, Emma did and looked up at the beam.

It stayed exactly where they’d put it.

She felt an unreasonable amount of satisfaction.

They worked together for the next half hour. Emma held beams while Jake fastened them, and before long she could read the level without asking what he wanted. She liked being useful, even in such a small way. There was something satisfying about work that could be seen when it was finished. A beam was either straight or it wasn’t. A screw held or it didn’t. No conference calls, no revisions, no one changing the expectations after she’d already met them.