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Nolan
Snakes. My house had bright-red-striped snakes! And bats! Bobby Lee called me and said he thinks he got rid of all three snakes—three—and closed up the half dozen holes under the house where they were getting in. He also set down more traps for mice and sprayed around the house and outside for other crawling pests.
In the attic, he found a roost of bats, and that was a different matter. He said it was going to take a little while for those to be taken care of. We couldn’t just kill them, and even though they were creepy, I didn’t want to kill them anyway. We needed bats in our world.
Bobby Lee suggested a particular device installed at the entrance that would allow them to exit, but it would force them through a tube and back outside when they tried to reenter. Eventually, they would get tired of trying and fly off to find another home. Once they were gone, the entrances would be sealed, and then cleanup would begin.
Bobby Lee made sure to let me know that the cleanup was critical and had to be done by specialists. He had a friend he could call for that, and I asked him to do what needed to be done and take care of it. That extra five grand the sellers had given me was quickly being eaten up by critter control, but that was okay.
What wasn’t okay was the seventh grader who decided to eat four cupcakes and a soda before soccer practice and, after doing jumping jacks, hurled all over my shirt and my shoes. The odor made me gag several times as I tried to remain focused on the other players. While I had taken off work, I was still going in for soccer practice in the afternoon.
I was ripping my shirt off as I rushed into the house. I knew Kayley wouldn’t be offended. She had seen me in less, and I didn’t have much modesty these days. After having kids, the idea of modesty was kind of ludicrous.
What I didn’t expect was a sexy man standing in my kitchen eyeing me from head to toe. Well, hello. Before I could enjoy him, I needed to know who he was. I should have realized that this was Kayley’s older brother. Now that she had said that, he did seem familiar. I was sure I had seen pictures of him with her before.
I rushed out of the room to grab a new shirt from my plastic container upstairs and then came back down. Brad kept his focus on the walls and off of me as he spoke to Kayley about which one could come down and what needed to stay in place. While he did that, I studied his features. He was a lot taller than me, but that wasn’t hard. I was only five foot one. He was in decent shape, but he did physical labor all day, so I wasn’t surprised. I kind of loved his beard, too. It wasn’t too long, and it wasn’t so short that it just looked like scruff.
I zeroed in on the lines around his eyes. I loved a man with laugh lines, but at the same time, I took in the deep furrows of his brow. I needed a man in my life who laughed a lot, but I wasn’t sure I wanted one that frowned as often.
He glanced my way, smiling slightly, and I noted that his brown eyes were very similar to mine. I kind of loved that. Some people thought brown eyes were dull, but there were so many shades that I could find nothing boring about them.
We stared at each other for a moment, and then he seemed to pull his gaze away like he didn’t want to but knew he had to. Was that because his sister was in the room with us?
I finally stopped gawking at him and paid attention to what he was saying. The wall that I had initially wanted to remove was a supporting wall, so that was a no-go. Damn. I studied the layout of the kitchen and the walls in regard to the family room. If I shifted all the cabinets to the opposite walls, I could remove that wall and open it up to the family room.
“What about that wall? Could I remove that one?” I pointed to the opposite side of the room.
“You could, but you’d lose all that wall space for cabinets,” he replied.
“Not if I flipped the kitchen in the other direction and moved the eat-in part over there near the family room.”
He was quiet for a moment as his eyes skimmed the room, and I could imagine him doing calculations in his mind to see if it would fit. I had already done them myself, and I should have a few more inches to play with.
“That would work. It would give you a little more room too.”
“I know.” I grinned at him as he turned my way again. It took a second, but then he returned the smile.
“That’s actually a good idea. That wall could come down, and you would open that area up quite a bit. You could also open up the family room if you changed out that door over there and made it either—”
“A sliding door or French doors?”
“Yeah,” he said huskily.
“I already have a set of French doors on my list to add to that room, but I might put a slider. It depends on what I do to the back porch.”
“Can I see it, the back porch?”
“Sure,” I told him, and he followed me to the back door. As I held it for him, I glanced back at Kayley, who was grinning as if she’d just won the lottery. “You coming?”
“I have to make a phone call.” She removed her cellphone from her pocket, and I rolled my eyes. No, she didn’t. She was just giving me time to spend with her brother.
On the back deck, Brad was looking over things, and I went down the back steps, calling over my shoulder, “Don’t step on the second one down. It’s about to break.”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” he commented.
“I couldn’t have you coming over here for some advice and getting hurt. My insurance agent could drop me in a heartbeat since I just started my policy.”
He chuckled, and the sound warmed my soul. It had been a long time since a man could glance at me, speak, or laugh, and my entire body would immediately respond.
