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Before I could second guess any of it, I pressed send.
A sudden banging sound had me jumping, and it was almost like the sound of a hammer striking down. Throwing my covers off—and throwing the comfortable warmth with it—I pulled on a sweatshirt and padded into the hall.
And found Mom, rubbing her eyes like a toddler woken up from a nap. “Morning,” I greeted, eyeing her up and down. “Did the sound wake you up too?”
“Mmm.” She sounded less than enthused. Actually, she sounded less than awake. “I didn’t realize he’d get started so early. It’s not even nine o’clock. On a Saturday.”
“He?”
“Reed. Sounds like he’s out replacing the porch steps.” Mom gave an obnoxious yawn, shuffling past me. “Go ask him if he’d like anything for breakfast, will you?”
“Why can’t you?” I called after her, but her silence was the only reply.
After an internal battle, I ducked into the bathroom and scrubbed my teeth like my life depended on it, because there was no way I was walking up to Reed Manning with morning breath. My hair was still in the two braids I’d woven it into last night, so thankfully not a knotted mess, but they were chaotic enough that I untwisted them.
“Who cares what you look like?” I asked my reflection, shaking out the poodle-like curls. The pink was fainter after last night’s shower, but the dye clung on faithfully. “It’s just Reed. He’s made it perfectly clear he doesn’t look twice at you.”
I grimaced, my pep talk doing the opposite of pepping me up.
When I got outside, I found that Reed had already pulled up the treads of the steps, but instead of stopping at the two bottom ones, he’d pulled up all four steps, leaving them stacked in the grass. He was in the process of hammering down the tread closest to the landing, and as I slid open the door, he looked up. “Did I wake you?”
He had on a loose T-shirt and a pair of dark blue work jeans. Strands of his golden hair were stuck along his temples in a way I was horrified to find attractive. “I normally get up at this time.”
Reed looked at me for another beat before turning to the stairs, twirling the hammer. “Your mom said the bottom two were rotted, but once I replace those two, they wouldn’t have matched the top ones. I figured since I had enough wood, I’d just redo them all.”
I tugged at the hem of my sleep shorts, desperate to make them cover as much leg as possible. “Hopefully she’s paying you for all this.”
“She is, but it’s not like I have anything better to do.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek, thinking about the comic books from last night.
Reed dipped his hand into a tin can filled with nails, positioning one over the step. His hammering took away any opportunity for more conversation, at least until the nail was flush with the board. I took a step closer and crouched at the edge of the step. “Do you want any breakfast? Bacon? Pancakes?”
He ducked his head, but I could see the smirk stretch across his lips. “Not if you’re the one making it. No offense, but I barely survived your bite of pasta. If you can even call it that.”
Even though he wielded a literal weapon, I reached out and smacked him for the dig. Since I was crouched so close to the edge of the porch, leaning forward caused me to lose my balance, and there was nothing to brace myself on.
The hammer clattered on the step as Reed dropped it, his hands catching me by the waist instead. Ten points of pressure caught me from tumbling, and for a moment, I was suspended over the torn-up steps, arrested in his grasp.
“Should’ve been voted Most Likely To: Break Her Neck,” Reed murmured, taking a short step closer. “First you almost get hit by a car last night, now falling off the porch—”
“I just woke up,” I said defensively, fighting to keep my voice level. “I’m allowed to be off-balance.”
A corner of his soft lips flicked up, and with it, so did my heartrate. “I wondered why your hair looked like you hadn’t run a brush through it.”
Even once I felt stable again, Reed didn’t let go right away. One of his hands reached up and brushed a lock of hair behind my ear. The involuntary breath I drew in got stuck in the middle of my windpipe, and I held perfectly still. He was close enough that I could see how each strand of his hair was a different shade, and I knew if I used the color picker from my web designing site, each would read with a different Hex color code. On my hips, his fingers pressed down ever so slightly, enough that, for a split second, I thought he was going to pull me into him.
“I’ll take pancakes,” he whispered with that same sort of smirk. “Extra syrup. I like things sweet.”
And then, once he made sure I wasn’t going to face plant again—which could’ve been possible; my knees were wobbly once more—Reed pulled back. He took the dull, fuzzy feeling of warmth with him, and the world lurched into its normal clarity. His attention on me had dropped as he went back to the task at hand, hammering in a new board with a loudthud, thud, thud.
Instead of smacking him again—because trust me, the urge was strong—I trudged into the house, muttering under my breath all the while. “Yeah, yeah, you could use some sweetness.”
* * *
“Rachel, you have to get it on myhair, not on my forehead!”
“Yeah, well, if you’d stop squirming, maybe I could!”
