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Okay, Grant thought. Now he understood what was going on here. She was a tricky thing. Tricky, tricky, tricky. But it wouldn’t work out the way she envisioned it. His grandmother didn’t know Pepper and how stubborn she could be. “Even if I did—”
“You want her, this is your chance,” she said, cutting him off. “If Pepper wants to fix up her house, then you help her make it happen. Spend time with her doing something important to her, as opposed to you just throwing cheesy pickup lines at her. You’re a great young man, Grant, and I’m not just saying that because you’re my grandson. You have a lot of qualities that are charming, but most of that goes to the wayside when you’re acting like the town’s sexy bad boy. You’re big on honesty, so be genuine with her and I guarantee you’ll make progress.”
Be genuine? That was something Grant wasn’t entirely sure how to do. He was honest, always, but when he hit puberty and realized he had a gift for charming women, his honest words always had an underlying agenda: a means to seduction. He learned early on that he had to
stand out from his brothers. He wasn’t a great athlete like Blake, or a brilliant student like Mitchell. But women wanted the alluring bad boy who would say all the right things, touch them the right way, and then roar off into the distance on his Harley. He could be that, and built his reputation on it.
But if he cast off the motorcycle, lost the sunglasses and the bad-boy machismo, what was left? He didn’t know. And he doubted Pepper would like whatever was left over.
“I mean it,” his grandmother warned as she placed a hand on his cheek. “Just be yourself and it will work out. I’m giving you a gift, Grant. Make the most of it.”
He wasn’t sure if being himself would be enough to crack her hard exterior. “She’s furious. I doubt she’ll want anything to do with me.”
“In her situation, your offer of help is one she can’t refuse. She bought you, whether she wanted to or not. Let her use you for manual labor and get every penny back. It’s the least you can do after your poor, clumsy grandmother got her into this pickle.”
Adelia patted him on the shoulder and turned to walk out of the gymnasium.
She was right. This was his chance to break through her defenses. He wanted Pepper. He had no clue why, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He needed to make the most of this opportunity.
He’d start first thing in the morning.
Sunday morning, Pepper opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling of her living room. For a minute, she reveled in the joy of a lazy Sunday morning, knowing she had an entire week of vacation ahead of her.
And then she remembered.
Rolling over, she smothered her face in her pillow and screamed as loudly as she had wanted to last night at the auction but couldn’t.
With that out of her system, she threw back the blankets and got out of bed. Screaming was nice and all, but it didn’t change anything. She needed to brew a pot of coffee, get out her notebook of chores, and see what she could still get done with a week and a thousand dollars. Even after two cups of coffee and some creative accounting, it wasn’t much. If she opted to use the money to reinforce the floor in the one bedroom, she could fake the window by caulking the shit out of it. That wasn’t the bedroom she wanted for her room, but the electrical problems in the other room would just be too pricey with her current budget.
She could recover from this, it would just take time. If she could get one bedroom done, at the very least, she could get her bed out of the living room. Then she could save up to do the rest. She was picking up more of her own clients and was hired to do the hair and makeup for a wedding in a few weeks. That was good money. And maybe if Adelia started having her hair done at the salon more often, she’d draw in more clientele with high-end hair needs. That meant higher commissions and, hopefully, higher tips.
All was not lost. It just felt that way in the moment.
Then the doorbell rang. At first, Pepper reached for her phone, thinking she had a text, then realized it was her doorbell.
No one had ever rung her doorbell before, so she hadn’t been entirely sure it worked. One less thing to fix, she supposed.
Getting up, Pepper peered out the peephole to see who was outside. It was Grant, looking quite spiffy for this early hour on a Sunday morning in a pair of khakis and a blue polo shirt. She doubted he’d come from church. He had something in his hands, but she couldn’t tell what it was through the tiny spyglass. It didn’t matter.
“Go away!” she shouted. She wasn’t letting him into her house. For one thing, it was a mess and would be for longer than she’d hoped. For another, she was wearing flannel pajama pants and a thin, cotton tank top with no bra. Her hair was up in a messy bun. She hadn’t even brushed her teeth yet. Never mind the fact that she was mad at him, although he’d done nothing wrong.
“Let me in, Pepper,” he said. “We need to talk.”
“No we don’t. Time is money. I may be broke, but I’ve got time and I’m not wasting it on you.”
“You’re going to, because I’m not leaving until you let me in.”
Pepper would see about that. She backed away from the door to let him wait it out. But just in case she was wrong, she darted into the bathroom to brush her teeth and slip on her robe. She wasn’t about to give him a nipple show.
Five minutes later, she returned to the door and he was still standing there. With a sigh, she opened the door and looked at him with an expression of exasperation. “What do you want, Grant?”
“I want to talk to you about last night.”
“Unless you’ve got a check for four grand to buy yourself out of my debt, I’m not interested.”
“I’ve got something better. This is for you.” He held out the bundle in his hands, and she finally got a good look at what he was holding.
It looked like a bouquet of some kind, but instead of flowers wrapped in paper, it was tools and paintbrushes wrapped in a drop cloth and tied with a heavy-duty extension cord. She spied caulk, a drywall saw, duct tape, a wrench, a level, a box cutter, a measuring tape, and even a tiny bottle of vodka. It was a sweet thing to do. She needed the majority of the things in his hands, but she couldn’t accept it.
