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Her tiny bathroom lights blinked, almost like they protested at having to do their job, but that blinking gave enough distraction to snap her from her tailspin of thoughts.
She couldn’t stay curled on the floor forever. Besides, she’d caused enough of a scene already. Frank waited for her in the kitchen, and she had a new reputation to build. Coming across as flighty and irrational wouldn’t do.
She gathered the energy to hook her hand to the bathroom counter and pull herself up. Her earlier vow to forget the past lay in tatters, but that didn’t mean she had to fall apart. At least, not outwardly, anyway.
The mirror above the sink revealed a pitiful reflection, one that made her tummy churn anew. She’d been living in her car for the last few days, so she shouldn’t have expected much. But her high bun lay in a frazzled mess, and loose curls stuck to her clammy forehead. Her left cheek was smeared in black dust from the fireplace. Worst still, the front of her light-colored outfit had somehow collected wayward soot, and she straight-up looked like a maimed creature from a C-grade zombie movie.
She took a steadying breath, pushed aside her overwhelming desire to cower on the floor again, and turned the tap on so she could run her shaking fingers beneath the cold flow.
She’d go out there and face the two men, and she’d do it with the confidence befitting a normal twenty-eight-year-old woman. One who hadn’t hightailed it minutes earlier. One stronger than the scared shadow of a woman who’d left LA.
Her entire life thus far was a blur of numb acceptance that the men around her could dictate her destiny. Again, stupid girl. Maybe she’d had no other choice, but she couldn’t afford to be that girl any longer.
She splashed handfuls of cold water over her face, removing the black marks while willing her nerves to settle. No towels hung in here yet, so she ran her sleeve over her wet skin, the classless gesture so far from her days as a big-city socialite.
Next, she lifted her posture and tidied her hair; anything to avoid looking like a woman who’d just flipped her lid. She’d make something out of this sucky situation. She had to. The cottage was hers. Her sanctuary. Her new beginning. Decrepit as this place was, she wouldn’t let yet another man keep her from the independence she so desperately wanted.
Uncertainty nipped at her heels, and still, she pried the bathroom door open a crack and waited for a beat, sussing out the hallway before marching onward to the kitchen, where a giant metal box sat on the floor. The lid lay open, a bunch of workman’s thingies visible inside.
Thingies? Tools, Scatterbrain, they’re called tools…
Yes. Right. Tools!
Blaine’s back was to her, his arms outstretched while he measured the overhead cabinets. He hadn’t noticed her in the room, or if he did, he ignored her. And bless her soul, an effervescent tingling spread through her torso, the ease with which he worked and carried himself taking instant effect.
His distinct masculine form, the khaki work shirt pulled over well-defined shoulders—the stretched fit highlighting a steady interplay of taut muscles beneath light fabric. This was as close to a religious experience as she’d had since… Well, since the last time she’d seen him more than a decade ago. And the fact that he did still affect her didn’t bode well.
He’d been nineteen back then—still gorgeous, with a heart of gold—but now he had to be closer to thirty-one. It should have been impossible for Blaine Callaghan to get more attractive, but his broader build and steadier stance took him to full-scale Adonis status. Just being in the same room as him made her knees want to liquefy beneath her.
A sudden jolt of shame rocketed up her spine. She’d only just left her awful marriage. Admiring another man’s bulging biceps felt wrong. Not that Anthony had any bulging biceps to admire.
Maybe the view would be good for her. Might help her move on. She didn’t owe Anthony anything, after all.
Good idea, Genius. Move on? Maybe one day, but not with this guy. It’s not like the last encounter with Blaine didn’t end in disaster or anything…
The grind of someone clearing their throat snapped her attention away from admiring “the view.” Frank. Oh right, Frank was here! He’d tucked himself in the farthest corner, which made him downright invisible compared to “the view.”
The older man raised a brow, suggesting he’d caught every second of her sightseeing. “Seems you two know each other, then?”
Blaine slowly lowered his arms and turned, his gaze training on her like he, too, wanted an explanation. She refused to offer him one. The past was strictly off-limits.
“I wouldn’t go that far.” She nodded at the cabinets. “So, what’s the verdict?”
A muscle on Blaine’s jaw ticked, and he narrowed his eyes as if to say, Are you really going to pretend we’re strangers?
She skittered her gaze from his because, yes, yes she was. Maybe her lie annoyed him, but it was a lie she would tell either way, even though a part of her wanted to mouth the words, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Frank already let me know what he needs.” Blaine’s easy rumble washed over her and set her heart to flutter as if she was the only one unsettled with this surprise reunion. “I’ll take these measurements back to the workshop and put something together over the next couple of weeks.”
She turned to Frank and offered a sweet smile, hoping he’d be her salvation. “Seems I’m lucky to have Frank and Maureen as landlords.”
“Yeah, they’re good people.” Blaine’s voice dragged her gaze back to his steely stare and the muscle in his jaw still twitching away. His rigidity made no secret of questioning whether she was “good people.”
To be fair, the way things had ended, she didn’t blame him.
But what really turned her insides to water was how the color of his eyes retained the same ocean-green flecked with gold. Even though the years had turned his expression more reflective and soul-baring, a tight wariness indicated he had zero patience for her need to save face or her submissive compliance. A submissive compliance that had hurt them in more ways than one.
Where once he’d looked at her with wide and hopeful wonder, now, hard lines and a clenched jaw took over. She let her vision fall to the scuffed floor, the swirling, honeyed pattern on the wood a weak distraction from the heat engulfing her face. If only she’d been stronger back then.
