Maggie Moves On(20)

Old shingles rained down from three stories above in steady thwap thwap thwap into the dumpster. The roof was a priority. As was the electrical work.

The landscaping crew, six of them armed with trimmers and loppers and wheelbarrows and leaf blowers, attacked the worst of the overgrowth around the house and drive. She didn’t mean to zero in on him, but Silas Wright certainly drew the eye.

Taller than the rest, he moved with a practiced ease, doing battle with a stubborn patch of thorns and brush where a storybook walkway would connect the front of the house with the expanded terrace.

His shirt was already streaked with dirt, and the grin he wore was wicked, as if there wasn’t anything in the world he’d rather be doing. That was as attractive as the rest of him, she decided. And she was definitely not going to go out with him, she reminded herself.

With more effort than it should have taken, she tore her attention away from all six-feet-plus of sexy landscaper. Through open windows, she heard the joyous sounds of kitchen demo.

“How about you focus on the porch roof, Billy?” Lou, the owner of the roofing company, suggested. Billy was a long-limbed and scrawny twenty-something with a shock of corn silk blond hair and a pair of job site–inappropriate sneakers. He looked a little green as he clung to the bottom rungs of the ladder.

“He’s so good-looking it’s hard to hate him for ruining the budget,” Dean complained. Maggie realized he wasn’t looking at Billy. He was eyeing Silas.

“He didn’t ruin it,” she argued. “He expanded it.”

“He exploded it. We’ll be lucky to afford half a roof now. We’ll only be able to shoot from the front because the back will be open to the sky,” he predicted.

“You missed your calling. Have you considered a career in motivational speaking?” she asked.

Dean cocked his head, still watching Silas. “He looks like a sexy lumberjack with that beard. I bet he’s got a closet full of flannel.”

As if he’d heard them, the man in question lifted his head and winked at Maggie.

“You need a date,” she muttered to Dean.

“You need a date,” he shot back. Then, to her horror, he waved Silas over.

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

“I’m getting you a date,” Dean said, all innocence.

She sputtered and took a step back. “We don’t date contractors, dummy!”

“Relax, weirdo,” he said, gripping her arm. “I’m getting him mic-ed up so we can do his intro interview.”

“Oh. Right.” Her cheeks felt hotter than the breezy sixty-six degrees called for.

“So stop acting like a seventh grader with a crush and— Sly Sy, can I call you that?” Dean asked, shifting his focus to the tall, sweaty landscaping god who ambled over with a red thermos in his hand.

“You wouldn’t be the first,” called a woman with dark hair and a sweatshirt tied around her waist as she passed them with a wheelbarrow.

Silas lifted his thermos in a toast. The man appeared to be hard to offend. “What can I do for you, Dino?”

Dean went a shade of pink that Maggie had never seen.

When Silas lifted the thermos to take a long drink, Dean slapped her shoulder. “The hot guy gave me a nickname,” he whispered.

“Control yourself, lover boy,” she said, under her breath.

Reining in his caffeine-induced giddiness, Dean rested the tripod and digital camera on his shoulder. “If you’ve got a few minutes, we could get your intro interview out of the way.”

“I’ve got all the time in the world,” Silas promised. He dropped the thermos, swept off his baseball cap, and shoved a hand through golden waves. “How do I look?”

They both stared at him for a beat too long.

“Um,” Maggie said.

Dean giggled nervously.

“Fine. You look…fine,” she said. “I’ll just go check on the electrical inside.”

“Hang on,” Silas said.

“Freeze!” Dean said at the same time, snapping out of his flirt zone.

“I believe you promised you’d hold my hand,” Silas reminded her.

She feigned a wince. “Ooh. Didn’t get it in writing though, did you?”

“Workaholic Nichols will stand by and supervise,” Dean said, resetting the tripod and pointing the camera in Silas’s direction.

“That’s a small camera,” Silas observed.

“Small but mighty,” Dean told him.

“I was expecting TV cameras and those cool folding director’s chairs,” Silas admitted.

“Our production’s pretty lean,” Maggie explained, nudging him to the right so the camera would pick up more of the chaos behind him. “We use this camera for most of the interview footage. I’ve got a smaller one for selfie videos and shooting on the fly. Sometimes we shoot on our phones. And Dean has a drone.”

Silas was watching her with interest. It made her nervous all over again. She unhooked the lavalier mic from her shirt and held it out to him. But he made no move to take it.

“You gonna stand there and hold the man’s mic all day or are you going to hook him up?” Dean asked from behind the camera.

She turned around, stuck her tongue out at him, and then clipped the microphone to Silas’s T-shirt.