Well Matched (Well Met #3)(10)

“Wow,” I said when the boy was out of earshot and his friends had scurried away. “You’re quite the taskmaster.”

Mitch shrugged. “I don’t like people using that word like that.” He leaned against the wall, echoing my casual stance, but tension lined his shoulders. “If I catch them saying it, they run a mile around the track. They know the rules.”

“No, that’s . . . that’s good.” The world was nasty enough, and if Mitch could make it that little bit nicer, one small-town boy at a time, more power to him.

“Anyway.” His expression cleared, and his shoulders dropped. He rolled his head on his neck, and I heard a faint crack. I’d always thought of Mitch as the kind of guy without a care in the world, but he cared. About a lot of things. Huh. “Next Saturday?”

“Next Saturday.” I nodded. “It’s a date.”



* * *



? ? ?

Sure enough, when I came home from work the next night, there was an unfamiliar contraption leaning against my front door. I was genuinely stumped for a full thirty seconds until I remembered that Mitch was loaning me his—or his father’s—pressure washer. Cleaning the back deck with it was one of the noisiest but also most satisfying tasks I’d ever undertaken. Once I was done, it looked like it had the day the contractors finished building it, and I considered leaving it that way and not bothering to stain it.

But Mitch shook his head when he got there that next Saturday morning and I broached the subject. “It looks great, but you want to stain it. How long ago did you say this was built?”

I hummed while I tried to remember. “A couple years ago? Something like that?” It was certainly after the accident—this deck had been a present to myself after the settlement from the lawsuit the accident had spawned had come through. The contractor had knocked out the window in the dining room and turned it into a pair of French doors. This deck was my favorite place to linger with a cup of coffee on the weekends.

“A couple years?” Mitch shook his head in disgust. “You’re lucky the wood didn’t split.”

“What do you mean? It’s pressure-treated lumber.” I stressed “pressure-treated” like I had any idea what that meant. I didn’t. But the contractor had specified that he was using it to build the deck, and it sounded suitably impressive to someone like me, who knew nothing about carpentry.

“Pressure-treated means it’s not going to rot, but that won’t keep it from splitting. You really want to stain it.”

“Oh.” I studied the planks of the deck, looking for any signs of . . . splitting? Was that what he’d said? I wasn’t a handyman, how was I supposed to know this stuff? “But if we stain it now it’ll be okay?”

“Absolutely.” He nodded vigorously. “It’ll look so much better than the bare boards too.”

He had a point there. I’d always intended to stain this deck when it had been finished, and then of course like any good homeowner I’d never gotten around to it.

We worked in companionable silence for a little while before I remembered that we were meant to be talking strategy. “So.” I reloaded my paintbrush and spread some stain across the railing. “Tell me more about this family dinner situation. You said it’s for your grandparents’ anniversary? Fiftysomething? Why are you celebrating fiftysomething? Isn’t fifty the big milestone?”

He nodded. “We did that too. On their fiftieth, we had a big blowout. Like a family reunion. Malones everywhere.”

“Oh, God,” I said to the porch railing. Mitch on his own was enough to handle. Malones everywhere? I’d never survive.

Thankfully, Mitch didn’t hear me. “It was great. I saw cousins I hadn’t talked to since high school. It was a big deal. The whole family got along for probably the first time in history. So now we have to do it every couple of years.”

“Oh. Wow.” I blinked. That was . . .

Mitch nodded, as if he could read my mind. “It’s a lot. But my grandma was so happy. Then she insisted we all get together again the next year, so we did it. And now it’s become this annual tradition.”

I shook my head. “You can’t do Christmas like a normal family?”

He snorted. “Nope, that would be too easy.” He moved farther down the stairs with his brush and can of stain. “Besides, someone always misses Christmas, what with in-laws and all. So now, it’s this whole anniversary thing at the beginning of June. And if anyone says anything about not coming . . . well, Grandma looks so sad.” He shook his head mournfully.

“Oh, God,” I said again, but this time I meant it. “That’s terrible.”

“Exactly,” Mitch said. “Grandma’s a scammer.” That wasn’t the response I’d expected and Mitch knew it; he looked up and grinned at my bark of laughter. “You should see it. Total crocodile tears. But you can’t say no to her.”

“Of course not,” I said. “Saying no to grandmas is illegal in some states, I think.”

“Exactly.” Mitch balanced his paintbrush on his small can of stain before standing up to stretch his back. He’d been hunched over those steps for a while now, and I had to say I enjoyed this little show of weakness from him. It proved he was mortal, or something. Plus, I was getting a pretty nice show here. Hands on his hips, chest practically thrust into the air, those arms with biceps roughly the size of my head. You could see each muscle stand out in relief as he stretched, like an anatomy model covered in warm skin and a tight T-shirt. A shock of blond hair fell over his forehead as he bent forward, and I blew out a long breath.