Along Came Trouble(35)

He’d been completely unaffected. Installing the damn deadbolts over her objections, without reading the instructions, and entertaining her son while he was at it. She’d found herself tempted to toss him a few bowling pins, to see if he could juggle, too. See if there was any job he couldn’t handle.

It was only business between them. She knew that. He had a job to do, and she had to either let him do it or fire him. Instead, she kept fluttering around, a bird without talons. Screeching at him but doing next to nothing to stop him.

And all the while, admiring him. His decisiveness. His competence. His body.

Human biology was such a cruel joke.

Henry made her draw a rainbow, a pot of gold, a leprechaun, and a goat. All but the first were well outside her artistic skill set. Ellen looked up from time to time at the scrum of men at the end of her driveway and nurtured her resentment, but somehow she felt as though the battle had already been lost.

“What’s that, a giraffe?”

Caleb. Damn it, she hadn’t heard him coming. She got to her feet in a hurry, but man, he was tall. And unruffled. And sexy. And she was once again at a disadvantage, her legs streaked with green chalk dust, her pathetic attempt at a leprechaun visible for all the world to see.

“Get them out of here,” she demanded.

“Who?”

“Bill and What’s-His-Name. You’re not installing lights on my house, and you’re not installing an alarm system, either.”

“No,” he said, slowly. “Bill and Matthias are going to do that.”

“I can’t believe you. I made my views on this perfectly clear last night, and they haven’t—” Her train of thought derailed. “His name is Matthias?”

Caleb smiled. “Yep. He has a sister named Millicent. She’s even taller.”

“That’s horrible. His mother must be very cruel. Or insane.”

“Artsy,” he explained. “I think she wanted to make sure they’d stand out from the crowd.”

“That man would stand out anywhere. Except maybe at Lincoln convention in a stove-pipe hat.”

He chuckled, and she covered her mouth with her hand, horrified. She was making him laugh. She was a hair’s breadth away from flirting with him, again, now, when she was supposed to be tipping cauldrons of tar off the battlements onto his head. For heaven’s sake.

She tried again. “Get them out of here, Clark, or I’m calling the police.”

He sobered, showed her his palm with the thumb tucked over his pinky. “Three lights. One over each of the two entrances that don’t have them, one outside your bedroom window. They only come on if something moves outside, and even then only for a couple minutes before they shut themselves back off.”

“No.”

“You can leave the alarm system off during the day. All you have to do is hit one button to turn it on at night and another one to turn it off in the morning. It doesn’t even beep.”

“No.”

“Your house is not safe.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Anyone could walk in at any time.”

“But no one will. This is Camelot, Clark. The whole entire point of living in a village of two thousand people in central Ohio is that you can leave your doors open during the day, and you don’t have to have security lights and alarm systems.”

Even as she said it, she knew she was being unreasonable. Three new lights and an alarm system—it wasn’t exactly armed guards on every door, or even the Secret Service–type guys in blazers who followed Jamie around backstage when he did a show. It was middle ground. Ceding it would not mean she’d lost the whole war.

But the sound of Caleb cutting holes in her doors earlier had set her nerves on edge. She’d felt as if she were walking around naked. Turned inside out. Exposed.

It was the principle of the thing. Having decisions made for her, being told she needed Caleb, she needed anybody, messed with her head.

It was Richard.

Richard had manipulated her, controlled her, used her to feel better about himself. He’d always been telling her what she meant and what she thought, what she ought to think. Patronizing her. Pitying her. Pushing her around with words and helpful suggestions and veiled put-downs.

She didn’t want her house tampered with—didn’t want her life tampered with. Not when it had taken her this long to get it all just the way she liked it. She’d had to fight so hard for her independence, she barely remembered how to yield, and she didn’t want to have to learn all over again.