Dream Lake (Friday Harbor #3)(44)

Alex was relieved to begin the physical work of the remodel, starting with the teardown of the kitchen wall. He and two guys from his crew, Gavin and Isaac, prepared the area with plastic and removed fixtures and outlets. Gavin, a trade-level carpenter, and Isaac, who was in the process of getting LEED certified for green construction jobs, were both serious about their work. Alex could trust them to show up on time and get the job done as safely and efficiently as possible. Wearing goggles and dust masks, the three of them took the wall down to the studs with pry bars. They tore out chunks of plaster, occasionally reaching for a reciprocal saw to cut through stubborn nails.

The hard physical work felt good to Alex, helping him expend some of the pent-up frustration that had accumulated during the past few days with Zoë. She had qualities that annoyed the hell out of him. She was unreasonably perky early in the morning, and she always seemed to want to feed him. She read cookbooks as if they were novels, and she recounted restaurant menus in astonishing detail, seeming to expect he would find the subject as fascinating as she did. Alex had never been fond of people who looked on the bright side of life, and Zoë had made it into an art form. She neglected to lock doors. She trusted salespeople. She started a conversation with the appliance dealer by telling him exactly how much she had to spend.

Everywhere Alex went with Zoë, whether it was the hardware store or the flooring company or a sandwich shop to get a couple of cold drinks, men checked her out. Some of them tried to be discreet, but some made no attempt to hide their fascination with her jaw-dropping beauty and her grade-A rack. The fact was, Zoë was eye candy, and short of disfiguring herself there was nothing she could do about it. At the sandwich shop, a pack of four or five guys leered until Alex had moved in front of Zoë and sent them a look of imminent death. They had all backed off. He’d done the same thing at other times, in other places, silently warning them away even though he had no right. She didn’t belong to him. But he kept watch over her anyway.

It would be a full-time job to fend off the poachers. Until he’d met Zoë, Alex would have scoffed at the idea that beauty could be a problem for someone. But it would be difficult for any woman to be subjected to that kind of relentless attention. It explained the reason for Zoë’s innate shyness—the wonder was that she ever dared to go out at all.

Now that the work on the Dream Lake cottage had started, Alex wouldn’t have to see Zoë for at least a month, except in passing. It would be a relief, he thought. He would get his head clear.

The first payment was due tomorrow. Justine had offered to drop it in the mail, but Alex had asked to pick it up at the inn in the morning. He needed to take it directly to the bank. He’d laid out his own money for the initial supplies and expenses, and since the divorce there wasn’t a hell of a lot of surplus cash in the coffers.

After working late on the cottage with Gavin and Isaac, Alex went home. He was so tired from the day’s exertions that he didn’t bother scrounging for dinner. He didn’t even reach for the bottle of booze, only took a shower and went to bed.

When the alarm went off at six-thirty, Alex felt like hell. Maybe he was coming down with something. His mouth was parched, and his head ached ferociously, and the effort to lift a toothbrush felt like bench-pressing a kettlebell. After a long shower, he dressed in jeans and a tee with a flannel shirt over it, but he was still cold and shaking. Filling a plastic cup with water from the sink, he drank until a wave of nausea forced him to stop.

Sitting on the edge of the tub, he struggled to keep the water down, and wondered wretchedly what was wrong with him. Gradually he became aware of the ghost standing at the bathroom doorway.

“Personal space,” Alex reminded him. “Get out.”

The ghost didn’t move. “You didn’t have anything to drink last night.”

“So?”

“So you’re in withdrawal.”

Alex looked at him dumbly.

“Hands aren’t steady, right?” the ghost continued. “Those are the DTs.”

“I’ll be fine after I have some coffee.”

“You should probably have a shot of booze. Guy who drinks as much as you, it’s better to wean off slowly rather than go cold turkey.”

Alex was swamped with incredulous outrage. The ghost was wildly overstating the case. He drank a lot, but he knew what he could tolerate. Only drunks got the DTs, like the homeless guys in alleys or the barflies who drank the nights away. Or his father, who’d died of a heart attack while recreational diving at a tourist resort in Mexico. After a lifetime of alcohol abuse, Alan Nolan’s coronary arteries had been so blocked that, according to the doctors, he would have needed a quintuple bypass surgery had he lived.

“I don’t need to wean off anything,” Alex said.

It would have been easier to take if the ghost had been mocking or superior, or even apologetic. But the way he looked at Alex, with a sort of gravity touched with pity, was too offensive to bear.

“You might want to take the day off and rest,” the ghost said. “Because you’re not going to get much work done.”

Glaring at him, Alex lurched to his feet. Unfortunately the motion was too much for his outraged digestive system, and he was forced to lean over the toilet, retching.

After a long time he made it to his feet again, rinsed his mouth and splashed his face with cold water. Looking into the mirror, he saw a pale, haggard complexion and puffy eyes. He recoiled in horror, having seen his father in this shape about a thousand times while growing up.