Somebody to Love(21)

“There was a mouse in my pants.”

He raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Lucky mouse.”

Her breath caught. Wrong thing to say. Wrong. “It’s pretty traumatic to have a rodent in your pants, Thing One,” she snapped. “Unless you like that sort of thing.”

“Oh, hey, sorry, princess,” he said, approaching her car. “Didn’t mean to make light of your tragedy.”

“There was a mouse in my pants,” she blurted. “It’s bad enough, okay? I mean, do you see that house? That’s mine! I own it! And I was doing fine, I wasn’t panicking or anything, even when that fricking bird flew into my hair last night but a mouse— I…I can’t have Nicky here! That place is infested!”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “Settle down. You are aware that you’re not wearing pants, right?” Another quirked eyebrow. “Not that I’m complaining.”

She looked down at him, her throat working. She could murder him and throw his body in the water. Or she could put on her pants. She took a shaky breath. “I’m not…eager to put them back on. In case the mouse had cousins.”

“Well, here. Let me check.” Thing One took the jeans from her and turned them inside out, then shook them vigorously. Checked the pockets, too. “Nothing.”

“I saw it. It was there. It ran all the way up this leg, then across my butt, then God knows where it was headed.” His mouth twitched. Did he think this was funny? This was not funny! “It’s not funny, Thing One.”

“Well. It’s gone now.” He looked down. She suspected he was smiling. Idiot.

“It’s in the tub,” she said, giving the jeans a last shake before pulling them on. “You can go find it. Maybe it’ll crawl up your pants and we can compare notes.”

“How was your trip up?” he asked, and really, what kind of a question was that when they were sitting in front of a hovel?

“It was lovely, Thing One. This house, however, is a sty.”

He looked at the house for a long moment, then back at her. “Well. Good thing I’m here, then.”

Right. It suddenly dawned on her that he was here. A familiar face, at least. Something moved in Parker’s chest. She looked away, but no, there was the mouse-infested house. The harbor. Better. Nice view.

“All right. Let’s see what we’re up against.”

Thing One went into the house, and Parker heard a few clunks and thunks. She sat on the hood of the Volvo, her panic fading gradually into the occasional shudder. A rodent running up her leg…there was a sensation a person wouldn’t forget, right up there with an episiotomy.

Her father’s attorney emerged a minute later. Now that she wasn’t screaming, she noticed he looked…different. It took a minute to figure out why.

He wasn’t wearing a suit. First time ever she’d seen him out of— Well, this was the first time ever she’d seen him in jeans and a T-shirt, that was for sure.

Parker looked away and cleared her throat. “So what are you doing here, Thing One?”

He sat on the hood next to her. “Since I’m devoting the next few weeks to overhauling this dump, Parker, you think you could call me by my real name?”

“I seem to have forgotten it.” There. She was getting her old vibe back. Good.

He smiled slowly, his dark eyes crinkling. Dangerous, those eyes. “Again?”

“Is it John? Jason?”

“It’s James. James Francis Xavier Cahill.”

Goose bumps broke out along her arms. It was chilly. Or something. “So what are you doing here, James?”

“Your father asked me to come up.”

Right. James was an obedient pet; she’d give him that. She didn’t say anything for a minute, just pulled her knees to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. “How’s he doing?”

“He’s okay.”

She’d bet her left arm James got more than three minutes on the phone with her father. She sighed. “So. This place. Did you know how bad it was?”

He shook his head. “I called my uncle this morning to ask about a security code, and he told me it was kind of a dump. I didn’t think it’d be this bad, but I can help you out.”

She really needed the Army Corps of Engineers, from the look of it. “So law school trained you to overhaul a house, Thing One? I know you’re good at emptying trust funds, but carpentry?” There. Hopefully that would erase the edge he’d gained from having seen her hysterical and in her panties.

He gave her a look of his own. “Nothing I did was illegal, Parker. Your father had the right to do what he wanted with those trust funds, because you gave him that right. You signed papers letting him have full authority over every penny. And even if I’d wanted to say something—which I did—attorney-client privilege prevented me.”

“Wow. You’re a great guy. Maybe my dad will give you a sticker.”

He ignored that. “At any rate, my father was a builder. I worked on a construction crew summers when I was in college. Do you really want to kick me out because you don’t like me?”

She felt her jaw locking. She’d be an idiot to send him away.

He took her silence as protest. “Look. Aside from hauling all this crap to the dump, you’ll need to reshingle the entire exterior. The roof needs to be replaced, the gutter’s hanging off the front, the chimney is crumbling. I’m guessing there’s dry rot under the linoleum in the kitchen, the cupboards are pulling away from the walls, and the stairs down to the dock are a death trap. The back door frame is warped. You probably need some significant rewiring, not to mention a new paint job inside.” He paused. “I happen to find myself free this summer.”