What a Bachelor Needs (Bachelor Auction Book 4)(22)

She found him in the laundry, flat on his back with this head and shoulders beneath the sink, old pipes and new scattered around him in seemingly no particular order.

“Do you ever stick to a plan?” she asked, and watched as the foot he’d been tapping impatiently against the tiles stilled and he leaned to one side in order to look at her.

“You’re early.”

“So’s the snowstorm. No customers. Are you looking to get home this evening? Because I’m pretty sure you’ve already missed that window.”

“I’m staying at Seth’s tonight. He’s got a place in Marietta.”

“Handy things, brothers.”

“I’ve always thought so. Your water pressure is a joke.” He returned his attention to her pipes and she returned her attention to his…thigh area.

“I prefer to call it quirky.” A couple of her taps had good water pressure. Others didn’t. “What are you doing?”

“Improving it.”

“Don’t suppose you could improve it in the shower as well?”

“I can try.”

She tried not to feel guilty. He had asked for more work.

“Fire’s on,” he said. “I cheated and bought an old cot from the thrift store and used three sides of it to make your fire guard. It cost you ten bucks. Where’s the poppet?”

“Claire’s staying overnight with my parents. They didn’t want me driving to get her. Having just slid most of my way home, I see their point.”

“So you have the night off. How are you going to spend it?”

“Asleep.”

He slid her a teasing glance. “Before that.”

“Staying in.”

“Want to do something with me?”

“Does it involve being sixteen again?”

“No. No pretending required, although I’m not ruling out kisses. We could go for a meal.”

“If we can find somewhere that’s open.”

“The thought was there.”

And the food was here and there was plenty of it. She didn’t even have to cook it.

“How about an afternoon picnic?” she offered. “I know this vast expanse of wooden floor. It’s very atmospheric.”

“It’s not that vast. Guess what else I found at the thrift store this morning?”

“Elvis?”

“A floor rug. I thought of you and bought it.”

“Does it come with a receipt?”

“Housewarming present.” He reached for a roll of thin white tape and began winding it around a join. “It’s rolled up in front of the fireplace. I was going to roll it out before I left.”

She didn’t know what to do with generosity like this. The gifts Boyd had bought her had only ever been apologies for his own excesses. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say nothing until you see it. You might hate it.”

It seemed unlikely, given she hadn’t hated anything he’d said or done yet.

“Will you stay for that meal? I’d tell you I’m about to cook up a storm but I’d be lying. The food’s from the bar. It was a slow day so we had a lot of leftovers. All I have to do is microwave it and plate up.”

“I’m in. When?”

“You didn’t stop for lunch, did you?”

“Not yet. But I’ll be out of here and your water will be back on in ten minutes.”

She could work with that. “There’s going to be wine involved,” she warned him. “At least, on my part there is.” More wine than food, given that she’d just eaten. And she probably needed to get out of her work clothes and into some regular clothes. Regular pretty clothes, because she was going on a picnic with Jett Casey at her house and she was reading far too much into it.

She left him to it, returned to the kitchen and uncapped the wine with far less finesse than usual. This wasn’t a proper date – this was Jett being Jett. Come for a meal, come for a drink. Come and have some fun.

Fun being a Jett Casey motto.

Picking up her glass of white wine, she padded to the front room and stepped in. Her socks didn’t stick to the floor and the room smelled a thousand times better than it had. A fire crackled in the grate, lending warmth and color, and he’d stacked wood for the evening in an old iron wash tub that had previously lived in her garage.

The fire guard was bigger than she expected, and prettier. Old, natural wood, unstained, with a tiny heart shape burned into the center of every slender bar. How much had he paid for a cot that looked like this? Ten dollars? He was either the best bargain hunter on the planet or he was lying about how much it had cost him, in order to protect her meager finances.

She ran her fingers along the top rail and found it smooth and worn and perfect to the touch.

She sipped her wine and looked towards the faint sound at the doorway, and found Jett leaning against it, watching her.

“Do you like it?” he said.

“It’s beautiful. Did you really only pay ten dollars for it?”

“Cross my heart.”

She still couldn’t tell if he was lying. Boyd had lied about practically everything.

Jett wasn’t him.

Still.

She looked to the roll of carpet, all wrapped up tightly and labeled. It wasn’t a small rug, by any means. Nor was it second-hand. “This is new.”