Page 88 of Unexpected Ever After

I gripped the long metal cylinder, pulling it out of reach. She narrowed her eyes once more, and for a moment, we were in a standoff. Except we were both squatting. At this angle, her coveralls stretched tight over her hips and across her chest. She was hiding a body under that suit. Exactly the kind that made my dick jump. Like a pin-up model from the 1950s. I suddenly pictured her in this same position, in a lot less clothing, a skirt flipping up in the wind, her lips in an ‘o’ of surprise and her fingers brought up in an oopsies!

My dick, ever the obedient fuck, jumped, sending heat scorching through my lower half.

“Give me my goddamned flashlight,” she hissed.

“You swear too much.”

“You like your plumbers to be more ladylike?”

She reached for the flashlight, but I pulled it out of reach. It was just then I noticed the name sewn into her coveralls.

Winona.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Winona asked.

I could ask the same question of myself. I closed my eyes. What the fuck was I doing? I couldn’t work when I knew people were here. It was why I’d made the noon rule so goddamned clear.

But my mouth betrayed me. “Stay, Winona. Fix it.” I saw the flash of surprise in her eyes at me using her name. But her eyes darted to her name tag. She was sharp.

“I won’t.” She grabbed for the flashlight once more, and this time I let her take it.

I stood. “Bill me double whatever she offered you. Triple. Whatever. Just fix the fucking bathroom.” I stormed toward the door.

“She was already paying me triple my emergency rate,” Winona said to my back, just as I was about to step into the hallway.

I paused, looking at her in the mirror.

“That’s already double my regular rate,” she said fast.

“And?” My voice was steely.

“And…” she hesitated, muttering something that sounded like you got me drove. “And you can call someone else and get it done for a fraction of that.”

“Blake would have told Sal you were the best, wouldn’t he? Why would I want anyone but the best?”

Her jaw clenched, but the tiniest flash of something else showed through too. Pride? Humility? I wasn’t sure, but it made me want to know more about how someone like her did what she did. How she’d gotten so tough. But wanting to know more was dangerous.

“Don’t you care about me taking advantage of you?”

I turned for real now, looking into those stormy blue eyes. I needed to cut her loose before I did something idiotic. Like be nice. She was right—Blake was the nice one. Our middle brother Connor, too. I had my moments, like when I’d helped Blake propose to Cassandra. But I’d lost every drop of civility since I’d come here. “I don’t give a fuck about the money.”

Her face pinched tight. Good. The words had landed just as I’d aimed. I could practically feel the heat radiating off of her. So why did it sting to have her look at me like that?

“Assholes like you deserve to lose everything,” she said after a moment, her eyes never leaving mine.

Something went tight inside me at that, and for a moment, it looked like she might have regretted what she’d said.

But she was right. I was an asshole.

So I didn’t say anything. I yanked open the door once again, and left her there, assured I was the worst human being on the planet. What the fuck did I care? She could join some other choice people who agreed.

Ireland. That’s where I should have gone. Where the people talked like her except… not quite. What the fuck was up with her accent?

But oh no, I came to Quince Fucking Nowhere Vermont because my brother was here. Like being in the vicinity of my brother would somehow make me feel less than a complete asshole. Unlike me and Connor, Blake had gotten his life together. He’d found a woman—an incredible, beautiful, smart woman who loved the shit out of him. But I hadn’t even given Blake my address. I’d gone to see him and Cassandra at their place when I first arrived, but I’d taken one look at their moony-eyed fucking bliss and knew I couldn’t see him again, not while I was here. I loved my brother, but I’d instructed Sal to send me a new phone, and to give the number to no one. Not a fucking soul, not even my own family.

It was the closest thing I could get to hiding in a cave.

And it had worked, sort of. I was in the home stretch with this book, even though it had tried to kill me for the past six months.

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