Page 31 of When in December

Poppy Owens was insane.Frustratingly, certifiably insane.

Poppy Owens stood outside in below-freezing temperatures, painting. A cloud of her breath swirled as she mixed the dark green paint before brushing it in long strokes onto a stretch of wood.

No wonder it didn’t take her long to all but bite my head off since starting her maddening twenty-four-seven work on the cabin. To be honest, I’d expected it to be sooner. It didn’t mean it didn’t feel just as sweet. Just as awful. Maybe that was why I’d kept trying to make it happen for the past week.

The first time, I admitted, had been an accident. When someone called her phone, which was sitting on the counter while she was talking to the construction crew, the ring felt like someone was stabbing an ice pick straight through my skull. So, I answered it. Turned out, it was the painters, confirming that they were rescheduled to paint the walls inside the house on Wednesday.

Irritated, I snapped at them that the walls were fine.

For a moment, especially when I saw the homemaker rushing around like a chicken with her head cut off, I felt bad. But then, more than that, I felt sweet, sweet satisfaction. Maybe that made me a bad person. It certainly made me a bad person. But for the past few days, since I’d started the charade to see how long it would take the homemaker to realize that her house she was determined to make a home wasn’t a lemon. The homeowner on the other hand?

It had become my favorite form of entertainment.

There wasn’t much else to do other than read the books I’d left behind, along with my grandmother’s tattered romances. There was no television or anywhere to sit since the furniture had been delayed as well.

“What?” Poppy snapped as I interrupted her work for what had to be the fourth or fifth time. “What else can I do for you today, Mr. Hayes?”

And Mr. Hayes? What the hell was up with that?

I didn’t think I had ever been calledMr. Hayesin my life, except for when I returned home and had to make a very painful trip to the bank to assess my finances, or lack thereof. I’d probably looked similar that day to the sad, pitiful face the homemaker had had when she watched the rest of the construction workers pack everything up and head out two days ago.

She now wore paint-splattered pants. The faded jeans hugged her hips a whole lot more than the fancy dress pants she wore every other day. But those pressed pants hadn’t given her enough stretch it seemed since she pressed down bright painter’s tape that wasn’t just to give the professionals she’d hired before I canceled the appointment a head start. Nope. Within twenty-four hours, the entire living room was coated in a warm forest green.

Power tools were also becoming involved in the setup in the once clean, albeit empty, living room, now crowded with crap.

Obnoxious Christmas music played through the old, dusty radio, once properly hidden in the cellar. Gone was the put-together homemaker, or whatever her title was, tapping away on her fancy silver tablet and ordering people around. Gone were her pleas over the phone for the people I’d rearranged and rescheduled behind her back after I snooped around on that fancy tablet, thinking that would be enough for her to call it quits.

Poppy was doing what she had to do for this project by herself. Everything.

She wasn’t calling it quits. She wasn’t leaving.

“What can I help you with?” She picked up her paintbrush so the paint wouldn’t drop and stared at me, waiting for an answer. Her oversize sweatshirt slipped over her smooth, freckled shoulder.

I still couldn’t understand why she was painting halfway out the front door, letting all the cold air in.

Every breath felt like ice stabbing at my lungs. “It’s fucking colder than a well digger’s ass in here.”

For a second, I almost thought I saw a curve of her lips.

“Air flow. In case you haven’t noticed since we haven’t painted yet, there’s no overhead lighting in the main areas.”

I hadn’t noticed. When I peeked over my shoulder, it was hard not to see the small, capped wires hanging from the center of the ceiling.

“It would probably help if you put on a shirt,” she suggested.

I forced myself not to look down at my chest. I had a shirt on. “I would’ve layered up if I had known my newly heated house was going to turn into a freezer.”

“I’ll be done soon. I appreciate the patience.” Poppy said her thanks like that was the opposite of what she could appreciate from me, turning back to her project.

“Can you turn that down?” I asked, swatting a hand toward the radio, which instructed to say merry Christmas in Hawaiian for the millionth time.

With a sigh, she paused her painting. The radio volume went down two bars, though until the song changed, it still sounded like nails on a chalkboard to my ears.

“Is that all?” she asked.

“No,” I said before I realized I wasn’t sure what came next.

But I was still standing here for some reason.

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