Page 16 of Love In Translation

“You swore, you bolted away, and then, down here, you waved your arms about like a demented chicken. Message received.”

Rheo followed the direction of his pointed finger. His bedroom window overlooked this portion of Paddy’s extensive garden.

More mortification.Marvelous.

“Fletcher, I—”

“Call me Fletch, everyone does,” he said, interrupting her.

She nodded her agreement. “My life is complicated, and while I enjoyed kissing you, I’m not in a position to take it any further.”

He sent a small, cool smile. “Did I ask you to?”

“Well, no,” she admitted. “I just didn’t want you thinking—”

“I only met you a short while ago, Rheo, but I already know you think too much.” He held up his hand in a silent request for her not to speak.

She narrowed her eyes and waved her hand in a silent gesture for him to continue.

“Firstly, you apologized earlier for kissing me. I was as into it as you, and if I didn’t want to kiss you, I wouldn’t have.”

Okay, that wasn’t what she expected. Also, very direct. But she far preferred someone being straightforward than glitter-covered bullshit.

“Secondly, it was only akiss, not a request to take you to bed or anything else.”

HisRelax, you’re making a big deal out of nothingwas implied, as loud as if he’d screamed it in her ear.

She dropped the legs of her chair to the ground and shot to her feet. She’d heard so many versions of “relax,” “stop overthinking,” and her favorite, “you’re far too sensitive” all her life. The accusation, verbal or not, was a hot-button issue for her and a trigger, instantly reminding her of how different she was from her family and how isolated and lonely she’d felt as a child. How she sometimes—more lately than usual—still felt.

Rheo wanted nothing more than to walk into the house—to go back to New York and her lovely, safe apartment—but before she could, he moved, about to lean his shoulder into a pillar. She threw out her hand, shouting a warning, but his shoulder connected, and the rickety gazebo creaked and swayed. One minute Rheo stood under the roof, the next she was a few steps away, watching the wooden beams tumble to the ground, cracking and splitting as they hit the chairs and concrete slab.

Rheo stared at what was now a huge, messy pile of oversized kindling and wanted to cry. She’d worked so hard on the gazebo, sweating as she sawed, hitting her thumb with the hammer, dropping wooden planks on her shoulder and once on her head. And with one touch of a masculine shoulder, it disintegrated. Okay, she knew it wasn’t the most solid structure in the world, but she didn’t expect it to fall apart like a pile of pickup sticks.

“Who the hell built that?” Fletch demanded, furious. He held her against him—nice!—and she was half off her feet. He’d pushed her out of the way of the tumbling structure and saved her from a serious injury.

She was still processing that reality when Fletch dropped his arm and stepped away from her to kick the plank closest to him. He picked up a concrete pot lying on its side and banged it down on its base. Rheo grimaced. He was properly furious.

“Do you realize how lucky you were? What if it fell when nobody was here with you?” he demanded.

It wasn’t a scenario she wanted to think about. Rheo considered asking him whether he could stand up straight for more than five minutes, but decided it wasn’t a good time. But why did he always have to lean?

“The posts should’ve been anchored to the ground with cement.” Fletch picked up the end of a beam and inspected a bent nail with disgust. “These should’ve been bolted in, not hammered together with nails.” He glared at her. “Didn’t you notice it was rickety?”

Well, yes.She’d had her doubts it would survive when a storm had blown through last week, but it did, so she decided it was fine. To be on the safe side, she’d placed the pots next to each beam to keep them straight and give the pillars extra support.

“I have never come across such shoddy, amateurish workmanship in my life,” Fletch railed. “Why do something if you aren’t going to do it properly?”

Because she was an amateur? Because she didn’t have the first clue about carpentry? Because she was scared of her grandmother, was terrified of disappointing her, and thought a gazebo might make up for her mistakes?

“You need to call the carpenter and demand your money back,” Fletch snapped, scowling at the pile of wood.

Now that her adrenaline was subsiding, a bubble of laughter crawled up Rheo’s throat. “I can’t do that,” Rheo told him, her voice shaky.

“Why the hell not?” Fletch demanded, still looking pissed off.

It was time to come clean. About this, anyway. “Because I built it.”

Rheo walked into the kitchen, shoes back on her feet, and headed for her coffee machine. It was one of the few appliances she’d had shipped from the Brooklyn apartment she’d sublet on a month-to-month lease to the translator who’d stepped into her shoes when she’d left.

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