Page 2 of Man Glitter
“I see you, stumpy!” I whispered to the tree stump that took me down last night.
I skirted around the trip hazard and made it all the way past the two tall trees that blocked my view of the neighbor’s yard. Weird there weren’t any fence lines around here to delineate properties, but maybe they did things a little different in Auburn Hill.
A large workshop came into view, light spilling out the door so brightly I was able to shut off my flashlight. A dark-haired man hunched over a huge machine, back muscles bunching and flexing as he ran a long length of wood through a saw machine that stretched up ten feet in the air. The wood clanked as it fell to the floor, the man standing up straighter, holding one piece of wood in his hands for a close inspection.
I sagged against the doorframe and blinked repeatedly. Maybe I was dreaming. Hallucinating? Because the man slowly turning to place his wood on a scarred work table was straight out of a Hollywood movie. A Marlboro man turned lumberjack. A cologne model all grown up. He looked to be mid-thirties and a hater of zippers as his worn denim jeans weren’t fastened, sliding down slim hips. My eyes dipped to take in the view like any warm blooded female’s would.
An even louder noise rent the air and I snapped out of my stupor. Hot or not—and I was most definitely going with hot—he was making a racket in the middle of the night. Saw dust flew through the air, coating his entire naked upper body, the tiny flakes of wood embedding themselves in all the nooks and crannies of his muscles.
I’d never been so jealous of a wood particle.
As soon as the machine wound down a decibel or two, I cleared my throat, wrapping the sweater further around me to cover the nipples that had suddenly stood at attention despite my attempts to tell them to calm down. Lumber man lifted his head, sky-blue eyes finding me, surprise barely registering.
“Hey,” he grunted, an easy smile showing off straight white teeth and two smile lines bracketing his mouth.
“Hey yourself,” I responded, my tone decidedly more arctic than his. “Do you know what time it is?”
His grin intensified as he glanced out the window to the left. “S’pose it’s nighttime if that dark sky and half moon mean anything.”
I frowned, my dislike for this character growing with each stupid comment. “Yes, us civilized people of the twenty-first century use these things called clocks, and mine says it’s after eleven.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered, running his fingers along the edge of the board he’d cut, paying me zero attention.
I stood up straight, sensing he wasn’t taking me seriously. “Auburn Hill has a noise ordinance that says all loud noises must be stopped by ten o’clock. I’d hate to have to call the police department.”
He whistled through his teeth and spun back to the loud machine that caused a cloud of saw dust. Was he really going to keep working after I’d threatened the cops? What kind of egotistical muscle man did I move in next to?
“Oh, I’d hate for you to call poor Waldo too. Man likes his sleep since he’s got five daughters. I suspect any man would be tired out with all that estrogen around. How about you put your ear plugs in—I know you city girls all have ‘em—and call it a night before you anger the town chief?” He winked like a sexy devil I wanted to throttle while simultaneously rubbing myself all over his delicious body.
And with that he pushed a button and the machine from hell cranked back on. He put the board against a flying wheel of red, and wood particles went flying again.
“Wha—” I’d only been this angry once before and very bad, life altering things had happened because of it. “One, two, three…”
The man shifted and fed another edge of the board to the sander, his jeans slipping lower to show off more tanned skin. The guy probably suntanned nude in his front yard. I lifted an eyebrow mid-count. I wouldn’t mind that, actually.
No! What was I thinking? The guy was a grade A asshole, and I’d have to come up with another method to shut him and his machines down at night. I twirled around and marched back to my house, grumbling the entire way.
“Who the hell says ‘I’ll be damned’ anyway? What is he? Eighty?”
I slammed my back door shut and locked it, irritated with myself for getting distracted by a hot body. He was clearly in the wrong and then he had the nerve to suggest earplugs as the logical solution.
Flopping down into bed, I really didn’t know how I’d get to sleep when I had rage fueled adrenaline running through my veins. When the sander fired up again, I reached over, grabbed my earplugs, and shoved them in my ears. Yes, Mr. Asshole Neighbor, I did have earplugs next to my bed. And this was the last night I intended to use them. I didn’t move to this bumpkin town to live like I did in the city.
Tomorrow, I’d carve out some time to chat with the Chief.
Mr. Asshole Neighbor had another thing coming.
2
Charlie
Snapping the lid on the tiny diffuser, I fired that bad boy up, inhaling deeply when the first puff of lavender infused air hit my nose. I needed some goddamn shut-eye pronto and my go-to sleep aids were failing me. In the back of my mind, I knew it had everything to do with the date on the calendar and the fact that the anniversary was looming yet again, but I was in the middle of a huge project for my best client with a strict deadline. You can’t handle power tools and be chronically sleep deprived. No bueno.
Chester bumped his head on my thigh and whined. I knew what he wanted and yet I always tried to hold out and get to sleep on my own. He’d come to me a few years ago fully trained to be a therapy dog, a detail I kept on the down-low. Didn’t need it getting out that Crazy Charlie needed a therapy animal to simply handle life.
“I know, Chester boy. Let me try doing some sanding and then if that doesn’t work, you can come sleep on the bed with me.” I patted him on the head, ignoring the way he looked at me straight faced like I was a dumbass. I knew it, he knew it, but no reason to acknowledge it.
I pulled on another pair of work jeans, identical to the other eight pairs I owned, not bothering with underwear or even zipping them properly. I’d seenThere’s Something About Maryat a very impressionable age. No underwear, no zippers, no trip to the emergency room twenty miles away with mangled goods. I shuddered just thinking about that one scene.
