Page 41 of Between Now and Forever
“I’ve liked building things since I was your little brother’s age.”
“You know Carter?”
“He came by last night wanting me to help him with his basketball. The kid never stops moving.”
Dylan grins. “That’s Carter.” His affection for his little brother is clear. That’s interesting, considering I’ve seen how he talks to everyone else. “So how did you learn how to build things?”
“Practice, mostly. I went to a trade school while I was in high school and learned the basics. It’s a lot harder than people think.”
“So do you build houses or what?”
“I don’t build them from the ground up. That involves a lot of shit that I don’t want to deal with. I do a lot of renovations, and sometimes that means adding a room or taking one down. That kind of thing.”
“That’s pretty cool.”
“There are worse ways to make a living.”
He nods, seemingly satisfied by his investigation of me. “Does that offer to help still stand? Not because I can’t do it. But because, you know, it might go faster with two guys on the job.”
“No problem. I have some time on my hands.”
He smiles, relief written all over his face. “Thanks. What did you say your name is?”
“I’m Jay.”
“I’m Dylan.”
“All right, Dylan. Let’s get over there and get to work.”
We start back across the lawn. Gabrielle watches us from the front porch. Her grin says,Thank you. My wave says,Don’t worry about it.
ButIworry about it. I worry about it a whole damn lot. Because helping a single mother I’m wildly attracted to is the last place I need to be. It’s a place I swore to myself I’d never be again.
I know that.
So why didn’t I simply just stay away?
CHAPTER TEN
GABRIELLE
Icollect the broken spindles littering the ground and make a pile near the driveway. The front of the house looks a little bare without them, but no spindle is better than missing every third and every sixth one being broken.
My muscles groan as I stare back at the house and take in my handiwork.Not bad.
Aside from the spindles, the steps leading to the porch are gone. I tore out all the weeds popping up in the landscaping and yanked a few plants that were overgrown. The porch light that hasn’t been changed since at least the eighties is now in the trash can.
I still need to clean the baby trees out of the gutters.
The ladder leans against the house right where I left it. I shake it, summoning the courage to give scaling the rungs another shot. The gutters were going to be my first plan of attack, but I chickened out when a not-so-strong breeze nearly yeeted me across the lawn.
It felt like that, at least.
“Woman up, Gabby,” I say, sliding gloves out of my pocket and onto my hands. Then I grip the rails. “Get your butt up there and do the damn thing.”
Voices drift around the house, replacing the hammering and drilling from the last couple of hours. I place one foot on the lowest rung. Dylan and Jay will be here any second, and they’ll try to talk me out of going up there.Heck, they both have already tried today.Besides, if I’m ten feet up in the air, it’ll be harder for Jay to bring up our earlier conversation.
“Look, kissing you would’ve been giving in to the moment. Did I want to kiss you? Of course. You’re gorgeous. But it would’ve been wrong of me to do that because it wouldn’t have gone anywhere.”
