Page 40 of Monster Among the Roses (Fairy Tale Quartet 1)

“Shaw,” Mom gasped, sending me a disappointed glare. “I invited Gloria to stay for supper.”

Of course she had. Pulling my anger back together, I drew in a deep breath. “Sorry, Mother. I wouldn’t dream of kicking out your guest.” Sending Gloria a tight smile, I splayed out a hand. “Please, stay and eat.”

With a satisfied little smirk, Gloria preened and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Why, thank you. I think I will.”

With a single nod at her compliance, I took a step in reverse. “I hope you ladies enjoy your meal.”

They both blinked. “What? But where are you going?” Mom asked.

I sent her a sad smile, completely ignoring the woman at her side. “I think I’ll eat out tonight.” I gave her a kiss on the cheek before adding, “Have a great evening, Mom.”

With that, I turned away and started for the door.

Both Mom and Gloria called after me, but I kept going. Once I was outside and back in the stairwell of the building, by myself, I finally cursed under my breath. I wished I hadn’t been so quick to defend Isobel. It felt as if I’d just painted a great big target on her back for Gloria to hate. It wasn’t a big deal, of course—the two women would never meet. Gloria couldn’t mistreat her to her face, and Isobel would probably never even be aware that someone disliked her now, because of me. But I still wished I’d been able to hide my feelings better.

What if Henry caught on to the fact I was starting to like her…a lot?

Damn, I was definitely going to have to learn to control myself better than this. Everything seemed to depend upon it.

chapter

THIRTEEN

Planning bookshelf projects and reading about bookshelf projects were entirely different beasts than actually building fucking bookshelves.

“Dammit,” I muttered, tossing down another board I’d cut a fourth of an inch too short. “I suck at this. I so totally suck at this.”

You’d think routing fancy edges or aligning and screwing boards together would be the real challenge for me. But nope, I just couldn’t measure and cut worth crap.

“Too short again?” Isobel asked from across the room, where she sat at the opened window and brushed wood stain across a freshly sanded shelf. Between us, the floor was covered in plastic drop cloths while sawdust fluttered in the air and the crisp scent of lacquer floated to me from the breeze the window let in.

“Yes,” I mumbled, tearing off my hat to run a hand through my hair and trying not to lose my shit. But seriously, you’d think I’d learn not to fuck up the length so badly after the first five boards I’d cut wrong. Moodily, I jammed my hat back on.

“Well, this is only the sixth miss,” Isobel said, dipping her brush into the metal can she held with one hand. “You’ve easily cut three times that number right.”

I blinked at her, wondering when the hell she’d turned so optimistic and encouraging. And why was she being so helpful? From the moment I’d showed her my idea for the library, she’d been involved in this project one hundred percent, just as much as I was. In fact, I wasn’t building these bookcases at all. We were.

The saw scared the shit out of her, so she didn’t do any cutting, but she sanded and beveled and measured, and now she was staining. This was supposed to be my handyman job, but she’d worked and sweated as much as I had. And I had to say, it was nice. We’d bickered, and disagreed, and then agreed and complimented, and now we were encouraging each other, apparently.

“Why don’t you take a break from cutting,” she suggested. “I only have one more board to stain before I’m out of the ones that have been sanded.”

Grateful to move on to something else for a bit, I started toward her. “You need some more sanded?”

She pointed her brush toward a stack of cut boards. “Those right there.”

“On it,” I said, happy for a change of scenery.

“I know it’s not plausible, but I was hoping we could at least put up one range of shelves today. I’m excited to see how the new ones will look next to the old ones.”

I grinned. Her enthusiasm was contagious. And adorable. I wanted to make sure she got whatever she wanted. With a grin, I said, “I bet we could get one up before the end of the day.”

She snorted. “It’d probably take us another eight hours, working straight through, to get to that point, and you get off work in,” she consulted her wrist, “two.”

I shrugged. “I don’t mind staying a couple hours longer.”

Blinking, she stared at me as if I’d just suggested I give her my undying love and devotion.

“But…you don’t have to do that. You already work here nearly fifty hours a week as it is.”

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