And how did she feel about a man who was suspended from his regular job because he’d ignored his boss’s orders? She wondered as she brewed tea and made toast, trying to ignore the harvest-gold appliances and chipped mint-green countertops as she did so. What if he ignored her instructions?

  Adam maintained that Dylan had put saving a life ahead of bureaucracy, but still, you had to wonder.

  While she ate breakfast, she scanned this week’s flyers from local hardware stores and big-box DIY places and wondered, not for the first time, if she’d made a terrible mistake. When she’d found out her grandmother had left her a little money, her parents had both encouraged her to buy her own place. “You know renting is throwing money down the drain,” her mom had insisted.

  “We’ve always made money on our houses,” her father, the accountant, had added.

  But her father was handy. And lived far away in California. The two of them had bonded not over carpentry but over scuba diving, a passion that had led to her current career.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t want a house. She did, of course, and she believed her parents and her financial advisor and the real-estate agent when they’d said that it was a good long-term investment. She imagined what her three-bedroom home could look like and knew it could be warm and beautiful. Even the neglected garden could shine with some love and attention.

  If she knew the first thing about gardening.

  When the doorbell rang later that day, she was almost ready to shove the For Sale sign back in front of the house.

  She opened the door.

  And the best-looking man she’d ever seen—who wasn’t staring back at her from a movie screen, TV set or a billboard—stood there. “Hi, I’m Dylan,” he said, all sexy and hot with his tousled hair that looked as though he’d only just gotten out of bed after leaving a woman or two very happy. His eyes were the kind of blue that reminded her of the seas she loved to dive in. His teeth were white and even and he was tall. His clothes might be scruffy but nothing could downplay the exquisite tone of his body.

  She actually had to blink and give her overloaded senses a moment. When she opened her eyes he was still there and still as spectacular. Of course, she should have realized that he wasn’t your run-of-the-mill kind of man when Serena had mentioned he was Mr. June and fanned her face. Serena was engaged to Adam Shawnigan, who wasn’t exactly dogmeat to look at. If she was getting gooey over another guy’s appearance—well, he’d look like this man.

  “Cassie,” she managed when she could form a word. “Come on in.” Then she saw the toolbox. “Oh, you brought tools.” She’d imagined this would be a preliminary session where he’d look around the house then go home and prepare a budget and maybe give her a supply list.

  He shrugged. “Adam said you want to get started right away and personally, I hate wasting time.”

  She had her first inkling that they were going to get on just fine.

  “Unless you take one look at this place and run screaming out again.” She sighed. “There’s a lot of work here.”

  Dylan stepped in around her and began to touch and poke at and inspect things. She’d planned to give him a tour and point out the areas she most wanted tackled, but he seemed to have his own agenda. Fascinated, she followed him. He didn’t take notes, merely nodded and muttered as he pulled on the banister (which was solid, that got a nod), opened a kitchen cabinet (headshake and muttering), then glanced around. “You’ll want a separate electric panel up here in the kitchen. For that you’ll need a licensed electrician. I can recommend one.”

  “Thanks.”

  “He can also change that fluorescent lighting to something from this century.”

  Without missing a thing he was zeroing in on her list of absolute must-haves.

  He dropped to his knees and pulled at a corner of the kitchen flooring. That got a groan.

  But when they got to the living room and he pulled up a corner of the awful shag rug, he not only nodded, he traced the inlaid wood pattern with a finger. “You can’t buy this kind of workmanship anymore.”

  Upstairs, he bounced on the floor, then walked into the bathroom and said, “Wow.” He continued through each of the three bedrooms, then took her all the way down to the basement and walked around. When they got back up to the main level he stood once more in the living room and turned slowly around.

  “You know,” Dylan said, “this place has great potential.”

  “Oh, how I am beginning to hate that word.”

  When he grinned at her she almost forgot to breathe. “Don’t worry. We’ll get her so she’s better than new. First, I have to warn you, things will get worse. Messy and noisy and destructive. But then things will get a lot better, and fast.”

  She nodded. “Define fast.”

  He had a confidence about him that made her feel everything would be all right. “A month from now you won’t recognize the place. Two months from now, you’ll have forgotten it ever looked this bad.”

  “I can’t imagine I’ll ever forget.” She’d better take lots of pictures along the way.

  “Now, Adam says you’re on a budget, so here’s what I propose. We tackle the absolute worst things that you can’t live with and then go from there. Absolute worst for me would be bathroom, then kitchen. It’s easy and not very expensive to strip out all the carpets and refinish the hardwood floors. Big bang for your buck. If you want to save money, you have to help. What can you do?”

  When he turned those gorgeous blue eyes on her, she tried to come up with something, some previously undiscovered handy-person trait. “I can choose the fixtures and colors and things.”

  “Good. Can you paint?”

  “Uh, I guess so. How hard can it be?”

  “That’s the attitude. I’ll show you a few tricks. Paint makes a huge difference and it’s relatively cheap.”

  “Have you done many renovations?”

  “Sure. Didn’t Adam tell you? I buy and fix up houses and then sell them. It’s a hobby of mine. I also take on projects for other people when I’m off duty.” He frowned. “At the moment I have some extra time.” There was an awkward pause. “Adam probably told you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “My unexpected time off is bad news for me, but good news for you.”

  She really hoped that was true.

  Within half an hour of him walking in the door, not only had she hired him, but Cassie already had him working in her house.

  And she knew within another half an hour that she hadn’t made a mistake. He’d gotten right on his cell phone and lined up a plumber and an electrician to give quotes on the job. Then he said, “I could have that carpet out of here today. What do you think?”

  She was nodding crazily before she got to the word yes.

  “It’s going to make a big difference right away.”

  She began to feel less overwhelmed. It was as though she had a team now. Even if it was only her and one man. At least the one man seemed to have the energy of three.

  “While I’m taking care of that, you’ll need to pick your bathroom fixtures and kitchen cabinets. Appliances, too, sooner rather than later.”

  “I’ve got some ideas already. I’ve been filing clippings and pictures.” She was so unsure and he must have heard the hesitation in her tone.

  “Want me to take a look? I’ve done a lot of this stuff.”

  “Would you?”

  “Sure.”

  She had several files of material, pictures she’d torn from magazines, ideas she’d printed off the internet and of course the ads from the flyers that appeared constantly in her mailbox.

  “I like this kitchen,” he said after flipping through her idea file. “You could replicate the cabinets using Ikea or Home Depot stock. I’ve got a buddy who can get you those countertops. For the flooring, do you really want that tile?”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  He pointed to the tile in the photo and she noticed that his finger was burn scarred. “See those ridges? It’s going to make the floor hard to keep clean. And if you drop anything, it’s going to shatter.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I’d go with cork. I think it suits your look, and it’s environmentally friendly and easy to clean.”

  “Thanks. I’ll think about it.”

  He flipped through some more of her stash and stopped. “Yes!” He said it with such enthusiasm she wondered what he was looking at. It was a magazine makeover from a bathroom like hers to a modern one that looked like a spa. “I was going to ease you into this idea, but you’re way ahead of me. If you move the bathtub so it’s across the back wall under the window, that gets rid of the ugly alleyway. You’ve probably got room for a stand-alone shower, too, if you go with a smaller vanity.”

  “Really?” She was as enthusiastic as he was. “I could have this?”

  “Absolutely. It will cost a little more since you’re moving plumbing, but it’s so worth it. We’ll save money in other places.”

  She nodded. “Deal.”

  “Okay, then. You start shopping, and I’ll start pulling out carpet.”

  As she got busy, her initial excitement about buying this house resurfaced. She’d let herself become overwhelmed, she realized. All she had to do was take the renovation one step at a time.

  She had a feeling that hiring Dylan had been an excellent first step.

  He was soon on his hands and knees pulling up the ugly carpet from the living and dining rooms. Fortunately, he was wearing a dust mask, because she could see billows of old dirt flying into the air whenever he pulled a new piece up. He cut and rolled the rug into sections and then hefted them all out to the truck he’d parked in her driveway.

  Then he came back and began removing the nail board tacked around the edges of the floor.

  The transformation was amazing—no more ugly shag.

  The floors weren’t perfect—there were a few paint splotches and all those nail holes—but they’d been covered with carpet for so long that they were barely worn.

  “This looks so much better,” she said, hearing her voice echo in the empty room. “And it doesn’t smell so dusty. I don’t even want to think about what was in that carpet.”

  He glanced up at her from his position, kneeling on the floor and said, “I won’t sand them yet. We’ll get most of the dirty stuff done first. But I like the impact getting rid of that old carpet makes. You start to see the possibilities.” He leaned right back onto his heels and glanced at her thoughtfully. “That’s what you bought, after all.”

  She stared right back at him. “I did. I bought myself a houseful of possibilities.”

  3

  DYLAN LIKED THIS HOUSE. It was the kind of place he might have bought himself if he’d been looking for a project. Instead, it was nice to work for somebody else for a change, not be responsible for all of it, not live in the mess.

  He hadn’t been sure how Cassie would manage living in a construction zone. It wasn’t for everyone. But after that first day, when she’d seemed as though she thought she’d made a terrible mistake, she’d come on board. He thought her ideas were good and she was smart enough to take advantage of his experience. She was easy on the eyes, too, he mused as he hefted the butt-ugly vanity out of the main bathroom and set it beside the even uglier turquoise sink.

  He stretched out his back, knowing his next task was to remove the old bathtub. That old beast had hulked in that spot for fifty years or so—he didn’t figure it was coming out without a fight.

  Cassie wouldn’t be home from work for an hour or two, so the noise and occasional swearing weren’t going to bother her. He had the place to himself. The bathroom window was wide open to let in the fresh air of a bright spring day. After this, he promised himself, he’d sit outside with a soda and enjoy the sunshine for a few minutes.

  As he prepared to do battle with the tub, he heard what sounded like a baby crying.

  He paused, thinking the noise had been awfully close, almost as if there was a baby inside the house. He stopped, listened carefully and heard the sad, plaintive cry again.

  Dylan had been a firefighter too long to ignore any sound of distress. He jogged quickly through the house but no one was there.

  Outside he ran. No one in the front. Around to the back. He heard the sound again. Louder now, and coming from above him.

  Shading his eyes with his hand, he looked up. The tree was an old one, gnarled and solid, the cedar standing probably fifty feet tall. And halfway up a kitten was crying its heart out.

  “Oh, no,” he said to himself. To the kitten he tried the positive approach. “Come on, kitty. You got up there. You can come down.”

  The reply was an even more pathetic howl of distress.

  He glanced around as though a neighbor might be outside, maybe with a ladder. But on a sunny Monday afternoon, Dylan seemed to be the only one around.

  He tried calling to the cat again. No dice.

  Then he ran into Cassie’s kitchen and found a can of tuna in her cupboards. He dug through her kitchen drawer and pulled out a can opener. Took a nice chunk of tuna on a saucer out to the cat to try and lure it out of the tree.

  The cat only sounded more woebegone than ever.

  At this point, Dylan had to accept the kitten was stuck in that tree.

  Glad none of his colleagues or friends was around to laugh at him for being such a cliché, he put the tuna on the ground, rubbed his hands on his filthy jeans and pulled himself up to the first branch of the tree.

  He’d been climbing trees as long as he’d been walking. The first time he’d fallen out of one his mother had claimed he must have nine lives. Lately she’d been warning him that he’d used most of them up.

  It was sort of fun to climb a tree at the age of thirty-five. And it was giving a good stretch to the muscles that had been bent over doing grunt work at the house.

  When he drew closer, he saw that the cat was very young. And very scared.

  “You’re not going to scratch my eyes out, are you?” he asked when his face was level with the cat’s. In answer, the animal butted its small head against his hand.

  He chuckled. “Okay, then.” He took a moment to scratch the kitten behind the ears until he heard it start to purr. Then, very gently, he scooped the small, warm body into one hand and lifted it toward his shoulder. A glimpse at the back end told him the animal was most likely a female. The cat caught right on and crawled up so she was hanging over his shoulder, digging in tight.

  Dylan winced as tiny, sharp claws grabbed him through his thin T-shirt, but at least he had his hands free and the animal seemed to recognize that he was trying to save her.

  “Going down,” he said, as though he were an elevator operator.

  He shimmied down the tree, talking softly to the cat the whole way. He swung down from the lowest branch. “Hang on tight, now,” he said to his companion, and dropped down to the grass, one hand hanging onto his burden.

  As he turned, he discovered he was no longer alone.

  Cassie was standing in the backyard, staring at him. Obviously home early from work. And she’d brought her friend, Adam’s fiancée, Serena, with her.

  “What on earth?” Cassie blinked at him.

  He felt suddenly like a kid caught playing hooky. Instead of working on her house, she’d caught him climbing trees. He could feel bits of leaves in his hair, his clothes were even more filthy than they’d been earlier and he had a kitten hanging over his shoulder, claws so far into him he didn’t think she was ever letting go.

  He decided to work on the most important thing first—getting the kitten disengaged from his flesh. With as much dignity as he could muster, he said to Cassie, “Could you pass me that tuna?”

  The two women exchanged a glance that had a lot of suppressed humor in it, and he strongly suspected there was a certain gender mocking going on. Not that he could prove it, since neither of them said anything. Cassie picked up the saucer with the chunk of tuna on it and passed it over.

  “Thank you.” He turned his back so the kitten’s head would face her. “Maybe you could try feeding the cat so she gets her claws out of my skin.”

  “Ouch,” she said.

  Then he heard her speak softly to the kitten. “It’s okay. I’ve got some yummy tuna for you, but you have to let go of Dylan first.” It was the sort of voice a mom would use with a toddler, but it worked fine. Or the smell of tuna did. He felt the claws release and then the small, warm body was lifted from his shoulder. When he turned around, the cat was already on the ground, happily chowing down.

  He rubbed his chest with his knuckles and frowned at his new boss, who was looking distractingly hot in a skirt and heels that showed off shapely legs. “Don’t you know cats need time to get used to a new home? You can’t just let them out and leave them.”

  Her eyes widened in surprise and he figured she’d made the dumb mistake of thinking that because she’d moved the cat she would settle right in. Big mistake. She was lucky the feline hadn’t hiked back to wherever she’d lived before.

  “Your cat doesn’t even have a collar. What if she had wandered? Could have got lost.” The cat looked up from its empty plate then and meowed, as though in full agreement.

  Cassie knelt down and patted the kitten’s head. She was obviously fond of her housemate.

  Which made him continue, “I’m surprised you wouldn’t be a better pet owner, seeing as you work at the aquarium.”

  She looked up at him, which made her eyes seem big. “I would if I owned a pet. But I don’t.”

  He began to feel incredibly foolish. “You mean—”

  “This isn’t my cat.”

  He found two pairs of large eyes regarding him. “I, ah, I’m going to rip that tub out of the bathroom now,” he said, backing away.

 

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