Chapter 7
Awall of heat hit her as she opened the door to her house. It was like an oven in there. Which meant the power was out again. It was temperamental, but so was her bank account. Had she forgotten to pay the bill? Had her check bounced? Or had the old house itself just decided to shut down and take a nap?
She went around opening windows until the meager breeze outside began to stir through the house. Thank God the sun was going down. But hell…the sun was going down. She wasn’t the sort of person to be prepared with normal civilized stuff like candles and flashlights. This wasn’t the first time the power had abruptly gone off with no explanation. She ought to have gotten prepared. And she couldn’t even charge her phone. She had just enough juice left to check her bank account balance. She had $50 left in her checking account.
“Goddammit,” she muttered, scrolling through her account history. There was the check to Florida Power and Light. So, she had paid. She stepped outside. The sun was setting as she looked up and down the street. The other houses had power. She could see their lights on.
She opened her breaker box on the side of the house to inspect it. It was hot to the touch. She knew nothing about breaker boxes. She flipped a few switches experimentally, hoping to get lucky. Nothing.
A sour taste rose up the back of her throat. She knew it well. It was desperation, come to whisper in her ear that she couldn’t get out of the red with this damn farm. She should sell it and go back to Fort Myers, go back to Trent. Nasty, little black desperation sitting on her shoulder, whispering, “You don’t know what the hell you’re doing. You can’t manage on your own.”
Like always, it was followed by her own hard swallow and clenched teeth. It wasn’t in her to quit. She wasn’t going to give up on this farm until the bank came and pried it from her fingers. Despite everything, her grandmother wanted her to have it. Her grandmother had made an honest living here, however modest. Her grandmother had been a dignified woman, and goddammit, Kayla intended to make her life dignified too.
She sat on her stoop as the last light faded away. No electrician was going to come rushing all the way out here, and she didn’t have the money to pay for one anyway. The rumble of his motorcycle told her Bill had left hours earlier and the silence since indicated he had not returned. Although there was a tense truce between them, she couldn’t just walk over there and ask him for help anyhow. Besides, it was undoubtedly his handiwork from years past that had fucked up the house in the first place.
There was one person she could call. She had five percent left on her phone and no way to charge it. It might be the frying pan into the fire, but she couldn’t think of any other option. She texted Evan.
Are you busy?
A few moments dragged by and then his response popped up.
What do you need?
She felt suddenly and alarmingly swamped with emotion. There was so much she needed.
My power’s out and I don’t know how to fix it…
So, you’re just using me for my electrical skills.
No, it’s your hot bod I’m after.
Then she wanted to smack herself. She defaulted to the saucy response because it was the only way she could relate to men. It was a lie, like everything else.
My hot bod will be there in ten minutes.
As promised, ten minutes later, he pulled in with his truck. He went straight to work like a professional, unloading flashlights and a few toolkits.
Watching his glistening, muscular, tattooed arms, and his chest barely concealed by his thin wifebeater shirt in the waning twilight, her pulse jumped a little.
“Wow. You come prepared.”
He turned, cocked his head a little and winked at her. “I always have the right tool for the job.”
He also always seemed to have a perfectly executed one-liner that gave her goose bumps and made her think of sex.
He shined the light around, spotting the still-open breaker box after her feeble, girly attempt at getting her power to come back on. He strode over to it.
“Can you hold the light for me?”
“Yeah, of course, sure?—”
She hurried over, took the flashlight, and stood on her tiptoes to shine it over his shoulder so he could see what he was doing.
“The box is still hot. How long’s the power been out?” he asked as he began to remove the cover with a screwdriver.
“I’m not sure. I was working horses.” He exposed a rat’s nest of multicolored wires, complete with rodent droppings and the remains of a mud wasp nest. Even to her untrained eye, it looked like a disaster.
“Holy shit! Do these main lines coming out of the dirt with no conduit feed the barn? This is just screwed into the bottom of the distribution panel overlapping the wires from the main feed. What electric is in the barn?
“Lights, fans, the well pump.”
“All right, we gotta let this box cool for a bit anyway. Let me walk out and see what kind of box the barn has. Back in a minute.”
He wasn’t gone long. When he returned, he announced that the other side of the barn feed lines went into a fifty-amp breaker box, and the wiring out there was at least passable.
Returning to the main box, he said, “You need a two-hundred-amp breaker box. This box is rated for one hundred, but wired for one seventy-five. No wonder it got so hot. I can’t believe it worked at all before now. That old wasp nest must have fallen down and blocked whatever little ventilation it had in there.”
“You wanna try saying that again in English?”
“Yeah, your box is seriously overloaded. No electrician did this. This is a do-it-yourself nightmare, and on top of that, I bet he was drunk.”
Kayla shook her head, remembering Canyon Bill. “You’re right. He was.”
He looked at her quizzically for a moment, then said “For now I’ll just take the two main feeders from the barn and patch them into the main feed from the pole. That will bypass this box, and it’ll be safe until we can get the box replaced. All right, hold that light steady now. I’ll have to do this on live wires since I’m bypassing the breakers.”
Kayla watched as he continued to speak in terms she didn’t quite follow, all while he deftly unscrewed clamps and moved wires and tightened screws. She was totally distracted by the sheen of sweat that had formed on his bare, muscled arms.
“Hey! The light!” he said, snapping her to attention.
“Oh, s-sorry,” she stammered, trying to focus the light and her thoughts on the task at hand. He stood back for a second and flipped the main breaker switch. Her AC and houselights all sprang back to life.
“That ought to do it for now, but I should do a real overhaul on this system some other time. It’s a mess,” Evan said. The light flooded through her house just like relief flooded through her body that at least one crisis had been averted.
“Let me at least get you a beer,” she said. The beer in the fridge was still cold, so that was something. Would he want sex now that he had come riding to her rescue again? Probably. At least it was foolish not to offer.
She could hear him clunking around outside doing something. She opened her freezer and pulled out a bottle of vodka. Her mother’s drink of choice when she wasn’t shooting smack in her arm. Kayla shook her head at herself, unscrewed the cap, and took a huge swallow. It seeped into her, offering the promised dulling of her nerves. One more swallow.
“Kayla?” His voice interrupted her, and she hurried to put the bottle back in the freezer.
“Yep.” She cleared her throat, spun around, and shoved a beer at him, hoping he hadn’t seen her chugging liquor out of her freezer.
“Come on in,” she said.
“Thanks.” He deftly tapped his beer bottle on the edge of the counter and knocked the cap off.
“Wow, you don’t want to know what would happen if I tried that,” she said with a laugh. Evan took a swig of his beer.
She still stood stupidly with her unopened bottle. He unclipped his keys and produced a bottle opener. He stepped in close to open her bottle too and winked at her. “Well, apparently, I’m hip. My buddy Dan and I are filming a TV show rehabbing hurricane-damaged houses. So far, the ratings agree with the suits that I’m cool.” He said it with an air of self-deprecation that made her giggle a little.
“Really?” She was appropriately shocked. “I don’t know anybody who’s on TV.”
“Me neither, trust me. I don’t think I’m the type at all, but they apparently do. We filmed a pilot episode on a cottage in Matlacha. It was picked up fast, and they signed us for a whole season. I feel like I’m in the twilight zone.”
“That’s crazy. I mean, I’ve seen those shows. It just kinda never occurred to me that those were just normal people like us.”
“I mean, normal might be subjective, but I know what you mean,” he said.
Tattooed arms crossed casually, sipping his beer, he was darkly handsome with enough ink for an edge thrown in. He had a quiet air of competence that made a person want to look to him. She could understand why they thought he’d be popular on TV. It was another good reason not to get too involved with him, though. A girl with her kind of extracurricular activities couldn’t be a reality show sideline.
“Got any more tricks up your sleeve?” she asked, feeling the vodka running in her veins now. She upended her beer and leaned back casually against the counter, portraying an ease she didn’t feel. A man she barely knew, but was sort of dating was in her kitchen. He had just done her a huge favor. The sense of obligation she felt was the only thing actually dampening her wild attraction to him. That, and the uncanny way her emotions seemed to run amok when he got near her.
She had dated guys she never thought of again…whose names she couldn’t even remember. So, what was the big deal about him? All her typical bullshit, all her typical armor just didn’t seem to work with him. He was her kryptonite.
He stood back a moment, seemingly reading her face like a book. His eyes were an enigma. Hungry, but knowing too much. She sensed something in him that was a little broken, like her. She wanted to reach out to him. She felt some connection between them that she didn’t think had been there before. An unseen force, pulling.
She lifted her lashes in just the way to beckon a man. But when their gazes met, the bullshit evaporated, and she saw him, and felt he saw her. He came toward her with a purpose that was both thrilling and terrifying. At the last second, she regretted it again, wished she could pump the brakes. She wasn’t nearly drunk enough for this.
He set his beer down and took her empty bottle placing it on the counter beside her. Now that he was upon her, she couldn’t meet his gaze. The force of him was too strong. The pull between them was twice as strong with him this close. She reached out, and his hard abs met her fingertips. Want and fear rose up in her like wild horses fighting for dominance. She pulled him closer, wished she’d had time to drink more. Wished she could beg him, Please don’t hurt me.
But his touch on her skin said, I won’t. His fingers swept her hair back with mesmerizingly slow care. It was as if he intended to memorize every inch of her. He kissed her jaw with promise, and she melted against him.
She could hardly draw a breath with his mouth on her sending electric shocks through her core. Something in her woke up—another woman who had been hidden away for so long. For a moment, she quivered with vulnerability. For a moment, it was real. It might have been the first time she had ever truly desired a man and felt safe in it. But she’d been a well-trained actress for too long to let her real self out so easily.
“I think I want you to fuck me,” she murmured into his ear. She felt his body’s visceral reaction to her words, felt the power that would overtake her when he chose. Those words didn’t come from her. They came from the part of her that had learned to be a seductress to survive. Learned that sometimes offering what a man wanted was safer than not, whether she wanted it or not. She’d learned to use and abuse every female quality she had in order to keep herself in one piece after her mother had taken her off the farm and brought her into the city.
He kissed her mouth, twisting her hair back in his fist. She could do nothing but open and let him take. She tried to prepare herself to be taken completely. He scooped her up, setting her on the counter and stepping between her legs. He pulled her snug against him, eliciting a gasp from her as their bodies met. She tried to let go, and her muscles trembled in the conflict.
He drew back with a ragged breath, tried to look her in the eye but she couldn’t seem to meet him there. She needed to act. A flutter of eyelashes or another dirty one-liner. She’d expected him to just take her. She couldn’t bring on any more seduction—at least not without more booze. He touched her chin softly, tipping her face up just enough to meet her gaze. There was a corresponding pang in her chest when their eyes met that made it hard to breathe.
“When you’re sure, you know where to find me.” He stepped back from her with obvious effort, turned, and left. Only when the door clicked shut could she let out the pent-up breath she had been holding.
She sat trembling on her kitchen counter for five minutes before she could move. She finished his beer and waited for it to kick in. At last, she went to the side door. He probably hadn’t locked her gate. She should go lock it. She opened the side door, expecting the all-consuming darkness on the other side. She was met with the welcoming glow of her own porch light. She hadn’t seen that light in so long, she’d practically forgotten what the porch looked like illuminated at night. Her heart squeezed. He was long gone. But before he left, he did more than she’d asked him to do, and taken nothing in return. He’d fixed her broken porch light. She sat down on the steps in the unexpected glow.