Chapter 5
“Good morning.”
Jamal looked up from the board he was measuring. He couldn’t contain his smile as Phylicia walked toward him, carrying a thermos. He was constantly amazed at the way this woman could make faded jeans and a plain white tee look sexy.
“Good morning,” he said.
She took a healthy sip from her thermos before capping it and allowing her eyes to roam around the yard. Finally, she looked his way, giving him her full attention, and the current that zapped between them was enough to singe the hair on his skin.
Phylicia cleared her throat. “I thought about your plans on how to tackle the restoration,” she began. “I think you may be setting yourself up for more work if you go one room at a time. You should just tear down everything at once.”
Her all-business tone made it apparent that she had no plans to pick up where they’d left off after yesterday’s kiss.
Jamal folded his arms across his chest, one brow cocked. So that’s how it’s going to be?
Phylicia lifted her chin. Damn right.
His mind recoiled in protest, but Jamal knew it was for the best, especially with all the work that needed to be done and the limited time he had left before guests began arriving. But there were after-work hours. And the work crew he’d hired would soon add a lot more manpower to the project.
“Are you ready to get to it?” Phylicia asked. “I could get started on removing the wainscoting today.”
“I thought you wanted me to leave the wainscoting untouched?” he asked.
“It’s your house, Jamal.” She scrunched up her nose. “You have no idea how hard it was for me to say that.”
“Phyl—” he started, but she put her hand up, halting him.
“It is your house. You agreed to leave my mom’s painting room intact, for which I am unbelievably grateful, but I don’t expect you to change all your plans just to suit me. You hired me to help preserve elements of Belle Maison’s original structure; that’s what I’m here to do.”
“I also hired you for your input,” he said.
“I’m open to suggestions. Doesn’t mean I’ll go along with all of them, but as highly recommended as you come, I’d be a fool not to listen to what you have to say.
” He tossed the measuring tape aside and moved toward her. “I want us to work together as a team.”
He reached for her, but she took several steps back. She held her hands up, her face resolute. “Look, Jamal, I already told you that if I’m going to work with you on this project, what happened yesterday afternoon cannot happen again. That kiss was…well, it was a mistake.”
“It wasn’t a mistake,” he disputed. “It was unbelievable.”
“Jamal—”
“Don’t shut me down without at least giving me a chance, Phylicia.”
“It’s not going to happen,” she reiterated. “I have too much going on in my life right now. And with you and this house and just… It’s not going to happen. Is that going to be a problem for you?”
He raised his palms up, giving her the universal hands-off gesture. What he really wanted to do was kiss the living daylights out of her again. Apparently, she’d quickly forgotten how explosive their kiss yesterday was. He, on the other hand, couldn’t get it out of his head.
“Good,” she said with a curt nod. “I’ll get to work on the parlor.”
Arms crossed over his chest, Jamal stepped to the side so she could move past him. As he watched her walk up the back steps and into the house, he couldn’t imagine how he would get through the next few months working alongside her.
As it turned out, he didn’t have to worry about running into Phylicia all that much.
With him outside measuring the strawboard that would replace the walls in the bedrooms, and her working inside in the front parlor, he hardly saw her for most of the morning.
At noon, Jamal tossed the carpenter’s pencil aside and entered the house through the door just off the kitchen.
He stopped at the arched entryway between the parlor and downstairs sitting room and watched as Phylicia carefully pried a section of aged wainscoting from the wall. She gingerly laid it next to an identical piece she’d placed on the floor, and turned to tackle the next section.
As she bent over, Jamal’s hands fisted at the way the faded denim cupped her ass like a well-worn baseball glove. It probably felt as soft and smooth, too. He reined in the urge to walk up to her and test it for himself.
Stop it, he ordered himself. Phylicia had made her feelings known; he had to respect them, no matter how much it killed him to do so.
He shoved away from the doorjamb. “Are you hungry?” he asked.
She jumped and turned.
“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “Between the pounding and the music, you’d have to wear a cowbell around your neck to announce your arrival.” She smiled, and that urge to kiss her roared back to life. “Did you need something?” she asked.
And isn’t that a loaded question?
Jamal bit back the answer that was on the tip of his tongue and held up his wrist to show her the time.
“Lunch,” he said. “What are you in the mood for?”
“Mine is in the truck,” Phylicia answered. “I always bring my own lunch when I’m working on a site.”
“Will you give me a few minutes to run over to Jessie’s before you eat?” he asked, referring to the pseudo-restaurant that was run out of a local woman’s kitchen. “I’m hoping you’ll share some of the history of the house over lunch.”
The look she gave him was guarded, as if she didn’t trust his motives.
Smart woman.
He held his hands up. “Information. I promise I won’t try anything else. I’ll need to know the history of Belle Maison when giving tours to guests.”
Slowly, she nodded, mistrust still evident in her narrowed gaze. “I’ll wait for you. Let me know when you get back.” She pointed at him. “But don’t sneak up on me this time. It’s not smart to startle a woman who’s holding a crowbar.”
“And I’m pretty sure you have several uses for it, too.”
“Bet your ass I do.” The musical sound of her laughter traveled along his skin like a caress. Jamal left the house before he went back on his promise not to try anything else with her.
“How long did you live here?” Jamal asked just as Phil took a bite of her sandwich. “Sorry,” he said, obviously realizing what he’d done.
She held up a finger. While she chewed, she studied his legs, which hung off the edge of the truck’s tailgate, where they sat eating their lunch. The muscles were so well defined that they looked as if they were sculpted by hand. A faded four-inch line stretched across his knee.
“Surgery?” she asked, gesturing to it.
“Yeah, back in college. The bitter end to my dreams of playing in the major leagues.”
“I forgot you played college baseball with Corey. That’s how you two met, right?”
He nodded. “We were teammates for a couple of years. He was a junior when I was a freshmen, but somehow we ended up being assigned together as roommates. Pissed him off, until the first care package from my mom arrived.” He chuckled.
“He warmed up to me after one bite of her famous walnut chocolate chip cookies.”
“It must have been hard to see Corey go off to the majors,” she said.
“He wanted it way more than I did,” Jamal said with a casual shrug.
“Playing major league baseball had always been my dad’s dream.
I just happened to be good at baseball, so I played it.
” He glanced at her. “I haven’t admitted this to very many people, but when I went down with that knee injury, I was more relieved than anything else. ”
“So, you spent most of your childhood trying to please your dad too, huh?”
“You too?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah. I was a total daddy’s girl. He hung the moon. Literally.” Phil laughed. “Back when I was in grade school, my room was decorated with a solar system motif,” she explained.
“What was it like growing up here?”
“It was wonderful. Just look at it.” She gestured toward the Victorian. “How many houses are so grand that they warrant a name? When I was younger, I used to pretend it was a castle.”
“When did you move out?” he asked. “The Realtor said the house had been abandoned for some time.”
“Unoccupied, not abandoned,” Phil reminded him. “I lived at Belle Maison until I finished college. I went to Southeastern in Hammond, so I commuted back and forth. Who in their right mind would pick a dorm room over this, huh?”
“It sure beats that cubbyhole Corey and I shared back at Arizona State.” He laughed, then tipped his head to the side in inquiry. “What does a restoration specialist study in college? Did you get a degree in design?”
“No, finance.” Phil rolled her eyes at his dumbfounded look. “I know, I know. How does a person with a finance degree end up restoring furniture?”
“It’s not that big of a stretch. Corey told me the restoration business was your dad’s. Did you work in the finance world before joining the family business?”
“Nope.” She shook her head. “I always knew this was what I wanted to do. But I figured I could help my dad grow the business with my finance degree.”
But things had not worked out as she’d hoped. Phil could recall verbatim the argument she’d had with her dad over her vision for the company. If she had known it would be the last words she ever said to him, she wouldn’t have uttered half the things that came out of her mouth that day.
She took a sip of the iced tea Jamal had brought back from Jessie’s. It had a hard time finding its way past the lump in her throat. “As I was saying, I lived here until I finished college. It was just me, Mom, and Dad.”
“This is a lot of house for three people,” he commented.