Chapter Fifteen
In the end, the party decreed the family now boasted two grill masters.
“This?” Hand on his belly, Doug pushed back from his plate. “This is how you eat like kings.” He held out a fist for Arden to bump.
“Teamwork,” she said.
“Add the bounty of the PNW. Which…” Zoey shook her head at her daughters. “A couple of princesses enjoyed a lot.”
“Yeah.” Rising, Boone lifted Lexy. “I’ve got this one.”
“Smart, seeing as Maddy has salmon in her hair.” Zoey drew the younger out of the high chair. “We’ll go clean them up a little.”
“We’re right behind you. You know,” April added as she boosted her youngest onto her hip, “I could probably needlepoint a minivan that got decent mileage, but I’ve never conquered the surf and turf medley.”
“But your manicotti’s gold.”
April smiled at Travis. “Excellent response. We’ll be back in five with nonsticky hands and faces.”
“Expect stickier ones after dessert,” Arden warned.
“Since we definitely need a break before that, while they clean up kids, we’ll help you clean up dinner.” Jen rose. “And you can fill us in on those locations. Coming here has made it clear this needs to be home.”
Nodding, Doug began stacking plates. “We’d talked about downsizing, but we need a place big enough so we can reinstate monthly family dinners.”
“And with six grandchildren before we even get started? A space we can designate as a playroom. Plus, three bedrooms. Overnights, maybe long weekends with those grandkids.”
“I need a good-sized deck or patio,” Doug added. “Because when we get out here, I’m having one of those grills.”
“So…” As squeals, loud complaints, a shriek of toddler laughter bounced through the house, Arden loaded the dishwasher. “Downsizing is a relative term.”
“So’s family.” Jen leaned in, kissed her cheek.
As they cleared the dinner mess, kids ran through the kitchen with Zorro, tongue hanging out, racing with them. Travis, taking his turn at watch, herded all outside again.
Arden watched them go. “I need a swing set.”
“You sweetie.” Now Jen hugged her shoulders.
“It’s going on the list.”
Arden enjoyed every moment of the noise and interaction, even when Maddy took a tumble that ended in wails and gushing tears.
When Jamie and Nick, along with Isis, joined them, it only added to the fun.
Her neighbors and her family clicked. She watched Nick play with monster trucks, Jamie help build a block fort.
Over and around the kids, conversations ranged from baking to art, movies and books, remodeling—and there, her neighbors and Doug bonded like glue.
They talked under the party lights while Maddy slept on her father’s shoulder and Trent’s head drooped on his mother’s.
Later, as she settled in bed, Arden thought she had so much of what she wanted. Family, friends, work that sustained and satisfied.
And a home she loved, felt proud of.
Most of all, a home she felt safe in.
She’d known the time would fly by, but when her aunt and uncle went back to Ohio, she comforted herself by remembering the holidays would come. This year, now added to the rotation, she’d host Christmas dinner.
Time for a new list. Or three lists, she thought. Gifts, decorations, menu.
But for now, as summer waned, her focus returned to the book. Day after day, she immersed herself in the work, and with the work she felt little hitches and snarls from the first draft smooth out in the second.
Another two weeks, maybe three, she decided, then she’d let it sit and soak for a few days before she went back to it to shine and polish it all up.
By her calculations, she’d finish with plenty of time to plan and prepare for the holidays.
Then she found the leak under her bathroom sink.
“Well, shit, and I was about to celebrate a good day’s work by bringing in some flowers, some ball tossing, and some wine on the back deck.”
She mopped it up. After emptying the tub she used to hold cleaning supplies, she used it to catch the drips.
Crouched, she studied the slow, steady drip. Then she looked up how to turn the water off on the pipe.
Her uncle had shown her long ago, but not on this particular sink or this particular pipe.
“It probably just needs tightening. I have a wrench.” She studied the pipe as Zorro nosed under her arm. “I think I can do this.”
She went down to the mudroom for the toolbox Doug had given her for her eighteenth birthday, as he’d given one to Travis, one to Zoey.
She knew what a pipe wrench looked like, so chose that.
Hesitated.
She could make it worse.
She could call Zoey, or just look up local plumbers. Maybe Jamie and Nick knew one, or Joe absolutely would.
But really, it probably just needed tightening.
She started back out, then Zorro left her side to run barking to the front door.
With a hand pressed to her jumping heart, she told herself it was probably Jamie. If so, at least she’d have a consultant.
But when she looked out to check, she saw Gideon.
Pipe wrench in hand, she stood a moment, closed her eyes.
She didn’t have to be interested in a man to wish he hadn’t shown up at her door after she’d worked all day, and in some of her oldest sweatpants, had her hair yanked back in a tail, and wore not even a trace of makeup.
“Oh well.”
She opened the door.
He studied her. “Should I consider that a weapon or a tool?”
“What? Oh, a tool. I’ve got a leak upstairs, which just had to wait until my uncle left—well, a week ago, but still. He can fix anything that can be fixed, but he’s not here.”
“What kind of leak?”
“The kind that drips water under the sink on all your under-the-sink things.”
Still watching her, he petted the wagging Zorro. “You need to turn the water off under the sink.”
“I did that. I looked it up to make sure I knew how, but I did that.”
“I’ll take a look. Which sink?”
“In the main bathroom upstairs, the left side. You fix leaky pipes?”
“Not usually. Hand over the wrench.”
She hated to be that woman, that woman who’d rather have a man handle some tool-requiring task than do it herself. Then justified it because she’d have happily handed the wrench to Zoey.
He angled his head. “Do you have a problem with me taking a look at your leaky pipe?”
“No. No, I do not.” She gave him the wrench. “I think I could probably do it,” she said as she led the way up. “But the fixtures in there are higher-end than I’ve ever had. And before, I’d have called my uncle anyway. At one eight hundred Doug Fix This.”
“Why have a pipe wrench if you don’t use it when you need it?”
“Uncle Doug gave me the toolbox, loaded, for my eighteenth birthday. Family tradition. And I did use it once back in my apartment, but it only slowed down the leak because it needed a new gasket or sticky stuff.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That one,” she said, and pointed.
“I can see that.”
He also saw she’d lined her cleaning supplies—likely taken out of the organizer now under the leaking pipe—on the counter like soldiers in parade formation.
He crouched down, took a look at the pipe. Then he went under the sink, headfirst, face up.
“Are you going to stand there and watch?”
“No. I’m going to get down here and watch.” She hunkered down while the dog sniffed Gideon’s boots. “I can’t call my uncle, obviously, and my handy cousin has a full-time job and two kids. So I’m going to watch what you do in case it happens again.
“Unless I need to call a plumber.”
“Not this time. It looks like you’ve got a loose slip nut. I’m going to check the gasket first. If it’s good, it just needs tightening.”
“See, that’s what I thought! That’s what I was going to do. Except for checking the gasket first.”
“Ever tightened a slip nut?”
“Not in a while, and only after the third date.”
He paused, shifted enough to look back at her.
She knew amusement when she saw it in the gorgeous green eyes.
“If you overtighten, you could strip them. Gasket’s fine.”
“How do you know? I might have to know sometime.”
“No cracks or wear. You see that, you want to replace them.”
“From Riley’s.”
“Sure. You need to tighten the slip nut, counterclockwise. Hand-tight, not Iron Man tight. Start with the one up here—closest to the drain.”
She listened as he explained, as he checked the next slip nut. Her uncle explained this way, she realized. Patiently step by step.
“Should be good.” He turned the water back on, then eased out. “Try it.”
She turned the faucet on, then crouched down beside him.
“It was sort of seeping and slow dripping. Now it’s not.”
She turned her head, smiled at him. “Thanks. In my zeal to repair, I probably would have turned those things as hard as I could. I know better now.”
She had skin like glass, he thought, and those tiny shimmering flecks in her eyes. And right now, she smelled like something exotic that bloomed in moonlight.
Catching himself, he shifted back an inch.
“I’ll take a look at the other sink, since I’m down here anyway.”
“Oh, let me get the stuff down there out of the way.”
Another organizer thing, he noted, looked like hair stuff and so on. The woman had a lot of hair. And it smelled damn good, so whatever she stockpiled under the sink, worth the price.
“These are good.”
“Excellent. Hopefully, I won’t have to reach for the pipe wrench again anytime soon, but if I do, I know the process.”
She replaced the hair stuff, then loaded the other thing with cleaning products, slid those under the first sink.
“You stopped by at just the right time.”
“I brought a couple of bookcases.”
“You—well, Jesus, Gideon, bury the lede.”
“You had a wrench in your hand.”
“I wasn’t expecting bookcases. Just you? No other muscle today?”
“The other muscles are busy. I’ve got a dolly. You’ve got muscle. You can help get them off the truck.”
“Yes, I do, and yes, I can.”
As September evenings ran cool, she grabbed a jacket on the way out.
She needed the muscle to help him maneuver the bookcase down the ramp, then up the three steps to her front door. He wheeled it into the library, and together they set it in place.
“Twice as wonderful.”