Chapter 9
Decker watched Poppy work her way down the hallway, picking up debris and Sheetrock panels as she went. Every time she bent over to stack the debris in an orderly pile he couldn’t help but drool over the magnificent sight.
Since their moment in the kitchen yesterday she’d been avoiding him.
Well, as much as one could avoid someone while trapped in a couple thousand square feet with each other.
Not only could he hear her breathing at night, but he could also smell her tempting scent of citrus and sunshine every time she so much as turned over in bed, creating images of what she slept in.
He was hoping it was nothing but sheets and the warm night’s air.
Then there was the way those jeans hugged her body, so tight he should be able to see her panty line. But there wasn’t one. Which meant one of two things: Either she was wearing a G-string or she’d opted to go commando. The first was tempting as hell, the second piqued his interest even more.
Could Little Miss Sunshine have a wild side?
He wanted—scratch that—needed to know. Just like he needed to know how she’d feel about him sliding his hands down her backside and cupping her perfectly rounded cheeks to find out.
“Still hard at work, I see?” he asked, and she didn’t even flinch, just went about her business, meaning she was aware of his presence—just ignoring him. Did she know he was thinking about her underwear? Or lack thereof?
He rested a shoulder against the wall. “Do you ever stop to take a breath?”
“Hard at work because there’s work to be done.”
“You might want to leave something for the rest of us,” he joked. “You’ll make us come off as slackers.”
She looked up at him with genuine confusion in her eyes. “That’s not what I’m doing.” There was so much sincerity and hurt in her expression he wanted to soothe her. “I just wanted to make it easy for us to take it to the dumpster tomorrow morning.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just joking.” By the way she nibbled her lower lip, she didn’t believe him. “The crew went home hours ago. It’s nearly nine. When was the last time you ate?”
She opened her mouth to answer, then shook her head. “I can’t remember.”
“Why don’t we order some takeout?”
She looked at him strangely, as if the idea of him wanting to take care of her was a foreign concept.
Heartbreaking rumors had flown around the crew about Poppy and her father, but he didn’t want to jump to conclusions.
He wanted to hear it from her. So he’d wait patiently until she felt comfortable enough to share.
The idea of her thinking she was anything but perfect made his fists clench.
“Pizza, Chinese, or Indian?”
Her stomach growled. “Indian sounds amazing. But I need to get this done first or it will keep me up all night.”
“Well, four hands are better than two. So how about we place an order, and while we wait I’ll help you organize the garbage.”
“Are you poking fun at me for my neat freak side?”
He bit back a grin. “I’m poking fun at you because you like things so orderly.”
“I work better when I wake up to a clean slate.”
“Do you like anything messy?”
She rolled her eyes. “Will you stop with the flirting?”
He pressed off the wall and stalked toward her until they were toe to toe. “Angel, when I’m flirting, you’ll know. This is just me being charming.”
She studied him for a long, serious moment. So long he felt a bead of sweat form on his forehead.
“Have you ever thought about just being you?”
Her question hit him straight in the chest. Most people liked his charm, not realizing that he used it to hide the truth—that ever since his career imploded, he’d felt like a fraud.
For a guy whose career depended on being laser focused on the goal, he now felt as if he was caught in a riptide, not knowing which way was up or down.
His world had been thrown completely off-kilter.
Sometimes he felt so lost it caused his throat to close and his heart to pound out of his chest. His therapist called it panic attacks.
He called it hell. Not that anyone knew.
So far he’d been able to keep the anxiety at bay until he was alone.
Taters would start whining when one started coming on, as if warning Decker to take a deep breath.
Sometimes it worked, other times the anxiety over the direction of his future was too much to contain.
When that happened Taters would sit by his side and lean against him in a show of support.
“What you see is what you get,” he lied.
“Who are you trying to convince?”
“You,” he said, and her cheeks turned the lightest shade of pink.
“Why?”
“If you have to ask that then I’m doing something wrong.” Which was a problem, because he didn’t know where the miscommunication was coming from. He’d made it clear that he liked her. Hadn’t he? Maybe not, because she was still wary about his intentions. “Bottom line, I like—”
“Shhh.” She held up a silencing finger. “Do you hear that?”
He couldn’t hear anything over the way his heart sank when she’d cut him off right as he was about to tell her the truth.
“All I hear is you avoiding the conversation.”
“No. Listen.”
When he was able to shift his focus away from her, he heard it. A gushing sound. No, it was more like a rushing.
“Shit.”
They both took off in a sprint toward the noise. It was coming from the office where his bed was set up. Before they even opened the door, he knew what the gushing was. The wake of water coming out from beneath the office door was an indicator that they had a leak.
He opened the door and that’s when the reality of the situation became clear. An inch of water covered the hardwood and was rising by the minute.
“It’s coming from the bathroom,” Poppy said.
Without another word they were shouldering their way through the adjacent bathroom door, each fighting to get there first. It was the toilet. The pipe connecting it to the wall looked as if it burst.
“I’ll turn it off at the base,” she said, dropping to her knees and crawling behind the toilet. “You call someone to get wet vacs and fans out here to suck up the water. The wood is toast, but I don’t want the water to warp the sub-floor.”
Or drop into the garage. Which was subterranean and sat directly below them.
He watched as she twisted the valve to stop the flow. Only it was like she was at the mouth of a hydrant with a thimble. She twisted and twisted with no luck.
“It’s stuck.”
“Here let me try.”
“Why? Because I’m a woman and not strong enough? I’m telling you, it’s like it’s been glued.”
Decker gently lifted her by the waist and set her aside, then shoved his oversized body into the undersized space between the vanity and toilet. No matter how much strength he used, the valve wouldn’t budge.
“See.” She was right. It was stuck. “How could you not hear this? You were in your room just an hour ago.”
“And it was fine. How is this my fault?” Without another word he turned to leave. She caught his arm. “Seriously, we aren’t even going to talk through a plan?”
“You don’t want to talk, you want to be right, and I can already tell by those big, save-this-house eyes, you’re wrong.
So can we put a pin in this and agree to fight later?
” he said. “The water is already dripping through the floor and I don’t want it to waterlog and have Sheetrock bursting into the garage. ”
“You’re just going to leave me here to what? Wait for the big man to fix the problem?”
Her choice of words rubbed him wrong, but all he could focus on was the task at hand—to stop the river destroying the floors. Without giving her a chance to answer he raced off as fast as his feet would take him, hoping to outrun the pace of water gushing out.
A minute felt like hours, as he could hear the liquid slushing around.
By the time he made it to the exterior valve that controlled the water to the whole house he was winded.
Wrapping his hands around the sixty-year-old rusted valve, it took every ounce of strength to shut off what should have been an easy fix.
Certain that the water was completely off, he wiped his brow and walked out of the garage to find Poppy standing there with her arms crossed and a glare on her face.
“Seriously, with all the things in Stark House, you went for the garage?”
“I shut the water off first. And do you know how much my equipment costs? It’s worth ten times over what’s left in the house.
But for the record, I was more concerned about this.
” He pulled the kitchen trim from the garage and held it out to her.
And for the first time since he’d met her, she was speechless.
“My measuring chart. You fixed it,” she whispered.
He felt his cheeks heat. “I know how important family heirlooms can be.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly, running her fingers over the penciled-in numbers.
He couldn’t imagine being attached to a piece of marked wood. But this was clearly precious to her. Which was why he’d stayed up all last night fixing it. “It was nothing.”
“My therapist says that I have control issues.”
“You don’t say?” He set the board against the wall and stepped closer to close the gap between them. “My therapist says I have a habit of listening but not really hearing. So tell me what I missed.”
“We’re co-hosts. A team. I want to be included in decisions. Not left on the sidelines to be saved. I can save myself.”
He had to smile. “So am I hearing you right? You want to be a team player unless you get to play the hero, then you want to do it solo?”
“I guess that is a little confusing,” she admitted with a small quirk of her silky lips. “I just don’t like to have decisions made for me. I prefer to have options laid out and then make the decision together.”
“And if there isn’t time for a board meeting?” He ran a thumb over her lower lip and loved how she shivered.
“Then act on your feet. Just like you did tonight.”
“And you won’t be mad?”
“Oh, I retain the right to get pissy. I hate to be left behind. Had enough of that in my lifetime.” Something he wanted to dig deeper into, but this wasn’t the time. “Eventually I’ll calm down and then apologize. Like right now. You were right and I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
“That’s okay. I might have overreacted, too. It wasn’t just your board. Some of those tools can’t be replaced. They were handed down to me by my dad and granddad. My granddad is gone and my father isn’t able to do what he loves anymore.”
Facing her, he took a step closer and slid his palm over her hands, surprised at how perfect they fit. He was more surprised when she flipped her hand over to hold his. “I’m sorry.”
He squeezed her fingers. “Yeah. Me, too.”
“I didn’t know you came from a line of builders.”
“You never asked.”
“I guess I’m asking now.”
“My granddad was a furniture maker. Heirloom pieces. My dad was a handyman turned builder. And my mom was the finisher.”
“Wow.”
“I used to spend weekends either in the shop or with my mom at tile stores or places with high-end bathroom fixtures.”
He felt his armor of bravado and arrogance slide away and in its place arose a vulnerability he didn’t often allow people to see.
He didn’t like to allow people inside. Didn’t like sharing the soft parts of himself because people had used them against him in the past—just look at the sex tape.
But with her, in this moment, it felt right.
“Your voice changes when you talk about your family. You sound like a real person.”
It wasn’t talking about his family that changed him. It was talking to her.
“You just thought I was a dumb jock who played with my stick?”
She blushed with what appeared to be guilt. “Maybe.”
“I’ve got layers, Angel. Maybe someday you’ll be curious enough to peel them back.”
Her gaze dropped to his lips and a spark flickered to life in his chest. Not to mention south of the beltline.
He slowly went in for the kiss, giving her time to pull back.
He was surprised when her eyes fluttered closed and she moved to meet him halfway.
He could feel her breath skate across his mouth.
Hot damn, he was the luckiest SOB on the face of the planet. Poppy Hart was about to kiss him. And wasn’t that every man’s wet dream come true.
“Can you say that last line again?” A voice came from behind them.
“What?” he mumbled.
“That last line about having layers. The mic didn’t pick it up.”
Decker opened his eyes to find that there was a camera aimed at them, a boom mic inches from their heads, and Jack standing to the side. With excited eyes, he nudged the camera forward. And that flicker died in a ball of flames.