Chapter Eleven
He lingers in the middle of the landing, with a toolbox in one hand and an empty mug in the other.
A pair of headphones cover his ears, and I can just make out the tinny sound of guitars blaring as we stare at each other in horror.
Or at least, I stare at him in horror. Callum looks like someone just whacked him over the head, his gaze darting from my face to my chest and back again like he can’t stop himself.
It’s only when I back up a step, feeling like my face is on fire, that he seems to snap out of it, scrambling to pull his headphones off as he moves toward me.
“Shit, Katie, I didn’t know you were—”
I don’t wait to hear the rest of the sentence. I whirl back to the bathroom instead, locking the door shut.
Oh my God. Oh my God .
“Katie?” I jerk away as he knocks on the wood, letting my bra fall to the floor as I grab a towel and hastily wrap it around me.
“What are you doing in my house ?” I shriek through the door.
“Your grandmother asked me to—” He breaks off with a curse. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were home. I didn’t see anything.”
The man’s a liar. The girls were definitely free for at least half a second.
“Katie?” He knocks again when I don’t answer, and I wince.
“I’m fine!” I lie. “Just going to have a shower now!”
Don’t tell him that??
Embarrassed pink blotches bloom over my chest as I stay very, very still as if, that way, he’ll somehow just forget I’m in here. And honestly, it kind of works because after a long second, he finally leaves, and I listen intently to the unfamiliar sound of his footsteps going down the stairs.
I’m going to kill Granny. I am going to double-check her will and then I am going to kill her.
I drop the towel and take a prolonged rinse in the shower to give Callum ample opportunity to leave.
This time, I make sure I’m covered and announce my presence before stepping back into the hall.
There’s no sign of him, and I can’t hear anything other than the faint noise of the construction site, but I still scurry to my room and throw on the first clothes I find before heading downstairs to find Granny sitting in her usual spot at the table.
She doesn’t look up when I come in, so I stand there, my hands on my hips, until eventually she deigns to acknowledge my presence.
“What?”
“What do you mean, what?” I snap. “What was Callum doing here?”
“Who?”
Oh, for the love of— “Callum! The man who was just in the house and saw me topless!”
“Is that why you were making such a racket?”
“Why was he here ?”
“He’s clearing out the garden,” she explains. “Like you told me to get someone to do.”
“I meant some sixteen-year-old looking for pocket money.”
“Well, when they knock on the door, I’ll be sure to give them a job.
I don’t see what the big deal is,” she adds, when I go to argue again.
“You said so yourself: you’ve been meaning to get someone out to clear it.
He stopped by with one of those leaflets and asked if we had any more issues, and I said as a matter of fact, we did. ”
“The big deal is you should have told me someone was in the house. And he didn’t mean issues with the garden. He meant about the traffic and—” I break off with a gasp, ducking behind the table as someone walks past the window.
Granny returns to her newspaper. “Honestly, Katie, you’re starting to worry me.”
I keep to my crouch as I head to the sink and peek out to see Callum pushing a wheelbarrow toward the far end of the yard, Plankton following him like he’s got a hamburger in his pocket.
“He’s still here?” I hiss.
“He said he had the afternoon free.”
“To do what?”
“ Gardening . Aren’t you listening to a word I say?”
“We can’t afford a gardener. How the hell are we going to pay him?”
She gives me a strange look. “Pay him?”
Oh no. “Granny, you didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” she asks innocently, and I groan.
“There’s no need to pay him,” she continues. “He’s helping an old lady. It’s good for the soul.”
“Clearing up that mess outside is not good for anybody’s soul. We’ve talked about this.”
“At least let him finish!”
I don’t bother to respond as I head out the front door.
She started doing this in the last few years when we realized we couldn’t afford to fix the place up properly.
While I didn’t mind having the odd person around to help me rewire a plug or move some furniture, Granny started guilt-tripping people into whole days’ worth of jobs.
I once came home to find Bridget clearing out our gutters after Granny lamented at length about how I was simply too tired at the end of the day.
Nush once painted my bedroom ceiling. Badly.
Once I cottoned on to what was happening, I quickly put a stop to things, and everyone knew now to check with me before listening to a sob story about how the only thing that would make Granny happy was if someone would regrout the bathroom tiles.
But Callum wouldn’t know that.
My sneakers sink into the soft earth as I round the back of the house, throwing open the gate to find him hunched over the hedge bordering our property.
“I’m going to need you to stop whatever she’s got you doing,” I call, once I’m in earshot. “Because we don’t have the money to—”
He whips around at the sound of my voice, and I come to a halt a few paces away, my attention zeroing in on the colorful tattoos wrapped around his left arm.
Intricate Celtic knots start at his wrist, covering every inch of skin until they disappear into his T-shirt.
It’s not like I’ve never seen a guy with tattoos before, but he was wearing a coat or sleeves the last few times we met and a hoodie in the house, so these are…
These are new.
“Pay me?”
“What?” I drag my attention away from the design and tug my cardigan tighter over my chest. “Yeah.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Well, I do,” I say, clearing my throat. “She does this. Granny. If she thinks she can get you to do something for her, she will. And she’ll say whatever she needs to get you to do it.”
“You mean it’s not her dying wish for someone to dig up her weeds?”
“I can’t pay you.”
“Then I’ll be sure to only do a half-assed job. I promise.”
“But—”
“I’m not going to fight with you on this.”
“We’re not having a fight.”
“Not yet.” He raises a brow. “But you’re looking for one, aren’t you?”
I open my mouth to retort before snapping it shut again. He’s right.
When I don’t reply, he turns back to the hedge, picking up a handful of fallen branches and tossing them into the wheelbarrow.
“I’m just assuming this dog is yours, by the way.”
“His name is Plankton.” And he doesn’t seem to even know I’m here, too enamored with the stranger to notice the person who feeds and shelters him standing two paces away. The little traitor.
“Plankton, huh?” Callum reaches forward to scratch the dog’s head. “I think he likes me.”
“Well, he also likes fox poop, so…” I trail off, watching as he tears a particularly stubborn root from the ground. His arm flexes as he does, and I let myself stare at it for a beat before flicking my gaze away. “Why are you even here?”
“We need to block off your road for a series of deliveries next Wednesday. Had to inform the residents.”
“Granny and I are the only residents on this road.”
“And you’ve been informed.”
“You couldn’t have just sent a letter?”
I catch the edge of his smirk before he ducks his head.
“We’ve seen what happens to our letters,” he says, and I know he’s referring to Jack’s face all over the dartboards.
“Anyway, I thought it was supposed to be a five-second job,” he adds.
“I didn’t expect your grandmother to be so persuasive.
She also had me put up some shelving over your boiler. ”
“I was getting to that,” I mumble, a little bit of house embarrassment creeping in alongside the whole almost-naked embarrassment.
What else did she point out to him? Did he see all the mold along the windowpanes?
The peeling paint in the hallway that I still need to do something about?
Isn’t it enough that the guy got a peek at the goods?
Now he has to see how behind on everything I am?
“I don’t mind,” Callum continues, mistaking my sudden awkwardness. “I like renovating. I try to take on a house a year between site jobs. Buy it cheap, do it up. That kind of thing.”
“Sounds time-consuming.”
“I enjoy it.” He straightens, wiping his forearm across his brow and leaving a smidgen of dirt there in the process. “So, are you going to help me or are you just going to stand there?”
“I’m just going to stand here,” I say, as Plankton sniffs around Callum’s feet and then wanders off.
I should probably do the same. I mean, I should definitely do the same, but my body doesn’t seem to be listening to what my brain is telling it to do.
And Callum doesn’t even seem to mind. He just keeps working, ignoring me as he throws handful after handful of branches and weeds into the wheelbarrow until I crack under the silence.
“So did Melissa text back or what?”
He looks confused for a moment before he realizes who I’m talking about, his blind date who never showed. The fact that he’s already forgotten about her makes me feel like the smuggest person in all the land, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“She did,” he says. “She apologized. Said she had a headache.”
“A headache girl.” I tsk. “You didn’t stand a chance. You should stay away from them in the future.”
“You’re not a headache girl then?”
“I’m a stomachache girl. Whole different vibe.” He bends over, the muscles in his back shifting as he grabs another clump of weeds. “Are you going to ask her out again?”
“Nah.” He doesn’t even hesitate, and it’s kind of dumb how pleased that makes me. Pleased enough that I glance around, looking for something to help him with.
“There’s a compost heap around the other side of the house,” I begin grudgingly. “If you want me to— Plankton!”