10. Porches, Power tools, and Pancakes
PORCHES, POWER TOOLS, AND PANCAKES
Felicity
Ishot upright, heart hammering as if I’d just sprinted a mile, the ghost of Dean Lockhart’s hands still burning through the fabric of my very real, very disappointing pajamas.
I picked up my phone from the nightstand.
It was four a.m. on a Saturday. I let out a frustrated sigh as I lay back down.
The hour was ungodly. Maverick was still asleep, and this was a prime opportunity for a single mom to catch up on sleep, but my blood was fizzing like it had been carbonated in my veins. And it was Dean’s fault.
The memory of my dream was already searing itself into the part of my brain responsible for both shame and satisfaction.
In it, I’d been in the office, finishing up some paperwork.
Dean walked in wearing a button-down so crisp it looked illegal in three states, and before I could ask what he wanted, he’d stalked over, yanked the paperwork out from under my pen, and—without so much as a hello—picked me up and laid me down on my desk.
My skirt hitched up, his mouth at my ear, his hands everywhere.
There was a lot of dirty talk, and at one point I’m pretty sure he’d threatened to staple me to the desk, which, in the dream, was hot.
I woke up right before the good stuff that would have sent HR into a tailspin.
My entire body tingled with awareness. When I looked in the oval mirror that was set in the corner of the room, my cheeks were so pink they matched with my Miss Piggy pajamas.
Since I seriously doubted I would be able to fall back to sleep, I decided to channel my, um, enthusiasm into productivity.
There was a ton of work to do on the house, and every time I got out any tools, Maverick pretended they were light sabers or swords, or any other weapon his four-year-old mind could imagine.
This morning, though, I had a sacred three-hour window before he typically woke up and a driving need to distract myself from the kind of fantasies that would make my therapist’s hair turn white.
So, as I waited for the coffee pot to brew, I watched three YouTube videos about porch repairs, slid on my steel-toed Timberlands, and headed out to begin the big project for the weekend: the porch.
I set up floodlights and my laptop on a folding chair and got to work.
Immediately, I realized the porch had not just been rickety, it had been actively plotting my demise.
The bottom step sagged nearly to the ground, and the spindle railings shrugged off wood glue like a personal insult.
After a quick assessment, I was sure I needed to replace the bottom step and the railing.
I made the rookie mistake of bracing one loose post with my foot while I drilled, which nearly resulted in a disaster and a string of swear words that would haunt the porch until the next renovation.
I was about to attempt a complicated maneuver involving a bungee cord, a clamp, and a very optimistic belief in physics when I heard the crunch of gravel and the low, throaty snarl of a pickup truck.
I froze, half-crouched over an uncooperative spindle.
I knew who it was without turning around.
My heart skipped several beats and then remembered I hadn’t changed out of my pajamas to start work.
I was still in my oversized sweats and an oversized shirt with a Muppet character that read Kissy Kissy, Kermy.
I flashed back to the dream, but this time I was wearing my pajamas.
I shook my head to try and erase the images and nearly smacked my own forehead with the cordless drill as I stood up, trying to look like a woman who totally knew what she was doing and absolutely did not need rescuing.
Dean stepped out of his truck with a rigid, silent efficiency.
He carried a cardboard box from Be Mine bakery and a to-go carrier with two coffees.
His hair was still damp, I assumed from his morning shower, and he wore a faded t-shirt, jeans, and an expression that landed halfway between suspicion and professional disappointment.
He looked unfairly good for someone who’d just shown up uninvited—jaw sharp enough to cut glass, forearms doing things to a faded t-shirt that should have required a permit.
The morning light caught the angles of his face in a way that made me feel personally victimized, which was not helpful given that I was wearing a Muppet on my chest.
There was a particular cruelty in how effortlessly he looked like that—like he hadn’t needed to try, like the jeans and the damp hair and the whole thing had just happened to him.
He gave the porch a once-over, then looked me up and down, brow raised.
“Morning!” I chirped, like I hadn’t just been objectifying him with my subconscious all night. “You’re up early for a Saturday.”
“You weren’t kidding about the YouTube,” Dean commented as he surveyed the situation, his eyes lingering on my laptop screen, which still blared a chipper DIY influencer showing off the “Ten Porch Repair Hacks Every Homeowner Must Know.” His tone was mild, but the undertone of “what fresh hell is this” didn’t escape me.
I raised my chin and met his gaze. “I am fully certified by the University of Watching Internet Strangers Who Know What They’re Doing.
” I swept aside a cascade of wood shavings with my foot, which only made it more obvious I’d made little headway and possibly a bigger mess.
I doubled down. “If you could get a college degree from watching tutorials, I’d have a master’s. Two, even.”
He didn’t laugh, which tracked. Instead, Dean set down the baked goods and drinks and tilted his head at the splintering spindle I’d been wrestling. “What happened to our agreement?” he asked, voice clipped but not unkind. “You’d let me oversee anything with a blade or a motor.”
I didn’t think he was trying to be condescending, but I still felt myself getting defensive. “I agreed to let you supervise. I never agreed to hand over the drill,” I pointed out.
Behind his gorgeous, whiskey-colored eyes was a war. I could tell he wanted to take over the project but didn’t want to offend me. The truth was, for all my independence, I needed help, and I wasn’t too proud to admit it.
I surrendered the drill with all the enthusiasm of a woman handing over her firstborn.
“Fine. But if you strip the screw, I’m taking it back.”
His mouth twitched in amusement.
I stepped around him…or tried. The toe of my boot caught on a loose board, and I pitched forward.
His hands caught me before the porch did.
One arm locked around my waist, the other on my hip, leaving me plastered against a chest that had absolutely no business being that hard.
For one humiliating second, I forgot how lungs worked. His hands were big and solid, and the press of his palm against my back was more stabilizing than any porch rail ever made.
His eyes dropped to my lips, and I felt my mouth water as he asked, “You okay?”
“Yep.” I swallowed the rush of saliva that had just flooded my mouth and tried to make a joke. “This is why I don’t accept help.”
His eyebrow lifted.
“I hand over one power tool, and suddenly I’m a damsel in distress,” I joked, but I didn’t move away, not right away.
The air between us was suddenly charged in a way that had nothing to do with static electricity or faulty wiring. I thought about the dream again—Dean’s hands everywhere, his mouth at my ear—and had to squeeze my eyes shut for a hot half-second.
He must have sensed some internal short-circuiting, or maybe he just picked up on the energy crackling between us, because he steadied me and stepped back. “We should get to work.”
“Sure, um, yeah, right, um, yeah, good.” I fumbled over my words as arousal spiked in me.
I’d already been attracted to Dean from the moment he showed up on our doorstep the day we arrived in Valentine’s Bay.
But now, after the real-life kiss and the fantasy dreams, and seeing him at the ranch with his animals, and his family, and my son, my attraction to him was out of control.
I needed to push it down, smother and suffocate it.
Giving it any room to grow was a bad idea. A very bad idea.
We set to work in a rhythm that was less adversarial and more complementary than I’d expected.
Dean was not a talker, but he was an efficient partner.
He’d hand me a clamp before I even realized I needed it, and he never once rolled his eyes when I dropped a screw or miscounted a measurement.
He didn’t call attention to my mistakes, but he also didn’t let me get away with YouTube shortcuts.
After I’d managed to reattach two spindles without catastrophic failure, I risked a glance over my shoulder at him. “How did you get so good at this stuff?”
I knew he loved numbers, but the contracting stuff seemed so different.
Dean shrugged, pausing mid-drill. “Growing up at the ranch, before Mom was able to turn it into what it is now, it wasn’t really an option.
My dad travelled a lot for work, so it was just Dawson and me.
When things broke, you fixed it and fixed it right.
It wasn’t just our home, it was our livelihood. ”
“That’s a lot of pressure,” I said.
He didn’t look up. “Pressure makes people useful.”
As much as I wanted to follow-up on that mindset and ask more questions, I had a feeling if I did, he would retreat into himself. So, instead, I focused on aligning the next spindle, but my mind wandered.
Dean was so… functional. Dependable. Everything about him ran on order and routine, but it wasn’t coldness, exactly. It was like he’d learned to ration his warmth the same way you rationed propane out on the prairie—use only what’s needed, save the rest for emergencies.
I wondered what it would be like if he let himself use more. Suppose he let someone in, past the point of utility. The office scene from my dreams popped into my mind’s eye, and I quickly shook my head like Mav’s Etch A Sketch, hoping to erase the erotic imagery.