10. Porches, Power tools, and Pancakes #2
With as much effort as I possessed, I threw myself into installing the next spindle, only to realize too late that I’d installed it incorrectly. Before I could correct it, Dean was beside me, taking the rail from my hands.
“Try it like this,” he said, guiding my hand to the right angle. His skin was rough from years of manual work, and when his fingers closed around mine, he squeezed just enough to steady the tool but not enough to make me feel incompetent.
I tried not to react, but my pulse was a dead giveaway.
“Thanks,” I said, way too breathy.
He let go, and our hands brushed. “No problem.”
Wanting to change the subject, I asked, “What would you be doing today if you weren’t on this home renovation rescue?”
“Payroll, expense reports, end-of-month reconciliations.”
“Riveting,” I stated flatly.
He smirked. “You asked.”
I considered him for a moment, wondering if he’d ever had a day in his life that wasn’t dictated by responsibility. “You know, it’s okay to take a break sometimes.”
He looked at me, very directly, like he was considering whether or not to let me in on a tightly held secret. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
The words were simple, but they hit me low in the gut. Dean Lockhart did not waste his time, and he was choosing to spend it here with me.
The thought was too big to handle just then, so I pivoted. “Well, you’re contractually forbidden from doing any more porch work until Maverick can inspect it. He takes his role as safety captain very seriously.”
Dean’s eyes, usually so guarded, warmed. “He’s a good kid.”
“He really is,” I agreed. “Thanks for the riding lesson last week. He hasn’t stopped talking about it.”
That was the understatement of the century. After the horse riding lesson, Maverick spent the next three days talking of nothing else. He couldn’t wait to have another one.
He shrugged, looking almost shy. “He’s a natural.”
A long moment passed between us, full of things that felt precarious and half-built, like the house itself.
“Well, you are officially off duty,” I said, letting him off the hook so he could leave and get on with his life. “I’m working on interior organization and cosmetic upgrades today, which does not need any supervision.”
He didn’t take the out. Instead, he followed me inside and got right down to work.
My intention had been to distract myself—maybe reorganize the spice rack or try again to caulk the drafty window in the kitchen—but the gravitational pull of that man was a force of nature, strong enough to caused me to turn my attention to sorting through a tangle of extension cords.
He’d shown up not long after sunrise and by eight that morning he’d already swapped out two smoke detectors, fixed the toilet in the guest bath, and was now working on the so-called hallway-of-doom—a name Maverick coined last week because it was so dark.
I hadn’t asked for help. I certainly hadn’t expected Dean to take an emotional inventory of our home and start fixing things.
He just had a quiet way of scanning a situation and slotting himself into the nearest gap, unobtrusive and efficient.
Dean was standing on a ladder, arm extended above his head as he anchored the new light to the cracked plaster.
His T-shirt rode up just high enough to tease a sliver of skin, and it took considerable willpower not to reach out and trace the chiseled line of his waist. Instead, I bent down and tugged on a stubborn knot in the extension cord, gritting my teeth and willing myself to focus on literally anything else.
“You okay down there?” he called, not looking away from his task.
“Just wrestling the serpents of the underworld,” I replied, flourishing the cords for dramatic effect.
He grinned, which I considered a win. Getting a smile out of Dean Lockhart felt like climbing Everest. Each time it was as if I’d conquered the impossible.
Every minute I spent in his presence caused my No Men Policy to experience structural damage.
I had good reasons for my rules, but they seemed to fade into insignificance next to the sheer competence he radiated.
The man had an answer for every household crisis, a tool for every malfunction, and a sort of low-key charm that would have been easy to miss if you weren’t paying close attention.
I was paying all the attention.
The new light fixture snapped into place with a satisfying click, and Dean stepped down, landing with a heavy thud that reverberated through the floorboards and, if I was being honest, through my ribcage.
He looked at me, eyebrow arched. “That should do it. You might want to avoid slamming any doors nearby, though.”
“Noted,” I said, and made a mental note to install soft-close hinges on every door by Sunday.
He moved through my home with the natural confidence of someone who’d grown up in a place where nothing worked right unless you fixed it yourself.
I followed him into the kitchen, where he’d already cleared a corner of my cluttered counter and arranged the donuts with methodical precision.
It might have been the most romantic thing anyone had done for me all year.
I watched him pour coffee into the ugly chipped mug I’d inherited from my uncle. For a moment, the sight of those big, capable hands—steady, sure, careful not to spill—sent a sparkle of warmth through me that had nothing to do with caffeine and everything to do with the man holding the carafe.
“What do you do to relax?” I asked, trying not to sound as breathless as I felt.
His eyes met mine and a heat passed between us, warming my entire body as if I’d just downed a shot of Fireball. I wondered if he felt what I was feeling, the exchange of energy between us. If he had, he ignored it in his response.
“Relaxing is for people who want to get less done.”
I tried to ignore the arousal spiking in my body and defuse the situation. “So you’re saying I’m lazy,” I teased.
“Never. You created an atmosphere of calm domestication to preserve energy,” he deadpanned, then handed me the mug.
Our fingers brushed. The jolt went straight to my brainstem.
Before I could decide whether to lean into the moment or run away from it, the familiar slap of tiny feet on hardwood echoed down the stairs.
Maverick hurtled into the room, hair sticking out in all directions and face smeared with what I had to hope was last night’s chocolate pudding and not a new, more horrifying substance.
“Pancakes!” he bellowed, arms raised in a gesture of pure triumph.
Dean blinked, caught between bemusement and concern for his own safety. “Good morning.”
Maverick spotted Dean and veered toward him at full speed. He launched himself at Dean’s knees with the reckless abandon of a child who had never encountered his own mortality.
To his credit, Dean caught him mid-dive, one arm around Maverick’s middle, the other steadying the coffee so it didn’t spill. He then flipped Maverick, so he was dangling upside down, and Mav began giggling like a maniac.
“Are you making the pancakes?!” Maverick demanded as the blood rushed to his face.
“I brought donuts.” Dean turned, so Mav could see the donuts.
“But we have pancakes on Saturday.”
Mav liked pancakes more than donuts, and we did have pancakes every Saturday. Dean, who had clearly not anticipated being drafted into breakfast service, looked to me for help.
“I’m gonna make the pancakes,” I assured him.
“No, I want Dean pancakes,” Maverick insisted.
Dean set him right side up and, after a beat, ruffled his hair. “I don’t know if I can make pancakes as good as your mom.”
“Mom burns them,” Maverick said, unintentionally throwing me under the bus with his brutal honesty.
Dean considered this. “I think I can handle not-burnt pancakes.”
“Yesss!” Maverick hissed, fist-pumping like a tiny, semi-feral victory machine.
While Dean shifted into pancake production mode, Maverick circled the kitchen, peppering him with questions. “Do you have kids? Are you married? What’s your favorite dinosaur?” The questions careened from topic to topic, each more blunt and revealing than the last.
Dean fielded them with remarkable patience, never flinching even when Maverick asked if he ever “peed his pants at work.” He had not, but he admitted to falling in a pond while chasing a runaway bull.
When asked about children, Dean’s answer was simple: “No kids.” When asked if he would ever want any, he paused, spatula in hand, then said, “Maybe someday. Right now, I just borrow other people’s. ”
Maverick nodded, as if this was the height of logic. “You can borrow me sometimes.”
A silence hung in the air after that, awkward but not uncomfortable. I busied myself with setting the table, but the words followed me around the kitchen, heavy and warm and a little dangerous.
As Dean ladled batter onto the griddle, he looked at Maverick. “Do you want them shaped like anything?”
“Dinosaurs!” Maverick shouted, because obviously.
The pancakes were, predictably, perfect. Dean stacked them high on Maverick’s plate, all shaped in crude but recognizable dinosaur silhouettes. Maverick declared them “awesome” and immediately drowned them in syrup.
I rolled my eyes, catching Dean’s eye as I did. “You’ve set the bar unreasonably high.”
He just shrugged, but there was the smallest flicker of pride in his eyes.
I watched the two of them at the table, Dean hunched to fit his long body into our cramped kitchen chairs, Maverick firing off questions between bites, and felt something in my chest ache and then expand.
I’d never seen a man like Dean before, someone who could be so hard-edged but so gentle, who could fix a roof and also remember a four-year-old’s favorite flavor of juice, which he had and even started stocking in the office kitchen.
The whole scene would have been domestic bliss, if not for the part where I was supposed to be immunized against this sort of thing. I’d sworn off men. I’d sworn off hope.
But here was Dean, breaking all my rules.