“Are you sure you don’t want some coffee or something?” Kari fidgeted, feeling useless. No, worse than useless. Useless and very aware of the long, male legs attached to the long, lean torso sticking out from under her sink.
Something clanked and Rob grunted and shifted his shoulders, which were propped on the edge of the open cabinet. It looked uncomfortable as hell.
“Or I could just shut up and let you get on with it,” Kari muttered.
“Did you say something?” A thump sounded from under the sink. “Ow. Fuck.”
Kari bit her lip and closed her eyes. Great. Not only was she taking advantage of her neighbor, now she’d injured him. She crouched and found him squinting at her, rubbing his forehead.
She grimaced. “I’m so sorry. Didn’t mean to make you hit your head. I just wanted to know if you wanted me to make some coffee or something. I feel useless as heck just standing around while you fix my sink.”
A weak grin slid across his face. “Coffee after noon? I’d be up until dawn.”
So, he wasn’t Scandinavian. Her mother would have offered coffee from sunup to sundown without thinking twice. “Anything?” Kari winced at the pathetic tone she couldn’t keep out of her voice.
He dropped his head back and continued to fiddle with whatever he was fiddling with. “You really don’t have to. I’m having a blast.”
“Sure seems like it, what with the swearing and the traumatic brain injury.”
“Well, if you could find an old towel or something to cushion my back, that’d be a help.” His voice sounded distracted and there was another clank.
“That I can do.” Kari hopped to her feet and nearly sprinted to the linen closet in the hall, stretching to the top shelf to find the store of towels she kept after they had gotten too threadbare for anything other than rags. Scooting back to the kitchen, she crouched next to him. “Towel.”
Rob rocked his hips side to side to inch out from under the sink and Kari swallowed as his tee shirt rode up, exposing a strip of bare stomach. She’d estimated that Rob was a bit older than her forty-two years, but there was no question that he kept himself fit. She lifted her gaze to his face, heat flooding her face at the gentle curve of his lips as he tugged his tee shirt down. I wasn’t perving on you! she wanted to protest.
But it wouldn’t be one hundred percent true. Rob was a little awkward and a lot eager, but he was also generous and helpful. He dog-sat for his daughter. He was helping Kari with her plumbing. He didn’t ask for anything in return.
And, if Kari was being honest, the man was cute. Seriously cute. As in silver fox matinee idol cute. As in Central Casting could find him a job as George Clooney’s cousin cute.
She offered him the towel and he twisted to lay it in the cabinet, settling back and inching under the sink again without a word. He took a wrench and applied it and a pair of pliers to the pipe, pushing them in opposition, grunting as the fitting gave way. This time, knowing his attention was on the plumbing, Kari allowed herself to appreciate the play of lean muscles in his arms, of the way his abs tensed under his tee shirt as the pipe gave way.
“Excellent.” He set the tools down beside him and picked up another wrench, doing something else with it, then scooting out to get to his feet and pull the whole assembly out, absorbed in his task, seemingly not even remembering Kari was there.
Having Kari looking on while he worked was distracting as hell. Rob tried to cover by examining the old faucet, though there was no need. The thing was going in the trash. It should have gone there years ago from the look of it.
But he wanted something to focus on so he wouldn’t think about the way Kari had blushed when he caught her looking at him. He wasn’t too proud to admit he appreciated an admiring glance, but Kari was right here next door. He needed to be careful. He knew all too well that starting something would almost certainly be followed by ending something, and he wasn’t about to have a next-door neighbor who hated him. Having an ex-wife halfway across the country hating him was bad enough.
“Problem?” Kari’s voice squeaked a bit and he shook his head.
“No, but I’m glad you decided to get a new unit. This thing is probably original to the house and wasn’t long for this world. Now I just need to get the new one installed and you’ll be right as rain soon.”
“Rain. Great. More water. Maybe my roof will leak next.”
“That’s awfully pessimistic of you.” Rob opened the box with the new faucet and laid out the parts on the counter. “Think about something happier. When we first met you mentioned you just got back from a cruise, right?”
“Yup. Caribbean.”
“Sounds swanky.”
“It was okay.”
He lifted his gaze to her face. She was looking out the window at the backyard. There was something sort of wistful about her expression. “Why only okay?” he asked.
She sighed and looked down at her hands. “Just not my type of thing. Very hectic, very busy. Lots of people all the time.”
He considered this as he settled the gasket and threaded the hoses through the hole in the back of the sink. He was a pretty gregarious guy, but even to him, that sounded like it might be a bit much. Kari had a much more quiet, self-contained vibe about her. “Doesn’t sound very restful.”
“No, it wasn’t. Lots of activities too. I would have preferred to curl up with a book on a lounge chair or something.”
“They don’t leave you alone to do that if that’s what you want to do?”
“Oh, they do. It’s just that there’s always something going on around that lounge chair. Games or parties or families with a lot of screaming kids. We docked in Nassau one day, and walking around the city is just one long string of people trying to get you to come into this shop or that one… Frankly, I was happy to get home.”
What would make a woman who seemed as reserved as Kari want to do such a thing in the first place? “Why did you go if it wasn’t your type of scene?”
“I won it at work. It’s not like I spent money on the ticket or anything.”
“Nice that you could find out it’s not your thing without spending money on it, I guess.”
“True.” One corner of her mouth quirked up. “You’re an always look on the bright side type, aren’t you?”
He settled back down on the kitchen floor, preparing to stick his head under the sink again. “I suppose so. I try to be, I guess. I mean, most things in life aren’t tragedies. Anyway, you got home from the stressful cruise to a nice quiet house and some relaxation, I guess.”
To his surprise, Kari started to laugh.
She couldn’t help it. It was perfect, somehow. And if she didn’t laugh, she’d cry.
Nice quiet house indeed. She’d come home and before she’d even unpacked her dirty clothes, Sam had come over and asked Kari the question she’d been dreading since Kari’s mother died, tearing the lid off of a lifetime of secrets and lies.
That had been two weeks ago. And Sam hadn’t called since.
The tears did come then, with a suddenness that shocked her. Kari’s mouth twisted and she clapped her hands over her eyes. The harder she tried to clamp down on the emotion, the harder her chest heaved, sobs wracking her lungs. Then there were arms around her, pulling her into a hard, warm chest, hands rubbing her back.
“Shh. What’s the matter?” His low voice was right in her ear, soothing.
Her hands still pressed against her eyes, she took one deep, shuddering breath. Then another. Tears still trickled, but the out of control sobbing was over. She pulled her hands away from her eyes and set them on his shoulders. He stepped away at that, releasing her. She wished he hadn’t. That brief bit of human contact, of comfort, had been like water on a thirsty plant. She took another breath, steadier this time.
“I’m sorry. I…I’ve just been under some stress lately.” She lifted her gaze to meet his, swiping her fingertips under her eyes to get rid of the moisture. He frowned, concern etched into the lines around his eyes. “I’m okay. Really.”
“You don’t seem so okay to me,” he said. His hand lifted and reached halfway between them, then fell.
She waved him away. “No. I’m fine.”
“If you say so. Do you want to talk about it? How fine you are?”
She shook her head. No, she didn’t want to talk to this attractive near-stranger about how she’d kept her mother’s secrets and lies only to be found out by her only living relative. And maybe losing that most precious relationship in the bargain. Shame and embarrassment would swallow her whole if she did that. Pile her panic about home ownership on top of that horrible little story and he might run screaming from her house. And at the same time, it all seemed so pathetic. So small.
Avert your eyes, we don’t talk about the madwoman next door. Seriously. She was a mess.
“Okay. Want me to continue to work on your sink? I’d leave you alone, but…then you wouldn’t have any water.”
She grimaced. “Please. Can we just ignore my awkward outburst? Pretend like it didn’t happen?”
“If that’s what you want.” His expression remained grave.
“Thanks.”
He nodded, then sank to the floor again and wriggled into the cabinet. “Not too much longer and I’ll be out of your hair anyway.”
She wanted to tell him she wasn’t counting the minutes until he could leave. That she actually enjoyed his company. It had been an awfully lonely two weeks. And she was getting used to seeing his long, jeans-clad legs sticking out from her kitchen cabinets.
“Can I…make you lunch or something? As a thank-you?”
He lifted his head—carefully this time—and looked at her. “You sure?”
She nodded. “Nothing fancy. I have the makings for ham sandwiches. Some chips. Beer, even.”
He let his head fall back and readdressed the pipes. “That sounds perfect.”
Kari nodded and moved to the fridge, taking out ingredients and assembling two lunch plates, stepping carefully around his legs. By the time she was done, Rob had finished with the faucet, run down to the basement to turn the water back on (seriously, how had she not even known where the main water valve was? Why did she think she could own a house? Who was she fooling?) and they were sitting at the little table in her dining room.
He looked around, taking in her minimal décor. She had plans to paint every room in the house, but for now, all the walls were stark white. His gaze roamed over the framed art posters, the little chest of drawers with a piece of whitework embroidery laid on top, and back to Kari’s face.
“That’s a nice cloth thingy on the chest there. Did someone make it for you?”
Kari shook her head. “No. I made it.”
His eyebrows went up. “Impressive.”
“My mom was very keen that I know traditional Norwegian hand-crafts like hardangersøm. I grew up doing it. Now I mostly need to keep my hands busy doing something. Knitting, embroidery…always something.”
He took a sip of beer, his dark gaze pinning her. “I take it back. That’s not impressive. It’s very impressive.”
Kari’s blush should be registered as a dangerous weapon. It made Rob think decidedly carnal thoughts that he had no business thinking. Better to get on more neutral ground.
“What do you do for work?” he asked.
“I’m an office manager and bookkeeper for a small publishing house,” she said. “Nothing terribly exciting.”
“My daughter would probably think it was very exciting,” he said.
“She wants to be an office manager for a company that makes instruction manuals?” Kari’s eyebrows quirked in humorous disbelief.
“Well, she wants to work in publishing. She’s been trying to get editorial work for a while now. Doing some freelancing, but she’d love to go full-time.”
“If we get an opening I can let you know since I’ll be practically the first to know,” Kari said. “Seeing as I’d be the one posting it. But there aren’t a lot of jobs like that out there. And certainly not in this neck of the woods.”
He sighed. “I know. I tried to get her to look into something more practical, but Mia’s both hardheaded and a dreamer. It can be a bad combination.” He picked up his sandwich and bit into it. A simple thing, a sandwich. But it had been a long time since anyone had made one for him. It tasted good.
“What do you do?”
“I’m the IT director for a computer game company.”
“So you could not only fix my sink but my computer too? Wow.”
“Does your computer need fixing?”
“No.” An unexpectedly sly smile flitted across her face and he felt another bolt of attraction run through him. “Besides, you’ve already fixed my sink and all I’ve been able to offer you in return is a sandwich. I’d better not push my luck.”
“It’s a good sandwich. Also, don’t underestimate the power of beer as a motivator. Anyway, I’m happy to fix your computer if something goes wrong with it. Or anything else.”
She sighed and looked around the room. “There’s so much to do. I hate all these white walls, but I don’t even know how long it will take me to paint a single room. Or how much paint to buy. Or…anything, really.”
“You’ve never painted a room before?”
She shook her head. “I’m the first person in my family to own a house.” She laughed a brief, reflective laugh. “Like I said before, when you first suggested I get a new faucet it was kind of a shock to me to realize I could do that. That it wasn’t up to the landlord to decide. That there is no landlord.”
He sipped his beer, thought for a moment. “Yeah. That’s one of the nice things about homeownership. But it’s also overwhelming sometimes.”
Kari’s eyes went wide. “You feel that way too?”
He shrugged. “Sure. Sometimes.”
“I thought I was just being a big baby. I finally got what I wanted—a home of my own—and then I don’t know what to do with myself.”
Rob nodded. “It’s kind of like when you’re a kid and you can’t wait to grow up and make your own decisions. Then you’re an adult and you sometimes wish someone else would make a decision for you—because it’s exhausting being in charge. And it’s scary sometimes.”
Kari stared at him, a pickle held halfway between her plate and her mouth. She blurted, “I’ve been terrified ever since my first night in this house.”
“Terrified?” Maybe that explained the semi-hysterical scene in the kitchen.
“Well, not every second. But it’s so unknown, all of it. What if something goes wrong, what if something breaks and I can’t afford it? I didn’t have much before, didn’t have much to lose. Now…”
And she was all on her own. When Rob had first bought a house, he had been married and experienced in basic maintenance. First time homeownership with neither a partner nor experience would be incredibly challenging. He was starting to think that Kari wasn’t, as she put it, “a big baby,” but incredibly resourceful and brave. “What about your parents?” he asked. “Other sources of support?”
“My dad died about five years ago. Mom went a few years later. They never had much, but what my mother left me boosted my nest egg to enable me to buy this place.”
“Siblings?”
“My brother Bjorn and his wife died in a car accident not long before my mother passed.”
He stared at her. “Wow. That’s…a lot of tragedy to be dealing with in a short time.”
She swallowed, her throat working. “It was hard. Sam and I…” She swallowed and lowered her eyes. “Sorry. I’m not going to cry all over you again.” Her face flushed again and Rob wished he could hug her or give her some other kind of comfort. She looked up again, meeting his eyes. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Hell. I’ve already confessed my fear about becoming a homeowner. What’s one more confession? I don’t think Sam’s speaking to me now.”
“Your niece, right? What happened?”
“She found out about a big secret that my mother had been keeping. A lie. And she found out I knew and hadn’t told her.”
There. She’d said it.
She waited for the earth to open up and swallow her.
Nothing happened.
“Why didn’t you tell her?” he asked. He sounded curious, but not judgmental.
Kari shrugged and stared at her half-eaten sandwich. “I’m…not really sure. Mor—Mom—told me when she was really sick. Not long before she died. And then she did die. Sam and I were coping with a lot and it seemed wrong to put more on her emotional plate then. And then…it was like that overdue library book you have under the bed when you’re a kid. You know the fine is only going to get worse the longer it sits there, but…”
“You just keep nudging it even further back with your toe.”
“Exactly. The longer it went on, the worse it was going to be. How could I bring it up? How could I explain why I hadn’t told her before? And I told myself there wasn’t any way she could find out.”
“But she did.”
“Yeah.” Kari pondered whether she should stop talking about this now. Oh, what the hell. “She inherited property from her great-uncle in Norway.”
“Her great-uncle?” He seemed to calculate something in his head. “Wouldn’t that make him your uncle?”
“That’s the thing. My father wasn’t her biological grandfather. My mother was married to a different man and pregnant with my brother when they emigrated. The ship they were on sank. Mor’s husband didn’t make it. She and my dad had met and fell in love on the crossing and ended up living happily ever after.”
Rob’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s quite the story.”
“Yeah. One I should have told Sam without her having to drag it out of me.”
“Hey.” Rob’s voice was soft and she looked at him. “How long are you going to beat yourself up over this?”
She half-shrugged. “Until Sam’s speaking to me again, I guess?”
“What if she doesn’t?”
Dread latched icy claws into Kari’s belly and she pushed her plate away. “I can’t even think about that.”
“Is she the type to hold a grudge?”
“Not usually, but this situation isn’t exactly usual either. And she’s…she’s all the family I have.” And what if I don’t even have that anymore? Kari felt scooped out and hollow at the idea. She was used to being responsible and reliable, but she wasn’t used to being this alone.
“And you’re all the family she has, too, right? I think she’ll come around. You guys seemed really close when I met her.”
“We are. Or we were. You weren’t the first person to mistake us for sisters.”
“Why don’t you give her a call?”
“Because I’m a coward?”
“I doubt that.” His eyes had gone all warm, making her feel funny and fluttery inside.
Kari slumped back in her chair. “Why is it so hard to believe? I’ve just told you that I am terrified of my own home and was cowardly enough not to tell my only niece—only living relative—about something huge that affects her.”
“Being terrified of homeownership isn’t cowardice, it’s rational behavior.” Rob said. “You’re actually brave to take it on by yourself for the first time. And I think a lot of people would have done what you did regarding your mother’s secret. It seems like you meant to tell her, but the timing was bad…and then I can’t imagine how you would have brought it up.”
“Hey Sam—remember my dad? Turns out he wasn’t really your grandfather. Sorry about that, kiddo.”
“I’m sure you put it more diplomatically than that.”
“Only because she asked me point-blank if I had ever heard of Mor’s first husband. By name. It let me off the hook. I didn’t have to do the awkward lead-in to the horrible conversation.”
His fingertip touched the back of her hand and the fluttering feeling in her gut intensified. “If you want my unsolicited advice, reach out to her.”
She swallowed. She’d been so afraid of having her worst fear realized—of having Sam reject her forever—that she hadn’t reached out. But Mor had avoided facing the truth for her entire life. Maybe Kari shouldn’t be emulating her. “I’ll think about it.”