Shelia and Joan were waiting beside Luke’s truck in the car park, chattering like magpies.
‘We’re starting our own projects tomorrow, Luke,’ said Shelia. ‘Could we stop by King of the Castle and pick up the materials? We need two macrocarpa sleepers. And you’ll need to take the truck to class tomorrow.’
‘Actually, I thought I’d spend the day at the office tomorrow, catching up on some paperwork. You can borrow my truck though.’ He avoided his mother’s eye as he shut the car door. A bit too hard. He jumped into the driver’s seat. Shelia and Joan were looking at him, their eyebrows raised in comically similar expressions.
‘Are you all right?’ Shelia asked at last.
‘Yup.’ He looked in the rear-vision mirror then turned to look over his shoulder before backing out.
‘You’ve missed a few of Harper’s classes lately.’ Shelia gave Joan a knowing look, the meaning of which wasn’t lost on Luke. ‘We thought you liked … the classes. We thought there was a Plan.’
‘The Plan hasn’t entirely gone to plan, so I think it might be best if I don’t hang around tomorrow looking like a pathetic loser. Believe it or not, a guy can only take so much ego hammering in a week.’
Shelia looked at him in alarm. ‘But darling, Joan and I need you tomorrow. We can’t carry four heavy macrocarpa sleepers. Those things weigh a tonne. Please. Harper doesn’t think you’re a loser. On the contrary. She thinks you’re a total hottie,’ Shelia giggled, though it sounded suspiciously like a snigger. Joan joined in.
‘Is there a certain age when grown women officially become teenagers again, or can it happen any time?’ Luke snapped.
The giggling turned to cackling at his show of temper. His hands tightened on the steering wheel and he focused on the stretch of busy road in front of him. Half of Auckland was on a mission to get to the beach. It was going to be a slow drive back through town with these two on board. He sighed and switched the radio on. His mind drifted. He’d help his mother tomorrow. He could never deny her anything. Hadn’t been able to since the death of his father when it had become his responsibility to make sure she was looked after properly.
Luke’s chest squeezed tight, a familiar pain he’d carried along with the guilt since he was twelve years old.
If guilt over his father’s death hadn’t been enough, there was the money too. He’d inherited a fortune, initially held in trust, and he’d had to sit and watch his mother struggling to get by, knowing the money was set aside for him alone, unable to touch it and give it to her. That had changed on his twenty-first birthday. He was wealthy now and could give his mother anything she wanted.
He sighed again. There’d never been any question he wouldn’t help his mother with the bloody macrocarpa sleepers.
So here he was, the next day, loaded up like a pack mule, lugging Shelia and Joan’s gear into the classroom. He gave Harper what he hoped was a nonchalant nod—friendly in a casual, I’ve-seen-you-naked sort of way—as he dumped tool boxes and King of the Castle carrier bags on the workbench and sauntered out again for the sleepers. Once out of sight he ran his fingers through his hair. Harper looked particularly gorgeous today, from her bouncy ponytail down to the incredibly sexy tool belt she’d strung around her hips. Luke strode towards the truck. How the hell was he going to get through the session?
Frustration continued to build as class began. Harper stood up the front explaining how to make the sleeper bench seat, breaking it down into easy steps. Luke watched in excruciating silence as Shelia measured her sleepers and slowly, painfully cut them to the length she wanted her bench to be. Luke itched to help. Harper was extremely busy, dividing her attention between the fifteen women in the class. She needed another pair of hands.
Luke looked down at his large hands, clenched into fists. He examined the scars on his knuckles, distracted for a moment by memories. Then he looked up to where Harper was absorbed, patiently explaining to a young woman how to use the circular saw.
Luke stood and eased his way over to Shelia’s workbench, where she was drawing a wiggly pencil line measurement on the piece of wood. Luke flicked a glance in Harper’s direction. Still too busy to notice him. He took the pencil from his mother, re-measured the line and drew it on straight. He clamped the wood onto the bench, checked it was secure and set the circular saw to forty five degrees. This was fun. Shelia stood back and watched as he started cutting along the straight line.
‘Luke!’ An angry voice at his elbow brought him back to the moment. Busted. He hastily shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and slunk off to the window seat. Harper’s angry gaze burned into his back.
The next hour drifted by. Luke sent a few work emails and texted a couple of friends to meet him at the pub. He kicked his feet around restlessly all the while aware Harper was almost run off hers with questions and demands from her students. Perhaps this project was a little ambitious? A pretty blonde woman—Hilary?—at the side of the classroom was totally ballsing up the bevels on the side of her bench seat feet. She’d looked his way, a couple of times, her expression screaming ‘help’. He’d shaken his head. Her pleading look this time was more than he could resist. He checked Harper was occupied on the other side of the room and slunk round the perimeter of the classroom, to Hilary.
‘Is that right?’ she whispered.
‘No. But Harper will have my guts for garters if I help you.’
‘Please. Just show me where to mark the screw holes. I don’t want to get it wrong.’
‘Okay.’ Luke bent to pick up the carpenter’s pencil and turned to make sure Harper wasn’t watching. His heart bumped. Harper stood right beside him, hands on small hips, a furious expression on her face.
‘Mr Colton,’ she hissed. ‘What are you doing? I told you not to interfere in my class. Go and sit in the corner.’
Mr Colton? Sit in the corner? What the hell?
Luke straightened, dropping the pencil on the bench. Hilary tried to nudge him out of the way. ‘It’s all my fault. I asked him to show me something,’ she said.
‘No.’ Shit. In his peripheral vision he could see Shelia charging over to defend him. Even worse than being publicly chastised and sent to the naughty chair by Harper was having women fight his battles for him. This stopped now. ‘Hilary asked for help because you’re busy. This is an ambitious project for these women. They’re using unfamiliar tools and machinery here that have potential to harm and they’re using them unsupervised.’
Harper’s chest swelled at his words, the buttons stretching across her bust. Nice. Too late he noticed how her nostrils flared and her lips tightened. She addressed the room.
‘Ladies, remember on day one, I said there was a reason I taught women-only classes. Who can remember what that reason was?’
Much to Luke’s relief no one answered her. The women fidgeted and stared at the ground. Harper sighed and turned to Luke. ‘I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We don’t need guys like you stepping in and doing everything for us.’ She nodded at the class, clearly looking for someone to agree with her. ‘We can work it out for ourselves or Hilary could’ve waited and asked me.’ Harper’s chest gave another small heave. ‘From now on you’re banned from my class altogether.’
Shelia gasped. ‘But he can stay till the end of the session? I need a lift home.’
Luke must have misheard his traitorous matriarch, who smiled apologetically at his confused double-take. It seemed he was outmanoeuvred on all fronts, with no choice but to drag what was left of his shredded dignity out the door.
But as he left, he couldn’t resist shooting Harper a hard, pointier-than-pointed look. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said.
***
And so now Harper added publicly humiliating Luke to the list of offences she’d committed against him. Though how it ranked alongside a) using him as free labour, b) using him as a sex toy, and c) kicking him out of bed, she wasn’t quite sure.
She suspected by the way he stomped out of the classroom she might have gone too far this time.
But he just wouldn’t butt out. And Hilary had been flirting with him. Tossing her platinum blonde hair and shoving her boobs in his face. While he lapped it up. He was trying to make Harper jealous. Wasn’t he?
And she was jealous. The acidity that rose from her stomach up to her throat would melt a car battery. But she wasn’t just jealous of how he’d stepped in and helped Hilary, even after she’d told him not to. She was jealous of how the women couldn’t help but defer to him. As if he was the authority on all things carpentry.
Because he was a man.
Jealous. Furious. Maybe it didn’t matter. Either way, she’d got him out of her classroom and she was back in the driver’s seat. She could teach these women, she was more than capable. And she’d do whatever it took to keep these classes her own. No outside interference necessary.
Yes, she was busy. Yes, this class was demanding of her time. Everyone liked individual attention. But Harper could manage on her own. She didn’t need Luke or anyone else undermining her. She chewed on her lip, battling old insecurities she’d thought she was well shot of.
The session flew after Luke’s ejection. Harper moved swiftly to ensure she gave everyone who needed it her full attention. She raced from person to person, always busy, always focused on the task at hand. Battening down any thoughts of Luke that tried to interrupt or distract her.
I’m too busy for complications. She didn’t want to even attempt to interpret her own feelings. Don’t have time for that.
Her feelings, like Luke, needed to know their place. They needed to stay tucked away. Banished to the corner of her classroom, her mind and her heart.
Her heart? When had her heart come into this?
She looked at her watch, croaked to the class. ‘Pack up time. Please put all the tools in the back room in the proper places.’ She forced herself to stand up the back of the class with a smile on her face, saying goodbye to all her students. Picking up a hammer here, screws and washers there. At last they left. Shelia scuttled out, dragging Joan behind her.
Her heart.
She couldn’t let Luke anywhere near her heart. Better it remained safely protected.
She sighed. Her day wasn’t over. She knew Luke would be back to confront her and she needed to wrap her heart in barbed wire before he got here.