She rolled her eyes. “Yes, but it was five bills. Your brothers in blue aren’t going to be knocking themselves out to track her down.”
“And that’s when you said fuck it, I’ll do the demo myself?” He swung the sledgehammer, slamming it against the wall with a satisfying blow that may have had more than a little to do with his lack of satisfaction in other parts of his life. He was a detective, not a spy, and this undercover stint was starting to make him twitchy.
The Luca brothers were planning something, a move of some sort, and if he could just figure it out then he wouldn’t have to be lying to a woman he was genuinely starting to like. Gina had been cracking him up over the past few days with her self-deprecating sense of humor, and she was smart, the kind of person who could judge running her own company and taking on a massive home renovation project. Plus, she had legs he couldn’t stop watching.
“Nah.” She shook her head as she reached up and pulled her hair into a ponytail, the move giving him a great view of her tits as they pressed against the T-shirt, which today featured a sloth doing yoga. “I gave up on hiring a handyman for demolition after Julio.”
“What happened with him?”
“He came in, took one look at the place, and gave a quote so outrageous that I knew he just wanted to walk away from the place and never look back.”
Ford took another couple of swings with the sledgehammer before setting it down on the floor. There were now enough started holes that it was time to move on to the reciprocating saw to cut out large pieces of drywall. Taking out an interior wall wasn’t difficult, but it could be time-consuming. And messy.
“Too much work?” he asked before taking a swig from his coffee.
She shook her head again, sending her pulled-back wavy hair swinging in a way that had him wondering how it would look fisted in his hand as she was naked beneath him. Shit. What in the hell was wrong with him? She was the job, not a possibility. There were rules, and he didn’t break them.
“Something about these old houses freaks most folks out,” Gina said, seemingly oblivious—thank God—to where his thoughts had gone. “I was lucky to have gotten Juan to sign on for the real renovation work. His waitlist is a million years long for an older home like this. He’s the best and he knows it.”
He plugged in the reciprocating saw, needing something to do to keep his hands busy so he’d stop thinking about how much he’d like to be touching Gina instead. “If it’s so difficult, why bother with it at all?”
“Her bones are strong.” She ran her hand over the detailed scrollwork on the staircase banister. “She just needs some touch-ups.”
“It’s a makeover story, huh?” He smiled.
“No way.” She handed him a dust mask and grabbed one for herself. “She’s perfect just the way she is, she just needs someone to love her like she deserves.”
“You sound like my sister Fallon with her car.”
Gina’s eyes went wide with excitement. “What’s she got?”
“A 1970 Pontiac GTO convertible.”
“Ohhhh, that just sounds sexy.”
Sexy? He liked the way she said the word.
“You like cars?” he asked, and suddenly he was searching his brain for any tidbit of knowledge he had about cars, which was pretty much nil beyond where to put the gas in and the number of his mechanic.
“I don’t really know anything about them, but I know what makes me stop and say damn yes I will have some of that.” She punctuated the remark with an exaggerated wink and slipped on the dust mask.
And Ford shifted his stance because he knew exactly what she meant, but he sure as hell wasn’t thinking about the house or a car.
…
Gina had held out as long as she could—there was just something about working alongside Ford that made even something as tedious as refinishing the stairs enjoyable—but when she swore she heard her stomach over the sound of the sander, she had to give in to the inevitable. “Okay, that’s it,” she said after she clicked off her sander and took off her dust mask. “I need food.”
He slipped his mask off and stepped closer to her. “Sounds like a plan.”
Ford reached over and tucked a stray hair that had slipped from her ponytail behind her ear. He probably didn’t mean anything by it, but it sent a shiver of awareness across her skin. Then he stepped back, lifted the hem of his T-shirt, and brought it up to wipe his face, exposing the hard planes of his abs and sending her thoughts to the four corners of the earth for the three-point-two seconds it took him to let his shirt drop back down in place.
“There’s just one problem,” she said, struggling to remember things like breathing and—oh yeah—eating. “I haven’t been to the grocery store this week.”
He gave her his cock-eyed grin that she’d gotten a little too used to seeing over the past few days.
“Pizza or Chinese?” he asked, taking the sander from her hand and walking it over to their makeshift supply table.
“I think they should combine both,” she teased, finding her bearings now that his pheromones weren’t close enough to whisper sweet nothings in her ears. “I’d scarf down a General Tsao’s thin and crispy.”
The look of pure horror on his face had her giggling so hard that she didn’t pay attention to where she was stepping on the stairs, and her foot landed on the wrong spot on the third step from the bottom. The wood did a weird shimmy as it creaked and sank underneath her. Her scream was barely to her lips when Ford’s strong arms wrapped around her. In the next heartbeat, she was pressed up against his chest. Would it really be that bad if she just melted into him? Or nibbled his ear? Or—
Regina! Snap out of it.
“You can put me down now.” Or never, she was good with that, too.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice sounding lower, rougher than usual. “Are you okay?”
The moment her feet touched the floor, her answer changed to a needy no, but she managed to shove the truth back before she said it out loud. “That step is all wonky. It’s on the never-ending fix it list.”
Ford took a closer look at the step. “I could fix it.”
“Yeah?” She should be looking at the step, but instead she was checking him out. Again. “Juan has some specialty parts on order to do the repair.”
“Let me know when they’re in and stay off of it until then.” Then he grabbed his T-shirt collar behind his neck and yanked it over his head. “Let me just go grab another shirt, and I’ll be good to go get food.”
He just needed a new shirt? She was more worried about her panties after that show of abs and shoulders. A woman could get used to having him around: rescuer, fixer, hottie—now that was a dangerous combination.
An hour later and they were seated at the neighborhood pizza joint with a half-eaten pepperoni pizza and a mostly empty pitcher of beer between them, and she was getting the inside scoop on one Ford Hartigan, twelve-year-old middle school cop.
“You really were the hall monitor?” she asked, although she already knew the answer.
Ford nodded as he took a bite of pizza.
“Did that mean you let your brothers off easy when they skipped class?”
He scoffed. “No way.”
“So you’ve always been about the rules.” Color her completely not shocked.
“For the most part,” he said and took a drink of his beer. “How about you, did you know you wanted to be a wedding planner?”
She shook her head. “I love to organize things and knew I wanted to be an event planner, it’s why I double majored in business and hospitality management, but the wedding part just sort of happened accidentally when my cousin needed help with her nuptials. Turns out, I love helping people plan for their big day. Once the house gets done, I’ll be able to meet clients in the salon and display past wedding pictures to help give people ideas. Then, if everything works out, I’ll be hiring employees and maybe even franchising out. Not too bad for sort of falling into it.”