She abruptly turned away, appalled that, in spite of her total misery, she was ogling a workman in her house. Not good. Actually, pretty bad.
She stalked to the dining room, remembered the spilled coffee. A roll of paper towels later, she reminded herself she was starving, and marched to her kitchen and flung open the fridge. Like she was going to find anything there, other than a pack of AA batteries, two containers of yogurt, and a jar of crushed garlic. Ugh. She slammed that door, opened the pantry door. A box of spaghetti she figured dated to World War II, some oil, and one can of stewed tomatoes.
As the food supply wasn’t looking too good, she moved to the next cabinet with the pullout wine rack, which usually held several bottles of wine. Except there were none, and Robin vaguely remembered polishing off the last couple of bottles a couple of weeks ago when Mia was fighting with Michael. There was, however, a bottle of vodka, which of course she didn’t remember acquiring. Nonetheless, she took the bottle out of the cabinet and returned to the fridge hoping she had overlooked some cranberry juice. Naturally, she had not. “Damn,” she exclaimed with great irritation, her voice echoing off the bare walls and floor.
“What’s that?” El Contractordodo said from the dining room.
Robin took two steps back, looked at him through the arched doorway. He was wiping his hands on a dirty towel, looking pretty damn virile. “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just expiring over here with no food, one lousy bottle of vodka, and nothing to mix it with.”
He actually laughed at that, the same warm laugh she had heard on the phone when they had discussed her renovations, which, upon sudden reflection, seemed like fifteen centuries ago. “You expire? I think you’re too ornery,” he said, still smiling.
Robin sighed. “I know you must think I am a grade-A fruitcake, but I’m not usually so . . . so . . .”
“So much trouble?” he finished for her.
Her eyes narrowed.
Hammerman brandished a charmingly lopsided, infectious smile, and Robin could feel a smile of her own spreading across her lips for the first time that day. “Aha—you do think I am a complete nutcase!”
“No, I do not think you are a complete nutcase. No more than three-quarters.”
Robin couldn’t help it—she laughed in spite of herself. “Well, I’m sure you’ve heard enough by now to know why, Mr. Manning.”
“Hey, call me Jake,” he said affably, dropped the towel, and put his hands on his hips to better consider her. “And for what it is worth, I figure there’s a good explanation for everything.”
“Really?” she asked hopefully.
Jake Manning frowned and shook his head. “No. Not really.” With a chuckle, he went down on his (very fine) haunches, opened up his backpack, and extracted a soda.
Robin realized she was checking him out yet again and quickly looked at the bottle of vodka she held. Yeah well, he really was a very handsome man in a worker-guy sort of way. She looked up as he took a big swig of his soda.
“Code Red Mountain Dew,” he said. “Good for what ails you and a perfect complement to any meal.”
“You actually drink that stuff?” she asked, coming out of the kitchen.
“Sure. It’s pretty good.” His cell phone rang; he put the plastic bottle on the table and wrestled the phone off his belt. “Try some with that and you’ll appreciate it,” he said, nodding at the bottle she held. He answered his phone with a short “Yeah,” paused for a moment, then walked out the front door.
Girlfriend, Robin mused, and strolled to the table where he had left his Code Red Mountain Dew. She picked it up, immediately flipped around to the nutrition chart and frowned. “Look at the sugar!” she muttered to herself, and carried it back into the kitchen and mixed the vodka with his drink.
By the time Jake came back in, looking a little flushed, she thought, Robin lifted the bright red drink on which she had managed to put a frothy pink head. “Salut,” she said and sipped the concoction, then flopped down on a dining room chair.
Jake looked at her drink, then at the table. “You used all of it?”
Robin nodded. He’d offered it to her, hadn’t he?
He frowned. He picked up a putty knife and began to scrape around the window casings with a vengeance, chipping off bigger and bigger pieces of paint. Robin sipped, watching him, wondering what she could say to break the silence. “Seems like that would go a lot quicker if you used one of those chemical peels,” she observed, ignoring the fact that all she knew about chemical peels came from facials.
Jake spared her a glance. “I’ll do that with the wall. Right now I am trying to see what is underneath.”
“You should at least get a bigger knife.”
He threw down the knife and picked up the towel. “So,” he said casually, wiping his hands, “you hit a police officer, then burned down your office?”
“I didn’t hit him!” Robin instantly cried. “I just mouthed off.”
“Imagine that.”