“Have a good run,” Evan said, looking at Jake.
“Uh-huh,” she mumbled, and walked out the door and proceeded down the street.
When the door shut behind Robin, Jake heard a heavy sigh and the rustle of newspaper behind him. “I swear to God she’s going to be the death of me.”
Good.
“I don’t know what it is about women—one minute they can melt you, the next minute they make you want to jump off a cliff. Know what I mean?”
How about jumping off a cliff right now? “I suppose,” Jake muttered.
The man’s chair scraped against the floor; in the next moment, he was standing directly behind Jake. “So . . . what are you doing here?”
Man, oh man, he was destined to have a lousy morning, wasn’t he? And he had such high (though admittedly asinine) hopes. “I’m testing the layers of paint to see what we’re working with before I strip these walls.”
“Ah,” the dolt said. “I’ve dabbled a bit in this kind of work.” When Jake didn’t take the bait, he continued, “Redid my living room. Had that old-style paneling, you know what I mean? I took that out and textured the walls.”
Yep, a bona fide expert with latent homosexual tendencies. “Hmmm,” Jake answered.
The man turned away from the wall. “I should get to the office.”
If he expected Jake to say something, he was going to be disappointed. Jake continued working as he listened to the sound of the man gathering his things, fought the urge to help him, and felt relieved when the door finally shut behind the guy. If there was one thing he hoped for this job, it would be that that guy would not be around too often . . . but wait a minute, there was that dipshit thinking again. Jake paused to wipe the brush he was using, shook his head again at his own great foolishness. He really had to shake the thought of Robin from his mind as he worked. Or at least the memory of her scent when she had stood so electrifyingly close to him this morning.
Meanwhile, Robin was pounding the jogging trail in slow, leaden steps, her hangover forgotten in favor of thinking about Jake. What it was about him she couldn’t be entirely certain, other than the fact that he was so ruggedly male. And handsome. Very nice coppery eyes. And as she turned around the corner and headed up North Boulevard again, she thought about the care he took with the antique brick, his fingers stroking it—Okay, enough already. What was she doing? Wasn’t it bad enough that she had fallen into bed with Evan? Now she had to go and fantasize about a perfect stranger, and a contractor at that?
God, she really needed a hobby. Or a boyfriend. A boyfriend who had nothing to do with her house or her work, completely disengaged from her life, existing simply to adore her and buy her gifts. That way, she wouldn’t be sleeping with Evan or fantasizing about some hired Hammerman who was working on her house. There was only one small problem—she really had such putrid, rotten luck when it came to guys. And boyfriends bored her.
When she opened her front door, her gaze immediately swept the entry and dining room, but there was no sign of Evan.
“He went to the office,” Jake offered.
Robin colored slightly, came in and shut the door, and stood there with her back to it, feeling very uncertain. And fat. Oh, man, she felt fat in running shorts. She stole a glance down the hallway to her room, mentally calculating the distance—she could make a mad dash for it, but then, he’d see the jiggle in her butt.
Jake looked at her expectantly.
Robin chuckled, thought she sounded an awful lot like Olive Oyl. “Well. Well, well.”
“Pretty humid out, huh?” he asked, turning back to his work.
What did that mean? Did she . . . oh Lord, help her—smell? “It’s not too bad,” she lied and suddenly pushed away from the door. “I’ve run in much worse. Much worse.” What a ridiculous thing to say.
“Well, you must be a pro,” Jake said, looking pretty dubious. He paused, went down on his haunches next to a tool bag, and fished inside. Robin ended up at the dining table, acutely aware that she was, once again, trying very hard to look at Jake without actually looking at him. God. She went to the kitchen, scrounged up a bottle of water, then wandered back into the dining room. Her gaze fell on the box of doughnuts. The lid was up, the box was empty. Damn.
“So . . . what else do you do, Robin Lear?” Jake asked as she drank her water.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean besides run and steal doughnuts. You into sports?”
Ahhh . . . sports. So not her thing. “I tennis when I can.” Which meant never. “And golf—”
“Oh yeah? Where do you play?”
“River Oaks.”
“Oh.” He continued digging through his tool bag. “Never played there.”
Well, of course not—River Oaks Country Club was the most exclusive club in all of Houston and not just anyone could play there. Actually, very few people could play there. He certainly could not play there. “Uh . . . what about you? Any sport?”