Vinyl was the best. Shae knew she was crazy to have so much love for an inanimate object, but it was true. After working for nine straight hours on the floors, she’d got a room and a half done. It might not be amazing progress, but considering she was working alone, she was damn impressed with herself. She sat back, her well-worn knee pads saving her legs from strenuous damage, and surveyed the beautiful floors. Sure, it wasn’t hardwood, but the overall effect was amazing. She’d bet a good eighty percent of people who looked at the home wouldn’t realize it wasn’t hardwood until they really got down and tapped on it. She would buy the place if she had the money....
She stood up and only then realized exactly how much the nine hours straight of labor had hurt her body. She stretched her arms up and leaned to each side, giving her spine a much-needed break. She really needed to get that new bathtub installed sooner rather than later. What she wouldn’t give to drop her body into a steaming-hot bath filled with Epsom salts.
There was the option to take a dip in the ocean, but she hated the idea of swimming alone at night. Something about the water became more menacing in the dark. Not to mention she watched a tad too many nature documentaries, so she knew exactly what was floating on the water at night.
She decided some fresh air would be good. She pulled off the mask that helped keep her from breathing in all the vinyl dust and turned the fan on higher as she opened all the windows. This would help clear out the space, but she’d still probably have a headache in the morning.
A small price to pay for how good it looked right now. With the fans working overtime, she walked gingerly downstairs and out the back door. It was too dark to really see the water, but she could hear the waves even over the sound of the fans blowing. She smiled at the relaxing sound and collapsed into one of the rocking chairs. She’d bought these chairs for about ten bucks a pop at the local hardware store. They were hard plastic, and any other day they’d be so uncomfortable she could barely sit in them. Right now, it felt like heaven. She let her head fall back and closed her eyes. As the relaxation finally settled into her bones, the loud blaring of the fire alarm had her eyes snapping open. She jumped up and turned around, looking at Seaside Escape to see what was happening. But then she realized the sound wasn’t coming from her house. It was coming from McCormick Place. She cursed under her breath as she started for her neighbor’s house. She was half expecting that the new neighbor had accidentally burned something, setting off the fire alarm by accident, but then she saw the orange flames dancing in the windows. “Shit.” Shae went running for the house. The back door was open, and she came inside right as she saw Tristan pour water onto the fire. The flames burst up, reaching as high as the ceiling but luckily staying confined to the pan it was coming from. Shae ran forward and pushed him away before he could cause any more damage as she found the lid that fit the pan and threw it on the fire. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she screamed.
Tristan held his hands up innocently, seeming not to understand what just happened. “I threw water on the fire. Water puts out fires. Even, like, three-year-old kids know that.”
“Not on a grease fire,” she said, unable to keep irritation out of her voice. She couldn’t believe he almost burned down McCormick Place. It would kill property values if she had to sell Seaside Escape next to a burned-out husk of a home.
Sure, it was a selfish way to think about it, but Shae wasn’t exactly in a giving mood right now. She grabbed an oven mitt, picked up the offending pan, and started for the back door. She’d apparently left the door open, so it was easy for her to get out onto the sandy beach. Once in the safety of the sand, she lifted the lid off. A billow of smoke rose out, but it appeared the flames had mostly died. Not wanting to take any chances, she put the pan on the ground, kicking the sand inside to make sure no more oxygen reached any of the embers. “You have no idea how dangerous that was,” she said, unable to hide her annoyance with him.
“I just can’t believe how lucky I am,” he said.
She frowned and glared at him. “Lucky? You almost burned down the place you’re renting, and you think you’re lucky?”
“What’s pretty damn lucky is that you were there. What would I do without you to save my ass?”
Shae just glared at him wordlessly, unable to find an adequate way to express how stupid he’d been. He had a good attitude, though. Maybe she should look on the bright side too. It had been lucky that she’d been around. It had been lucky that she knew exactly what to do to save the McCormicks’ house. She might’ve had a shitty couple of days, but at least she’d been able to do this one good deed. Maybe she should consider herself lucky too.
“I tell you though, that was a damn nice steak.”
Nope. She wasn’t looking on the bright side of things. He deserved to go to hell. In a rush, the nine hours of work caught up to her, and she was suddenly starving. The idea that he had destroyed such a good dinner affected her more than it should’ve.
As though he read her mind, he said, “You know, you saved my ass. The least I can do is buy you dinner.”
She blinked a few times, not sure she heard him right. “You want to buy me dinner?” she asked skeptically.
“I say you deserve a damn nice dinner too. And, in the spirit of things, I think it should be steak.”
Her mouth watered at the thought of a steak dinner. She probably smelled like smoke and vinyl glue, and she had no idea how she looked, but she didn’t care at this moment. She’d been on such a tight shoestring budget with this house project that she hadn’t had anything more expensive than Taco Bell the past three months. Quite frankly, even if the super-hot guy did work for Damask, she didn’t care. “I can’t go like this...” she said, to herself more than to him.
“Well, considering you saved my life, I can wait for a while. How long do you need?”
All the nice steak houses would be closing by eleven. She mentally calculated the time she had to get ready and drive and get there without being a complete jerk to waitstaff. “Give me ten minutes.”
He looked at her skeptically. “Just ten minutes?”
She wasn’t sure whether she should be offended by his opinion of her time to get ready. But she’d always been efficient in everything she did, and makeup wasn’t any different. “Eleven minutes,” she said. This gave her buffer time to reach her bathroom. Without waiting, she took off running back to the house, calculating all the things she needed to do to be presentable. Not just presentable, but so she didn’t look completely out of place on the arm of someone as handsome as Tristan.