Tangled Sheets, Tangled Lies

And now there was Cole Travis. She had to hire him, even though when he smiled at her, or argued with her, or basically stood within ten feet of her, she felt so damned powerless she wanted to run into the streets screaming. He was a man who threatened everything she’d worked so hard to reconstruct—and he was a man who was leaving in six weeks, she reminded herself sternly, and she’d best remember that every time she got her priorities mixed up.

It was time to get some real advice, she thought as she grabbed her car keys, got in her enormous, brand-new SUV and drove to pick Jem up from his playgroup at the Bouchard’s house a few blocks away.

As she strapped the seat belt over him, she asked, “You want to go check the sign with me before we go home, honey?”

“Yeah!” he said, clapping his hands.

She smiled and tousled his unruly mop of hair. Never in her life had anyone supported her eccentricities the way her son did. And this quirk of hers, in particular, was a pretty hard one to swallow.

Lauren looked for signs. Not the mystical, “Ooh, I think that’s a sign!” kind of sign, but actual, real signs that bore messages for the masses. In the course of her life, she’d found them at shopping malls, car dealerships, churches, restaurants, high schools and civic centers. Sometimes they were old-fashioned signs that were changed manually by a human being and sometimes they were electronic signs that were changed every day—which made things so much easier because some of the most important decisions in her life had been resolved by signs.

In fact, the reason she’d known that they had to settle in Valle Verde was that the local ice-cream shop, the Frosty King, had a nice, old-style sign. And the first day they’d driven into town, it had had a message that read, Put Down UR Baggage. Home Is Just Where U R. Underneath it had said, Double Dips, 99 Cents, and she and Jem had taken advantage of both pieces of advice. And when they were done with their ice cream, they’d driven straight to the real estate office.

“Can I have a Rainbow Bar, Mom?”

Lauren signaled and made a left turn onto the main street. “You haven’t even eaten dinner yet, mister.” She looked over at his crestfallen expression and chuckled. What an actor.

As they approached the Frosty King, the familiar fluttering in her stomach revved up. When she went to look for a sign, she usually knew what she wanted it to say. But today, she had no idea. She told herself she wanted it to say, Don’t Give Up, but deep down in her bones she knew it was more like, The Answer Is Right Under UR Nose.

Suddenly the sign came into view and her heart sank and soared simultaneously at its advice. Don’t Waste UR Energy, it read. Take The Path Of Least Resistance.

She stopped the car on the road’s graveled shoulder and gripped the steering wheel so tightly she thought it would snap in two. Was Cole Travis the path of least resistance?

Jem peered out the windshield, then looked over at her for an explanation. “What’s it say, Mommy?”

“It says,” she answered, her eyes still fixed on the huge red-and-white sign, “that we have found our handyman.”

As she prepared dinner that night, Lauren sighed and sliced the three-inch high lump she’d baked in her new bread machine. She was still trying to expand her very small cooking repertoire and the loaf was a bit flat, but she’d improve. The sign had said as much a few weeks back when she was deciding whether to hire a full-time housekeeper. Do It URself, it had said. Pride Is In The Accomplishment.

She smiled as she threw the bread in a basket, then called Jem and her future handyman—who she’d asked to stay for dinner—to come inside. In five minutes, the three of them were gathered around her big, nineteenth-century farmhouse table.

Cole had changed into a clean denim shirt and his collar lay open at the neck, revealing only some of the dark-golden curls that lay beneath it. She tore her gaze away but not before her pulse had kicked up to a hot, salsa rhythm. What was it about this guy? she thought as she continued to fill her son’s plate and her own. A denim shirt and a peek at his chest hair was all it took to raise her blood pressure? Get a grip, Lauren.

As they passed the food around and Jem chattered away, she noticed that Cole asked questions and answered them in language her son could understand—something Miles had never quite mastered—and she wondered with a sudden flash of concern if her son might grow attached to Cole. Jem hadn’t mentioned Miles in ages, so maybe not, but she added it to her growing list of things to worry about anyway. She’d just have to make sure that attachment didn’t happen. And she’d start by making sure she didn’t get too close to Cole herself even though just having the man at her dinner table was making her feel melty in all the wrong places.

Cole hefted a forkful of the very tasty but very lumpy potatoes and, as he chewed, thought about how much his mother would love to pass on a few bits of potato lore to Lauren. But that wouldn’t happen because his mother was never going to meet Lauren, he reminded himself. And he’d do well to remember that before he complicated this thing further.

The dinner passed quickly in a buzz of companionable chatter, mostly stemming from Jem. Cole was amazed by how the smallest things in Jem’s day—catching a pollywog, finding a really nice stick to hit rocks with, rolling lemons from their tree down the street—took on a mythic quality in the boy’s retelling.

But as the narration went on, Cole couldn’t help but reflect on his own life—and what might have been if Kelly hadn’t left him one rainy Seattle morning with nothing but an envelope full of divorce papers to show for their marriage. If things had been different, he thought as the familiar tension tightened inside him, perhaps they, too, could have brought up a child like this.

The possibility that Jem might be his son overwhelmed Cole for a moment but he snapped out of it quickly when the boy’s face lit up in rediscovery of something that he’d forgotten.

“I found a snail shell by that big tree!” He fixed his excited gaze on Cole. “Wanna see it?”

“Sure I would,” Cole said as he laid his napkin beside his plate.

Lauren reached over and touched her son’s arm and her hair, that silky curtain that kept tempting Cole to bury his hands in it, swept forward over her cheek. “Why don’t you bring it downstairs in a few minutes, honey. Cole and I have something to discuss.”

“’Kay,” he said, slipping out of his chair and running up the stairs.

When Cole followed her to the living room, Lauren sat down where she had earlier when she’d interviewed the Brothers Grim, so Cole took a seat on the fancy old couch across from her. His curiosity about what she wanted to discuss pricked at his mind, but an alarming amount of his concentration was caught up with the sinful way her low-slung jeans hugged her curves.

Lauren twisted her slender hands together before folding them in her lap. “I’d like to hire you,” she said in a rush of breath.

The ever-present spring inside him relaxed a bit and a wide grin spread across his face. “No!” he said with mock surprise. “And with so many other qualified candidates?”

She delivered a quelling look, then spoke again. “In addition to the work on the house, the barn must be completely renovated in six weeks, with the fixtures built, display cases installed and security system operational. If I don’t open at the start of the Summer Festival, I’ll miss the biggest influx of tourists for the entire year.” She looked up at him, a tentative smile peeking through her mask of worry. “I’d like for you to take the job, Cole. You’re very talented.”

He almost said, “I’d like to show you just how talented I am,” but instead dipped his chin to hide a smile and waited patiently for the “but” he could hear in her voice.

Her expression took on an earnest hue before she said, “Cole, I need to know right now if you can commit to completing this job. From the little you’ve told me about yourself, it seems that you are the type of man who may wake up one day and, for whatever reason, decide to take off.”

Even though there was no way she could know who he really was, the idea that he, Cole Travis, the Rock of Gibraltar, was having his level of commitment questioned made him more than a little crazy. An awful bitterness he’d thought long since rested in peace began to smolder within him. But since nothing of his current situation was her fault, he buried it and answered her civilly. “Nothing could stop me from completing this job,” he said. “I promise you.”

Her face creased into a sudden, brilliant smile. “Good. Thank you.” She sounded relieved, which made him almost feel bad about what he wasn’t telling her about himself. And what he still had to say.

“Now.” He leaned forward and planted his forearms on his thighs. “About room and board.”

As he’d expected, her smile faded to a faint shadow. What he hadn’t expected was the slight but unmistakable blush that rushed in to stain her smooth cheeks. “Room and board?” she repeated weakly.

“The hotel I stayed in last night is the closest one I can afford. And it’s forty miles of winding country road from here. I’ll be able to start earlier and finish later if I stay here. I’d be willing to take something off my pay, of course, since you’ll be cooking for me.”

Her lips parted as surprise touched every feature on her beautiful face. “You did taste my cooking tonight, didn’t you?”

He tore his gaze from her sweet, bow-shaped mouth, nodded soberly and went on. “I worked out a simple plan while I was in the barn today. I’ll need to use a bathroom in the house for a week or so while I build your customer washroom, but I can fix up the loft as a bedroom right away.”

She kept trying to get a word in, making her look like a cute little guppy.

“Don’t you have a wife at home who might object to this plan?”

He shook his head. “No wife.”

“And you want to sleep in my barn.” It was a statement, but she sounded as if she’d run out of arguments.

Even though he shrugged like he didn’t care one way or the other, the truth was he suddenly realized it felt like his whole life was hinging on this one conversation. “Only if you want me to finish this job on time.”

Her eyes narrowed. “That sounds like blackmail.”

“I call it practical,” he said, shrugging with a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “But it’s your choice.”

She looked around the room, from the cracked floor-boards to the broken newel post to the fading paint. He tried not to feel satisfaction in the fact that she really had no choice at all. Finally, she looked at him and said, “Okay,” infusing her voice with none of the word’s meaning. “You can sleep in the barn.” Then she rose fluidly from the chair, held out a hand and smiled at him unsteadily.

He grinned, came to his feet and wrapped his big palm around her warm fingers. “Congratulations, you just hired the best pair of hands west of the Mississippi.”

She rolled her eyes at his cocksure statement. “Prove it, Cole. Just prove it.”

His gaze roamed her face, from her famous green eyes down to her famous full lips, and couldn’t help himself. “Oh, I will,” he promised and wondered how long he was going to be able to keep his secret from Lauren—or keep the best pair of hands west of the Mississippi off the most beautiful woman on the planet.

Three

Lauren sat at her kitchen table, balancing the phone between her shoulder and ear as she stifled a yawn and fiddled with her cup of cooled coffee. Her friend and former agent, Sherry Buchanan, was going into hyper-drive as she told Lauren about the sheer hell that her retirement was putting the Boudoir Lingerie folks through.

Truth be told, Lauren couldn’t have cared less. They’d had her dangling on a string since she was eighteen, standing around in her underwear in bizarre locations, working fifteen-hour days and waking up in the dark for indecently early calls that had made it almost impossible to care for her child. She’d earned a lot of money working as Boudoir’s lead model—enough to sustain her and Jem for a lifetime if she was careful. But she’d done her share by being part of the reason that the catalog could now call itself one of the world’s premiere fashion outlets.

“I told them I’d ask, sweetie,” Sherry was saying over the Monday-morning din of her busy office. “Would you please come back just for the fall season?”

As a cool morning breeze floated in the kitchen window, bringing with it the clean, country scents of the summer morning, Lauren laughed. She wasn’t leaving this small-town paradise for the fall season—or any other season, for that matter. “Jem is loving it here, Sherry. And if you remember, one of the reasons I quit was Boudoir’s habit of making motherhood about as convenient as being an international spy.”

The older woman laughed, making Lauren smile. When Lauren had run away at sixteen, Sherry—who at the time already had two grown children—had discovered her in a shopping mall talent search. And since then, she’d been more of a mother to Lauren than anyone else ever had.

“Okay, honey,” Sherry said. “I’ll tell them you considered it very carefully and that you decline.” The sound of Sherry shuffling through the heaps of head-shots on her desk rustled through the phone before she asked, “Hey, how’s your handyman search going?”

Lauren stared down into the inky-brown liquid in her cup and remembered how Cole had looked last night sitting on her antique settee. With his natural handsomeness and well-muscled frame, he should’ve looked silly there amongst the faded cabbage roses and ornate woodwork. But he hadn’t looked silly at all. He’d been as cool as could be, like he’d spent many an evening chatting in a fancy old parlor.

She pushed the vision out of her mind. “I’ll tell you about it if you stop working and shut your door for two minutes.” She kept her tone deliberately mysterious to tempt her workaholic friend into taking a break.

The rustling stopped abruptly, and then Lauren heard the sound of a door shutting noisily. Sherry, who was a closet devotee of romance novels, sounded breathless when she said, “Do tell.”

Lauren frowned. How could she describe Cole? Gorgeous, charming, good with kids, a drifter? “Well, you’d love him. If he was a model instead of a handyman, you’d have his headshot on your wall in nothing flat. And if he was a few years older, I’m sure you’d be working overtime to get him into your bed.”

“Oh, really? Is he available?”

Lauren realized in that moment that she had no idea if he was available, or even why he’d landed in Valle Verde. The last thing she needed was to get all chummy and personal with him.

“I don’t know if he’s available, Sher. Sounds like he moves around a lot,” she said as she stood and walked across the kitchen and the cool, hard floor under her feet sent a shiver up her bare legs. “I guess he’s available if you don’t mind being a camp follower. Or getting your heart broken.”

“Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I just thought I heard the distinct sound of you emerging from your post-Miles cocoon ahead of schedule.”

Lauren almost dropped her cup. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“I’m saying that it’s high time you ditched your silly rule about avoiding men. And it sounds like your handyman might be just the one to help you celebrate its demise.”

“Not a chance.” And I’ll just keep repeating that mantra every time I see him and those seductive blue eyes of his.

Sherry just laughed. “All right, all right. Have it your way.” She paused for a moment. “And if you do have it your way, don’t spare me the details.”

Lauren laughed. “I miss you, you crazy old broad.”

“Right back atcha, sweetie. Tell Jem his Grandma Sherry misses our Sunday dinners and that I can’t wait to see him. And you, get to work on that handyman!”

“I have no intention of working on my handyman— Hello? Hello?” she said before she realized she was talking to dead air. Shaking her head, she walked to the opposite wall to hang up the phone, then stopped in her tracks. Her heart skipped a few beats, then picked up where it left off in triple time as she stared in utter dismay at her worst nightmare: Cole, standing in the living room not ten feet away from the kitchen door, his big, callused hands easing a pane of glass from her beautiful, rattling old windows. He stopped what he was doing long enough to turn and smile at her, his eyes sparkling with amusement.

Lauren’s mind pumped feverishly as she tried to recall exactly what she’d just said. “How long have you been standing there, Cole?”

His smile grew wide. “A long, long time.”

She felt a furious blush rush straight up to the roots of her hair. Dammit. “That was my agent…I mean, my friend on the phone,” she said, flustered, struggling to find a way to get the hell out of this gracefully. Dammit, dammit.

“Agent? Oh, that’s right, you’re a model,” he said, as he returned to his task, placing the loosened panes on a cloth he’d laid at the base of the window. “Didn’t I read somewhere that you’d retired?”

Lauren stared at his back, dumfounded. Until that moment, she hadn’t been sure he knew who she was. And now, even though most of the western world knew what she looked like in her underwear, the knowledge that he did made her feel strangely exposed—naked even though she was fully clothed. She crossed her arms over her chest guardedly before saying, “Somehow, I can’t imagine you reading the tabloids, Cole, but those are the only publications I can think of that report such useless trivia.”

He turned around, one brow arched. “I believe I read that in the Wall Street Journal, actually. The reporter seemed to think your retirement might affect the stock price of Boudoir’s parent company.”

She’d read that load of tripe, too. “In a year,” she said with a shrug, “no one will remember my name, I assure you.”

“Your name, maybe. But you I think they’ll remember.” As he spoke, his gaze never strayed from her face for a second.

The intensity in his blue topaz eyes sent a wild tribal dance into full swing in her stomach, but she couldn’t seem to look away. The good news was that his attention had been effectively diverted from the phone conversation during which she was horrifyingly sure she’d said something about “working on her handyman.” The bad news was she was beginning to think that something about her handyman was working on her.

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