“A discount? That’s all my truck’s door is worth?”
“I am very good at my job, Mr. Devereaux.”
“Nolan.”
She drank again. “Nolan. Though you don’t really look like a Nolan.”
“What does a Nolan look like, Hellcat?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I suppose I shouldn’t stereotype.”
I sat back and rested the bottom of the glass along my stomach. “No, I’m curious now.”
“Glasses, pocket protector, maybe, and a job at the IRS?”
“It was my grandfather’s name.” Not that I knew him, but my mother had named me for my father’s father. Because everything in my mother’s world revolved around him. The sour taste of memories had me standing to clear the table. “You good?”
She nodded and I took her plate, as well, then went to the sink and started cleaning up.
She gave me a wary glance as she finished her wine.
I scraped the last of the food into a container and tossed it into the fridge, washed the pan, then I turned to her. I needed her gone. “I’ll bring you back to your car.”
“Sure. Are you okay to drive?”
I nodded. “Migraine is gone. Food helped.” I ducked into my bedroom for my sneakers and returned to find her flipping my keys in her hand as she stared out the window at the lake.
“Ready?”
She glanced at me. “That’s a helluva view.”
“Yeah.”
She shook her head and tossed the keys at me and stepped through the door. “Do you not like talking to anyone or is it just me?”
“You are a pain in my ass.”
She threw me a frown over her shoulder. “I could say the same, you know.”
“You could, but you want this job.” I steered around her and left her to catch up as I strode to my truck.
“I do want this job. And you should want me to do this job. No one will treat you or this house better than me and my team.”
I got into my truck, and she scrambled to the passenger side. It was still locked when I looked through the window at her. She just glared at me until I released the lock.
“I think you like being an asshole,” she muttered as she clicked her seatbelt.
I turned over the engine, but I didn’t say a thing.
It was a quiet ride back into Crescent Cove, but luckily, she didn’t seem to need to fill the silence. She watched outside the window, her long fingers laced in her lap.
She was stupidly pretty, especially when she wasn’t talking. Again, I had the urge to drag out my chalks to draw her face. Something about that pointy chin made her face interesting. I’d been around beautiful women for the last ten years, both in New York and Los Angeles, but the perfection they sought through fillers and plastic surgery always left a bad taste in my mouth.
It was the imperfections that made a face unique.
Like the little uptilt to her nose and the way her forefinger was just a little crooked.
Annoyed that I kept glancing at her, I forced my eyes forward as the turnoff to Main Street came up. The days were getting longer, and the sun had come out just long enough to make the sky a brilliant pink. Most of the stores were closed for the evening, leaving the small town quiet, save for some pedestrian traffic.
Colorful awnings dripped with the last of the rain. Decorative barrels of flowers in a cheerful rainbow of colors dotted the sidewalk along with a few artfully disguised trash bins. Dog watering stations were staggered between benches and the sandwich boards with handwritten menus for the few places that were still open.
The retro style street lamps slowly illuminated as I rolled down Main as if they were on a timer or activated by the setting sun. Flags on the storefronts fluttered in the light breeze off the water. A pizza place was doing a brisk business, and a wine store had a dozen people doing a tasting on their outside patio. As we got nearer to my sister’s restaurant, my gut twisted. The only other place open was a diner near the gazebo.
“I’m right there near Kinleigh’s Attic. Ugh, I mean Ladybug Treasures. I keep forgetting about the name change.”
A vague memory of a man helping me to my truck with Dahlia snaked through. “Did someone help you drag me to my truck?”
She glanced at me. “Remember that part?”
“Vaguely.”
“Does that happen a lot?”
I tightened my hold on the steering wheel. I didn’t want her to think I was a complete waste of humanity. Especially if I wanted to work on the house with her crew—if we came to an understanding. “Comes and goes. Weather tends to make them worse.”
“Oh. That should be interesting living here where the weather goes haywire at the drop of a hat.”
I grunted.
