Beg, Borrow, or Steal (When in Rome, #3)(22)

Not a lick of remorse on her face when she looks in my eyes. In fact, she shrugs and her chin dimples. “Oh well, I guess you’ll just have to sell the place and move. I hear the North Pole is nice.”

I hold up my trusty hammer. “Why? I’ve always wanted to build a house. Looks like I finally get my chance.”

Her smile falls. “You can’t do this renovation yourself, Jack.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because you’re a teacher, not a contractor. Have you ever built anything in your life?”

“If you saw my Lego creations as a kid you wouldn’t be asking me that question. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a wall to finish working on.” I head back around the house and up the porch stairs, making it to the landing before I hear the click of Emily’s boots following behind.

“You’re going to do more work tonight?” she asks.

“Yep.”

“No. You can’t. It’s too loud for me and Ducky to sleep.”

“Who the hell is Ducky?”

She’s trying to peek around me to see in my house. “Ducky is my cat.”

I find this endlessly amusing. “Why do you have a cat?”

“To cook in my soup for dinner tomorrow.” She rolls her eyes dramatically. “She’s my pet! Why else would I have a cat?”

Sometimes it’s so hard to not fully smile around her. To not bust out laughing if I’m being perfectly honest. But I don’t because that would just go to her head and make her think she’s won this round. (Which . . . maybe she has.)

Something else I shouldn’t do: notice how the hairs at the back of her neck are curling up. Her bangs too. She always wears her hair perfectly styled to school. But right now, and like the day I saw her with wet hair, it’s messy and waving in every direction. A little frizzy. And it’s so damn charming. Emily orchestrates and micromanages every facet of her life to perfection, but she can’t control her bangs against humidity.

I have the strongest urge to wrap one of those curls around my finger.

“I didn’t take you for a pet owner.”

“And I didn’t take you for someone who would present his nipples to anyone on the other side of his front door, but here we are learning new things about each other,” she says, gesturing to my shirtless body. And again, I’m having to smother my laughter. Judging by the sparkle in her eyes, I think she is too.

Finally, she sighs and glances over my shoulder to where I left my front door cracked open. “At least let me see what you’ve done so far.”

Emily takes an advancing side step, but I match her, barricading her from going any farther. In no way can Emily Walker go into my house right now.

“You’re really not going to let me see?” Her eyes are wide, mouth slightly parted in disbelief.

“Nope.”

“That proud of your work?”

The state of the house has nothing to do with it. Okay, well maybe it has a few things to do with it. But the main reason I can’t let her in there is that nothing escapes Emily’s notice. She pays ruthless attention to detail and has the memory of a steel trap. Wouldn’t be surprised if she told me she has a photographic memory actually. Which is why I have no doubts that Emily will walk into my house and immediately scent her way to my room, currently littered with sticky notes full of scene ideas for the book I’m due to begin writing soon. Not only that, but books one through three of my Echoes in the Dark series are lying on my bed from where I just scoured through each of them trying to find the one line I needed to reference for the scene I’m writing. She would put two and two together in no time. Less than no time, knowing Emily.

I guard the door, hoping my bare nipples are enough to scare her off. “It’s not safe for you in there. There are nails sticking up all over the place.”

Her suspicion grows. “I would think you’d like nothing more than for me to go inside and accidentally impale myself so you wouldn’t have to deal with me anymore.”

“Tempting. But if you died there’d be an investigation and all that. It would take too much time away from the renovation.”

“Fine.” She turns away. “If it’s really that dangerous I don’t want to go in.” Her boots clip-clop back toward the porch stairs and I follow like a bouncer escorting her away from the club.

Of course, it’s a mistake on my part, because the moment I leave my post, she fakes me out and darts around my body, right through my front door.

“Dammit,” I mutter, hurrying in after her—half expecting her to have somehow teleported directly into my bedroom and skipped the living room altogether. But when I get inside, I nearly run straight into her back. She never made it past the living room.

She’s standing here, slack-jawed, blinking at the space. “Jack!” She breathes out my name in awe. Not in awe of how incredible this project is. In awe of how terrible it is.

“To be honest,” she starts, as if she’s not always brutally honest with me. “I was only joking when I thought you were ashamed of your work. You’re one of those people who are good at everything they do, so I didn’t expect . . . this.”

“I think there might actually be a compliment in there somewhere?”

She’s eyeing the kitchen area. “You don’t have a stove. Or a fridge.”