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The hotel he’d taken her to for the best week of her life. They’d lived a lifetime in seven days—drinking wine, eating good food, exploring the city. No one expecting them, no schedules to keep, no fears to ruin it.
She watched him work for several minutes. Finally, she straightened and prepared to leave. She needed to get back to work.
“Do you need anything?” she asked before she left for good. She didn’t need to give him an explanation of any kind. And yet she still felt the urge to let him know she was leaving.
He glanced over his shoulder and shook his head. “No.”
“Okay, cool.” She cleared her throat and tucked her fingertips into her front pockets. “I have some projects I need to focus on, so… I probably won’t see you for…” She backed into the hallway as she let her sentence fade away.
“Go be incredible,” he called as he continued working.
“Right,” she whispered to herself as she turned in the hall and headed back to her office.
CHAPTERNINE
OH!
NIKKI
“Nikki!” Asa yelled from the two floors above her. His voice rang through the ductwork to where she stood in the basement, and she flinched.
“Sorry!” she called back and flicked the circuit breaker back on.
She jotted “upstairs bathroom” in pencil on the label.
She thought that particular switch was to the kitchen.
Nope.
One of these days Asa was going to have enough of her “home improvements” and either move out or hide her toolbox.
Nah.
He didn’t have anywhere to go. He was stuck with her. And as far as hiding her tools? He wouldn’t dare. Her little hobby was what kept her mind from flying apart when she was trying to work through her feelings.
Okay, so that was the bathroom. What about this one?She flicked the switch and held her breath.
She checked to be sure the voltmeter was still in her back pocket and turned to leave the utility room. The door to the room was still open, and for the one thousandth time since she’d moved in, she thought about just removing the door completely.
The people who owned the house before her had used this tiny room as a place to store old paint and the cat litter box. They had kept the door closed all the time whether by choice or by chance, she didn’t know. The door handle had broken off long ago, and when she’d moved in, she’d found a screwdriver along the top of the unfinished doorframe that happened to fit perfectly in the empty hole where the knob belonged.
Had the handle been removed deliberately because the lady had small children and she didn’t want them wandering into that room? Perhaps. They had installed a cat-flap so there wasn’t a huge need to leave the door open.
But Nikki didn’t have children. Or a cat.
So, she could just remove the old door, which was original to the house, and use it upstairs somewhere.
“Later,” she promised the door, patting it on the way by. One thing at a time.
She ran up the narrow stairs and straight into the kitchen where she’d already started to take apart the light fixture above the sink.
She climbed onto the counter, her focus on the light that had only ever worked intermittently.
She’d gotten home from work the night before and gone straight to bed. But since her body was used to a very different sleep schedule, she’d woken up around five in the morning and just stayed up.
It was Saturday.
She didn’t have anywhere she needed to be and she usually tried to catch up on her house projects on the weekends.
