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She looked up to find Wreck watching her with a little smile tugging at his lips and amusement dancing in his eyes.
Be cool.“Yep. I’m great.”
“Me too.”
“That’s phenomenal. I’m going to get your water now.” She turned and walked off, realized she was aimed for the mailbox, and then corrected her trajectory. She turned, and Wreck was standing there watching her with a bigger smile now, his arms crossed over his chest. “Truck is that way,” he told her helpfully, pointing.
“Yes. I’m going that way now. To your truck. You said you like me too.”
“I did. I meant it.”
“That’s very good news.”
He nodded, biting back a hot-boy grin.
“Okay, I’m going to hydrate you now.”
“Okay.”
“All right.” She nearly ran into his truck, and laughed at herself. “There’s your truck.”
“It’s big and red and hard to miss.”
“So true.”
“You’re pretty fuckin’ cute,” he called across the yard. “Just so you know.”
She stood there, grinning like a dumbass, while he disappeared around the corner again.
He thought she was cute. And he liked her. Wreck the Phoenix Shifter liked her. Over the past few years, she’d felt unlikable and expendable, but he was taking all of those uncomfortable insecurities away from her.
He’d said she would figure out she was the fire, but that wasn’t happening. He was the fire, but she was figuring out her place with him, and that felt pretty damn special.
When she returned to the side of the house with the frosty waters, Wreck was back to work. She took a second to admire how handy he was. He had some kind of leveling contraption fixed to the top of ten boards, and was securing them onto the fence framework with a nail gun that he clearly knew what he was doing with. He shot them so fast and so accurately, she just stood there observing in awe. When he made his way to the lumber pile to pull the next ten, she saw a spot where she could help. She hauled one to his five, and held those five in place where they were leaned against the framework while he got the last of the fence boards.
She spread her arms out and leaned her weight on them while he secured the level, then backed away for him to nail them down. He made her put on a pair of gloves at the first sign of splinters, and they hit a good rhythm as they worked the entire line of fence. The yard was enormous, and it wasn’t until he had to cut some new boards that she really got a look at the work he’d done. The yard had to be an acre, with different fencing along the back to give a view of the small river running through the property behind this one.
“How long have you been working on this job?” she asked, amazed.
“Since yesterday.”
“Whoa. One day? You did all this in one day?”
He shrugged. “I wanted to finish it yesterday, but I was distracted.” He tossed her a smirk and went back to his saw.He wasn’t even wearing protective goggles. Maybe shifters just popped splinters out if they got them. She would be plucking splinters from her arms for a week, but perhaps shifter bodies rejected imperfections.
She’d never wished this before in her life, but it didn’t seem like such a bad thing to be a shifter anymore.
Truth be told, she enjoyed this. She liked him teaching her about what he did for a living. She liked being of service if he needed her to run and grab something that would make the job go by faster. She liked the feeling of teamwork with him, and how patient he was. Most of all, she liked spending this quality time with him.
He was a hard worker. He didn’t take many breaks, and he worked at the speed of freaking lightning. Figuring out ways to help before he even asked her to was so fun.
Nail gun ran out of nails? She ran and grabbed a new sleeve of them.
He needed to cut more wood to the correct length? Cool, she could start hauling the finished boards to where they had left off while he made the cuts.
If he looked thirsty? She offered water.
By the end of the day, he had taught her how to measure and make the cuts on a real-life saw with a real-life saw blade, and how to load and use the nail gun. She was basically a carpenter now. Or a lumberjack? Whatever she was, she felt like a million bucks.
