Roommating (Preston's Mill #1) (5 page)

Lucy jumped off his lap and followed him to the kitchen. “Oh
no. Don’t even think about it. You can’t handle the big people stuff,” he said
as he grabbed a pack of Oreos from the cabinet. The damn dog was right there with
him—all jingly and happy and tail wagging. He sighed. Looking around, he went
to where he knew Heather kept the dog treats and grabbed two of them. “And if
you rat me out for this, I’ll deny it,” he said to the dog as they walked back
over to Flo.

So Chris ate his Oreos and Lucy had her treats, and as the
dog settled in beside him again, he couldn’t help but feel annoyed. Not at the
dog. She wasn’t so bad. But at the entire situation. Here he was, watching
renovation shows and looking at different ways to do things on their job sites,
while Heather was out on a date. Why did she have enough free time on her hands
to make plans to go out and socialize, anyway?

They were supposed to be proving something to her father—that
they could work together and be ready to take over his business in six months
so he could retire. Well, from where Chris was sitting—with a tiny dog snoring
in his lap—it looked a little one-sided. His days were longer and far more physical
than Heather’s, and while he didn’t begrudge her that—not really—right now, he
couldn’t help but wonder about how fair this setup really was.

She had an entire office staff at her disposal to help
her…do what? Push papers around? Pay some bills? Meanwhile, he was getting
sweaty and dirty and doing a shit-ton of grunt work. How was that a
partnership?

Plus, she was out on a date with Randy!

“I’m being crazy, right?” he said to the dog. “I can’t
honestly expect Heather to walk onto a job site and start pulling down drywall,
but…”

And that was just it. He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure what he
wanted or what he expected of her, except that she not be off flitting around
town with some guy while he was the one doing the majority of the work on
putting Tom’s mind at ease.

Tomorrow—yes, definitely tomorrow—he was going to talk to
her about where she saw this business going. Was she just planning on riding
the current wave of what her father had built, or was she looking and thinking
of ways to improve and build the business?

It was about time he figured out just how useful of a
partner he was going to be stuck with.

The following Thursday, Heather felt
like she was about to drown in paperwork.

She wasn’t sure what had gotten into Chris this week.

It had started fairly reasonably. On Monday, he’d wanted her
to write up a plan for her ideas on expanding and improving the business. She’d
been thinking through all of that for months now, and it was smart to have it
written out, so she’d been happy to oblige. But after she’d given it to him on
Wednesday—a very detailed and professional report—he’d demanded her to provide
all this evidence in support of her ideas, pulling from the entire history of
their previous jobs.

Those records, as Heather was all too aware, were kept in
paper files in a tiny storage room in the basement, so she’d had to spend hours
there, pulling information and then trying to compile it all into a coherent
form for Chris.

It crossed her mind that he was just being a jerk—giving her
busy work just so she had to put even more effort into her job—but she hated to
assume something like that, especially since he seemed to be making an attempt
to spend time with her father and invest time and energy in the company.

Maybe he just really did want to do a good job.

She hoped so. But either way, she didn’t have a choice but to
collect all the information he asked for. She knew a challenge when she was
offered one, and she wasn’t going to let Chris get the better of her.

But her head was spinning from peering at so many old files,
and she hadn’t yet implemented a good computer system for keeping records, so
she was compiling the information on PowerPoint spreadsheets.

On Thursday, she was only halfway done at six-thirty in the
evening, and she’d started at six o’clock that morning.

She was exhausted, and she had a headache, and she was
mentally cursing Chris for demanding all this information. She’d worked late
every night this week, and she’d had to cancel a lunch she’d scheduled with
Randy yesterday. Not that she cared too much about the lunch, but it was the
principle of the thing.

What the hell did Chris need all this for anyway? He’d never
been a numbers guy. He was a hands-on, hammer-the-nail kind of guy.

She was scowling at the computer screen in the empty
office—her father and Jenny, who answered the phones and helped out around the
office, had left more than an hour ago—when a sound at the door startled her.

She looked up to see Chris coming in.

She was hard pressed to summon a smile. “What are you doing
here?”

“I was checking to see if you had that stuff for me yet?”

She blinked. “Not yet. I’m still working on it.” Surely he
couldn’t expect her to pull years’ worth of information together from paper
files in a couple of days. That would take a miracle.

He frowned. “How long do you think you’ll need?”

Evidently he did think she could perform such a miracle. She
frowned back at him. “I don’t know. It’s a huge amount of information. I can’t
just wave my wand and make it happen.” She caught herself as her voice sounded
too sarcastic.

She wasn’t a sarcastic person normally. Normally, people
would call her sweet and sincere. She wasn’t sure why Chris always brought out
that side of herself, but she wanted to rein it in as much as possible.

For one thing, they had to work and live together. For
another, she didn’t like to think he had the power to change her.

“I wasn’t saying you should wave your wand. I just asked how
long it would take.”

She took a deep breath. “I’m not sure. I’d guess I’m about
half way through. Hopefully, I’ll be done by early next week.”

He was opening his mouth to reply when his phone rang, and
after he checked the screen, he held up a hand to indicate he was answering it
and he’d return to their conversation in a moment.

“Hey, Tom,” he said, after connecting the call. “What’s up?”

She frowned, wondering what her father wanted from Chris
this evening. Obviously, it would be work related, and it probably wasn’t
important at all. But it bothered her that she couldn’t tell the topic of conversation
from Chris’s commentary, which was made up of nothing but, “Sounds good” and
“Sure thing” and “Got it.”

When he’d hung up, he turned back to face her. “Sorry about
that.”

“What did my dad want?”

He gave a half-shrug. “Nothing. Just work stuff.”

“What work stuff?”

“Why does it matter?”

Heather’s frown deepened. “It doesn’t matter. I just want to
know. Why won’t you tell me?”

Chris stared at her like she was a curious experiment. “Are
you always this nosy?”

“I’m not nosy. But that’s my father, and I’m part of this
company. If it’s work related, why can’t I know?”

“He was just giving me some advice about the Garner job. The
guys were having some trouble with the original woodwork.”

Heather relaxed. “Oh.”

Chris was still eyeing her, like he was trying to figure her
out. “You didn’t think there was something going on behind your back, did you?”

“No,” she admitted, feeling kind of silly about her reaction
now. “It’s just…secret conversations make me…really nervous.”

“It wasn’t secret.” He’d come a little closer, and his
expression had changed—like he wasn’t just peering at her now, like he
genuinely wanted to understand her.

“I know. But you wouldn’t tell me, and I’m…irrationally
sensitive about that kind of thing.” She was a little embarrassed to tell him
how horrified she’d been every time her parents had closed their bedroom door
to fight when she was a child, not letting her hear what was going on. “Just
leftovers from my parents’ break-up.”

“I get it,” he murmured. “We all have those kinds of leftovers,
I guess.”

“Yeah.” She gave him a little smile, feeling better.

He smiled back, and she felt like they understood each other
for real in that moment.

Then his expression changed, yet again, and he asked, “So
when do you think you’ll be done with this stuff?”

She gave a little jerk, like he’d flung sand in her eyes.
All her softer feelings evaporated as she remembered his obnoxious pushiness.
“It will be done when it’s done. I’m working as hard as I can.”

“All right then. No need to snap my head off.”

Her tone had been a little cool, but she’d definitely not
snapped. “I didn’t snap your head off.”

“Well, you snapped something off.”

She scowled at him. “If you don’t stop being annoying, I’m
going to snap off something you like very much, and then how will you feel?”

He looked surprised by her comeback, and then he started to
laugh.

He was still chuckling as he left the office.

He was a very good laugher, she had to admit. His whole face
warmed in an incredibly attractive way. All kinds of things were attractive
about him.

This morning, he’d come out of his room without a shirt on
to get his coffee, and she’d almost melted at the sight of his gorgeous,
masculine chest.

She’d wanted to touch it, touch him. She still did.

She brushed the thought away, since it would do her
absolutely no good.

She wasn’t going to touch him. Not at all. Never.

She was a sensible woman, and she wasn’t at the mercy of her
occasional lustful urges.

She just had to remember that.

***

Later that evening, Heather was
sprawled out on her chair in the apartment, staring at the television.

Chris had been in his room when she’d finally got home,
which was a great relief. She didn’t want to see him or talk to him. She’d
warmed up some soup, since she didn’t have energy to make anything more, and
ate it while she watched a cooking show on TV.

Lucy was perched on her lap now, peering at her hopefully,
wanting either attention, a walk, or a treat.

At the moment, the dog wasn’t going to get any of those
things. Heather was too tired to move.

If she’d been smarter, she would have paced out the work
involved in Chris’s project and not almost killed herself getting it done so
quickly. It wasn’t like it was really urgent. Chris could have waited a little
longer.

But Heather had always been an overachiever, and she didn’t
like anyone to think she couldn’t do her job.

That applied double to Chris.

She wondered if he was taking his role in the company as
seriously as it seemed.

That would be nice—if he was. Maybe he wouldn’t be walking
out the door next month, as she half expected him to.

Her dad would be utterly crushed if Chris walked out on him
again.

When she heard a noise from the other side of the apartment,
she turned her head. Her eyes widened dramatically when she saw Chris come out
of his room.

He wore a pair of boxers and nothing else. And, damn, his
body was fine. She could see even more of it right now than she had this
morning, and the effect on her own body was dramatic.

This evening, she had an even harder time tearing her eyes
away from the broad chest, long legs, strong thighs, flat abs.

“Sorry,” he said, evidently noticing her staring. “I thought
you’d be in your room. It’s late.”

“Is it past my bedtime?” Her tone was a little sharp, so she
tempered it as she added, “I just hadn’t made it to my room yet.”

He shrugged and headed to the refrigerator, where he pulled
out a bottle of water. Instead of returning to his room, he came a little
closer to her. “You look beat.”

“I am. My head is still swimming with all those paper files.
I told Dad he should have converted to computer records about ten years ago,
but he never listened to me.”

“We can do it, then.”

“Yeah. That’s the plan.” She gave him a vague smile. “It
doesn’t help in collecting information at the moment, of course.”

“I guess that was a big project I asked for.”

She couldn’t tell if he was teasing her or apologetic.
Either way, at least he acknowledged the ridiculous amount of work he’d given
her. “Uh, yeah. I can’t wait for the weekend. I’m going to lay around and not
move for hours at a time.”

“Good plan. Unless you have another date, of course.”

She’d been petting Lucy, who looked like she might jump over
to dote on Chris at any moment, but she glanced over at Chris’s face at his
words. “Nothing definite.”

Randy had mentioned something about the weekend, but she
wasn’t sure she was going to say yes. She liked him well enough, but she didn’t
want to go out with him two weekends in a row because that would start to feel
serious.

She definitely didn’t want to be serious about Randy any
time soon.

At the moment, she was still having trouble keeping her eyes
off of Chris’s chest and legs.

“Did you date a lot in Charlottesville?” he asked.

She managed to tear her eyes from his chest and move them up
to his face. He looked casually interested, like he was just making
conversation and didn’t really care about the answer.

There was no reason not to reply. “Eh. I went out casually
pretty often.”

“Nothing serious?”

“I dated one guy for three months and another guy for five.
That was as serious as it got.”

“Why is that?”

She widened her eyes. “What kind of question is that? It
just never worked out to be any more serious.”

“I figured you were the one who didn’t want to get serious,
and I was wondering why.” He looked completely genuine—not like he was teasing
her or trying to bait her.

She realized it was a real compliment he’d given her—that he
assumed any guy she dated would want to be serious with her. “I don’t know.
They just weren’t the right guys, I guess. When it got to the point of deciding
whether it was going to be serious or not, I just couldn’t…see myself with them
long-term.” She sighed, realizing she’d never really acknowledged this to
herself before. “I guess it has something to do with my mom walking out. It’s
hard for me to trust that…that a relationship is going to last, that he’s not
going to just leave me eventually.”

“Yeah,” Chris murmured, leaning back in his recliner. He
wasn’t looking at her now. “I get that.”

“What about you?” she asked, feeling vulnerable and not wanting
it to be one-sided.

“What about me?”

“Have you been serious about anyone?” She knew he’d never
been serious about any girls when he’d lived in Preston, but the three
intervening years were a blank.

“Nah.”

“Why not?”

He didn’t answer for a long time, and she thought he wasn’t
going to reply at all. But then he finally said into the silence. “I guess I’m
kind of the opposite.”

“In what way?”

“I’m the one who leaves.”

She’d known that about him. He’d done it to her father three
years ago. “Why do you think you do that?”

He turned his head suddenly to meet her eyes. “Who’s going
to trust
me
to stick around?”

Her chest clenched at the dry words, and she understood
something about him she hadn’t known before.

They weren’t really as different as she’d always assumed.
Both of them lived with these self-fulfilling prophecies. What they expected to
happen always did—and it might be partly because they didn’t know to hope for
anything else.

***

The next morning, Heather was
staring at her computer screen again, trying to input numbers into her
spreadsheet.

Chris was in the inner office, talking to her father. She
really wished she knew what they were talking about.

It was silly to feel that way, but she always got a little
nervous when Chris and her father talked privately. It made her wonder if they
were keeping secrets from her.

Of course, there were no secrets. She knew that rationally.
But she always felt that little prickle of anxiety anyway.

Her father’s office door was partly opened, but she was too
far away to hear what they were talking about. She told herself not to be
stupid and tried to focus on her work instead.