The Return Of Rafe Mackade (The MacKade Brothers 1)

"Need a hand?"

He glanced back, saw her standing there in her classic sweater and pleated trousers. "Not in that outfit. I just wanted to get this coat finished, and I thought you needed some sleep."

She contented herself with leaning against the doorway to watch him. "Why is it that manual labor is so attractive on some men?"

"Some women like to see guys sweat."

"Apparently I do." Thoughtfully she studied his technique, the slide of the trowel, the flick of the wrist. "You know, you're better at this than the guy who did my place over the shop. Very tidy."

"I hate drywall work."

"Then why are you doing it?"

"I like when it's finished. And I'm faster than the team I hired."

"How did you learn?"

"We were always having to fix something out at the farm." He twisted his neck, cracking out kinks. "When I left, I did a lot of handyman stuff."

"Then started your own company."

"I don't like working for somebody else."

"Neither do I." She hesitated, waiting while he scraped off his tools. "Where did you go? When you left?"

"South." He stooped to bang the top back on the bucket of compound. "Picked up some jobs here and there. Figured out I was better at swinging a hammer than running a plow." Out of habit, he reached into his shirt pocket, found it empty. Swore. "Quit smoking," he muttered.

"Good for you."

"It's driving me nuts." To keep himself busy, he walked over to check a seam he'd finished the night before.

"You went to Florida," she said prompting him.

"Yeah, that's where I ended up. Lots of construction work in Florida. I started buying houses-dumps—fixing them up, turning them over. Did pretty well. So I came back." He turned to her. "That's about it."

"I wasn't prying," she began.

"I didn't say you were. There just isn't much to it, Regan. I had a rep when I left here. Spent my last night in town in a bar fight. With Joe Dolin."

"I wondered if there was history there," she murmured.

"Not much of one." He slipped off the bandanna he'd twisted at his forehead to keep the hair out of his eyes, stuffed it in his pocket. "We just hated each other's guts."

"I'd say your taste in enemies is excellent."

Restless again, he moved his shoulders. "If it hadn't been him, it would have been somebody else. I was in the mood that night." His grin flashed, but there wasn't much humor in it. "Hell, I was usually in the mood to cause trouble. Nobody ever figured I'd amount to anything, not even me."

If he was trying to tell her something, she wasn't sure she quite understood it. "It looks as though they were wrong. Even you."

"People are going to talk, about us." He'd thought about it, as he watched her sleep, finding himself restless and edgy and needing to move. "You're going to walk into Ed's or Kingston's Market,

and conversation's going to take a hitch. And when you walk out again, people are going to start talking about what that nice Bishop woman is doing with that troublemaker Rafe MacKade."

"I've been here three years, Rafe. I know how it works."

He needed something to do with his hands, so he picked up sandpaper and attacked the first dry seam. "I don't imagine you've given them much to gossip about up to now."

He worked as if the devil were looking over his shoulder, she thought. It seemed he did everything with that controlled urgency just under the surface.