She’d been drawn zombie-like to the deep bathtub and the promise of feeling clean after her long flight. Nothing like being stuck in a flying tuna can for fourteen hours to make you crave running water and a bar of soap. That’s what she got for not stopping to freshen up at the airline’s lounge before the two-hour drive from the airport to Patterson’s Bluff.
Are you feeling fresh now?
“Stop already!” She squeezed her eyes shut as more water came, pushing past her fingertips and spilling onto the floor. It rose up to where her knees pressed into a soggy bathmat. Her dress would be ruined.
Everything would be ruined.
Cora hadn’t even stripped out of her clothing before disaster hit. She’d been here all of five freaking minutes and she’d ruined her friend’s house.
How can you be this much of a disaster with even the simplest thing?
The water kept coming, and now she had so much in her eyes that she couldn’t even open them to look around. She hadn’t been able to figure out how to make it stop, and no amount of twisting the bathtub’s taps had worked.
This was the end. She was going to flood the entire house, have nowhere to stay, and her only real friend was going to hate her forever.
RIP, Cora Cabot. She didn’t live long, but she owned a lot of pretty shoes.
“What the hell are you doing?” An angry voice boomed over the sound of rushing water, and Cora squeaked, surprise causing her to yank her hands back from the open pipe. Mistake! The water gushed out harder, and she immediately tried to cover it again.
“What are you doing?” she shouted, her voice shaking. Great, now, on top of being a complete hot mess, she was going to get murdered by some stranger while she looked like a drowned rat and smelled like a dead one. “Who are you?”
“Who are you?”
Cora could barely keep her eyes open long enough to see who was shouting at her because water droplets kept finding their way in. Should she run? How far would she get on this slippery floor? And where would she even run to? This place was in the middle of nowhere.
“You stay there—I’m going to shut the water main off.” The sound of footsteps sloshing through water faded.
Minutes later, as sheer helplessness almost overwhelmed her, the water mercifully stopped. She withdrew her hands and used her forearm to push her hair out of her face so she could survey the damage. The entire bathroom was soaked. Totally and thoroughly soaked. The fuzzy pink mat made a squelching sound as she stood, her feet sinking into the sodden material. Her suede ballet flats lay ruined next to where the door opened up into the bedroom, and beyond that, the powder-blue carpet had a huge dark patch stretching all the way to the foot of the bed.
For a moment, Cora stood still as a tree, her heart pounding in her ears. The place was silent except for the drip, drip, drip of water sliding from her fingertips and her hair. Catching sight of herself in the mirror, she cringed.
She looked like that freaky little girl from The Ring.
As she stepped onto the carpet, water pooled around her feet. A cute pink cardboard box sitting on the floor next to Liv’s chest of drawers was ruined. The cardboard had warped, softening and losing shape so that the box leaned precariously to one side. Biting down on her lip, Cora peeked inside and sighed with a heavy heart.
It contained a scrapbook that said “Happy 40th Wedding Anniversary” on the front with a picture of a man and woman who looked a lot like Liv. On top of ruining her friend’s carpet and her bathroom, she’d also ruined a handmade gift. Cora swallowed against the sadness tinged with green-eyed envy climbing up the back of her throat. It was c
lear her friend had put a lot of time and thought into it. And even more than that, it was clear she had the kind of family where such a thing would be appreciated. Where a gift of time was worth more than a swinging price tag containing as many zeros as possible.
Pressing the heels of her palms to her eyes, Cora let out a strangled noise of frustration. This was her life at the moment, one ridiculous problem after the next.
“You’d better tell me who the hell you are and what you’re doing in my sister’s house.” The angry voice was back, booming through the quiet room.
The man was barefoot and shirtless and bronzed, with water dotting his skin like glimmering freckles. His hair flopped over his forehead and he raked it back, biceps flexing with the movement. There were muscles…everywhere. Like his muscles had muscles in some kind of mind-bending hot guy trick. For a moment, Cora was convinced she’d actually drowned, and this was some weird earth-to-heaven transitory phase.
Sexy limbo.
Crap. This was Liv’s older brother? He looked pissed. Apparently, her day could get worse.
She pressed a hand to her chest in the hopes of slowing her thundering heart. Though only part of the accelerated beat was due to getting pummeled in the face with water. “Don’t you know it’s rude to sneak up on a person like that? What if I’d been holding a weapon? I could have hurt you.”
“Explain to me how you would have been holding a weapon while you were occupied with a flooding pipe?” He came closer. Now she could see his eyes were blue—a perfect sky-at-noon blue. Almost too vibrant to be real. “And what was your plan, anyway? To hold your hands over the pipe until the world ran out of water?”
Shame flushed through Cora’s face, heating her cheeks until she was certain she resembled a tomato. Okay, sure, she wasn’t the handiest person around. She didn’t know how to do things like fixing leaks or sanding wood or…hammering nails or whatever other handy things people did to their houses.
“I was taking a moment to think,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. A water droplet ran down her forehead, racing along the line of her nose and then clinging to the tip. But she refused to wipe it away, because on some silly level, that felt like showing weakness.
Yeah, like pretending not to be a drowned rat is going to make a difference.