Grant turned back to me, his sharp jaw flexing. “I’ll run numbers and get you a quote by Monday night.”
For a second, I looked up to make eye contact with the ill-tempered man, and this was the first time I got a good look at him. He was as attractive as I remembered, his dark eyes stared into mine, and I took in his features. The small split scar in the middle of his eyebrow and the way his hair naturally parted where he kept running his hands through made me intrigued.
“That’s fine; I’m not in a rush.” I felt the blood rushing to my head again, so I broke eye contact to walk them back to the front door.
“It was nice meeting y’all, and I’ll talk to you once you get the quote for me. Thanks again.”
Grant just looked away and nodded, but Beau replied, “Nice meeting you, ma’am.” He winked at me as I shut the door behind them.
Not as bad as I thought. I could work with this. Grant might act like an ass, but his coworker was friendly, and I knew I would not have to see him much anyway.
I walked back through the house and turned off the lights, reminiscing on the summer days I’d spent here. The smell of freshly brewed sweet tea and Gram’s floral perfume was now covered up by the scent of vacancy with a hint of mothballs.
I was determined to fix this home back to the beauty it held many years ago. However, I was putting my faith in a guy who seemed to hate my guts and would rather be anywhere but with me. The sooner we could start, the sooner I could move in.
I walked out the side door and locked up as my phone began vibrating in my pocket. Ashley’s name appeared, and I picked up.
“Hey, how was work?” Hoping to put the conversation on her, I wasn’t exactly prepared to hear Ashley’s impending rant.
“We can talk about my day later; how did it go with the hot contractor?” Well, so much for trying to put it on her.
“It went about as good as you can imagine. The best way I can describe him is as one of the old guys in the theater from the Muppets. But at least he showed up. There’s a guy on his team that’s sweet and pretty cute. You’d probably like him. Overall it went better than I expected, I guess.” I could feel her I told you so about to come up. “See! I knew it wouldn’t be bad, and he has to have good ratings for a reason. Although I will say, I overheard my boss one time say that she hired him to fix her unbroken sink so she could look at his ass for a minute.”
Who could blame her? Grant’s tall, well-built figure was something most women around here could only dream about. I thought back to how he towered over me and made the large living room feel like it was so much smaller.
“Well, he showed up and kept his eyes to himself, so that’s more than I can say for most other contractors I attempted to hire.”
We finished our conversation discussing her day at work and how a new guy in her gym was ‘the cutest thing she’d ever seen.’ So much for swearing off all men for a while. But I didn’t mind, listening to Ashley’s day tended to put mine at peace. If anything, her vibrant personality and perspective toward men were something I admired. I hadn’t so much as gone on a date in six months, and when I did, it always ended in a ‘We should do this again.’ Then we would never see each other afterward.
“All right, well, I’m going to let you go. I have to head to Cooper’s.” We said our goodbyes and hung up.
I pulled out of the driveway and headed straight to the one hardware store in Lakeshore. With soft music playing from my speakers, my mind wandered back to that day last year. I thought about how much Grant had changed in a short time. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-nine, maybe thirty, at the time, but he looked so disheveled he could easily pass as thirty-five.
His dark, untidy hair was a mess, and his clothes looked like he had been on a job site that whole day—but something in his eyes was so endearing.
However, it only lasted a few seconds before he began treating me like everyone else seemed to, a young girl with nothing to offer. I had stayed up that night wondering who he could have been and how I could learn more about him- besides the town gossip. I tried to think of ways I could tame that wild hair and get that light back in his eyes.
Grant Dawes.
The name rang in my ears. He might have been easy on the eyes, but he was impolite and assumed who I was before he even knew me. He didn’t bother to help me reach the top shelf; he just stared at me like I was a lost puppy dog. I visibly shivered at the embarrassing moment running through my mind.
And yet you're openly inviting him into your future home?