Ian (Unbreakable Bonds 4.5)

Hollis saw where he was going with that and couldn’t stop his slow grin. “Ooh yeah, Lucas can be errand boy.”

“What?” Lucas thundered. “Hell no.”

“It’s the best idea,” Jude said. “And you can take Snow because until we have all the paint supplies, we just have demo and he doesn’t need to be risking his hands. He has more surgeries than normal coming up this week.”

Snow barked out a laugh. “Give me a break. That’s ridiculous and you know it.”

But Jude merely shrugged. “You can help Lucas carry supplies.”

“Like he’ll carry shit,” Rowe muttered. “He’ll just order people around in the store and make them load everything.”

Both Lucas and Snow nodded.

“You’re all a bunch of assholes,” Lucas muttered.

Hollis snorted. “I’ve been telling you that from the beginning.”

“Hollis and I will work on getting the cabinets down.” Jude aimed a finger at Rowe and Noah. “It looks like the bathrooms are original, so that tile is probably over wire mesh and concrete. It’ll be a bitch to get off. My uncle used to say these old bathrooms make the perfect tornado shelters. Are the tubs coming out?” He looked back at Hollis.

Completely impressed with Jude’s authoritative voice, Hollis nodded. “Yeah, I’ve ordered these pre-fab things that are going in, so everything has to come out or there will be distance issues.”

“Right,” Jude continued. “Those tubs are cast iron and they weigh a ton, so the best way we’ll get them out the door is to break them in half.”

Rowe whooped.

“You’ve done this work before, I take it?” Hollis asked Jude.

“I have an uncle with a remodeling business. I used to work part-time with him.”

“So if Rowe and Noah are on the bathrooms, you and Hollis are on the kitchen, and Lucas and Snow are on supply runs…” Ian closed the box of pastries. “…what about Andrei and me?”

“It really won’t take two of us to get paint supplies,” Snow said. “Give me something else.”

“These walls need to be sanded,” Hollis offered. “I have all the stuff for that.”

“That’s a shit job,” Noah piped in. “I’ve done that before.”

Snow snorted. “He has experience, so let him do that.” He held out his hand and raised his eyebrows at Noah. “Give me the hammer.”

“Nah.” Noah patted the tool on the floor next to him. “We’ve bonded. I’ll take this baby to the master bath.”

Snow curled his lip and crossed his arms.

“You still haven’t said what I’ll be doing,” Ian told Jude.

“You got any painter’s tape?” Jude asked Hollis.

“Yeah, I have enough to do a couple of rooms.”

“Ian and Andrei can mask the bedrooms so they can paint when Lucas gets back. We need another sledgehammer, too.” Jude looked around the room. “Everyone set now? Do we need to yell some more? No? Let’s get to work then. We can knock most of this place out in three days easy.” With that, Jude strode into the kitchen.

Lucas lifted an eyebrow, looking completely amused, and Hollis followed his gaze. Snow was staring after Jude with a look he recognized. Uh oh, that expression meant trouble when it came to those two.

Snow caught everyone staring and merely shrugged. “It’s going to suck sanding the walls with this hard-on.”Chapter 2Ian stood in the middle of the empty bedroom, his hands on his hips as he looked around. It wasn’t a bad little room. Hollis had already pulled up the old carpet to reveal battered and worn hardwood floors. The walls had been patched and sanded. Refinished floors and warm, cheerful paint would help to make the room feel more welcoming, but that wasn’t their job.

He had to remember that their goal was to simply put a fresh coat of white paint on the walls and replace the ancient light fixture with a new ceiling fan.

“Are you ready to do this?” Andrei asked as he strolled into the room, twirling a roll of blue tape with the index finger of each hand. He had his long, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail high on the back of his head. Ian was surprised he pulled off that hairstyle so well, but having his hair away from his face left those sharp, elegant features exposed. That was a good thing. He definitely looked ready to get to work with his old blue jeans, plain black T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, and worn work boots.

Ian smirked at him. “Sure, it shouldn’t take too long.”

Andrei stopped spinning the tape rolls and looked around the room, a frown starting to tug at the corners of his lips. “Do we really have to tape everything? I mean it’s all getting a coat of white paint. I figured that we’d just need tape the glass of the windows.”

“We can’t do that. What about drips?” Ian’s fingers tightened around the roll of blue tape in his left hand.