Caleb would be able to reach. He could help.
It drove her crazy, having that bulb out. Sometimes she felt as though the stupid thing were mocking her, public evidence of her inability to handle her own household maintenance.
But the relief she felt at the idea of having Caleb take care of it made her antsy. She had to be on her guard against that feeling, to remain wary of reassigning agency from herself to a man. Be sufficient. That was the lesson of her relationship with Richard, the conclusion she’d drawn from the first twenty-seven years of her life.
“Ellen?”
Caleb was staring at her, his brows drawn together. He’d asked her if he could change her lightbulb, and she was sitting here pondering it as if the fate of the world rested in her hands.
“No,” she said.
“Is that no, you don’t mind, or—”
Abruptly, she stood. “I’ll get the bulb.”
Inside the house, she rooted through the storage closet and wondered what her problem was. Insanely sensitive about that house, Jamie had said. But it wasn’t about the house, really. She just didn’t know where to set boundaries between herself and other people anymore.
Strike that. She didn’t know where to set boundaries between herself and men. Especially this man.
Still, it seemed pretty clear she didn’t need to hold the line at lightbulbs.
She went into the garage and came out carrying the bulb and the stepladder. Caleb jumped up. “Let me get that.”
And she did. But her brain had to force her fingers to let go.
“So how was your day?” she asked as he leaned the ladder against the house. She needed the distraction, needed to make this small moment of male home improvement feel unimportant in order to counteract the fact that her armpits were damp with anxious sweat that made very little sense.
This was a lightbulb, not the first domino in a chain. Every decision would be hers to make, individually and on her own timeline.
He couldn’t take that away from her. And if he tried—well, then he would deserve to find out how hard she could fight. Right now, he wasn’t her enemy. He was a nice guy offering to change the lightbulb over her front porch.
Caleb threw her a lopsided grin as he ascended. “Well, it started off pretty good. I got a new client this morning.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Some rich pop star’s mistress, the way I understand it. And his pampered sister. But here’s the trouble, see?” He looked down at her, and just being the focus of his dark-brown gaze made her feel interesting. “Would you hand me the bulb?”
Ellen blinked.
“Over there?” He pointed.
Gangly as an ostrich, she ru
shed to pick it up from where he’d set it down. When she handed it to him, he laid it on the top step of the ladder and carried on being charming and helpful.
“The sister wouldn’t let me in her house, and the mistress has an eccentric grandmother who cornered me with photo albums and scrapbooks.”
“Nana was there?”
Carly’s eighty-four-year-old grandmother had recovered slowly after breaking her hip last year. She’d decided to move into an assisted-living facility in Mount Pleasant, turning her house over to Carly, who’d needed a refuge after her marriage broke up. But as much as Nana relished the social opportunities of her new living situation, she still spent a lot of time over at Carly’s. She claimed she needed time off from all the “old people.”
“Yes, and she was in fine form.” He reached up and unscrewed the burned-out bulb, the movement so effortless, Ellen wanted to cry.
“What, she doesn’t like you?” she asked. “I’d think you’d be exactly Nana’s type.”
“No, Nana loves me. She’s loved me since Carly brought me home in the fourth grade and I ate an entire plate of her chocolate-chip cookies.”
“Her chocolate-chip cookies are awful.”