Final Score

“It’s going to make a big difference right away.”

She began to feel less overwhelmed. It was as though she had a team now. Even if it was only her and one man. At least the one man seemed to have the energy of three.

“While I’m taking care of that, you’ll need to pick your bathroom fixtures and kitchen cabinets. Appliances, too, sooner rather than later.”

“I’ve got some ideas already. I’ve been filing clippings and pictures.” She was so unsure and he must have heard the hesitation in her tone.

“Want me to take a look? I’ve done a lot of this stuff.”

“Would you?”

“Sure.”

She had several files of material, pictures she’d torn from magazines, ideas she’d printed off the internet and of course the ads from the flyers that appeared constantly in her mailbox.

“I like this kitchen,” he said after flipping through her idea file. “You could replicate the cabinets using Ikea or Home Depot stock. I’ve got a buddy who can get you those countertops. For the flooring, do you really want that tile?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

He pointed to the tile in the photo and she noticed that his finger was burn scarred. “See those ridges? It’s going to make the floor hard to keep clean. And if you drop anything, it’s going to shatter.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I’d go with cork. I think it suits your look, and it’s environmentally friendly and easy to clean.”

“Thanks. I’ll think about it.”

He flipped through some more of her stash and stopped. “Yes!” He said it with such enthusiasm she wondered what he was looking at. It was a magazine makeover from a bathroom like hers to a modern one that looked like a spa. “I was going to ease you into this idea, but you’re way ahead of me. If you move the bathtub so it’s across the back wall under the window, that gets rid of the ugly alleyway. You’ve probably got room for a stand-alone shower, too, if you go with a smaller vanity.”

“Really?” She was as enthusiastic as he was. “I could have this?”

“Absolutely. It will cost a little more since you’re moving plumbing, but it’s so worth it. We’ll save money in other places.”

She nodded. “Deal.”

“Okay, then. You start shopping, and I’ll start pulling out carpet.”

As she got busy, her initial excitement about buying this house resurfaced. She’d let herself become overwhelmed, she realized. All she had to do was take the renovation one step at a time.

She had a feeling that hiring Dylan had been an excellent first step.

He was soon on his hands and knees pulling up the ugly carpet from the living and dining rooms. Fortunately, he was wearing a dust mask, because she could see billows of old dirt flying into the air whenever he pulled a new piece up. He cut and rolled the rug into sections and then hefted them all out to the truck he’d parked in her driveway.

Then he came back and began removing the nail board tacked around the edges of the floor.

The transformation was amazing—no more ugly shag.

The floors weren’t perfect—there were a few paint splotches and all those nail holes—but they’d been covered with carpet for so long that they were barely worn.

“This looks so much better,” she said, hearing her voice echo in the empty room. “And it doesn’t smell so dusty. I don’t even want to think about what was in that carpet.”

He glanced up at her from his position, kneeling on the floor and said, “I won’t sand them yet. We’ll get most of the dirty stuff done first. But I like the impact getting rid of that old carpet makes. You start to see the possibilities.” He leaned right back onto his heels and glanced at her thoughtfully. “That’s what you bought, after all.”

She stared right back at him. “I did. I bought myself a houseful of possibilities.”

3

DYLAN LIKED THIS HOUSE. It was the kind of place he might have bought himself if he’d been looking for a project. Instead, it was nice to work for somebody else for a change, not be responsible for all of it, not live in the mess.

He hadn’t been sure how Cassie would manage living in a construction zone. It wasn’t for everyone. But after that first day, when she’d seemed as though she thought she’d made a terrible mistake, she’d come on board. He thought her ideas were good and she was smart enough to take advantage of his experience. She was easy on the eyes, too, he mused as he hefted the butt-ugly vanity out of the main bathroom and set it beside the even uglier turquoise sink.

He stretched out his back, knowing his next task was to remove the old bathtub. That old beast had hulked in that spot for fifty years or so—he didn’t figure it was coming out without a fight.

Cassie wouldn’t be home from work for an hour or two, so the noise and occasional swearing weren’t going to bother her. He had the place to himself. The bathroom window was wide open to let in the fresh air of a bright spring day. After this, he promised himself, he’d sit outside with a soda and enjoy the sunshine for a few minutes.

As he prepared to do battle with the tub, he heard what sounded like a baby crying.

He paused, thinking the noise had been awfully close, almost as if there was a baby inside the house. He stopped, listened carefully and heard the sad, plaintive cry again.

Dylan had been a firefighter too long to ignore any sound of distress. He jogged quickly through the house but no one was there.

Outside he ran. No one in the front. Around to the back. He heard the sound again. Louder now, and coming from above him.

Shading his eyes with his hand, he looked up. The tree was an old one, gnarled and solid, the cedar standing probably fifty feet tall. And halfway up a kitten was crying its heart out.

“Oh, no,” he said to himself. To the kitten he tried the positive approach. “Come on, kitty. You got up there. You can come down.”

The reply was an even more pathetic howl of distress.

He glanced around as though a neighbor might be outside, maybe with a ladder. But on a sunny Monday afternoon, Dylan seemed to be the only one around.

He tried calling to the cat again. No dice.

Then he ran into Cassie’s kitchen and found a can of tuna in her cupboards. He dug through her kitchen drawer and pulled out a can opener. Took a nice chunk of tuna on a saucer out to the cat to try and lure it out of the tree.

The cat only sounded more woebegone than ever.

At this point, Dylan had to accept the kitten was stuck in that tree.

Glad none of his colleagues or friends was around to laugh at him for being such a cliché, he put the tuna on the ground, rubbed his hands on his filthy jeans and pulled himself up to the first branch of the tree.

He’d been climbing trees as long as he’d been walking. The first time he’d fallen out of one his mother had claimed he must have nine lives. Lately she’d been warning him that he’d used most of them up.

It was sort of fun to climb a tree at the age of thirty-five. And it was giving a good stretch to the muscles that had been bent over doing grunt work at the house.

When he drew closer, he saw that the cat was very young. And very scared.

“You’re not going to scratch my eyes out, are you?” he asked when his face was level with the cat’s. In answer, the animal butted its small head against his hand.

He chuckled. “Okay, then.” He took a moment to scratch the kitten behind the ears until he heard it start to purr. Then, very gently, he scooped the small, warm body into one hand and lifted it toward his shoulder. A glimpse at the back end told him the animal was most likely a female. The cat caught right on and crawled up so she was hanging over his shoulder, digging in tight.

Dylan winced as tiny, sharp claws grabbed him through his thin T-shirt, but at least he had his hands free and the animal seemed to recognize that he was trying to save her.

“Going down,” he said, as though he were an elevator operator.

He shimmied down the tree, talking softly to the cat the whole way. He swung down from the lowest branch. “Hang on tight, now,” he said to his companion, and dropped down to the grass, one hand hanging onto his burden.

As he turned, he discovered he was no longer alone.

Cassie was standing in the backyard, staring at him. Obviously home early from work. And she’d brought her friend, Adam’s fiancée, Serena, with her.

“What on earth?” Cassie blinked at him.

He felt suddenly like a kid caught playing hooky. Instead of working on her house, she’d caught him climbing trees. He could feel bits of leaves in his hair, his clothes were even more filthy than they’d been earlier and he had a kitten hanging over his shoulder, claws so far into him he didn’t think she was ever letting go.

He decided to work on the most important thing first—getting the kitten disengaged from his flesh. With as much dignity as he could muster, he said to Cassie, “Could you pass me that tuna?”

The two women exchanged a glance that had a lot of suppressed humor in it, and he strongly suspected there was a certain gender mocking going on. Not that he could prove it, since neither of them said anything. Cassie picked up the saucer with the chunk of tuna on it and passed it over.

“Thank you.” He turned his back so the kitten’s head would face her. “Maybe you could try feeding the cat so she gets her claws out of my skin.”

“Ouch,” she said.

Then he heard her speak softly to the kitten. “It’s okay. I’ve got some yummy tuna for you, but you have to let go of Dylan first.” It was the sort of voice a mom would use with a toddler, but it worked fine. Or the smell of tuna did. He felt the claws release and then the small, warm body was lifted from his shoulder. When he turned around, the cat was already on the ground, happily chowing down.

He rubbed his chest with his knuckles and frowned at his new boss, who was looking distractingly hot in a skirt and heels that showed off shapely legs. “Don’t you know cats need time to get used to a new home? You can’t just let them out and leave them.”

Her eyes widened in surprise and he figured she’d made the dumb mistake of thinking that because she’d moved the cat she would settle right in. Big mistake. She was lucky the feline hadn’t hiked back to wherever she’d lived before.

“Your cat doesn’t even have a collar. What if she had wandered? Could have got lost.” The cat looked up from its empty plate then and meowed, as though in full agreement.

Cassie knelt down and patted the kitten’s head. She was obviously fond of her housemate.

Which made him continue, “I’m surprised you wouldn’t be a better pet owner, seeing as you work at the aquarium.”

She looked up at him, which made her eyes seem big. “I would if I owned a pet. But I don’t.”

He began to feel incredibly foolish. “You mean—”

“This isn’t my cat.”

He found two pairs of large eyes regarding him. “I, ah, I’m going to rip that tub out of the bathroom now,” he said, backing away.

* * *

AFTER DYLAN DISAPPEARED into the house, Cassie rose with the kitten in her arms. She looked at Serena and they both stifled giggles. Serena said, “Did we just witness a fireman rescuing a kitten from a tree?”

“Yep. And he looked awfully good doing it.”

“He looks good doing just about anything,” Serena agreed. “Too bad he can’t grow up.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did I tell you about Last Bachelor Standing?”

“I don’t think so. I’d have remembered.”

Serena shook her head. “Well, when the three boys—and I do mean boys—Adam, Dylan and Max, were all celebrating Adam’s thirty-fifth birthday back in February, every one of them was still single. They challenged each other to one of their stupid contests. They’ve known each other forever and have this strange compulsion to set up bets. This one was who would be the last bachelor standing.”

“You’ve got to be joking.”

Serena shook her head once more.

“Obviously, Adam didn’t win,” Cassie said, pointing to Serena’s engagement ring.

A purely feminine smile was her response. “No. He did not. Then Max went to Alaska and fell for that bush pilot who, let’s just say, took him down in flames.”

“Which leaves Dylan.”

“Yep. Undisputed winner of the contest, which I like to call Last Guy to Grow Up.”

Cassie could hear banging and sawing coming from the bathroom so she knew they couldn’t be overheard. “Is he proud of this so-called accomplishment?”

“He brags about it every time the guys get together.”

She glanced up at the bathroom window. “Sometimes I think it’s a wonder our species survives.”

“Speaking of survival,” Serena said, regarding the rescue cat, “what are you going to do about this little stray?”

The kitten was purring loudly in her arms, but she could feel that the animal was skin and bone. “I guess I’ll meet my new neighbors, see if anyone claims it.”

“It might belong to the last people who lived here. Sometimes cats find their way home.”

Cassie dumped the rest of the can of tuna into the saucer. Then she said to Serena, “Come on in. I’ll show you the progress so far, as promised. And you can help me choose paint colors.”

“As promised. Where do you want to start?”

“My bedroom. I cannot stand waking up every morning surrounded by walls the color of already chewed bubblegum.”

“Let’s go.”

But first she had to stop and admire the hardwood floors. “These are going to be so beautiful when they’re refinished.”

“I know. I can’t believe the difference already.”

As they walked upstairs she described the bedroom of her imagination. “I want something very feminine. I work with fish and marine mammals and scientists all day. I want my bedroom to be a woman’s retreat.”

They entered the room and she immediately saw what she wanted. “I’ve seen a yellow-and-blue duvet cover that I love, and I’ll have chintz cushions in the window seat in a coordinating fabric.”

Serena nodded. “The window seat really is pretty, with that view out into the garden. I love those multipaned windows. So country cottage.”

“I think that window seat might have sold me this house,” she admitted.

“What about a chandelier for a light fixture?” The one crouching over a single lightbulb in the ceiling was a square of etched glass that must have been ugly even in the ’60s.

“Ooh, I like it. And I’m looking for an antique headboard. I haven’t found one yet, but I’ll know it when I see it.”

“Nice. And you’ve got an en-suite bathroom, which is such a great feature.”

“But what color for the walls?”

Serena took a few moments to walk right into the bedroom. She sat on the window seat. Looked into the room. “I am seeing a French blue. Something soft, but the color of lavender.”

“Oh, that’s perfect.” Cassie picked up the fan of paint colors she’d bought to help her choose and began to flip. There were so many shades they made her eyes hurt, but Serena helped her and they finally decided on a color that both agreed would be wonderful. For the bathroom they decided on a darker shade of the same lavender color. The color would go well with the dark wood cabinet she’d scored for half price in a high-end decorating store that was changing its stock.

Cassie added two different colors of paint to her growing list of supplies to purchase, then added a chandelier because the idea pleased her so much. She knew that if she could get even this one room finished, she’d feel more settled.

When she turned to leave she found that the cat had followed them and had settled herself on the window seat, nestled among the cushions she’d put there temporarily.

Since she was sound asleep after her ordeal in the tree, Cassie decided to leave her to sleep.

Tomorrow she’d find her home. And if she turned out to be a stray, she supposed she’d have to find the nearest animal shelter.

A ray of late-afternoon sun shone on the kitten’s tortoiseshell coat and as she dreamed, her whiskers twitched.

* * *

SERENA ALSO HAD some good ideas for other rooms, including sophisticated neutrals for the main downstairs rooms. When Cassie had jotted down a list of colors, she offered Serena a drink, but her friend shook her head. “Can’t. I’ve got to run. I’ve got an appointment to view a hotel ballroom for the wedding reception.” She flapped a hand to her chest and her engagement ring flashed. “Booking a wedding without a year’s lead time is crazy. Everything decent is already booked.” She sighed. “Fortunately, I have connections and I’m very persuasive.”

“If it was me, I’d want to get married outside.”

“Me, too. And good luck with that. My advice? When you get married, give yourself plenty of planning time.”

“I should probably start by actually going out on a date.”

Serena nodded. She understood. In the past they’d bonded over being single professional women and laughed about their bad dates. Now Serena had found the love of her life. Cassie still seemed to be stuck in single mode.

“I can’t believe I’m getting married,” Serena suddenly said, looking uncertain.

“I can. It suits you.” It did, too. Serena had always possessed the most amazing confidence but now that she’d found love there was a deeper calmness that hadn’t been there before. Perhaps it was contentment.

After Serena left, Cassie walked toward the main-floor bathroom—soon to be a magazine-inspired transformation—to check on progress. And found the cat seeming to do the same. She sat, tail curled around her paws, watching Dylan manhandle the tub. He was sweating and his muscles bulged. A wave of lust, as unexpected as it was unwelcome, crashed over Cassie as she watched him.

“Can I help?” she asked.

“I’ll get a buddy to help me heft the tub out of here,” he grunted.

“I can do it,” she insisted. “Give me two seconds to change my clothes.”

“It’s heavy,” he warned.

“I heft all the time at work.”

In not much more than two seconds she’d shoved herself into a pair of old jeans and a T-shirt she’d gotten somewhere for free and should never have accepted.

“Take the other pair of work gloves from my toolbox,” he said, “and let me know if it’s too heavy.”

The tub was heavy, all right, but she worked out, and as a diver she was used to carrying heavy equipment. She’d manage.

The tub was not only ugly and heavy but the edges she had to hold dug into her hands even through the gloves. No way could she simply drop it halfway to the door, so she gritted her teeth, tightened every core muscle she could locate and slowly, step by step, they got the beast down the hall then out the front door. He’d already put down the back of his truck, so they walked it right over and wedged and heaved until the hulk of metal humped in the truck bed like a beached gray whale.

The cat followed them, watching the operation with interest.

“You’re stronger than you look,” Dylan said, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, running his gaze down her body in a way that made her tingle.

“I—” She had no idea what to say. Their gazes connected and she felt that pull of attraction once more, stronger now that she suspected he felt it, too.

“Hi, there,” a female voice called out, breaking the spell.

They both turned and a pleasant-looking woman in her forties stood at the edge of the drive, smiling. “I’m Lynette Peters. My family and I live next door.” She indicated the white house on Cassie’s right with a front yard full of blooming spring flowers. “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

“Thank you,” Cassie said, walking forward. She pulled the work glove from her right hand and shook hands. “I’m Cassie Price. I do have one question.” She pointed to the cat sitting behind the truck licking one paw. “Do you know whose cat this is?”

The woman glanced down at the kitten and shook her head. “I don’t recognize her and I know most of the pets around here. I’d say she’s a stray. Poor little thing. People should get their cats spayed.”

“I know. I was hoping she had a home. I guess I’ll have to take her to the shelter. Maybe they can find her a home.”

“Well, you let us know if you need anything, you or your husband.”

“Oh,” Cassie said, “Dylan’s not my husband.”

On his way back to the house, Dylan sent Lynette his lady-killer grin and said, “She just uses me for sex.”

“Dylan!” She felt her cheeks warm, probably because she’d been lusting after him only a few minutes earlier. She turned back to Lynette. “He’s joking. Of course we’re not, uh, you know...”

Lynette watched Dylan saunter back to the house. “Then you must be crazy.”

4

HOW COULD ONE SILLY, joking comment change everything? Cassie wondered as she walked back into the house and found Dylan carrying a rusted length of pipe down the hall toward her. She held the front door wide for him and as he passed she wondered what it would be like to enjoy a man only for sex. She’d never tried it before, but with Dylan, she could see the appeal. The lust wasn’t all coming from her. She recognized the interest in his eyes.

Even without Serena’s subtle warning earlier, she could tell Dylan was a player. There was something about a really sexy guy that said he knew exactly the impact he had on women. It wasn’t his fault, she supposed—it must be hard to be that sexy and gorgeous and not end up a little full of yourself.

So she knew he was a player, and normally she was immune from such practiced charm. It was incredibly bad luck that Dylan should be the one to get to her. When they were spending so much time together.

She’d simply have to let him believe she was as immune to him as she wished she were.

It wasn’t that she was in a hurry to settle down or anything, but there was something wrong with considering getting involved in even the most casual way with a man who prided himself on being the last bachelor standing.

* * *

OVER THE FIRST week they fell into a routine. He’d arrive in the morning before she left for work, and when she returned, he’d show her the day’s progress, suggest her next task and often stay working with her.

When she protested that he was working too many hours, he shrugged. “I like to keep busy.” She thought maybe working on her house prevented him from brooding over his job woes, and since she enjoyed working with him in the house—and the sooner her house was done, the better—she didn’t argue.

When Saturday arrived, she wasn’t a bit surprised to see him show up, his hair damp as though he’d just stepped out of the shower. Obviously misinterpreting the way she was staring at him, he said, “Sorry I’m a little late today. I always do a longer workout at the gym on the weekends.”

Which told her that not only was he working out on top of the exhausting physical labor of a home renovation, but that he considered every day a workday. “I wish I had your energy,” she said.

“I’ve gotta stay in shape for the championship hockey game,” he told her, helping himself from the pot of coffee she’d made.

“Oh, right. Adam said something about an emergency-services league.”

“Right. Play-offs in a few weeks. Our team, the Hunter Hurricanes, gets so close every year to winning, but this year that trophy is ours.”

“Isn’t this a charity event? To raise money for a good cause?”

“Sure it is. Doesn’t mean we don’t all go out there and play to win.” Then he glanced up. “You should come and watch one of our games sometime.”

It was the first time he’d suggested anything remotely unrelated to their project, and she was startled. And pleased. “Oh, thanks. I’d love to.”

The kitten appeared, scampering on her little kitten legs to meow at Dylan’s feet. He scooped the cat up so they were nose to nose. “How are you doing, Twinkletoes?”

A purr was the answer. He put the cat over his shoulder in a practiced way that she suspected happened a lot when she wasn’t home. The cat hung there, purring with content, while Dylan drank more coffee.