Jason ran across the lawn after a softball. He swept it up and threw it to his brother. "You want to play with us?" he asked Matt. "We need a pitcher."
"Do I get to bat?"
"Sure, you can be up first, but you'll never get anything off of Billy. He stinks as a pitcher."
Matt took the bat and knocked it against his rubber-soled boots a couple of times. He shuffled his feet and practiced his batter's stance. He looked Billy in the eye and set himself back for the pitch. "Okay, Billy Kane, give me your best shot," he said.
Billy slow-pitched him an underhand ball. Matt smiled and swung, enjoying the feel of connecting with the ball. It was a perfect line drive, fast and hard, and zoomed straight as an arrow to Elsie's Cadillac, where it shattered the passenger-side window.
There was a full minute of silence.
"You're a dead man," Billy said. "She's gonna kill you."
"Quick, get the baseball," Jason said. "Well tell her a meteor did it."
The screen door squeaked on its rusty hinges and Elsie stepped out onto the porch. "What was that crash?" There was an audible gasp when she saw her car, and then her false teeth came together with a sharp "click." She surveyed the group of bystanders with steely eyes and with her mouth drawn into a tight little line. Her eyes locked in on Matt, standing flat-footed, grinning his most endearing, sheepish grin, still holding the bat.
"Got good stuff on the ball?" she asked him.
"He's going to help us fix the toilets," Lizabeth said.
Elsie didn't blink. "The toilets, huh?"
"She doesn't look impressed," Matt whispered to Lizabeth. "Maybe we should up the ante. Tell her I'm going to paint the living room. Tell her I'll put a new floor in the bathroom."
"That isn't necessary," Lizabeth said. "It was an accident."
"I know that, and you know that, but Elsie looks like she's contemplating death by meat loaf." He looked over Lizabeth's shoulder at Elsie. "New bathroom floors," he called to her. "Ceramic tile."
That caught Elsie's attention. "Ceramic tile? Does that include new grout around the tub?"
Matt leaned into Lizabeth and murmured into her hair. "Everybody has his price."
The contact sent a rush of excitement skimming along Lizabeth's spine. She glanced at Matt from the corner of her eye. "Really? What's your price?"
"What do you want to buy?"
"What would you be willing to sell?"
The question hung in the air. He didn't know what he wanted to sell. He was afraid it might be everything. His heart, his soul, his chromosomes. He suspected that he offered to tile the bathroom not because he was afraid of Elsie, but because he wanted to impress Lizabeth. More than that, he wanted to do something nice for her. And he wanted to do something nice for the house. Now that he'd had a chance to see it up close, he realized it had wonderful potential. The basic structure was sound despite years of neglect. It was well laid out and had nice detail. Most important, it was the sort of house that grew on you. It had character. Just like Lizabeth.
When he didn't answer immediately Lizabeth's mouth curved into a grim smile. "Pretty scary question, huh?"
"The question's okay. It's the answer that's got me shaking in my boots."
Two days later Lizabeth looked at the can of paint Matt had set out for her and felt her temper kick in. "I've been on this job for three days and all I've done is paint trim. I'll admit I'm not too bright about construction work, but I'm smart enough to realize that trim does not ordinarily get four coats of paint."
Matt sighed. He didn't know what to do with her. He'd never had a woman on the job site before. Equal rights was fine in theory, but he didn't know how to go about putting it to work. He had some old-fashioned ideas about women. His natural instinct was to protect and pamper. Asking a woman to clean half a ton of construction debris from a basement made him feel like a brute. And to make matters even more complicated, he was in love. Flat out in love with Lizabeth Kane. Every day his feelings for her grew stronger. It had his stomach tied in knots. He'd asked her out, but she'd turned him down. Probably a weekend in Paris hadn't been a good choice for a first date. He'd gotten carried away, he admitted.
"I want to be treated like any trainee. I want to learn how to do carpenter things," Lizabeth said. "I've been watching the carpenters work on House Three, and most of what they're doing seems pretty straightforward."
"Lizabeth, it's ninety degrees outside, and it's only eight o'clock in the morning."
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.
Matt made a frustrated gesture and kicked the can of paint into a corner. "You win. But you have to work with me. I want you where I can keep an eye on you."
"What kind of an attitude is that?"
"It's the best attitude I can manage right now."
Four hours later Lizabeth pushed her damp hair from her forehead and readjusted the baseball hat Matt had given her. She hadn't been more than three steps away from Matt all morning, hammering one nail for his twenty, and she was sure he was slowing his pace so he wouldn't embarrass her. He'd slathered suntan lotion on her fried neck, bandaged the bleeding blisters on her hands, and kicked a carpenter off the project for unnecessary cussing. He was driving her crazy.
He looked up when she paused in her hammering, and he smiled at her. "Want a soda?"
One more soda and she was sure she'd float away. He'd been pouring liquid into her since ten o'clock. Undoubtedly he knew what he was doing, but she couldn't take any more. "We have to talk."
Thank goodness. He didn't think he could endure another half hour of watching her work. She seemed so frail, with her curly hair tucked under the baseball cap and her yellow T-shirt clinging to her slim frame. Every time she picked up her hammer he felt his stomach tighten. He wanted to whisk her away to a cool restaurant. Get her all dressed up in something pretty and feed her strawberries dipped in chocolate. "We could take an early lunch break and talk in the shade, under the trees," he suggested hopefully.
"I don't want to take an early lunch break. I want to work like the rest of the men. I just don't want to work with you."
"Want to run that by me again?"
"You're overprotective. It's sweet of you to want to take care of me, but I need to stand on my own." She began to hammer while she talked. "I want to be accepted as an equal out here. That's never going to happen if you keep hovering over me like a mother hen."
He had a news flash for her. She was never going to be an equal. She was going to be the boss's wife. Equal that! "This is just your first day as a carpenter. You don't know anything."
"I know lots of things. I know how to hammer a nail. I can't hammer nails as fast as you can, but I can hammer them just as well. Look at this one. It's perfect."
Matt looked at the nail and agreed it was pretty good. "Okay, so you can hammer a nail, but you have no common sense. You let yourself get sunburned and blistered. And you try to carry things that are too heavy for you."
He was right. She'd been stupid. "I'll be better. Ill keep my hat on, and I'll wear gloves."
"What about the heavy stuff?"
"You'll have to settle for two out of three. I want to pull my weight."
Matt pressed his lips together. Damn stubborn female. She had him. There was no way he'd ever fire her as long as she wanted the job. And there was no way he could force her to obey his every command. He couldn't exactly duke it out with her if they had a disagreement. She'd never go out with him then. He took a deep breath and studied the toe of his work boot while he got his temper under control. "If you want to continue to work here you're going to have to work with me." He saw her nose belligerently tip up a fraction of an inch and he held up his hands. "However, I'll try to be less of a mother hen."
"I suppose that's an okay compromise." The truth is, she enjoyed being next to him. The shivery excitement was always there, but running parallel to that was a comfortable rapport. Matt Hallahan felt like a friend. Despite his tattoo, he felt like someone she'd known and liked for a very long time. And as long as she was being honest with herself, she had to admit that a part of her enjoyed being clucked over. It had been a lot of years since anyone had regarded her as fragile, probably because she wasn't, and while she couldn't let it interfere with learning her job, she secretly treasured the attention.