Husband Under Construction

“I expected your dad.”

“He had other obligations. So I’m your man.”

In your dreams, buddy.

Although there was no reason, really, that being within fifty feet of the man should raise every hackle she possessed. Wasn’t as if there was any history between them, save for an ill-advised—and thankfully unrequited—crush her senior year of high school when grief had clearly addled her brain and Noah had been The Boy Every Girl Wanted. And, rumour had it, got more often than not. Well, except for Roxie.

Twelve years on, not a whole lot had changed, as far as she could tell. Not on Noah’s part, and—apparently—not on hers.

Which, on all counts, was too pathetic for words.

Dear Reader,

Anyone who’s ever had more than one child (or been part of a family with multiple siblings) will recognise Noah Garrett as The One Who Makes His Mother’s Heart Stop on a Regular Basis—the kid who fears nothing and nobody, the child most likely to come home bruised and bloody. Or with something gross or scary. And yet inside that daredevil kid often lurks a very sensitive soul, one that harbours doubts and fears he wouldn’t dream of confessing to anyone…or even to himself.

Like, for example, being scared to death of falling in love? Oh, yeah—even tough, cocky Noah has an Achilles’ heel, and her name is Roxie Ducharme…a gal who can definitely teach him a thing or two about overcoming adversity. And who, whether she means to or not, forces Noah to reassess everything he’s believed about himself up to this point.

Because only in the arms of a strong woman does a man become all he can be.

Enjoy!

Karen

About the Author

Since 1998, RITA^® award-winner and Waldenbooks bestselling author KAREN TEMPLETON has written more than thirty books. A transplanted Easterner, she now lives in New Mexico with two hideously spoiled cats and whichever of her five sons happens to be in residence.

Husband Under
Construction

Karen Templeton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my guys

who’ve been there for me

literally and figuratively in every way that matters.

My gratitude for all of you knows no bounds.

Chapter One

If you asked Noah Garrett’s mama to describe her son in one word, she’d immediately say, “Daredevil,” accompanied by the heavy sigh of a woman who’d seen the inside of the E.R. far, far too often.

Even as an infant, the boisterous New Mexico thunderstorms that sent his older brothers diving into their parents’ bed made him coo in delight. While other toddlers howled in fright if a dog licked their faces, Noah would howl with glee. As he got older, no tree or roof was too high to climb—or jump off of—no bug too big or ugly to examine, no basement too creepy to explore, no night too dark to sneak out into when he was supposed to be asleep. And woe betide the erstwhile playground bully who dared mess with Noah. Or any of his brothers.

So the churning gut as Noah said, “I’ll do it,” while staring his father down across the banged up desk in the tiny, cluttered office was highly uncharacteristic.

Not to mention unsettling. Especially as that churning gut had nothing to do with his father, who, yes, made Noah crazy on a regular basis but did not frighten him in the slightest. Behind him, on the other side of the open door, power saws ripped and hammers pounded and a half dozen employees shouted to each other in Spanish over the constant noise, more secure in their jobs than they probably had any right to be. And aside from his father, nobody was more determined to give them reason for that security than Noah.

Even if it meant sacrificing his own in the process.

Rubbing his chest, Gene Garrett lowered his big-bellied self into the rickety, rolling chair behind the desk to wrestle open the perpetually stuck top drawer and rummage inside for heaven-knew-what.

“Good of you to offer,” he muttered as he searched, “but Charley’s my friend. He’ll expect me to do the estimate. Not you.”

“Except,” Noah said, “aside from the fact that Charley’s not even going to be there, I’m gathering this is going to involve a lot more than new cabinets. Not to mention you’re up to your eyeballs with that order you’re installing in Santa Fe next week—”

“And you’ve got the Jensen project,” Gene grunted out as he leaned sideways, the drawer swallowing up his bulky forearm.

“Finished that up two days ago. Next objection?”

His father looked up, his thick, dark brows bouncing over his gold-rimmed glasses like a pair of goosed caterpillars. “Could be a big job.”

“Not any bigger than the Cochrans’, I don’t imagine. And I handled that just fine.”

Gene again contorted himself to peer into the depths of the drawer, then reinserted his arm. “You and Eli handled it just fine. So no harm in waiting a week, until I’m free.”

Despite his determination not to let the old man get to him, annoyance zinged through Noah. “And you know full well it’s a miracle Roxie got Charley to even think about fixing up the place,” he said, over a zing of an entirely different nature. “So she probably wants to present him with the estimate as a done deal. Strike while the iron’s hot. You said yourself the house is in pretty bad shape—”

“Which is why,” Gene said, finally righting himself, a half-empty bottle of Tums clutched in one scarred, beefy hand, “I can’t let just anybody handle it.”

This honoring your father thing? Sometimes, not so easy. “I’m not ‘anybody,'“ Noah said patiently. “I’m your son.” Even when his father shot him a pained looked that said far more than Noah wanted to hear, he refrained from pointing out exactly whose idea it had been to begin with, to branch out from woodworking into full-scale remodeling services, anyway. Instead, he simply said, “Only trying to take the load off you.”

One paw straining to pry the childproof cap off the bottle, Gene flashed a frown in Noah’s direction. “Don’t need you or anybody else to take the load off. You still work for me, remember?”

“Like you’d ever let me forget. Give me that,” Noah said, leaning across the desk to snatch away the half-strangled bottle before his father hurt himself trying to get the damn thing open. “So let me put it another way—either let me run with this, now, or risk Charley’s changing his mind and we lose the job altogether.”

The bottle easily—and gratefully, Noah surmised—relinquished, Gene linked his hands over his belly. “And I don’t suppose Charley’s pretty niece has anything to do with you wanting this job?”

Focusing real hard on the bottle top, Noah snorted. “Roxie? Doubt she even likes me.” Which, judging from her reaction to him the few times they’d run into each other since her return to Tierra Rosa a few months back, probably wasn’t that far from the truth.

Never mind that the first time Noah’d clapped eyes on her he’d felt as if somebody’d clobbered him with a telephone pole. A reaction he’d never had to another female, ever. He didn’t understand it, he sure as hell didn’t like it, and no way was he about to admit that after a lifetime of rushing headlong into potential danger without a second thought—or, in most cases, any thought at all—the idea of working with Roxanne Ducharme made him break out in a cold sweat.

“There some reason you get up her nose?” Gene said, in the long-suffering way of a man whose sons had more than tested the concept of unconditional love.

“Not that I can recall.” Which was the truth. And you’d think her completely unexplained antipathy would at least somewhat mitigate the telephone-pole-upside-the-head thing. You’d be wrong.

“Not even back in high school?” said Mr. Dog-with-a-Bone across from him, and Noah thought, And you’re going down this road why? They were talking a dozen years ago, for cripes’ sake.

“She was only there for that one year. And ahead of me at that.”

“Never mind that you lived right across the street from each other.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Noah handed back the open bottle, thinking that even with his crazy schedule back then, working afternoons and weekends at the shop whenever he didn’t have practice or a game, he must have seen her at some point. But damned if he could remember. “I doubt we exchanged two dozen words the entire time. She’s a potential client,” he said, directly meeting his father’s eyes. “Nothing more.”

After an I-wasn’t-born-yesterday look, Gene tipped the bottle into his palm, shook out a couple of antacids. “Just remember—” he popped a pill into his mouth, crunched down on it “—the past always comes back to bite us in the butt.”

Meaning, Noah wearily assumed, the string of admittedly casual relationships which somehow translated in his father’s mind into Noah’s overall inability to commit to anything else. Like, say, the business. Noah’s knowing it backward and forward—having never worked at anything else from the time he was fourteen—apparently counted for squat.

Before he could point that out, however, Gene said, “Now, if you want to get Eli in on this one, too—”

“Forget it, Eli’s so sleep-deprived on account of the new baby he’s liable to pass out on Charley’s sofa. Dad, I can handle it. And hey—what’s up with popping those things like they’re candy? You okay?”

Rubbing his breastbone, Gene softly belched before palming the few valiant, light brown strands combed over an age-spotted scalp. “Other than having two weeks’ worth of work left on a project due in six days? Sure, couldn’t be better. That burrito I wolfed down an hour ago isn’t doing me any favors, either.” Then he sighed. “And your mother’s about to drive me nuts. And don’t you dare tell her I said that.”

Aside from the fact that his parents’ making each other nuts was probably the glue holding their marriage together, considering how aggravated Noah was with his father for refusing to admit he needed help, he could only imagine how his mother felt. Still, sometimes playing dumb was the smartest choice. “About what?” he asked mildly.

Gene pulled a face. “About taking some time off.” Releasing another belch, he rattled the Tums. “Days like this, a guy needs his buddies. But it’s not like this is the first tight deadline I’ve pulled off.”

“And if you don’t start taking better care of yourself it might be your last.”

“Oh, Lord, not you, too—”

“You even remember the last time you went on vacation?”

“Sure. When we went to visit your mother’s sister in Dallas. Couple years ago.”

“Five. And visiting family does not count. And you called home a dozen times a day to check up on things.”

“I did not—”

“Got the cell phone records to prove it. And anyway, whether you think you need down time or not, you ever stop to think maybe Mom might like to get away? With you? Alone?”

After giving Noah a “Who are you?” expression, Gene grunted. “Donna’s never said one word to me about wanting to go anywhere.”

“When does Mom ever ask for anything for herself?” Noah shot back, suddenly annoyed with both of them, for loving too much and asking too little and putting up with far more crap from their kids than any two parents should have to. At which point he wasn’t sure who he was, either. “Frankly, I don’t think she even remembers how. If she ever did.” Emotion clogged Noah’s throat. “Yeah, she’s worried about you. With good reason, apparently,” he said, nodding toward the Tums.

Father and son exchanged a long look before Gene said, “I had no idea you cared that much.”

Honest to God. “Maybe if you looked past your own issues with me every once in a while,” he said softly, “you would.”

Leaning back in his chair again, Gene regarded Noah with thoughtful eyes, as a light November snow began to halfheartedly graze the grimy office window. Then, on a punched-out breath, he said, “I just don’t understand—”

“I know you don’t. And sometimes I’m sorry for that, I really am. Other times…well. It’d be nice if you’d find it in yourself to accept that I’m not like you. Or the others. Now,” he slipped his hands into his front pockets, “what time’s that appointment? At Charley’s?”

After another long moment, his father said, “Two.”

Noah checked his watch, then snatched his worn leather jacket off the rack by the office door, grabbed a clipboard from the table under it. “Then I’d better get going.”

As he walked away, though, his father called behind him, “You call me if you’ve got any questions, any questions at all. You hear?”

Only, as he struck out for Charley’s house—barely two blocks from the shop—the glow from the small victory rapidly faded, eclipsed by the reality of what he’d “won.”

Lord, Roxie would probably laugh her head off—assuming she’d find humor in the situation at all, which was definitely not a given—if she knew Noah’s brain shorted out every time he saw her.

That his good sense had apparently gone rogue on him.

Not that Noah had anything against family, or kids, or even marriage, when it came down to it, he thought as he rounded the corner and headed up the hill he and his brothers had sledded down a million times as kids. For other people. If his brothers and parents were besotted with wedded bliss, cool for them. As for his nieces and nephews…okay, fine, so he’d kill for the little stinkers. But since, for one thing, he’d yet to meet a gal who’d hold his interest for longer than five minutes, and for another, he was perfectly okay with that, his reaction to Roxanne Ducharme was off-the-charts bizarre.

God knows, he had examples aplenty of healthy, long-term relationships. Knew, too, the patience, unselfishness, dogged commitment it took to keep a marriage afloat. Thing was though, the older he got, the more convinced he became he simply didn’t have it in him to do that.

To be that, he thought with another spurt of gut juice as he came to Charley’s dingy white, 1920s-era two-story house, perched some twenty feet or so above street level at the top of a narrow, erratically terraced front yard. In the fine snow frosting the winter-bleached grass and overgrown rosebushes, it looked like a lopsided Tim Burtonesque wedding cake. Even through the snow, the house showed signs of weary neglect—flaking paint, the occasional ripped screen, cement steps that looked like something big and mean and scary had used them as a chew toy.

He could only imagine what it looked like on the inside.

Let alone what the atmosphere was likely to be.

Noah sucked in a sharp, cold breath, his cheeks puffing as he exhaled. Maybe he should’ve given Roxie a heads-up, he thought as he shifted the clipboard to rummage in an inside pocket, hoping he’d remembered to replenish his stash. Yes. Although he’d quit smoking more than five years ago, there were still times when the urge to light up was almost unbearable. This was definitely one of those times.

Thinking, Never let ‘em see you sweat, he marched up to the front door, plastered on a grin and rang the bell.

Ding-dong.

Wrestling a dust bunny with a death grip from a particularly ornery curl, Roxie carefully set the tissue paper-smothered Lladro figurine on her uncle’s coffee table and went to answer the front door…only to groan at the sight of the slouching, distorted silhouette on the other side of the frosted glass panel.

Thinking, Road, hell, good intentions, right, Roxie yanked open the door, getting a face full of swirling snow for her efforts. And, yep, Noah Garrett’s up-to-no-good grin, glistening around flashes of what looked like a slowly-savored chocolate Tootsie Roll pop.

Eyes nearly the same color twinkled at her when Noah, a clipboard tucked under one arm, lowered the pop, oblivious to the sparkly ice bits in his short, thick hair. His dark lashes. The here-to-forever shoulders straining the black leather of his jacket—which coordinated nicely with the black Henley shirt underneath, the black cargo pants, the black work boots, sheesh—as he leaned against the door frame.

“Hey, Roxie,” he rumbled, grinning harder, adding creased cheeks to the mix and making Roxie wonder if dust bunnies could be trained to attack on command. “Dad said Charley needed some work done around the house?”

“Um…I expected your dad.”

A shrug preceded, “He had other obligations. So I’m your man.”

In your dreams, buddy.

Although there was no reason, really, why being within fifty feet of the man should raise every hackle she possessed. Wasn’t as if there was any history between them, save for an ill-advised—and thankfully unrequited—crush in her senior year of high school, when grief had clearly addled her brain and Noah had been The Boy Every Girl Wanted. And, rumor had it, got more often than not. Well, except for Roxie.

Twelve years on, not a whole lot had changed, far as she could tell. Not on Noah’s part, and—apparently—neither on hers.

Which, on all counts, was too pathetic for words.

“Kitchen first,” she muttered as she turned smartly on her slipper-socked foot, keeping barely ahead of the testosterone cloud as she led Noah through the maze of crumbling boxes, bulging black bags and mountains of ancient Good Housekeepings and Family Circles sardined into the already overdecorated living room.

“Um…cleaning?” she heard behind her.

“Aunt Mae’s…things,” she said over the pang, now understanding why it had taken her uncle more than a year to deal with her aunt’s vast collections. Even so, Roxie found the sorting and tossing and head shaking—i.e., a box marked “Pieces of string too small to use.” Really, Aunt Mae?—hugely cathartic, a way to hang on to what little mind she had left after this latest series of implosions.

Except divesting the garage—and attic, and spare room, and shed—of forty years’ worth of accumulated…stuff…also revealed the woebegone state of the house itself. Not to mention her uncle, nearly as forlorn as the threadbare, olive-green damask drapes weighing down the dining room windows. So Roxie suggested he spruce up the place before, you know, it collapsed around their heads. Amazingly, he’d agreed…to think about it.

Think about it, go for it…close enough.

However, while Roxie could wield a mean paint roller and was totally up for taking a sledgehammer to the kitchen cabinets—especially when she envisioned her ex-fiancé’s face in the light-sucking varnish, thus revealing a facet to her nature she found both disturbing and exhilarating—that’s as far as her refurbishing skills went. Hence, her giving Gene Garrett a jingle.

And hence, apparently, his sending the one person guaranteed to remind Roxie of her penchant for making Really Bad Decisions. Especially when she was vulnerable. And susceptible to…whatever it was Noah exuded. Which at the moment was a heady cocktail of old leather and raw wood and pine needles. And chocolate, God help her.

“Whoa,” Noah said, at his first glimpse of the kaleidoscope of burnt orange and lime green and cobalt blue, all suffused with the lingering, if imagined, scents of a thousand meatloafs and tuna casseroles and roast chickens. She adored her aunt and uncle, and Mae’s absence had gouged yet another hole in her heart; but to tell the truth the house’s décor was intertwined with way too many sketchy memories of other sad times, of other wounds. Far as Roxie was concerned, it couldn’t be banished fast enough.

“Yeah,” she said. “‘Some’ work might be an understatement.”

Just as this estimate couldn’t be done fast enough, and Charley would sign off on it, and Noah or Gene or whoever would send over their worker bees to make magic happen, and Roxie would get back to what passed for her life these days—and far away from all this glittery, wood-scented temptation—and all would be well.

Or at least bearable.

The Tootsie Roll pop—and Roxie—apparently forgotten, Noah gawked at the seventies-gone-very-wrong scene in front of him, clearly focused on the job at hand. And not even remotely on her.

Well…good.

“And this is just for starters,” Roxie said, and he positively glowed, and she thought, Eyes on the prize, cupcake.

And Noah Garrett was definitely not it.

Despite the stern talking-to Noah’d given himself as he hiked up all those steps about how Roxie was no different from any other female, that he’d never not been in total control of his feelings and no way in hell was he going to start now—The second she opened the door, all dusty and smudgy and glowering and hot, all he knew was if the Tootsie Roll pop hadn’t been attached to a stick he would’ve choked on the blasted thing.

Noah’d stopped questioning a long time ago whatever it was that seemed to draw females to him like ants to sugar, it being much easier to simply accept the blessing. So if he was smart, he mused as he pretended to inspect the butt-ugly cabinets, he’d do well to consider Roxie’s apparent immunity to his charm, or whatever the hell it was, a blessing of another sort. Because if she actually gave him the time of day he’d be toast.

While he was pondering all this, she’d made herself busy sorting through a couple of battered boxes on the dining table on the other side of the open kitchen—more of her aunt’s stuff, he surmised—affording him ample opportunity to slide a glance in her direction now and then. Maybe the more he got used to seeing her, the sooner this craziness would wear off. Back off. Something.

Long shot though that might be.

So he looked, taking in a cobweb freeloading a ride in a cloud of soft, dark curls that were cute as all hell. The way her forehead pinched in concentration—and consternation, he was guessing—as she unloaded whatever was in those boxes. The curves barely visible underneath the baggy purple K-State sweatshirt. Then she turned her back to him, giving him a nice view of an even nicer butt, all round and womanly beneath a pair of raggedy jeans pockets.

She jerked around, as if she could read his mind, her wide eyes the prettiest shade of light green he’d ever seen, her cheeks all pink, and for a second Noah thought—hoped—the world had righted itself again. As in, pretty gal, horny guy, what’s to understand? Not that he’d necessarily act on it—one-sided lust was a bummer—but at least he felt as if he’d landed back in his world, where everything was sane and familiar and logical.

Except then she picked something off the table and walked back into the kitchen. “Here, I made a list of what needs doing so I wouldn’t forget,” she said, handing him a sheet of lined paper and avoiding eye contact as if she’d go blind if she didn’t, and suddenly her attitude bugged like an itch you can’t reach.

As Noah scanned the list—written in a neat, Sharpie print that was somehow still girly, with lots of question marks and underlinings—bits and pieces of overhead conversations and whispered musings, previously ignored, suddenly popped into thought. Something about losing her job in Kansas City. And being dumped, although nobody seemed clear on the details. With that, Noah realized that grinding in his head was the sound of gears shifting, slowly but with decided purpose, shoving curiosity and a determination to get at the truth to the front of his brain…and shoving lust, if not to the back, at least off to one side.

“This goes way beyond the kitchen,” he said, and she curtly nodded. And stepped away. This time Noah didn’t bother hiding the sigh. She wanted to hate him? Fine. He could live with that. Heck, he’d be happy with that, given the situation. Just not without reason.

Roxie’s brows dipped. “What?”

“There some unfinished business between us I’m not remembering?”

The pink turned scarlet. Huh. “Not really. Anyway,” she said with a pained little smile, “the kitchen is the worst. But the whole house—”

“Not really?”

If those cheeks got any redder, the gal was gonna spontaneously combust. “Figure of speech. Of course there’s nothing between us, unfinished or otherwise. Why—?”

“Because it’s kind of annoying being the target for somebody else.”

Dude. You had to go there.

Roxie’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”

Noah crossed his arms, the list dangling from his fingers, his common sense clearly hightailing it for parts unknown. “God knows, there’s women with cause to give me dirty looks. If not want my head on a platter.” At her incredulous expression, he shrugged. “Misunderstandings happen, what can I say?” Then his voice softened. “And rumor has it you’ve got cause to be pissed. But not at me. So maybe I don’t appreciate being the stand-in, you know?”

After a moment, she stomped back to the dining room to dig deep into one of the boxes, muttering, “Now I remember why I left. The way everybody’s always up in everybody else’s business.”

“Yeah. I think that’s called caring,” Noah said, surprised at his own defensiveness. Even more surprised when Roxie’s gaze plowed into his, followed—eventually—by another tiny smile, and he felt as if his soul had been plugged into an electrical outlet. Damn.

“No, I think that’s called being nosy,” she said, and Noah chuckled over the zzzzzt.

“Around here? Same difference.”

The smile stretched maybe a millimeter or two before she dropped onto a high-backed dining chair with a prissy, pressed-wood pattern along the top. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, but…you’re right. And I apologize. For real this time. It’s not you, it’s…”

She rammed a hand through her curls, grimacing when she snagged the cobweb. “This hasn’t been one of my better days,” she sighed, trying to disengage the clumped web from her fingers. “Sorting through my aunt’s stuff and getting nowhere in my job search and thinking about…my ex—and trust me, it’s not his head I want on a platter—” A short, hard breath left her lungs. “I feel like somebody’s weed-whacked my brain. Not your fault you’re the weed-whacker.”

“I’d ask you to explain, but I’m thinking I don’t really want to know.”

“No. You don’t.” Once more on her feet, Roxie returned to the kitchen, leaning over the counter to scratch at something on the metallic, blue-and-green floral wallpaper over the backsplash. “I promise I’ll be good from now on.”

“That mean I have to be good, too?”

“Goes without saying,” Roxie said, after a pause that was a hair too long, before her gaze latched onto his Tootsie Roll pop. “Got another one of those?”

Lord above. Noah had gotten tangled up with some dingbats in his time, but this one took the cake. Not even the cute butt could make up for that. Even so, this could shape up—heh—to be a pretty decent job, so he supposed he’d best be about humoring the dingbat.

“Uh…yeah. Sure.” He dug a couple extras out of his pocket. “Cherry or grape?”

“Cherry,” Roxie said, holding out her hand, not speaking again until it was unwrapped and in her mouth, her eyes fluttering closed for a moment in apparent ecstasy. Then, opening her eyes, she grinned sheepishly around the pop. Mumbling something that might have been “Cheap thrill,” she slowly removed it, her tongue lingering on the candy’s underside, her gaze unfocused as she dreamily contemplated the glistening, ruby-red candy on the end of the stick, which she gently twirled back and forth between her fingers. “Can’t remember the last time I had one of these,” she sighed out, then looked at him again, her pupils gradually returning to normal. “Well. Ready to see the rest of the house?”

Holy crap.

Lust run amok Noah could handle. Electric jolts he could ignore, if he really put his mind to it. But the two of them together?

This went way beyond unfamiliar territory. This, boys and girls, was an alternate universe. One he had no idea if he’d ever get out of alive.

If he even got out at all.