LITMIR.BIZ

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Kane Chatterson simply gave her a brief, unsmiling nod before asking, “Do I call you Doctor or Captain?”

      “Call me just Julia. Please.” She reached out her hand to shake his, and he gripped her fingers quickly, his warm calluses leaving an imprint on her palms. As a medical professional, she had no rational or scientific explanation for the shiver that vibrated down her spine. As a woman, her only explanation was that this new sensation was most likely the result of her aunt’s fresh lecture on dating. And possibly the fact that she hadn’t been this attracted to a man since...ever.

      “Just Julia,” he replied. But still no smile.

      She looked at her watch. She’d be out of here in ten minutes. Surely, she could pretend to be a normal, successful woman for another ten minutes.

      “What do you mean, you weren’t formally introduced earlier?” Damn. Aunt Freckles didn’t miss a thing.

      “We, uh, spoke briefly at the Cowgirl Up Café when our orders got mixed up this morning,” Kane told her aunt. The faint dusting of copper-colored stubble on his square jaw made it too difficult to tell if the man was actually blushing.

      “Yeah, I figured the new waitress I hired wasn’t quite ready for me to leave her on her own,” Freckles replied, then turned to Julia and gave her a wink. “Seems like lots of people are getting stuff wrong this morning.”

      “Here.” Julia handed the cell phone to her aunt, determined to prove that she hadn’t made a mistake. Or at least two of them. “It says right here on my calendar app that we were supposed to meet at the café.”

      Since Freckles was busy tapping on the screen and Mr. Chatterson’s attention was on the yellow paint chipping off the wood siding of the house, Julia stole another look at his dour face. She’d been trying to save his life back at the café. Surely he couldn’t be irritated with her over that—unless the laughter she’d heard as she left the restaurant was directed at him. Maybe the guy’s ego had taken a hit. Or maybe his feet were cold and tired from walking all this way from the restaurant.

      Julia glanced down at the scuffed cowboy boots. No, that sturdy, worn leather looked like they’d been walked in quite a lot. So his stiff demeanor most likely wasn’t the result of sore feet. She allowed her gaze to travel up his jeans-clad legs, past his untucked shirt and all the way to his green cap with the words Patterson’s Dairy embroidered in yellow on the front.

      That funny tingling made its way down her spine again.

      What was wrong with her? She didn’t stare at unsuspecting men or allow her body to get all jumbled full of hormones, no matter how good-looking they were. Julia reached up and tightened the elastic band in her hair, hoping he wouldn’t look over and catch her checking him out.

      “Sug,” Aunt Freckles said, holding up the smartphone. “Somehow you managed to program the Cowgirl Up Café as the location for everything in your calendar this month—including five surgeries, two staff meetings, a seminar on neurological disorders and the Boise Philharmonic’s String Quintet.”

      “Oh. Well, I haven’t had time to go over the new software update. Yet.” Julia waved her hand dismissively before powering off her screen. That wasn’t a real mistake. She had much more important things to accomplish than mastering some stupid scheduling app—like getting this tour underway if she wanted to report for duty on time. She pulled a key from the pocket of her cardigan sweater, the one Aunt Freckles said did nothing for her coloring or her figure, and asked Mr. Chatterson, “Would you like me to show you around inside?”

      “I could probably figure it out on my own,” he said, then used the top step to wipe his boots as she unlocked the door. “But it wouldn’t hurt for you to tell me some of your ideas for the place.”

      Well, wasn’t he being generous?

      “Shouldn’t you grab a notepad?” Julia gestured toward his run-down truck-vehicle thing.

      “Why?”

      “So that you can take notes?”

      “Don’t need to.”

      “What about measurements? Surely you won’t be able to remember every little dimension.”

      “No, ma’am. I probably won’t. In fact, there’s probably a lot of stuff I won’t remember. But I’ll get a sense of the house and what it needs, which is something no tape measure can show me.”

      “But how will you give me an estimate?”

      “If I decide to take the job,” he said, looking up at the large trees, their pine needles creeping toward the roof she was positive needed replacing, “I’ll come back and take measurements and write it all down neat and tidy for you.”

      “Sug,” Freckles interrupted in a stage whisper. “Kane here knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t come into the operating room and tell you where to cut or how to dig around in someone’s brain.” Then, as if to lessen the rebuke, Freckles turned to the brooding contractor. “Julia’s a neurosurgeon in the Navy. Smart as a whip, my grandniece. Did I mention that?”

      “I believe you did. Should we get started?” he asked, wiping his hand across his mouth. Then, without waiting for a response, he walked through the door as though he couldn’t care less about Julia’s abilities in the operating room or her whip-like intelligence. Not that she wanted the attention or expected him to be in awe of her, but it was one of the few times somebody hadn’t been impressed with her genius IQ.

      The guy strode into her front parlor as though he owned the place, and Julia resented his take-charge attitude and her unexplainable physical response to him. However, he was the expert—supposedly—and she was intelligent enough to know that this old house needed much more than her surgical skills.

      The trio made their way from room to room, and Julia lost track of the amount of times she had to tell Aunt Freckles that she didn’t love the idea of glitter-infused paint on the walls or a wet bar added to each of the three floors. When they finished the tour in the kitchen, Julia was already in jeopardy of being ten minutes late for her shift. Unfortunately, she didn’t trust her aunt not to suggest something outlandish in her absence.

      “I say you get some of those cool retro turquoise appliances and redo all these cabinets with pink and white paint.” Freckles waved her arms like an air traffic controller. “Then you can do black-and-white-checkered tile and give it a real fifties’ vibe. If you knock out this wall, it will open up the kitchen to the family room.”

      “Which room is the family room?” Julia rubbed at her temples before tightening her ponytail. Again.

      “I believe that’s the room you referred to as the study,” Kane told her. His smirk gave off the impression that he was laughing at her for some reason. Again. “Or was that the informal parlor?”

      “Either way,” Julia said. “I don’t want a fifties-themed anything in my house. Besides, remodeling the kitchen is my last concern.”

      It was difficult to not startle at Freckle’s loud, indrawn breath. “Sug, no, no, no. The kitchen is the heart of the house. That should be the first thing Kane works on. How’re you gonna cook or eat if you don’t have a decent kitchen?”

      “I don’t intend to do much cooking here. I eat most of my meals at the hospital, and as long as I have a refrigerator to store all the leftovers you give me, I should be just fine.”

      The woman tipped her head back, then rubbed her fingers over her eyes. Julia feared her aunt was going to smear her purple eye shadow. “It’s just that with the Pumpkin Pie Parade coming up and then ski season right after, I’m going to be so busy at the café. I worry about you being all alone, not eating right and withering away to nothing.”

      “I assure you, I value my health too much to allow myself to wither away,” Julia said. “But I know you worry about me, and if it makes you feel any better, I’ll buy a cookbook and teach myself some basic recipes. After all, how hard can it be?”

      “Sug,

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