LITMIR.BIZ

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the tile she had.

      And then there was the fact that he didn’t need to be taking over the maintenance of Nichole’s place. What was he doing?

      She didn’t need this from him. And he didn’t need—

      “Hey.”

      Garrett turned around and all thoughts about replacing a segment of the baseboard or not were temporarily shelved as he looked to where Nichole stood on the threshold of the kitchen, wrapped up in one of those stretchy thin robes that didn’t actually look all that warm … and, so far as he could tell, nothing else.

      “Hey, yourself. Hope you don’t mind I started a pot?”

      Her mouth pulled to one side as she finger-combed a few wild curls from her face. “You’re asking me if I mind that you made coffee, but not that you’ve pried up a piece of my floor?”

      He looked down at where his Swiss Army knife was wedged between the wall and—and hell. Looking back at Nichole, he offered the only defense he had. “I’m good at fixing things. And it’s just the baseboard. The floor beneath looks fine.”

      Shuffling into the kitchen, Nichole just nodded at him, looking adorably exhausted as she folded herself into a kitchen chair and then tried to cover an enormous yawn with her small hand.

      “Okay, but your kind is notorious for taking things apart and leaving them that way. Indefinitely. Anything you touch in this place gets put back to rights within the week.” She slanted a look at him. “Regardless of whether this thing with us has run its course.”

      Giving them less than a week to run their course? Grumpy, grumpy. She didn’t need to worry about his taking her place apart piece by piece. It was a habit, but one he intended to kick. With Nichole, he didn’t want to be the guy who had to fix everything.

      Okay, he’d fix the baseboard … because now that he’d seen it, the damn thing would nag at the back of his mind until he knew it was taken care of. But that was it.

      Garrett looked between Nichole and the coffee. After the baseboard, the only thing he’d fix for Nichole was a hot cup of joe. Grabbing a mug from the tree beside the pot, he poured her a cup. “Cream? Sugar?”

      A smile flickered at the corner of her mouth as she looked him up and down. “Whipped cream.”

      With a shrug, he turned for the fridge, but Nichole was already up and walking over. “Thank you, Garrett, but I’ll get it dressed up. I’m kind of particular.”

      “Sure.” Even better.

      He watched her navigating her space, seeing a routine he never would have thought to imagine, liking the look of her in the morning in this environment that so few would have the opportunity to experience.

      Possessive satisfaction swelled within him at the thought, urging him into closer contact. His fingers played through her hair as she topped off her coffee with skim milk, swirled a spoon through the pale brew and then clinked it at the side of the mug twice.

      Another sideways glance and she was looking very amused. “So, was it … good for you?”

       The overnight.

      Giving in to the laugh Nichole always seemed to pull from him, he nodded. “Very.”

      “Seriously, how is it you’ve never spent the night with a woman before?”

      Garrett took her hand and led her over to the breakfast nook by the bay window and, setting down his own coffee rather than giving up the loose hold he had on her fingers, pulled out her chair. “It just always seemed more of a complication than it would be worth.”

      But then, he hadn’t exactly known what he was missing.

      Parking it across the table, he threw back half his own mug—more about the infusion of caffeine than the lingering warmth he’d take his time over on the next cup.

      “Really?” she asked, pulling her feet up beneath her as she settled in. “I guess I would have thought in some ways making a getaway would be more complicated.”

      Nichole brought the mug to her lips and took a long swallow, her satisfaction all too distracting. But she’d asked a question. And, though the answer wasn’t exactly simple, he trusted her with it.

      “Not really. I mean, at first it just wasn’t an option. I didn’t go off to college at eighteen like most of the other guys did, so it wasn’t like I could just sneak some co-ed into my dorm. I was living at home with my four sisters. Basically raising them.”

      “Wait—Bethany’s a year older than you, and wasn’t your mom still around? I mean weren’t there times you could have got away if you’d wanted to? Weren’t there co-eds trying to sneak you into their dorms?”

      Sure there were. Truth be told, there had been for years. “Yeah, but there was a lot going on. Our situation at home was pretty precarious for a number of reasons. My parents hadn’t done a lot of contingency planning. There was a small policy that got us through the first couple years, but my mom didn’t work, and I didn’t want the girls’ futures to die with my dad. Bethany was smart as hell. Always making those gifted programs at school. A hell of a lot more going on than I ever had, that’s for sure. And with the earning potential in the house pretty well limited to what I could eke out, her grades were her ticket into college. So that was her job and she nailed it. Free ride right through.”

      Nichole was smiling at him then, and he knew she’d seen the pride he couldn’t contain when it came to his older sister.

      “Which was great, but it meant she was basically gone by the time I was seventeen.” He’d never been a senior in high school, because by then he’d dropped out to work full-time. Everyone had helped out in the day-to-day—but the money, the bills, keeping the house fixed up had fallen to Garrett.

      “My mom had always been kind of fragile. I have no idea how she managed to have five kids, but even before Dad died we’d all become pretty adept at chipping in. Which is probably the only reason we were able to make it the way we did. She never really recovered from losing him.”

      “Garrett, that must have been so hard.”

      He nodded, closing his eyes. And for a moment he was back in his kitchen that day, with some textbook open in front of him, his dad blowing through the room with all his endless energy, trailing a bunch of little girls clamoring for a last kiss before he took off for work. He’d leaned over Garrett and looked at the page, shaking his head in that bewildered way he’d had when it came to school.

      He’d been blue-collar to the core. Working in construction from his teens. No higher education. Just a salt-of-the-earth, meat-and-potatoes man’s man who’d loved his family.

      He’d clapped Garrett on the shoulder and nodded toward his wife over at the counter, cleaning up breakfast. “You’re the man of the house while I’m gone, son. Make me proud.”

      Same words every day. And Garrett had grinned, rolling his eyes at the idea. Still, he always gave his dad his everyday commitment—”Yes, sir”—earning that last, “Good kid,” as he left for work.

      Thirty minutes later his father had been dead. And all Garrett had had to honor the man he’d worshipped was that last promise he’d made.

      Clearing his throat, he looked back at Nichole. “Mom tried. She got meals on the table and held it together enough so, for a while, the relatives weren’t asking questions. But even as kids we had a sort of instinctual understanding of her limitations. She cried a lot. Spent more and more time in her room. Less and less time doing the things a capable parent did. If there was a crisis in the middle of the night she wasn’t the one the girls went to. It was me. And by the end—when I was eighteen—it got to where she needed the kind of help she couldn’t get at home. Hell, she should have had help before then, but we—I just didn’t understand.”

      The guilt inexorably tied to thoughts of his mother pushed at him, weighing in his

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