LITMIR.BIZ

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kind of sound, and Jack hummed a couple of bars of a classic rock riff under his breath, sounding a little on edge after the mention of Ryan’s arrival. “Dunh, dunh, da, dunh, dunh, dunh-da.”

      She recognized what he was humming. Deep Purple. “Smoke on the Water.”

      He’d done a good job, her professional eye told her. Most amateur painters skimped on the prep work. They didn’t spend enough time sanding or filling in holes, didn’t tape the windows, and ended up with sloppy edges and rough spots. Jack hadn’t even opened his paint cans until yesterday evening, after she and Rob had gone for the day. He must have worked for hours last night on the ceiling, and today he’d done the main wall color, a buttery cream. There was a contrasting trim to go on later, in a pale Wedgwood-blue.

      “I like it,” she told him. Then she fought a yawn, which Jack fortunately missed.

      If he’d spent half last night painting, she’d spent at least as much time worrying about Kate being out late again, and listening for the sound of her coming through the front door. She’d heard her sister’s key in the lock at almost two, and then unsteady footsteps stumbling up the stairs.

      “Yeah? You do?” He turned. “I wanted to prep it well enough so it didn’t need a second coat. Really wanted it done today, before—” He stopped. “Well, just done today. What do you think?”

      “You’ll have to wait for brighter light, but I can’t see any patchy spots. You may have some touching up, that’s all.”

      “And it’s not too yellow?”

      “Not at all,” she reassured him.

      “And not too, you know, girly?”

      “Not to my eye.”

      “Good.”

      He wanted the new paint job to be finished enough to show off to Ryan, she realized, and he wanted Ryan to like it. This was no bachelor pad he was creating for himself, here. He wanted it to be a home.

      “A sunroom has to be sunny,” she said. “You can tone down the cheeriness with some darker furnishings. It’s not girly.” His concern for Ryan’s opinion reminded her of her own concern over Kate, and that she should call and let her know she’d be late home for dinner, because of Cormack’s delay. “And of course when the trim and floor are done it’ll look so different, and so much better,” she told him. “Really impressive. Great room for a kid’s computer and study desk.”

      “You think so?” He looked happy at the idea.

      “Definitely, when it’s all finished.”

      He grinned. “I’m going to enjoy throwing this carpet into a Dumpster.”

      “I’ll bet!”

      She made the call to Kate but was asked to “Please leave a message” on both the land line at home and Kate’s cell. “Hi, Kate, it’s me,” she told the cell phone. “Wanna cook something, if you get in? There’s pasta and salad fixings, deli pasta sauce in the refrigerator. I’ll be there for it, but late. Cormack won’t be. Anyhow, call me when you get this, okay? Let me know what’s happening.”

      She’s eighteen, she’s college age, she’s not a child, ran the familiar mantra in her head, after she put down the phone. The mantra didn’t help. Nothing helped. Kate was a mess. She’d broken up with her boyfriend a month ago, and even though Mitchell had been a jerk and bad news and not nearly good enough for Kate, she still had a wounded heart. Carmen was scared. Their talks achieved nothing.

      Cormack had no solutions to offer, either. He tended to opt out by spending his evenings elsewhere, leaving Carmen to fret and yell and try a new strategy with Kate every week. Sometimes she got angry with her older brother and business partner, but he was probably right when he said that there was nothing they could do. Kate had to ride out her own problems, deal with her own heartaches and learn from her own mistakes.

      Restless and concerned, Carmen wandered into the sunroom to watch Jack fill in the last unpainted rectangle of wall. “Want some help cleaning your gear?” she asked him, unhappy about the circular motion of her thoughts about her sister. “There’s nothing more I can do until Cormack and Rob get here.”

      “You don’t have to help. You look pretty wiped.”

      “I hate sitting around.”

      Because then I’m just going to either A, worry about Kate or B, spend too much time watching the way Jack’s butt looks in those old jeans when he moves.

      Yeah, definitely she was in trouble.

      And though a part of her sang out a warning that she should run a mile, because she had no time for a man, especially a man with a nine-year-old son, when she had Kate to worry about and Melanie and Joe only just grown and gone, another part of her insisted, Isn’t it time I had something for me?

      Jack Davey would most definitely be something for her.

      Which part of herself did she listen to? The sensible, nurturing part, or the part that wanted to take a leaf out of Kate’s book and throw caution to the four winds, right along with her tender heart?

      “If you’re serious, start on the trim brushes,” Jack said, pulling them from the plastic bag he’d stored them in to stop them from drying out. “I’m done with them. Use that old sink in the basement.”

      “Sure.” She reached out and he gave them to her, the two handles inevitably sticky with paint drips that had run down them. She was accustomed to messy hands. His were stained and sticky, also, and when their fingers touched as she took the brushes, the stickiness glued them together for a moment. She didn’t try too hard to pull away.

      “How fast does this stuff dry?” she murmured, and he favored her with his blink-and-you-miss-it grin.

      “Fast,” he said. “Better go wash it off.” He dropped his voice. “Your hands are too pretty to have paint all over ’em.”

      Yep. Serious trouble. What kind of signal had she sent just then?

      Down in the basement she ran water over the brushes and squeezed the thick bristles, knowing she’d probably still have paint traces on her hands a couple of days from now, despite the industrial-strength soap she and Cormack kept at home.

      The water was beginning to flow clearer when Jack came down with the roller. She heard his footsteps on the old wooden stairs and her heart began to beat faster. It was pretty shadowy down here. Atmospheric. A little more dangerous, in all sorts of ways, than being alone with him in the kitchen and sunroom while they worked.

      She stepped sideways to give him room, and he used her almost-clean waste water to rinse away the thickest of the paint on the roller. “Those are about done, aren’t they?” he said, after a while.

      She looked at her brushes. They were. For a good minute she’d just been standing here wondering why it felt so nice to have Jack Davey this close, and what one of them might do about it. She knew he felt this chemistry, too…

      “Here’s a rag for drying them.” He reached up to a nail sticking out from the wooden floor beam above their heads and pulled down what had to be another one of his old T-shirts. Their arms bumped. He shut off the faucet.

      When she took the rag from him, he didn’t let it go. She pulled. He tugged gently back. She looked up at him. “Thanks for saying the right things about the paint,” he said.

      “That’s okay. It does look good.” She added, “But I know why it’s important. You want Ryan to like it.”

      “Oh, I’m that transparent?”

      “Maybe because I’m that way with my baby sister, sometimes. Thinking—oh, too much, probably—about what I can do to make her happy. I recognized what you felt. Ryan comes first.”

      “That’s right. I say that to myself all the time. In exactly those words.”

      He

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