Before he’d arrived, Grace and Jenna had raced around the upstairs, putting things to wrong. She’d told Gage there was a plumbing leak when there really wasn’t, so they’d had to create one.
To that end, Grace had loosened a pipe fixture under the sink, and they’d used a couple of the SpongeBob Dixie cups to splash water here and there as though the pipes had been dripping for quite a while, then sopped it up with extra towels. The towels were still on the floor, wadded up and wet and screaming for a cleanup crew.
“Sorry about the mess,” Jenna said, kicking at one of the towels with the toe of her shoe. “I tried to keep the water from spreading too far.”
“No problem,” he murmured, setting his beer on the sink and his toolbox on the floor, then kneeling down to study the vanity’s inner workings.
Worrying a thumbnail between her front teeth, Jenna stood in the doorway and watched, praying he wouldn’t figure out that she and her friends had staged the leak to lure him out to the house. He didn’t seem suspicious as he turned the knob to shut off the flow of water to the pipes, twisted this and felt around that.
“I don’t see any cracks or corrosion,” he said.
She didn’t respond, afraid that anything she said might blow the whole charade.
Gage flipped around, lying down on his back to stare up at the bottom of the sink basin. “Can you hand me-”
Before he’d even finished his sentence, Jenna had the bottle of Corona shoved into his hand.
“Um…” He looked at her oddly. “Thanks, but I was actually going to ask for a wrench.”
“Oh.” She gave a nervous, too high-pitched laugh. “Sorry about that. But you might as well enjoy it,” she added, crouching down beside his toolbox to search for what he needed.
When she found it, rather than handing it to him, she stood back and waited. He continued to eye her strangely, but she held her ground.
Finally, he took a slow sip of beer before setting the bottle aside. As soon as he did, she handed him the wrench.
“Thanks,” he muttered, reluctantly pulling his attention away from his exhibiting-blatant-signs-of-psychosis ex-wife to once again tinker beneath the sink.
She liked to think that after this was all over, he’d believe her when she said she hadn’t gone off the deep end and wasn’t in need of a Thorazine Big Gulp, but something told her that wasn’t going to happen.
It was a shame, too, because as she stood there, staring down at him lying on the floor, she couldn’t help but wish things had worked out between them. That she had a right to ogle his body, admire the play of muscles beneath his tight T-shirt and the way he filled out a pair of Levis.
And he filled them out well. Really, really well.
“You’ve got a loose fitting under here, so I tightened it, but I don’t see anything else that should be causing a leak.”
Sliding back out from under the vanity, he used a corner of one of the towels to dry the pipes, then turned the water back on and tested his work. When everything remained dry, he slapped his hands together, wiped them on the front of his jeans, and returned the wrench to the toolbox.
“I don’t know how that got loose, but you should be okay now. At the very least, it will hold until you can get a professional out here next week.”
“Thanks. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
That sounded good, right? Now she just had to figure out how to get the rest of that Corona -and maybe a second one-into him before he could leave.
To that end, she rushed around him, plucking up the wet towels and tossing them into the bathtub, then grabbing the bottle of beer while he collected the toolbox.
Gage stepped out of the small powder room, moving toward the stairs, and a shaft of panic stabbed through Jenna’s heart.
“Wait!” she cried, reaching out with both arms as though that gesture alone could draw him back and keep him there a bit longer.
Cocking his head to one side, he did exactly as she asked-he waited. For her to say something, do something, give him a reason not to climb back in his car and drive back to town.
And she was trying, she really was. Her mind was doing its best to race, to grasp for an excuse. But a couple pitchers of margaritas and enough Mexican food to feed Santa Anna’s army had made her brain sluggish.
A dozen responses would have rolled off Grace’s tongue by now, with a dozen more lined up and ready to go. Ronnie would have simply grabbed him by the collar and kissed him into submission.
But, for better or worse, Jenna wasn’t like either of her friends. She may have been married to Gage for three years before things had started to go downhill, but that didn’t mean she knew what to say or how to handle him. She wasn’t sure she ever had.
“Jenna?” he prompted when she stood there like a crash test dummy. “Was there something else?”
Eyes wide, mouth open and working like a guppy’s, she made a high, squeaking sound that caused Gage to blink. He probably thought she was having a seizure and was about to swallow her tongue.
Then she blurted, “The bedroom!”
He blinked again.
“There’s a… um, lamp in the guest bedroom that hasn’t been working quite right. I’m afraid the wiring might be faulty and I worry about it starting a fire.”
Lifting a hand to his chin, he rubbed his jaw, his fingers making a slight scratching sound as they scraped against the dark beard stubble growing there. He shook his head slightly, and she knew she had him about as confused as a man could get.
“Jenna, I’m no electrician. I-”
“Please?” she asked, instilling her tone with what she hoped was just the right amount of pleading. “I’m out here all by myself for two weeks. I don’t want to lie awake nights worrying about the house burning down around me.”
Gage sighed. “Fine. Lead the way.”
“Great.” She beamed at him and moved down the hall, pushing open the door to the room where she was staying.
As he brushed past her, she once again shoved the bottle of Corona into his free hand. “Here, finish your beer before you start, though. You deserve it.”
Instead of following him inside as she probably should have, she slowly moved away. “I’ve got another one in the fridge. I’ll just go get it for you. Be right back.”
Sidestepping along the railing that ran the length of the upstairs hallway with a too-bright, too-wide smile stretching her lips, she quickly spun around the banister and danced down the stairs… not breaking her neck, thank goodness, although there were a couple times when her feet slipped and she nearly took a header.
This wasn’t part of the plan, she knew. Grace would crown her if she knew Jenna was running away from the bedroom where she’d finally managed to corner Gage.
But she needed that beer, darn it. She needed Gage to drink it, and drink it fast.
If he didn’t… Well, if she couldn’t get it into him, then she’d just drink it herself and be done with this whole stress-inducing, blood pressure-raising, faint-worthy mess.
Knit 3
While Jenna was off God knew where doing God knew what, Gage touched the bottle of Corona to his lips and took a long swallow, wondering what Jenna was up to. It didn’t take a detective-which he just happened to be-to figure out that she was drunk off her ass, he just didn’t know why. Or what had apparently caused her to drunk-dial him after more than a year of no direct contact or one-on-one conversations between them.
He’d bet a month’s pay she was up to something.
Or maybe she wasn’t up to anything, but was simply nervous about having him around when they normally made a point of keeping Zack, Grace, Dylan, and Ronnie around as buffers.