He looked solid. Strong. Balanced. Like a rock, an oak, the earth.
He observed her for a timeless moment as the rain pattered down, and she had the sensation that everything important about her was written in a language that he could read in a glance.
She put her glasses back on. In that moment of grace before they spotted up again, she flash memorized every detail. The sweep of the dark hairs of his brows, the grooves that bracketed his mouth.
He wiped rain off his forehead with the sleeve of his wool shirt.
“Are you Nancy D’Onofrio?” he asked.
This epitome of manhood knew her name? She nodded, wishing she hadn’t opted not to wash her hair. She’d slicked it into a tight bun. The peeled-onion look. She was still in yesterday’s funeral black, and her breath must reek of liquor, considering how hungover she felt.
This guy, by contrast, looked clear eyed, clean living. He’d probably gotten to bed at ten and was up at five to meditate, or do yoga or some such. He probably drank something austere, like green tea. Not the sugared-up, high-test espresso she guzzled to get revved for her crazy days. She saw him in her mind’s eye. Shirtless, in a yoga pose.
And, God, what was she even doing having thoughts like this, at a time like this? How freaking shallow was she, anyway?
Distraction
, came the answer from a calmer place deep inside. He was eye candy. Fantasy material. Better even than frantic work as a way to not think about the ragged hole in her life. Her eyes were fogging up, and the guy’s mouth was moving, and had been for some seconds already. And she’d just been staring at him.
Mouth open, no doubt.
“…Mrs. D’Onofrio here?”
Ah, God. Not again. Irrational anger flared inside her. Why was it always her goddamn duty to announce it to the world? She’d been the one to find Lucia’s body. She’d called the cops. She’d called her sisters. She’d told the neighbors. She’d told the delivery people. She’d written the obit. Could somebody else please take a fucking turn?
Not his fault,
she reminded herself. She shook her head.
“Lucia’s dead,” she croaked.
The man’s face went blank. “Oh, my God,” he said. “When?”
She swallowed hard, rubbed her eyes under her glasses, and tried again. “Last week,” she said thickly. “The funeral was yesterday.”
He was silent for a long moment. “I am so sorry,” he said finally.
There was no good response to that. She’d learned that this week. Painfully. Nancy sniffed and said, “Me, too. Who are you?”
“I’m Liam Knightly,” he said. “I’m the carpenter. I’m here to start the work on the house.”
“Work? On the house? What work?”
“She didn’t tell you about the renovation she was planning?”
“I hadn’t spoken to her for a couple of weeks before she died.”
“Me, neither,” he said. “We set this date weeks ago.”
Nancy shook her head, bemused, and stared at his big truck.
“Not a word?” Knightly wiped rain off his face. “Would it make you nervous if I stood under the awning with you? I’m getting drenched.”
“That’s fine,” she said distractedly. “That is, do you want to come in? For a cup of coffee, or tea? If Lucia has tea. Or had, I guess I should say.” Babbling, again. She hated that. So damn stupid.
His eyes gleamed with a smile he was too polite to allow to emerge. “Thank you,” he said. “One moment. I’ll go tell Eoin to wait.”
“He can come in, too,” she called. Hmm. His ass was as fine as his quadriceps had suggested that it would be. More so, even.
“No, he’s shy. He’ll be fine in the truck.” Knightly jerked open the driver’s-side door and exchanged a few words with whoever sat on the passenger side. A few graceful strides brought him back up the stairs. It took forever to get the locks open. Her hands felt clumsy and thick.
The funeral smell of lilies and other florist shop herbiage was intensely strong in the front room. Knightly followed Nancy through the house. She snapped on the light and had a bad moment when she remembered that they had trashed the kitchen last night. Every surface was covered with spilled flour, shreds of dough. Grapes were squished on the floor. The scorched remains of the
schiacciata
looked sad and unkempt on the serving plate. Lucia’s fine-cut crystal liquor glasses were sticky with port. The bottles lay empty and forlorn under the kitchen table. He must think her a total lush. And a slob, too.
“We had a wake for her, last night,” she felt compelled to explain. “Me and my sisters. Up all night, with port wine and Tuscan pastry.”
He nodded. “A good thing to do.”
Nancy touched her aching head with her fingertips. “Felt that way at the time. So what was I…oh, yes. Coffee. Or tea.” She started rummaging in drawers. “Which do you prefer?”
“Tea, please. If Lucia has it. Or had it, I should say.”
She whipped her head around, suspicious. Was he teasing her?
The smile in his eyes disarmed her. She was almost betrayed into smiling back, but a vague sense of inappropriateness stopped her. “I thought you’d pick tea,” she murmured. “What kind? Green? Herbal?”
“Black tea,” he said. “With sugar and milk, if you have it. I’m Irish. I get the tea thing from my folks.”
“I’m Irish, too,” she confessed, for some odd reason. Like he cared.
He looked perplexed. “With a name like D’Onofrio? And Lucia…”
“Was Italian, yeah. Right down to her toenails.” Nancy yanked a green canister of Irish Breakfast tea out of the drawer. “Will this do?”
“That’ll be fine,” he assured her.
“She adopted us,” Nancy continued, rummaging for a teakettle. “She took us in as foster kids. I was thirteen. Nell and Vivi came later. My name was O’Sullivan, then.” The pans rattled as she shoved them around. “O’Sullivan was my mother’s name. I don’t know about my father. He could have been Italian, or anything else, for all I know. The way things went, I was lucky to have a surname at all.”
“Hey,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me all this, if you don’t—”
“I was so glad to be adopted by Lucia.” She kept talking, a tight, vibrating quaver in her voice. “So proud that she wanted me. I’ve been a D’Onofrio for more than half my life. So I guess I’m Italian now, too.” She yanked out a saucepan that was nested in the other pans and ended up pulling the whole cluster out of the shelf. They hit the floor, clanging, rolling. Nancy stared down, saucepan dangling from her hand, and felt his hands at her elbows. He gently steered her until she was in front of a chair, then pulled her back until she was forced to sit.
“I’ll take care of this.” He pried the saucepan out of her fingers.
He ran water into it, set it on the stove, and lit the gas. Then he gathered up the pans and slid them back into the cupboard. Without seeming to search, he assembled sugar, mugs, spoons, milk. He pushed the mess aside on the table, draped a tea bag in each cup.
Nancy pressed her hand over her mouth and let him do it.
Knightly poured the hot water, then sat down. After a few minutes, when she made no move to drink, he stirred some sugar and milk into the cups and nudged hers toward her. “Go on,” he urged. “Tea helps.”
She tried to smile, and took a cautious sip. Tears kept slipping down, one after another. Tickling. Dangling from her chin.
“She was a wonderful lady,” Knightly said gently. “Pure quality.”
Nancy wished she’d left her hair down, but it was slicked back, every wisp, and her wet face was naked, shrinking in the cold, gray light.
“Yes,” she whispered. “She really was.”
The sounds of the morning shifted into the foreground. Cars going by, rain sluicing down against the window glass. Steam rose, curling from the two cups. Liam Knightly reached out and took her hand.
Her first instinct was to yank it back, but she didn’t want to be rude, and he’d been so nice about the tears, and the tea. And besides. He had a nice hand. Big, warm, graceful. His grip made her hand tingle.
“I lost my mother, six years ago,” he offered.
“Oh. So, um. You know,” she said. “How it is.”
“I know how it is,” he echoed.
Tears blinded her again for a while. He sat with her, sipping tea. Holding her hand. Usually silence felt like emptiness that needed to be filled. Knightly’s silence made space for her to breathe. Space for tears, for her silly meltdown. He wasn’t put off. He was in no hurry.
It was strange, but she didn’t want it to end.
It occurred to her that this was the most intimacy she’d had, besides hugs from her sisters, since her last fiancé’s defection. Ah, hell, maybe before. The chaste way that Liam Knightly was holding her hand was more subtly erotic than anything she’d ever shared with Freedy.
That passing thought made her blush. She mopped her eyes and felt a square of cloth being tucked into her hand. She glanced at it, bemused. “I didn’t know people still used these.”
“I’m old-fashioned,” he said. “My father liked them.”
She dabbed her eyes with the crisply ironed cotton, wishing she looked prettier for him. Feeling stupid for wishing it.
“What happened to Lucia?” he asked.
The question jolted her out of her self-absorption, and thank God for it. “A thief broke into the house. She was here, alone. The shock and fear must have provoked a heart attack.”
His mouth tightened. “That’s terrible.”
“I was the one to find her,” she told him. “Two days later. I’d been calling. She hadn’t been answering. So I came to check.”
“Ah, Christ. That must have been terrible.” His hand tightened. “Did he…” He hesitated, clearly afraid to ask. “Had he hurt her?”
She gulped her tea and shook her head. “Not as far as they could tell. The chain on the door was broken. The TV, DVDs, and stereo were gone, and the computer. And Lucia’s jewelry.” She forced herself to sit up and pulled her hand away. “Let’s get back to practical matters.”
His subtle smile flickered. “If you like. There’s no rush.”
“I imagine you’re losing money right and left as the clock ticks.”
“I’m self-employed,” he replied. “I choose not to see my time that way. There’s time for tea and condolences for a lost friend.”
“Ah.” Well, hmmph. Just call her just brittle and shallow and tense, why didn’t he. “Um, thanks. Anyhow, I have no idea what kind of arrangement you made with Lucia, but—”
“How about if I just tell you?” he suggested mildly.
She retreated behind her tea mug. “Ah, okay,” she murmured.
He pulled a square of folded paper out of his pocket. It proved to be a floor plan of Lucia’s ground floor. Several notes and edits had been made, in Lucia’s distinctive, elegant script. It hurt to look at it.
“We chose this date to start the work a month ago,” he said. “She was going to make the changes to the ground floor that you see on that plan, build a new deck, put in new teak flooring, do over both the bathrooms and the kitchen, redo the stairs, enlarge the upstairs closets, finish the attic, and put in some skylights.”
“Ah…wow,” Nancy said. “I am so sorry that it, ah, went up in smoke. I imagine that makes problems for your work schedule.”
He shook his head. “I’ll be all right. I have plenty of work, and for this job, I’d hired only one assistant. But I have a truck full of building materials parked outside, and another full load in my barn back home. Bought and paid for. And that stuff’s not smoke.”
She was startled. “Bought already? Lucia bought it?”
“Yes. Twenty-two thousand dollars and change,” he said.
Nancy’s jaw dropped. “Twenty-two…my God! Is it refundable?”
Knightly gazed into his cup. “No,” he said, reluctantly. “I knew a guy who was going out of business and liquidating his stock. I took Lucia there a few weeks ago, and we picked out supplies at a quarter or a third of the list price. No refunds. The lumber’s all cut.”
Nancy rubbed her forehead. “Oh, lovely. This is all I need right now,” she muttered. “Twenty-two thousand bucks’ worth of lumber, flooring, tile, and bathroom and kitchen fixtures dumped on my head.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I liked her. I was trying to save her money.”
“Well, thanks for that,” she muttered, with bad grace.
He drummed his fingers against the table. “You’ve got a couple choices,” he said. “You can try to sell the stuff on eBay, or craigslist. Or you can go ahead with the renovation. It’ll boost your property value. Though I have no idea who owns the house.” He paused, delicately.
“My sisters and I,” Nancy supplied.
“Then all you have pay now is labor and a few odds and ends. You’d recover that and more in increased property value,” he said. “That way the investment won’t be wasted. If you intend to sell the house.”
Nancy chewed her lip. “We don’t ‘intend’ anything,” she said. “The funeral was yesterday. We have no plan. We have no clue. None.”
He lifted his hands up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pressure you.”
His quiet tone shamed her. This was not his fault. It was hard to think clearly. She kept losing the thread, getting muddled and lost. “My sisters should know this. Would you excuse me while I call them?”
He set down his cup and rose to his feet. “Certainly. Would you like me to leave while you make the call?”
“No, no. It’s fine. Sit down.” She waved him back down and dialed Vivi’s number. Nell, the impractical scholar and bookworm, had no cell phone. She considered cell phones evil, annoying, and probably carcinogenic, and refused to accept one even as a gift, which drove her sisters nuts. This, of course, amused Nell to no end. Naughty Nell.
“Yeah?” Vivi picked up, her voice sharp with alarm. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. It’s just that I’ve discovered a new wrinkle.” Nancy outlined the situation and waited while Vivi relayed it to Nell.
Her younger sisters conferred. Vivi came promptly back with the verdict. “Our combined opinion is that if Lucia wanted it done and went to the trouble of buying all the supplies, we should respect her wishes. But I don’t have any cash on hand to help pay the crew.” Nell said something emphatic in the background. “Neither does Nell,” Vivi added.
“Okay. I’ll look into some loans, then. Later, babes.”
“Eight o’clock tonight,” Vivi reminded her, in a steely tone.