Page 38 of Rebel Summer

“What?”

“Fifty hours for six weeks.”

My mouth dropped open as I caught his meaning. “Fifty?”

“Fifty hours, extra. On top of the two hundred.” He motioned toward the lobby. “At your snail’s pace, there’s no way you’ll get the Legos done in two hundred. If you want to be my neighbor, it’ll cost you in time.”

“That’s twenty-five percent extra work,” I protested.

“It’s simple supply and demand, Books.”

I could only stand there with my gaping mouth, trying to think.

“Unless you’d rather stay with?—“

“Ten.”

The smile was across his face before I could prepare myself for it. I tamped down the flutters swirling in my stomach.

“Fifty,” he said again.

“Fifteen.”

“Fifty.”

I shot him an exasperated look. “Fifty is too much. I have to be done by the end of July. I’ll help you paint. And retile.”

“It’s a brand-new remodel,” Dax admitted with a sheepish laugh. “Completely furnished. It doesn’t actually need any of those things.”

“What? So you’ve been sitting with it empty and ready to go for three years?” I asked incredulously.

“Three quiet years with no dogs tearing up my yard and no obnoxious neighbors.”

“I don’t have dogs. And I’ll be super quiet.”

He stared at me for a long moment, his face calculating. “If you want to cut a deal, I’m going to need you to prove your extensive tool knowledge.”

“What?” The teasing gleam in his eyes filled me with both hope and dread.

“If you show me exactly how to use a…” he thought for a moment, “torque wrench, I’ll give it to you for forty.”

My body stilled. “A torque wrench?”

A wolf on the scent, he visibly panicked. “No, I meant a?—“

“Nope! You said it!” I took off running toward his workbench where his tools were spread out across a pegboard. I raked my eyes over the tools before grabbing what I was looking for and began walking him through all the steps of using it.

I’d like to thank a broken down car in a sleepy Tennessee town and a sweet old mechanic thinking I cared to know about the tools he was using for that tidbit of knowledge.

“Alright. Double or nothing,” Dax tried, unsuccessfully attempting to hold back a smile.

“Nope. That’s what you get for being a jerk who assumes girls don’t know tools.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t think that about every girl. Just you. But I stand corrected.”

“Forty hours?” I held my hand out expectantly.

“Forty hours, Books.” His hand grasped mine to shake it and I had to keep myself from squealing. We had laid down our weapons momentarily to strike a deal. A deal that suddenly filled my mind with all kinds of exciting possibilities.

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