Page 6 of Not That Complicated

After three days of putting up with my bleached and balding carpet, I decided enough was enough. I measured the room, ordered a basic carpet from John Lewis, and got a recommendation from Lenny at The Lion for a good handyman. By the middle of the next week, my Adam-fixation/stain problem was on the way to being solved.

Craig Henderson—No Job Too Small!—showed up at nine a.m. sharp, as he’d said he would, with a big smile, a sturdy-looking sidekick named Kevin, and a can-do attitude.

It all started out so well.

That should have been my first warning.

CHAPTER THREE

I showed the guys upto my room and left them to it. Settling at my desk, I pulled up the design I was working on that I needed to finish by noon tomorrow, and that was as far as I got before Craig banged back down the stairs and came into my office.

“Right,” he said, standing in the doorway and scratching his pepper-and-salt stubbled jaw. “We’ve got to shift your furniture around a fair bit first. Don’t worry if you hear a bit of a racket. We’ll pull up the carpet you got there now, bring it down, and then we’ll get the new one up the stairs for you and fit it, all right?”

“That sounds great,” I said.

I hadn’t even bothered trying to drag the new carpet up on my own. I knew my limits. The delivery guys had run it in through the front door, dropped it in the hall, and left before I had the chance to ask them to take it upstairs. I’d rolled it like a log to lie against the wall so I didn’t have to keep climbing over it every time I needed to get out of the house, and called it good.

“Should be done by the end of the day,” Craig said.

“Marvellous. Thank you.” I started to turn back to my monitor, and stopped when Craig smiled at me, brows lifted.

“Cup of tea?” I guessed.

“Lovely.”

“…and a biscuit?” I said when he didn’t leave.

Craig winked and stomped off.

I made the tea and threw a few Hobnobs onto a plate. After brief consideration, I told myself not to be a selfish arse, and emptied the rest of the packet on there.

I stacked the cups and biscuits on a tray, carried it all upstairs, and swung into my bedroom in time to see Kevin single-handedly hip-thrust my bed past the open doorway. He was hunched over and shoving it for all he was worth, really putting his back and thighs into it. The bed bounced and skittered reluctantly but inevitably over the carpet.

Craig was busy moving the chest of drawers. He simply picked it up in his brawny arms and waddle-walked it to the same side of the room as Kevin had wrangled the bed. Everything else had already been stacked there; bedside table, steamer trunk, the small bookshelf, the laundry basket.

I stood in the doorway, feeling vaguely violated despite their obvious lack of interest in my personal space and effects.

“Ah,” Craig said when he spotted me. “Tea break.”

They’d been here for fifteen minutes. But, okay.

I headed across the room to set the tray on the chest of drawers. Right in the middle, a board groaned horribly when I trod on it. I stopped, startled. Craig was surveying the cleared side of the room. Kevin’s attention had locked onto the tea tray, but he glanced up when I stopped.

I rocked forward half a step and back again.

The board groaned like a pirate ship.

Kevin looked away quickly.

That was new.

I continued over to the chest of drawers, put the tray down, then moseyed on back.

I paused on the creaky board. Once more, it groaned.

Hmm.

I left them to it and jogged back down the stairs to get on with some work.

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