Page 24 of Heating Up (Nugget)
He went out to the truck and lugged the large box into her room. Then went back to his room for the toolbox and returned. “There you go.”
“’Night, Aidan. Thanks for the air conditioner.” She stood in front of it for a few seconds just like he had. The only difference was, it blew her dress up. He enjoyed watching her frantically pull it back down.
In his room, he quickly stripped and got under the covers. A few minutes later he realized he didn’t have curtains, and the late afternoon sun was streaming through his windows. Shit. Tomorrow he’d have to get blackout shades. Given his schedule, he often slept during the daytime. In the meantime, he pulled the blanket over his head and shut his eyes. He slipped off to sleep only to be awakened by a loud crashing and a litany of curses that would’ve done a dock worker proud.
“Make it go away,” he muttered, and prayed that if he stayed under the covers long enough, Dana would give up and stop making noise.
But ten minutes later it sounded like she’d driven an eighteen-wheeler into the wall. “No rest for the weary,” he said out loud, threw the blanket off, and put his clothes back on.
When he entered her room, she sat in a pile of parts with her face in her hands. She had changed into yoga pants, and was putting the damn closet organizer in—backward.
“Here, give me that.” He took the hammer from her. Apparently, she thought she could beat the organizer into submission. “Get all this stuff out of the way.”
The mess was probably sending her into a tizzy. The bed was already piled with clothes, a couple of handbags, and shoes. For a woman who’d lost everything in a fire just days ago, she sure had a lot of crap.
“No, I can do it. You go back to bed.”
He fixed her with a look that saidWho can sleep with all this racket?
When he started dissembling the pieces, she shouted, “What are you doing?”
“You did it wrong.”
“No, I didn’t. I read the instructions.”
“Well, that was your first mistake.” He demonstrated how the shelves were on the wrong side.
“Oh,” she said, like it was a giant revelation that shelves should face out, not in.
“First you put the tracks in, then you add the rest of this stuff.” He looked down at the rods, racks, and shelves that were now strewn across the floor.
“That’s not what it said in the directions.”
He picked the instructions up, crumpled them into a ball, and tossed them into her white wicker waste basket. For a second he thought her head would explode.
Then he found his drill and deftly screwed the tracks into the wall. For the next hour he built her a closet organizer that rivaled the one on the box, using scraps of lumber he’d found in the garage.
“You want shoe racks down here?” He was trying to use every inch of space.
“That would be great.” She sat cross-legged on the floor, handing him tools from time to time.
He trudged back out to the garage to see what he could find, returning with a couple of shelves that already had lips on them. Tawny must’ve used them for her boots. Aidan attached them to the back of the closet at an angle for easy access. In the process of scrounging, he’d also come across a few spare hooks and screwed them into the only wall space left. Dana could use them to hang belts, scarves, or whatever.
He gathered up his tools and sent Dana after a broom and a dustpan. She took over the cleaning and then he watched as she gleefully hung up her clothes, organizing each piece by color.
“This is even better than my old closet. Thank you, Aidan. Seriously, this is a dream.”
He watched some more as she carefully selected which shoes should go where, deliberating over every choice. Honestly, he’d never seen a woman happier in his life. And for some bizarre reason he found it endearing. It must be sleep deprivation, he told himself.
“You think you could let me go to bed now?”
She turned to him and nodded. “I’m sorry. Yes, of course, go sleep. And thank you so much for doing this.”
For a second he thought she was going to hug him. But he got the sense that Dana wasn’t terribly demonstrative. Maybe if he was a file cabinet or a spice rack she’d really let her emotions flow.
Still, he fell asleep with the image of her lining up her handbags in perfect straight rows and a smile on his lips.
Chapter 6
