Page 10 of Her Christmas Fix
When I first came to Wild Rose Point after retiring from the army, I had no place better to go. No family left and no home to speak of, but I was friends with Noah Kendrick, who runs the Salty Dog Diner in town and helps former military members get back on their feet when they need it.
I landed on my feet okay. If you don’t count the nightmares and occasional shakes and the occasional propensity to use brown whiskey as a sleep aid. Noah offered me a job in the café when I showed up in town, but waiting tables wasn’t my vibe. However, I’d tagged along on enough construction jobs with my grandpa growing up outside of Spokane that I figured working with my hands would be a better fit.
Mason Pierce, who runs the biggest construction outfit in town, put me to work on one of his crews. But I took orders for way too many years to be good with that for long. Enough is going on in and around Wild Rose Point that once I decided to hang up my own shingle, I’ve been kept plenty busy. Hell, Mason even referred the smaller jobs he didn’t have room for in hisschedule. I managed to hire a couple of guys of my own and keep all of us busy.
Then I got lured in by fucking Daniel Peters.
The guy had been a top-notch ego stroker when he called to say he wanted me to handle the entire renovation, soup to nuts. Like Monika’s late grandmother, I’d been fascinated with the house on the bluff, sitting empty since I moved to town. I loved the idea of putting my stamp on it and let myself believe Daniel when he told me that he was coming to me instead of Mason because my work was the kind that might put the house and my name on the pages of some fancy architecture magazines.
Oh yeah, I liked having my ass kissed after years of being underestimated. Even when Mason gave me a gentle warning that sometimes things that seem too good to be true are, I figured I could handle it. So I went all in.
It was great until the payments stopped. He made excuses and promises, and I had so much invested at that point—time, money, and most of all my stupid fucking pride—that I drained my own savings to cover things in the interim. The money that I’d been saving not just for me, but for my best friend’s widow and her kids.
I made it out of the military with nightmares and a propensity to self-anesthetize, but Joey Jones, the guy who’d been my literal ride or die for decades, carried much darker demons. Ones that turned his young wife into a young widow and left me with a case of survivor’s guilt that haunted way worse than the horrors of war ever could.
Susanna had the house she wanted picked out once I convinced her to let me help her buy it, and then I had to tell her the money was gone. She didn’t ask why—probably assumed I drank or gambled or whored it away like Joey had with most of their savings. And I’d been too big of a chickenshit to tell her anything different, because what did it matter?
I failed.
I’d failed to keep my best friend alive, and I’d failed at the silent promise I’d made to him at his funeral service. I probably should have taken legal action, but there’s that goddamn pride again. I wasn’t going to let it be known that I’d been suckered.
So even though Monika has a lot of self-recrimination about being taken in by her con-artist ex-boyfriend/manager, she’s not the only one. But now that I know that she’s as much of a victim as me—and I hate thinking of myself as a victim—well, it’s hard not to notice how she throws herself into the work with a determination that catches me off guard.
She shows up every morning with her hair pulled back in a messy bun, wearing paint-splattered jeans and old t-shirts that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe but which she treats like they’re disposable. She listens when I explain things, asks thoughtful questions, and isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty.
More than that, it’s hard not to notice how beautiful she is, especially when she’s not trying. Yesterday, she had drywall dust in her hair and a smudge of primer on her cheek, and was laughing at herself for hammering her thumb instead of a nail. And I had to pretend I needed something from my truck just to walk outside and get my head straight.
I made that joke about her being a diva. But she’s the opposite of everything I expected. Case in point: the shy smile she flashes as we’re packing up tools for the day.
“I should cook dinner,” she announces even as her green eyes flick to me then away again. “You’ve been feeding me for three days. It’s my turn.”
I try not to look skeptical, but clearly have a shit poker face because she laughs.
“Okay, I’m not exactly a domestic goddess. But I can manage something simple. How does pasta sound?”
Domesticity aside, she’s a goddess in every other sense of the word. The kind I’d give anything for a chance to worship. I clear my throat, and turn partially away before she realizes the effect she has on certain parts of my anatomy. “Pasta is my favorite.”
An hour later, I walk into the kitchen after a shower and change of clothes, and discover that my Hollywood goddess has turned making spaghetti into a slight natural disaster. Tomato sauce is splattered on the backsplash, she’s got three burners on for unexplained reasons, and there’s water sizzling on the stovetop under one of the pots where the water’s boiled over.
“Tell me about the decision to go with three pots,” I say, surveying the damage.
She waves her wooden spoon at them, accidentally flicking more sauce onto the tile backsplash. “One for pasta, one for sauce, and one for...”
She pauses, then turns off the third burner. “I was testing whether a watched pot actually boils. You know, one watched, one unwatched. For science.”
I nod as if I’m following her logic, which is the least logical thing I’ve heard in a while. “And?”
“I forgot to watch either of them, so the experiment’s compromised.” She shrugs, completely unbothered by the absurdity of it. “I also forgot to turn the third one off.”
I can’t help laughing. “So maybe science isn’t your thing?”
“I once played a nuclear physicist, but they killed off the character in the opening scene.” When she grins at me, there’s a tiny splash of sauce on her cheek that I have to resist the urge to wipe off. “This is why my daughter insists on cooking when she’s with me. My specialty is making reservations.”
“Smart kid,” I mutter and lean over to slide the experiment pot off the burner.
She bumps me with her hip as I reach past her. “Maybe I need better supervision.”
“You’re doing just fine.”
