Nicole Helm - Too Friendly to Date

Maybe if she showed her family “before” pictures, they’d be impressed with how far she’d come.

On a sigh, Leah stepped into her room. Yeah, she was definitely going to need some help in the cleanup department. She smiled a little. It was nice knowing she’d have friends who’d chip in without a second thought.

MC and its employees had become her second family. For a while, she thought it’d be enough. She could do without her parents, and the brother she’d never been all that close to, because she had friends who cared about her. She didn’t know when that suddenly hadn’t been enough. But it wasn’t anymore.

She slipped out of the dress and examined the long white scar down the center of her chest. Mostly she tried to pretend it wasn’t there. A reminder of too many things she wanted to forget.

Fifteen years. For fifteen years someone else’s heart had beat in there. The five years directly following the transplant, she hadn’t treated it or herself or her family well. In fact, her careless, selfish, destructive behavior had almost broken them all apart as much as it had almost killed her.

So, she’d left Minnesota and moved in with the black-sheep aunt no one in her family talked to. She’d gotten her life and health together, put herself through electrician training. And without her and her health issues in the way, Mom and Dad had gotten back together after the stress of her health and hospital bills had caused them to separate.

Now she had this life. And it was good and enough time had passed that she wanted to heal. Wanted to have a family to spend holidays with. Wanted her brother to forgive her for wrecking their family. She wanted to make up everything she’d ruined.

So, if she had to lie, cheat or steal to accomplish it, she would. Hopefully it ended with the lying. Even more hopefully, it ended without her even more screwed up about Jacob than she already was.

CHAPTER TWO

JACOB STOOD IN front of the dilapidated old Victorian on Jasmine Street in the heart of Bluff City, Iowa. It was surrounded by renovated or completely rebuilt houses and small businesses. It was an eyesore and for sale.

Perfect.

Leah stepped out of the house followed by Henry, MC’s plumber. They were both covered in dust and wore hard hats. Jacob had already toured the place twice before he’d brought out Leah and Henry, so today he’d stayed outside, not wanting to hover over them while they checked it out.

“Have to rewire everything, and I mean everything. There’s not crap for restoring, electrically speaking.” Leah stood next to him, squinting at the old house.

“Plumbing, too. Have to redo everything. Shit hole.” Henry’s plumbing estimation.

“Pipe dream, boss.” Leah clapped him on the shoulder, but he barely felt it.

Yeah, pipe dream, but he could see it. He could see it fully restored and absolutely perfect. With Grace and Kyle—his business partner and now also his sister’s boyfriend—moving out of the main house once their house was finished being built back in their hometown of Carvelle, Jacob was thinking about selling that first project. Without people sharing the same roof, the big house on the bluff was too much for him. MC had a strong enough reputation he didn’t need the grand showpiece as an office anymore, and he really didn’t want to think about living in that monster by himself.

This house would be a better size. He could work and live there like he did at the main house. It could still be a bit of a showcase of what he could do. Right in the heart of town. And if he bought it, it wouldn’t be demolished and turned into a strip mall.

“Jacob.”

“Hmm?”

“It’s a money pit.”

Jacob spared Leah a glance. “My favorite kind.”

She shook her head. “One of these days it’s going to blow up in your face. You can’t keep taking risks like this.”

“What’s life without a little risk?” Jacob turned his attention back to the house. Especially when the risk was this perfect. “I’ll put a lowball offer in. See what happens.”

“What about the Perkins house?”

“I can do both.”

Leah shook her head again. She did that a lot when he got on one of his extracurricular projects, but she also always pitched in. She’d complain and poke fun until she was blue in the face, but she’d be the first one there with him and the last one to leave. He supposed that was how she’d somehow suckered him and Grace and Kyle into helping her clean up her house before her family’s arrival.

Speaking of that. “You gonna have food tonight?”

Leah slid the hard hat off her head, began tapping it against her thigh. “I’ll order some pizza. Buy some beer and sodas.”

“Dessert?” He grinned over at her when she scowled. She had a big, dirty coat on over her sweatshirt. Her hair was a static mess from the hard hat. Her cheeks were pink from the cold.

Jacob looked back at the house. This sex drought was really, really getting to him.

“I’ll get some snickerdoodles.”

“If it doesn’t contain chocolate, it is not a dessert.”

“I’m not buying a bunch of chocolate and watching you guys scarf it down when I can’t have any. Cruel and unusual.”

“Not our fault you’re allergic to everything.”

“One pan of brownies. Store-bought. And you’re taking all the leftovers home with you.”

Jacob grinned, slung his arm over her shoulders. “You drive a hard bargain. Guess I can live with that while I’m slaving away cleaning your pigsty.”

She wiggled out from under his arm. “Think of it this way. You get a front-row seat to the look on Kyle’s face when he sees how messy I really am.”

Yeah, seeing his anal-retentive partner’s face when he got a load of Leah’s place was going to be fun. “Fair enough.”

“You two gonna blab all afternoon? Freezing my balls off.” Henry marched over to the truck.

Leah rolled her eyes and followed suit. Jacob took a few extra seconds to give the house one last look. It was going to be his, money pit or no money pit.

* * *

“LEAH, MY GOD, how do you live like this?”

Leah had to bite back a smile. She was messy. Definitely. She knew it wasn’t an attractive quality and it embarrassed her...sometimes.

But Kyle’s complete and utter horror was too funny.

“Thanks for coming, guys. Food and drinks are in the kitchen. Grab what you want. I did actually clean that room.”

It had taken all weekend and then another hour this afternoon when she’d gotten home from work, but it was one room down and she was determined to keep it clean until Friday, when her parents and Marc arrived.

“As far as cleaning goes, trash anything you want. Everything with any sentimental value is in my room, which I don’t need help with.” It needed help, no doubt, but she didn’t like the idea of Jacob poking around in there. Not when he was likely to find all sorts of things she didn’t want him seeing. Pill bottles, inhalers, old pictures. No, she didn’t want him, or any of her friends, seeing any of that.

“Leah, this isn’t going to take an evening. This is going to take a decade.”

Leah patted Kyle’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’ll survive. I promise. If you start having chest pains or a numb feeling in your arm, you just tell Grace and she’ll rush you to the hospital.”

“Ha-ha.” But he smiled, which was becoming more and more normal. Man, that was nice. Leah liked seeing Grace and Kyle together. The easy way they balanced each other out, made each other happy.

Anytime she thought of that and felt a little bit jealous, she immediately blocked the feeling out. She refused to be jealous of anyone anymore. That was part of what had caused her so many problems after her surgery.