with her explanation, she released a pent-up breath and directed her attention to her daughter. “You all set, sweetheart?”
Belle scrambled up from the table. “Yes, Mommy.”
“Then let’s go paint your room.”
Together, she and her daughter climbed the stairs. Brandon had taped off the windows in their absence. When she met his hazel gaze her heart thumped an extra beat and her pulse kicked up. Then her hands started shaking. If it continued she wouldn’t be able to paint straight lines along the ceiling and baseboards. She needed to give her blood sugar time to level out before attempting something that meticulous.
“I’ll roll if you’ll cut in,” she suggested.
“Got it,” he replied and positioned the stepladder in the far corner.
She took one final look around the room. The last time she’d decorated in here had been a month after Belle’s birth. She and Rick hadn’t wanted to know their baby’s sex before delivery. That meant no personalization. Afterward, caring for two children with Rick’s hectic schedule, not to mention their tight budget, had limited Hannah’s decorating to hanging a border of pastel merry-go-round horses on the builder-beige walls. Now her baby girl wanted pink walls with ballerina pictures. That was no surprise considering she’d started dance classes this spring.
“Are you starting here?” Brandon stood beside her, one dark eyebrow cocked.
She startled over his proximity. How had he crossed the plastic drop cloth she’d spread on the floor after removing most of Belle’s furniture so quietly? “Yes. I’ll go clockwise if you’ll go the opposite.”
She winced when she looked at his face. He had to be hurting. Each time she’d touched him he’d flinched. When she’d finished he’d been one big knot of muscles. The professional side of her had wanted to massage the kinks loose, but the personal side of her had rejected the idea. He wasn’t her patient.
Brandon was a trouper to work through the discomfort, and for that, she was grateful. But he had a point about Mason being on the computer. Under the guise of checking her email while she was downstairs, she’d ensured her parental controls were still in place before letting Mason have the laptop.
“You washed the walls after removing the border?” Brandon asked.
Of course he’d remember the border. He’d loaned her his level and shown her how to mark a straight line for hanging the paper. “Last week.”
Brandon lifted the lids on each of the paint cans and poured all three into an empty five-gallon bucket. Nine years ago she’d messed up Mason’s room because one of the batches of paint hadn’t been mixed correctly. She’d ended up with a streaky mess of slightly different shades of the same color paint on the walls. After she’d bought replacements, Brandon had shown her the trick of mixing all the buckets beforehand to ensure a uniform result. It had been an expensive lesson—that was the only reason she recalled it so clearly.
His muscles bulged as he lifted the heavy bucket and carefully poured some of the pink liquid into a rolling pan for her and then a smaller pail for himself. The veins lining his hair-dusted forearms and biceps were a sign of his good muscle tone. He’d always been brawnier than Rick, and more adept at doing the physical stuff that this old house required. And he’d never been stingy with his time even though he had his own projects.
He expertly used his brush to catch any drips then looked up and caught her watching him. “You okay?”
She blinked and felt her cheeks warm. “Yes.”
Why was she so focused on him? She had a job to do and a limited amount of time to get it done before the children needed attention. She slid a roller onto her handle and pushed it through the thick liquid and then onto the wall, but the mindless back and forth action wasn’t enough to erase the realization that Brandon had been a part of every major project she and Rick had completed together on this old house.
Brandon had been the one who’d taught both her and Rick how to paint, build swing sets, plant shrubs and grass and to safely replace faulty outlets and faucets along with countless other chores. If Brandon hadn’t known how to do it, he’d been the one to liaise with the contractors for them because he spoke their language. She and Rick would have been lost without him. They never could have taken on this house without him.
So even though she’d banned Brandon from their lives for five years, he’d been here all along, embedded into the walls and the soil around her home. But that didn’t mean she could forgive him for not watching Rick’s back—no matter what the preacher had said this morning.
“Mommy!” Belle’s panicked cry almost made her drop the roller.
“What is it, baby?”
“I messed up. I painted the wrong color in the nine spot.”
“It’s okay. When it dries you can paint over it.”
“But I want to do it now!”
Tired eyes filled with tears. Because they’d moved Belle’s furniture yesterday, Belle had stayed in Hannah’s bed last night. That meant her baby girl hadn’t slept well and was cranky today.
Brandon descended the ladder to survey the disaster then cut his eyes Hannah’s way. “If you’ll get me a cotton swab I’ll show you how to fix it.”
Hannah hurried to retrieve one from her bathroom. Brandon took it. Their fingers brushed, and that unsettling sensation swept through her again. If her sudden agitation wasn’t caused by low blood sugar, then what was it? The only other time she’d felt like this was when Rick had—
No. It was not desire. Not for Brandon. She staggered back a step—away from the man and the idea.
“You fixed it, Occifer Brandon!” Belle’s excited cry yanked Hannah out of her unpleasant thoughts. Her daughter threw her arms around Brandon and hugged him.
Hannah blinked. She’d completely missed his magical fix. Her confusion must have shown in her face because Brandon winked and displayed the paint-stained cotton swab with a smile on his swollen lips. That smile/wink combo made Hannah’s stomach flip.
“The acrylics are water-soluble. A little dab’ll do ya’. Knock yourself out, kiddo.” He ruffled Belle’s hair and she beamed.
Hannah marveled at how good he was with her daughter. Not many single men would be. He returned to the ladder and Hannah’s gaze followed, fixing on the muscles stretching denim as he climbed. She flushed hot all over and her palms moistened. Her tongue felt thick and dry, then panic quickened her heart as she acknowledged the undeniable. Her reaction to Brandon Martin was...sexual.
Her libido had been buried with Rick. It was a sick, cruel joke that her womanly needs had been resurrected by the man responsible for putting her husband in his grave. The one man she could never trust with her future because he’d already ruined her past.
* * *
BRANDON POINTED THE water hose at a paint tray and absently surveyed Hannah’s backyard while he formulated a plan. He had to build a rapport with Mason if he wanted the boy to trust him enough to confide in him. Putting some distance between him and Hannah wasn’t a bad idea, either.
Three hours confined to the same small room with her had totally screwed with his usual ability to block out distractions. He’d been aware of every move she made, every sigh and every sound. The only time he’d been able to relax was when she’d left the room to check on Mason. Even then he’d wanted to follow and observe her interaction with the boy to see if the kid was hiding something. But he was trying to respect the boundaries she’d marked.
He finished washing up the painting gear and debated going home. But he had a job to do, and cutting corners on an investigation had never been his way of dealing with complications. He stored the materials in the garage and reentered the house. He found Hannah in the den standing behind the sofa and reading the laptop screen over her son’s shoulder.