Free Barefoot in the Rain by Roxanne St. Claire Page B

costly required a steady hand and a completely focused brain, and, shit, he’d been fighting for both of those since he’d left Guy’s house a few hours ago.
    When he finished cutting the plank, he shut off the saw and shoved his safety goggles onto his head, meeting his visitor’s gaze as she stood in the doorway of Casa Blanca’s largest villa, Bay Laurel.
    “You like?” he asked, gesturing to the one-quarter of the living-area floor he’d managed to nail down.
    “I do.” She raised her bright red sports water bottle in a mock toast. “This must be the astronomically expensiveAfrican wood that Clay’s been talking about for two months, right?”
    He grinned. “I picked it up on Friday.” Grabbing his own water and a bandanna to wipe the sweat from his forehead, he paused to admire the wood he’d laid so far. Scary thing was, he didn’t remember leveling or nailing half those planks. His head was not in the game. But the wood was gorgeous, perfectly grained and beautifully stained. “Bay Laurel’s going to be spectacular when it’s done.”
    “As nice as Rockrose?” Tessa asked. “I saw it last night all finished for the first time.”
    “Yeah, I understand we have our first guest.” He picked up the freshly cut plank, dusted off the sawed edge, and rounded his cutting table to return to the floor.
    She nodded. “Small world, isn’t it?”
    He threw her a look as he passed, trying—and failing—to read the expression on a face he’d gotten to know pretty well in the months they’d both worked at Casa Blanca.
    “Sure seems that way,” he said, laying the board so he could get the blind nailer on top of it and start hammering.
    Tessa stepped over the new wood, getting her footing on the underlayment that hadn’t been covered yet, and settled into a corner of the room like she was ready to chat.
    Not that unusual; they’d had plenty of conversations about the resort, her gardens, the other construction workers when someone irritated them. But he knew that she knew—no, he didn’t know what she knew.
    And that made everything awkward.
    He kneed the nailer against the board and waited to let her set the direction and tone of the conversation.
    “So you and Jocelyn were next-door neighbors.”
    So
that
would be the direction and tone.
    “Moved in next door when we were both ten,” he confirmed, scooping up the soft-headed dead-blow hammer to start nailing the flooring. This was a critical plank, part of a decorative band of darker wood that offset the shape of the room, an idea he’d had and really wanted to make perfect to impress Clay.
    He’d have a better shot at perfection if he wasn’t nailing at the same time he was having this conversation.
    But Tessa sipped her water and watched, not going anywhere.
    He raised his hammer just as she asked, “Were you two close?”
    He swung and missed the fucker completely.
    “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I didn’t know it was like batting.”
    “It’s nothing like batting,” he said, shifting his knee on the pad and looking over at her. “And, yeah, we were good friends.” The next question burned, and he couldn’t help himself. “She never mentioned me?”
    Tessa looked at him for a beat too long, a lock of wavy brown hair falling from her bright-yellow work bandanna, her soft brown eyes narrowed on him. She never wore makeup, he’d noticed, not even for employee parties or barbecues at Lacey and Clay’s place. But her eyes were always bright and clear, probably from all those vitamins and organic crap she ate.
    “No,” she said simply. “Not once.”
    He nodded and raised the hammer again. This time he hit it direct and hard, a satisfying vibration shooting up his arm.
Not once
.
    Why would she mention him? He’d never even called to find out where she was, if she made it to college, how she made it to college.
Not once.
And she’d never called him, either. He’d stopped waiting sometime around the middle of his first