I can’t believe I called him. I held my breath as I watched the three little dots on my phone screen as it tried to make the connection. Maybe he wouldn’t answer. My number would probably show up as unidentified. I never answered those, why should Chase?

“Good morning,” he said on the third ring, his voice still a little rough around the edges. God, it was sexy as sin and took me straight back to what we’d done in my hallway last night. Molten heat poured through me, taking my breath away. This is exactly what I’d hoped to avoid.

“Barely,” I said. It was ten minutes to noon.

“Sleep well, did you?” He was teasing me. Chase was cool and sultry, I was a mess. I’d gotten the idea to call him. Now I had no blasted idea what to say.

“Well enough,” I answered. “I’m sorry to bother you. I just sort of wanted to apologize.”

“Just sort of?”

There was ambient noise behind him, wind maybe, or cars rushing by. “Mostly,” I said. “And also to thank you for trying to take care of me.”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone and Chase’s voice was muffled like he might be holding his hand over it. Shit. He was in the middle of something. Of course he would be. I was just another conquest for him. I knew that the minute I left the bar with him. At the time, it’s what I was after. The glow of arousal I felt at the sound of his voice turned quickly to the heat of embarrassment. I just wanted to end the call with whatever shred of dignity I could muster.

“Ariel.” He came back. “This is a bad time.”

“Of course.” My throat ran dry. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

Chase responded with that wicked little laugh that had revved my engine last night. I gripped the phone tighter, glad as hell he couldn’t see my face.

“You’re not bothering me. I didn’t mean that. I just mean I’d like to continue this conversation later. When’s a good time?”

“What? I didn’t ... I wasn’t. No. It’s nothing. I just wasn’t quite in my right mind last night. I wasn’t properly appreciative of what you tried to do for me.”

That laugh again. A tremor went through me. “Baby, if that’s what you think, I’d sure like to be around you when you’re in your right mind.”

Fire lit inside of me. Oh God. This man had a downright sinful effect on me. Even through the phone I knew what he was thinking. When I closed my eyes, all I could see was the mirror reflection from last night as Chase drove himself home, took me to the edge of pleasure and back again.

“Chase,” I said, biting my lip.

I could tell he was smiling from the tone of his voice. “I want to see you again.”

There it was, bold, commanding. What had I expected when I called him? Nothing. At least, that’s what I tried to tell myself. I’d wanted to take the upper hand. I wanted to do the decent thing and thank him for seeing me home safe. He’d been right about the eggs. I’d have a massive tequila headache right now if he hadn’t been there. And I’d wanted to be dismissive as if last night hadn’t turned everything upside down. I had soundly failed at all my objectives.

“I didn’t ... I meant …”

There was a commotion on the other end of the phone. The noise was muffled again. Then Chase came back on. “Baby, I’m going to have to call you back. I’m out on business today but we’ll be back in town later tonight. Can I call you?”

“Call me? Oh. I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. I was really just trying to thank you.”

There was a shout in the distance. Chase hollered back, “Got it. Let’s roll!”

“Chase?”

“Call you in a few hours,” he said. Then the call ended.

I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it. I jumped off the window ledge as if it had grown radioactive. “Well done,” I said into the air. I’d just failed on every level. I probably sounded needy as hell to him. It was the last thing I’d intended.

Leaning against the wall, I blew a strand of hair out of my eyes. I stood in the upstairs master bedroom of the Hutchins Street house. The desire to smash some shit poured through me. It would help me clear Chase out of my head. Because I needed to. That had been my whole point in trying to head him off with that phone call. But it seemed every intention I had where that man was concerned backfired on me.

Grabbing my sledgehammer from against the wall, I walked to the north window. The Hutchins Street house had a huge yard behind it. I wanted to change this slider to custom French doors, rebuild and extend the deck off the back. No other house on the street would have one like it. It was a beautiful view.

“We’re good to go with the water lines.” Bobby’s voice cut through the fog in my mind. Gripping the handle of my hammer, I turned to him.

“Everything’s shut off?” I asked. Bobby nodded.

“Great. Time to start smashing some walls.”

“We doing a complete tear-out with this hallway bathroom?” he asked.

“Yup. And the wall between it and this room. I want to build a master suite. There’s room for a half bath at the other end of the hall.”

“Sounds good,” Bobby said, giving me a half-assed salute. I had my whole crew working demo in this house today. It would be cathartic as hell. The house shook from the first hammer blows in the kitchen. I had Ryan and the rest of the crew down there ripping out kitchen cabinets. As Bobby egged me on, I went to the wall separating the master bedroom and the first-floor bathroom. Then I raised the sledgehammer and smashed a hole in the wall. As the impact vibrated through my shoulders, my head began to clear.

“Oh yeah,” I yelled. “I love demo day.”

Each hammer blow helped. Plaster fell all around me exposing the wooden skeleton of the wall behind it. As more space opened up, the vision in my head became more real. This space would be beautiful. The natural light coming from the west windows made plaster particles spin like fairy dust.

My shoulders ached from exertion and sweat poured down my back. It was good, hard work. For me, it was as soul-cleansing as church. This was my religion. Breaking away barriers to reveal something better beneath it. Hours passed like minutes until finally I had nothing but studs in front of me.

Panting, I wiped my brow with my gloved hand and stood back. Laughter rose from the basement as my crew set to work on what would be the third bathroom down there. I stepped through the debris and pulled off the last loose bits of plaster. The floor creaked. As I pulled away the remnants of the old baseboards, something caught my eye.

“What treasures did you leave for me today?” I said to the air. I reached into the open space. A hole had opened up in the floor and I could see clear through to the kitchen. Bobby was down there, pulling off the last of the cabinets.

I felt around in the hole in the floor. It was amazing the kind of things we’d find. At a house on Beckham Street last year, Ryan had found an unopened six-pack of Billy Beer behind a bathroom wall. The year before that, I’d nearly had a heart attack when I punched a hole in a wall on a Mulberry Street project and found a face staring back at me. It had been a life-sized porcelain doll. Why the hell anyone had buried it behind drywall, I’ll never know. Today, my find was equally odd. The object was wrapped in dirty, rust-covered rags that may have been white at some point. As I peeled back the stiff fabric, I found a pair of praying hands. They were metal, pewter maybe. I couldn’t be sure, but from the weight of it, I guessed this had been a bookend or something. I wrapped the cloth back around it and set it aside. Later, I’d see if I could find a marking or something on the tiny statue. You never knew when something like that might be a collectible.

“Hey, boss!” Ryan said, seeing movement in the ceiling above him. He gave me a wave and I laughed.

“Anything good down there?” I yelled.

“Nah,” he said. “Some refrigerator magnets and a couple of mason jars.”

“Damn,” I yelled back. “Looks like we gotta keep working for a living.”

The light was fading. I’d forgotten to break for lunch. I was caked with sweat and covered with plaster dust, but I felt good, rejuvenated. Running my hands along the eastern wall, I closed my eyes and imagined this room as I wanted it. The floors were solid oak. They would gleam once I was done with them. I wanted something bright and colorful in the bathroom.

A second vision snapped into my mind as I came to the northern window, where I wanted to extend the balcony. My thoughts drifted to Chase and what had happened in this very house. Hell, it might have happened in this very room, for all I knew. The newspaper article about Rochelle Raines’s murder hadn’t been heavy on details.

A chill ran through me as I ran my fingers along the wall. I stepped into the hallway. There were two bedrooms on either side. Which had been Chase’s? Had he been happy here before his world fell apart? I wanted to think he had been.

“Chase,” I whispered as I pressed my back against the wall and closed my eyes. Smashing wood and plaster had helped me push him out of my mind, but it hadn’t lasted. I could still feel his lips on mine. Goosebumps covered me as I remembered how full he’d made me.

I still wanted him. It was as if he had some hold on this house too. It was part of him. I’d seen it in his eyes the day I met him. He was so strong, so virile, but there was a broken little boy inside of him too.

“What happened to you that day, baby?” I whispered to the walls. I wanted to know, but feared the truth might tear me apart.

“You mind if we call it a day?” Bobby poked his head around the corner. He was covered in plaster dust and sweat too. I pulled my mask over my head and tossed it on the ground.

“What time is it?”

“Almost six. You’ve been busy,” he said, walking past me into the master bedroom.

“We should finish demo tomorrow if we’re lucky,” I said. “I want to get the cleanup crew in here by Monday. I’m looking for a four-week turnaround on this one.”

Bobby whistled. “Hardcore. I think we can make it.”

“Good,” I said, slapping him on the back. “And yes. Call it a day. We’ll get an earlier start in the morning. You don’t mind working Sunday, do you?”

“You know we don’t,” he said. I tousled Bobby’s hair. He was such a good kid who had a shitheel of a family. His father had been in and out of jail his entire life. If I hadn’t plucked him out of his machine shop class his senior year, Bobby might have joined him.

He yelled down to the rest of the crew. “You want us to wait for you?” he called back.

“Nope,” I answered. “I’m just gonna do a walk-through while the space is empty. I think I’ve got my design plan set, but there are a few things I want to be sure of.”

“Got it,” he answered. “See you in the morning.”

As Bobby opened the front door, my heart stood still. He looked back, a smile breaking wide. “You’ve got company, boss,” he said. I could already see it. Chase’s Harley was parked in the driveway.

The fading sun lit his hair gold as I stood in the doorway. I could see my reflection in his mirrored sunglasses as I stepped off the porch. Bobby gave Chase a quick wave as he bounded past him and hopped into the passenger side of one of the trucks. Ryan was in the driver’s seat. He shot me a questioning look. I smoothed back my hair and waved them off.

I was a mess. A wreck inside and out. I had a day’s worth of grime and sweat coating every inch of me. I wore beat-up work boots and a denim overall with the legs cut off. They had fourteen kinds of paint spattered all over them.

Ryan pulled away from the curb and gave me one last wave as he left me alone with Chase Cutter. He swung his leg off the bike and came toward me, tucking his sunglasses into his pocket. I was sweating my brains out in the Texas heat, but it didn’t seem to affect Chase at all. It was as if he were made for this climate with his sun-kissed hair and tanned skin. With my red hair, I was prone to burn.

Chase stopped a foot away from me. We were eye to eye as I stood on the top step of the porch. He reached for me, picking a chunk of plaster out of my hair and flicking it into the lawn.

“Would you like to see it?” I asked.

Chase’s smile faltered until he realized my meaning. He looked up at the house. “You think there’s something worth saving here?”

I swallowed past a lump in my throat. The question seemed to hold more than one meaning. I realized at that moment that coming back here cost Chase something. And he’d done it for me.

“You’d be surprised,” I said. I turned and stepped back into the foyer, beckoning Chase to follow. He hesitated for a beat, then came up the porch.

The place was barely recognizable from what it had been just a few short days ago. There was nothing left of the kitchen. The crew had taken out all the cabinets and appliances leaving scarred, bare walls. We’d stripped five layers of flooring, taking it down to the plywood subfloor.

“I’d hoped we’d find some hardwood under there,” I said, stepping over the debris. Chase followed.

“I don’t remember there ever being any. But I lived here in the eighties and nineties.”

“Right,” I said. “I looked it up. This place was built in 1946. Did you know that? A lot of these bi-levels were. They were bought by people coming home from the war wanting to start new lives.”

Chase let out a bitter laugh. “They were selling hope on Hutchins Street. Hard to believe.”

I couldn’t bear to look in his eyes. But I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know what he saw when he looked down those bare hallways. I saw potential. He probably saw the stuff of his nightmares.

“That’s what I want for this place,” I said. “Hope. Not just Hutchins Street.”

He followed me down the hall, running his hands along the walls. He stopped when we came to the bathroom I’d gutted today. From there, he could see straight into what was left of the master bedroom.

“You changed it,” he said, his voice catching.

“I always do,” I said. “But I like to leave the original character if I can. I just want to improve on it. Balcony off the back. Open up the floor plan.”

He stopped at the threshold of the bedroom. It was a nearly imperceptible change in his posture, but I saw it. Chase would not or could not go any further into the house.

“Why are you here, Chase?” I asked.

His smile kindled something dark inside of me. He’d affected me like that from the very first moment. It was as if my body were tuned to his on some preternatural level. I ached for him, plain and simple. It wasn’t sensible. It wasn’t rational. It was primal and I craved it.

“I don’t know, Ariel,” he answered. “And that’s the God’s honest truth. Something about this house keeps drawing me back. At least, that’s what I thought it was. Now I’m not so sure.”

He took a step toward me, that wicked smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. God. I was a hot mess. I stunk. Yet I knew I’d have a hard time stopping myself if Chase pulled me against him again.

“Now what do you think it is?” Oh, I knew his answer. His eyes danced with it. Still, when the word slipped past those luscious, full lips, my knees went weak.

“You,” he said.

“You got a thing for sweat-caked, grimy women who know how to swing a hammer?”

Chase gave me a full, million-watt smile. “No. Just one.”

“Chase …”

“You called me,” he said.

“To apologize.” I took a step back. “I wasn’t myself last night. And I was kind of a bitch to you. And to tell you not to worry that I was expecting anything else from you.”

“I think you were more yourself last night than you’ve been in a while. I think you don’t let your guard down very often and you did with me. I liked it.”

I took another step back and Chase advanced. God, he moved with the grace of a jungle cat. “Chase.”

“Ariel.”

I stopped. I’d reached the living room again. Chase stopped too. The air between us seemed charged. I let out a breath.

“I barely know you. Last night was ... well ... unique. One-night stands aren’t really my style.”

Chase leaned against the wall. “Who said it was a one-night stand?”

He took my breath away. He had me literally speechless. Desire thrummed through me and I felt certain he could sense it through all the dust and grime covering me.

“Come on,” he said. “You’re right about something. You barely know me. And I barely know you. I want to change that, Ariel. That’s why I’m here. Not because of this fucking house. You could tear it to the ground and I’d be okay with that. Hell, I’ve thought of doing the same thing myself a thousand times over the last twenty years. But I don’t want to talk about this house. Not tonight. I’m tired. It’s been a long day for both of us. Yet somehow, I couldn’t end it without seeing you again. Now, as far as I can tell, you waved off your ride out there unless you’ve got an invisible car parked somewhere. So let me take you home. Or let me take you out.”

My mouth dropped. “You don’t take no for an answer, do you?”

“Not usually. So, come on, Ariel. What are you afraid of?”

I clamped my mouth shut. But when Chase held his hand out to mine, I found myself taking it.