Walking up to Brooke’s house this time felt way, way different than my previous visit a week earlier. First, no babysitting gig. Second, I had a notebook under my arm that held the preliminary sketches for her salon. The stack of 8.5x11 papers, white and spiral bound, held a different sort of weight while I lifted my hand to knock on the bright, glossy red of Brooke’s front door.

This wasn’t taking direction from my uncle on some stranger’s house, this wasn’t mind-numbing busy work in the slow season. She’d asked this of me, was trusting me with something that was directly improving her future. Before I could knock, the door swung open.

“Good Lord, took you long enough,” she said with a sweet smile on her face. Sweet, but in a I’ll rip your nuts off without blinking if you screw this up kind of way. It was her eyes. Again. They held that touch of sarcasm, that edge that was so inconveniently hot.

I glanced at my watch. “I’m one minute late.”

Brooke stepped back so I could come in when the complete silence registered.

“Where are the midgets?”

She laughed and closed the door behind me. “At the neighbor lady’s house. She’s retired and has been a huge help to me. Outside of Julia, she watches them the most for me when I work.”

“Oh, great.” I pulled the notebook out and tapped it against my side.

The quiet stretched between us for a moment while we looked at each other. Stretched and stretched, almost a tangible thing that was ready to snap when I heard something from the laundry room.

“Anna is back there taking some notes.”

My eyebrows rose a fraction. “As in Garrett’s sister Anna?”

She nodded. “She’s helping me with some design ideas.”

“Huh. She still married?”

Brooke laughed under her breath, and a slight wariness cooled the dark fire from earlier in her eyes. Of course, that sounded very much like I cared whether Anna was still married. Which I didn’t. Not in the way she was thinking.

The situation was this; Anna had an idiot husband. We all knew it. That was the first issue. The second was that my big brother, Tristan, had been in love with Anna pretty much since the first day he saw her. You may laugh, you may think I’m exaggerating, but believe me … I’m not. While our group of friends might have been aware that he had feelings for her, was intrigued by her, only I knew how deep it went. And I knew it without him needing to say a damn word about Anna.

Brooke cleared her throat and glanced quickly to where Anna was. “I don’t know. It’s not usually my policy to ask intensely personal questions the first time I meet someone.”

“You should start,” I said easily. “It’s fun.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Fine. What’s your greatest fear in life, Michael Whitfield?”

The smile that spread over my face grew slowly, the icily worded question only making her that much more attractive to me. “You really want to know?”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”

The words fairly itched along my tongue. It would be so easy to play it off, to make a joke and give her an answer that had as much substance as cotton candy. Brooke held my eyes steadily, practically daring me to brush her off. Tension, thick, electric, glorious tension rolled up my spine in waves when neither of us blinked. Her breathing deepened at the same time my heart started an erratic thud in my chest. Then she raised a thin eyebrow at my silence, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

My mouth dried out when I realized that I couldn’t back away from that challenge. Hopefully she wouldn’t laugh at me, think I was joking for sympathy. Finally, I nodded, mind made up. “That no one will ever see me for who I really am.”

Brooke blinked and her mouth went slack, just enough that I could see the white of her teeth. To her credit though, she recovered quickly. “A valid thing to fear.”

Anna called Brooke’s name and the moment snapped back like a rubber band that was pulled too tight.

“Aren’t you going to tell me your greatest fear?”

While we walked back to the laundry room, she glanced briefly over her shoulder at me. “Not just yet. Only if you’re a very good boy.”

I shook my head and laughed, feeling that all-too-familiar zap of electricity race up my spine when I was around a woman who well and truly intrigued me. It was my greatest addiction, bar none. And nothing would tamp it down, nothing except feeling like I’d gotten my fill of her.

We turned the corner and Anna’s eyes widened in surprise. “Michael. I didn’t know you were the contractor.”

Brooke smiled. “I guess I didn’t even think about the fact that you two knew each other. I’m still getting used to the dynamics of that big group of friends. It’s very Melrose Place. But without the cheesiness.”

Anna and I laughed, because she was right. Tristan and I lived by our friends, and our group kept growing with each new couple. One big happy family, except for the perpetual bachelors that lived under our roof. Anna’s smile was easy and wide, and it wasn’t hard to see why my brother was so instantly smitten with her.

Her black hair was shiny and long, her Korean heritage stamped through her high cheekbones, and her big dark eyes perceptive in her face. Every time I’d seen her, she wore a smile, the kind that probably came from a deeply ingrained desire to make the people around her comfortable. The reason I recognized it was because it was a smile I was really damn good at. I’d had a lifetime to practice it.

“Good to see you, Michael.” She gave me a brief hug, and I had to contain my laugh when I imagined the murderous look on Tristan’s face when I told him that not only did I see Anna, but there’d been full frontal hugging.

“You too.”

She turned to pick up some swatches, and I saw the bright glint of her wedding ring. Brooke was staring at it too, and I looked away so she didn’t catch me doing the same thing.

“So what are you thinking?” I asked Anna.

I opened up my notebook while she gestured to the main wall. “I’m thinking that this wall could be either exposed brick or wood panels--shiplap, if we want to get trendy with our word choice--for some visual interest. You could paint the brick if you want something cleaner and brighter,” she said to Brooke, who was staring at the wall like it would magically change in front of her. “Personally, I think that would be a tragedy, but that’s up to you. You could prop a large framed mirror up against this wall, or two if you wanted to do more than one chair.”

Brooke looked at me and I gave her a brief shake of my head.

“Just one,” Brooke answered. “One chair, a shampoo bowl, a small area to sit and a dryer cap if there’s space.”

I flipped open my notebook and handed it to her. I could’ve lied and said that it didn’t affect me when her eyes completely lit up at my sketch. “Something like that?” I asked as casually as possible.

“Oh my holy hell, it’s perfect, Michael,” she gushed, reaching out to grip my arm excitedly. “Michael, I love it.”

Anna leaned over so she could look and hummed approvingly. “Yeah, that would be great. You could use a small arm chair,” she pointed at the sketch, at an open corner. “Right there. With an accent table for your seating area and put a small minibar behind it if you wanted people to be able to make coffee or have a drink. You’re a lot more flexible in this space since your water hookup can’t move without considerable cost.”

I nodded in agreement, and pointed back at the main wall. “Shampoo bowl there and the main station next to it. We could do small floating shelves on either side of the mirror if you wanted. Once we blow out that back wall, I could make something to conceal the washer and dryer so that it’s not as obviously a laundry room if that’s what you want. And you can see on the sketch that I added some cabinets all along the upper wall above the washer and dryer so it’s completely self-contained.”

Brooke pulled in a shaky breath and I glanced over at her in surprise. There was so much latent emotion in that one small inhalation that I could practically feel it dig into my skin, just like her fingers had.

“I’m really doing this,” she said quietly.

Anna shot me a small smile and then wrapped her arm around Brooke’s shoulders. “Looks like it. I think you’re going to have an amazing space. Michael won’t let you down.”

Warmth shot through my veins at Anna’s easily spoken words. But the trust-filled smile that Brooke sent in my direction absolutely set me on fire in comparison. Straight to my heart, stoking an uncontrollable wave of heat that I wasn’t prepared for.

The overwhelming potency of it triggered a sense of premonition through every single nerve ending.

“I know he won’t,” Brooke said with such surety, such calm, that the feeling grew and grew. I had to look away, tune out their conversation just so that I could focus on steadying myself.

This is going to be significant.

Every thudding beat of my heart repeated it. Anna and Brooke finished talking around me, and I think I waved goodbye when she let herself out.

“Are you okay?” I heard Brooke ask.

“This is going to be significant,” I accidentally said out loud, unable to banish the repetition in my head.

Brooke simply laughed. “I know. I’m sure I’ll regret it when demo starts and I start plotting your death when the kids can’t nap through the noise.”

Right. She didn’t know I was having an existential moment about how this little project could possibly alter the course of my life. How, I didn’t precisely know. But what I did know is that it would change things for me. I couldn’t joke it away, and didn’t even think that I could meet her eyes until I felt a bit more under control. What was she doing to me?

The moment I walked through the door, it was like someone tipped over a line of dominoes, and now I was powerless to keep them from tumbling into place.

“We can work out a schedule.”

“Hmm?”

I finally felt steady enough to look at her. Her eyes were searching my face, looking for some sort of decoder ring as to why I looked like I was losing my ever-loving mind. Good luck, beautiful. If I had one, I wouldn’t pass it along just yet. Not until I understood exactly what had just happened.

“A schedule. I’m heading into the slow season, so I can be flexible on what hours I work here, if that helps.”

Her relieved smile was instant. And quite adorable.

Stop. Stop. This had to stop.

“That would be great. I can let you know what my work schedule is at the beginning of the week if that’s okay.”

“Sure.”

She turned and started digging through a diaper bag that was sitting on the padded bench next to her. Once she’d fished out her keys, she pulled one of them off the ring and held it out to me.

I stared down at it like it was a bomb, and it felt like one, given the spasms it gave my heart.

“What is that?” I asked, like a giant idiot.

“A key to my house,” she answered, like I sounded like a giant idiot.

I blinked at her.

She rolled her eyes and stuck it in my hand. My fingers curled around the cold edges instantly.

“Now you can let yourself in to work when I’m not here.” She lifted a dark eyebrow. “Don’t make me regret giving that to you.”

“I won’t,” I said roughly.

Yup. This was going to be significant.