I broke the egg and let it dribble into the bowl with the others. “Dang it,” I muttered and fished a piece of shell out of the yolky mess. Finding a fork in the drawer next to the sink, I sloshed it around until the eggs were the appropriate soupy mess.

I nabbed the bacon from the pan one second before it turned to charcoal and tossed the slices onto a plate where they splintered into breakfast meat shrapnel.

“Just what the hell are you doing?”

Devlin was standing in the kitchen staring at me like I was some kind of common criminal. Granted, I had kinda broken into his house. But, in my defense, Granny Louisa asked me to.

I would have explained all that to him, but he’d appeared wearing only a pair of low-riding cotton pajama pants. I would have bet my best boots that he wasn’t wearing any kind of underwear either. With great reluctance, I dragged my gaze away from what promised to be a spectacular package and let it roam his naked torso.

He snapped his fingers. “Hello!”

“Hi,” I answered chipperly.

Devlin rolled his eyes and put his hands on his narrow hips. “What are you doing in my kitchen, Scarlett?”

“I’m making you breakfast.” Maybe the man just wasn’t very quick in the mornings. What the hell else would I be doing in his kitchen holding a plate of bacon?

“I mean, why are you making me breakfast? How did you get in here?”

I cocked my head to the side. “Granny Louisa asked me to look after you, and she always leaves the downstairs door open. I let myself in.”

“You broke into my house—”

“Granny Louisa’s house,” I corrected him.

“You broke in here to cook me breakfast?”

I was starting to wish I’d just ordered him a sticky bun for delivery and called it a day. He obviously didn’t know what an honor it was to have Scarlett Bodine cooking up a mess of scrambled eggs for him. Men fantasized about this exact moment, and here he was bitching about it. It was literally the only meal I knew how to make. I’d learn to cook. Eventually. But for now, I lived off of sandwiches, scrambled eggs, and diner food.

To be real honest, I doubted I was missing much. And none of the men I’d dated ever complained about me being better in the bedroom than the kitchen.

“You can’t just come into someone’s house,” Devlin began again. He acted like he was explaining 2+2 to a kindergartner.

“Sure, I can. We all do it. Just bein’ neighborly. Better get used to it,” I said, dumping the eggs into the pan.

“I don’t want to be neighborly.” He was gritting his teeth, and there was a sexy tic in his jaw. He was even better looking than Granny Louisa had told me. I was surprised because she wasn’t a woman to undersell anything.

“Well, you don’t much have a choice now,” I told him, swiping a spatula from the pitcher on the counter and flipping the eggs. “Coffee’s on,” I said, nodding in the direction of the coffeemaker. “Maybe you’ll feel better after you have some caffeine.”

He stared at me for almost a full minute before he finally moved toward the coffee. That I could make blindfolded with one arm tied behind my back.

“Scarlett, I don’t want you coming into this house uninvited,” he said after his first sip.

I plated up the eggs, threw a couple of slices of extra, extra crispy bacon on the side and handed it over to him. “Oh, you’re just sayin’ that.”

“I am saying that. But I’m also meaning that. I’m not here to make friends or be neighborly.”

“Then why are you here?” I asked. Who in their right mind would come to Bootleg Springs for solitude? Hell, we practically went door-to-door at the rentals just to introduce ourselves to our new tourist friends. Devlin was in for quite the rude awakening.

The doorbell rang, and I smirked. I’d installed it special for Granny Louisa. Instead of a bell ringing, it was Beethoven’s 5^th. It never failed to put a smile on Granny Louisa and Estelle’s faces.

“Doorbell,” I announced in case he was too dimwitted to know what it was.

“I gathered that,” he said dryly and stalked to the front door. I helped myself to a cup of coffee and checked my schedule. I had another half hour before I had to leave for my first job of the day. I’d finally convinced Jimmy Bob to let me fix the gutters on The Rusty Tool. The hardware store’s façade was about twenty years past due for an update, and I was sick and tired of getting doused with overflow every time I walked by the store on my way to the diner.

After that, I had a maintenance call at one of my properties. This week’s renter somehow managed to deprogram the garage door. Then, I was popping in to change furnace filters for Sheriff and Nadine Tucker and giving their air conditioner the once over to make sure it was ready for summer. I planned to squeeze in a drive-by to get a look at the boat lift on EmmaLeigh and Ennis’s dock. EmmaLeigh texted this morning to tell me it was stuck in the up position.

I heard voices from the foyer, and then the door closed.

Devlin walked back into the kitchen staring down at the plate in his hand.

I peered through the plastic wrap. “Those Millie Waggle’s brownies?”

“I guess. I didn’t catch her name. She didn’t say much.”

Millie dressed like a Sunday school teacher and baked like a chocolate-loving sinner. She tended to get a bit tongue-tied around men higher on the scale than a five out of ten. I wished I would have seen her expression when disheveled Devlin opened the door shirtless. The poor girl probably wouldn’t speak for the rest of the day.

I helped myself to a brownie and took a bite. “Mmm, oh yeah. That’s a Waggle brownie. My lord, that woman is a sinful genius.”

Devlin was eyeing me with something unreadable in those brown eyes. Interest? Disgust? Both? He made it too much fun to push his buttons.

“Well, better eat before your eggs get any colder. What do you want for supper?” I asked, batting my lashes.

The tic was back in his jaw. My work here was done.

“I eat alone,” he insisted.

I grinned up at his grumpy, sexy-as-hell face. “We’ll see about that.”

He turned away from me and yanked open a drawer, the handle coming off in his hand. “This place is falling apart,” he muttered.

“I can fix that,” I promised Devlin. It was just a little knob for Pete’s sake. He acted like the entire house was crumbling around him.

He grabbed a slip of paper off the counter and scrawled something on it.

Curious, I snatched it off the counter the second he walked away. Sliders don’t slide, deck needs refinished, creaky stairs, ugly ass carpet, leaky upstairs sink, drawer hardware. I flipped it over and felt my eyebrows wing up.

“Well, I can definitely take care of the first list for you, but you might need professional help for the second.” The back of the paper was a list of apparently everything that was wrong with Devlin McCallister’s life. Starting at the top: married the wrong woman.

He grabbed it out of my hand.

“Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t need your help with anything. And I definitely don’t need you snooping around here pretending to fix things. I’ve got a list long enough for a handyman.”

“And just where will you find one of them?” I asked, tongue in cheek.

He stomped across the kitchen and glared at his granny’s bulletin board. He snatched a card off of it triumphantly. “I’ve got it covered,” he insisted.

“They’re pretty busy this time of year what with the tourist season startin’ up.”

Stubbornly, Devlin dialed.

My phone rang in my pocket, and I fished it out. “Bodine Home Services. Scarlett speaking. How can I help y’all?”

Devlin hung up on a growl.