He picked up the sledgehammer and positioned himself in front of the wall. “Did you file a police complaint?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, but it was five bills. Your brothers in blue aren’t going to be knocking themselves out to track her down.”
“And that’s when you said fuck it, I’ll do the demo myself?” He swung the sledgehammer, slamming it against the wall with a satisfying blow that may have had more than a little to do with his lack of satisfaction in other parts of his life. He was a detective, not a spy, and this undercover stint was starting to make him twitchy.
The Luca brothers were planning something, a move of some sort, and if he could just figure it out then he wouldn’t have to be lying to a woman he was genuinely starting to like. Gina had been cracking him up over the past few days with her self-deprecating sense of humor, and she was smart, the kind of person who could judge running her own company and taking on a massive home renovation project. Plus, she had legs he couldn’t stop watching.
“Nah.” She shook her head as she reached up and pulled her hair into a ponytail, the move giving him a great view of her tits as they pressed against the T-shirt, which today featured a sloth doing yoga. “I gave up on hiring a handyman for demolition after Julio.”
“What happened with him?”
“He came in, took one look at the place, and gave a quote so outrageous that I knew he just wanted to walk away from the place and never look back.”
Ford took another couple of swings with the sledgehammer before setting it down on the floor. There were now enough started holes that it was time to move on to the reciprocating saw to cut out large pieces of drywall. Taking out an interior wall wasn’t difficult, but it could be time-consuming. And messy.
“Too much work?” he asked before taking a swig from his coffee.
She shook her head again, sending her pulled-back wavy hair swinging in a way that had him wondering how it would look fisted in his hand as she was naked beneath him. Shit. What in the hell was wrong with him? She was the job, not a possibility. There were rules, and he didn’t break them.
“Something about these old houses freaks most folks out,” Gina said, seemingly oblivious—thank God—to where his thoughts had gone. “I was lucky to have gotten Juan to sign on for the real renovation work. His waitlist is a million years long for an older home like this. He’s the best and he knows it.”
He plugged in the reciprocating saw, needing something to do to keep his hands busy so he’d stop thinking about how much he’d like to be touching Gina instead. “If it’s so difficult, why bother with it at all?”
“Her bones are strong.” She ran her hand over the detailed scrollwork on the staircase banister. “She just needs some touch-ups.”
“It’s a makeover story, huh?” He smiled.
“No way.” She handed him a dust mask and grabbed one for herself. “She’s perfect just the way she is, she just needs someone to love her like she deserves.”
“You sound like my sister Fallon with her car.”
Gina’s eyes went wide with excitement. “What’s she got?”
“A 1970 Pontiac GTO convertible.”
“Ohhhh, that just sounds sexy.”
Sexy? He liked the way she said the word.
“You like cars?” he asked, and suddenly he was searching his brain for any tidbit of knowledge he had about cars, which was pretty much nil beyond where to put the gas in and the number of his mechanic.
“I don’t really know anything about them, but I know what makes me stop and say damn yes I will have some of that.” She punctuated the remark with an exaggerated wink and slipped on the dust mask.
And Ford shifted his stance because he knew exactly what she meant, but he sure as hell wasn’t thinking about the house or a car.
…
Gina had held out as long as she could—there was just something about working alongside Ford that made even something as tedious as refinishing the stairs enjoyable—but when she swore she heard her stomach over the sound of the sander, she had to give in to the inevitable. “Okay, that’s it,” she said after she clicked off her sander and took off her dust mask. “I need food.”