Handyman Special (Circles of Love Series, Book 4)

Handyman Special

Circles of Love Series

Book Four

by

Pamela Browning

Award-winning Author

HANDYMAN SPECIAL

Reviews & Accolades

A touching love story with unique characters wrapped in an unforgettable plot.

~Romantic Times

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ISBN: 978-1-61417-816-3

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Copyright © 1985, 2015 by Pamela Browning by Author. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

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Dedication

In memory of my dear friend Jack W., who taught me to paint a room many years ago.

It was Jack who inspired the move to the 'Ville, where I first set eyes upon the inspiration for my fictional Kalmia Hill.

Author Note

My Circles of Love series celebrates untraditional families, all brought together through the love of the hero and heroine for each other. In these four heartwarming books, each loving couple must decide what makes a family. Is family defined only by blood ties? Or is it what we feel in our hearts?

Jane and Duncan, Martha and Nick, Kate and Morgan, Sage and Adam - four couples whose love stories ultimately bring them to the realization that a family is made up of the very special people that we choose to embrace in our ever-widening Circles of Love.

P.B.

Chapter 1

It was one of those October afternoons when the air is cool enough for sunshine to feel welcome on your face, and Sage McKenna shook her short, tousled amber curls back so that the warm rays could spread full upon her cheeks. The sunshine soothed her after her bout with a head cold that had left her feeling like a limp dishrag until that morning. Earlier she'd taken a time release cold capsule to clear her stuffy sinuses. She hoped it would be her last.

Sage leaned pensively on the split-rail fence, gazing at the house she'd always wanted and thought she'd never own. Yet now, through her own hard work, Kalmia Hill would be hers. She felt a shiver of excitement at the anticipation of the fulfillment of her dream.

She and Gary had often stood at this very fence. They'd planned how they would own this timelessly beautiful house someday—but the present was no time to think of matters that were best forgotten. Instead, she concentrated on the here and now. There was so much she wanted to do for the house, and she could hardly wait to get started.

The house known as Kalmia Hill crowned the crest of the rise. It dominated the landscape with its white façade, which shone bright against the crisp blue autumn sky. Sheltering hardwood trees were flamboyant in their fall foliage, and a low hedge of dark-green boxwood joined the house to the earth. From there the hill sloped gently to the silvery waters of Lake Willoree, the incline interrupted two-thirds of the way down by the fence where Sage rested so thoughtfully.

There remained nothing for Sage to do but to drive the sixty-five miles to Columbia to hand over her earnest money. Old Mrs. Purdy, the absentee owner, had put off selling the house until she'd moved to the retirement home where she now lived, but she'd been eager to sell last week when Sage had made a verbal offer over the telephone.

Today, once they had both signed the contract, Sage would be on her way to become sole owner of Kalmia Hill. Mrs. Purdy had agreed to the terms, and if it hadn't been for catching cold, Sage would have already signed the contract. She felt a thrill of excitement at the prospect of closing the deal. She loved her work. It made her heart happy to bring new life to old houses. It also benefited her checkbook, which was of no small consequence now that she was a single mother.

Tomorrow—well, Sage would have to draw up a plan of action before she actually started work. She wanted to see the inside again, to wander dreamily from one high-ceilinged room to the other. She wanted to allow her active imagination full rein. There was a lot you could do with a house like Kalmia Hill. Its intricate detailing and perfect proportion made it a prime example of Georgian Revival architecture in the South.

Check for water damage first, that's what she'd do, although the slate roof appeared sound enough. Repair any leaks, then search for damage to the plaster. Commission a plumber to modernize the old fixtures. Hire an electrician to replace dangerous wiring. Add electrical outlets, perhaps. Then on to the fun part—patching crumbling ceiling molding, refinishing scarred oak banisters, removing dark and heavy coats of wax and varnish from the walnut parquet floor.

She turned toward her white Chevy pickup just in time to catch the flash of shiny sapphire-blue metal as a vehicle wheeled into the winding driveway that twisted and turned on its way up the hill. Then the thick azalea bushes bordering the drive obscured the car from view.

I wonder who that could be, she thought to herself, intrigued. Sightseers? More of the snowbird retirees from the North who increasingly sought out this small South Carolina town for its comparatively mild winters and its low cost of living? They often came to marvel at Kalmia Hill, which had been completed in 1896, but Kalmia Hill had never been for sale. Many of these older people ended up buying one of the other properties that Sage had lovingly remodeled and refurbished and redecorated. Well, she thought triumphantly, somebody was about to get lucky. Sage planned to restore Kalmia Hill and advertise it for resale within the year.

She climbed quickly into her truck, yanking her unaccustomed skirt in after her so that the soft wool fabric wouldn't be caught in the door as it closed. Shifting the transmission into drive, she pumped impatiently on the gas pedal, not thinking at all about the equally unaccustomed high-heeled boots she wore for her appointment with Mrs. Purdy. The pickup lurched suddenly as her heel caught in the depression between accelerator and floorboard, slamming more gas to the engine than she'd intended.

All at once the truck took on a feisty life of its own and zoomed forward as Sage wildly tried to master the spinning steering wheel. She overcompensated in her panic. A horrible crunch sounded as her Chevy slammed through the crumbling old split-rail fence. There was a jarring thump as the truck locked in battle with a stalwart oak tree and lost. Panic gripped her as she sat clutching the steering wheel in the sudden silence, gasping and thinking how much worse it could have been if she'd steered toward the lake instead.

She summoned the presence of mind to switch off the ignition, and then everything blurred out of focus for a moment before flipping into madly spinning polka dots and spirals. When the fracas inside her head cleared, a man's face and shoulders blocked the side window of her truck. She blinked in confusion; he didn't disappear. He was real, then.

Go away, Sage said shakily.

Go away? He frowned at her, dark heavy eyebrows aligning themselves into one straight line across his forehead. Beneath them, eyes dark as obsidian—she'd seen a hunk of it in a museum once—blinked in consternation. A nose, highly arched and magnificent in proportion, and beneath that a mustache curving upward. Beneath that, lips. An upper lip obscured by a lower lip that he had thrust up over it, which made him look as though he were considering something. A chin of determination, a throat of corded strength. Clothes of exceptionally good taste, a gray wool blazer with a bit of a pattern to it, tattersall or something, and beneath it a slate-blue turtleneck sweater.

She shook her head to clear it, aghast at how her words must have sounded. "I didn't mean go away, she said, more strongly now. I meant get out of the way. I want to climb out and inspect the damage."

You're not hurt?

I don't think so. Numb.

If you're numb, how can you tell if you're hurt or not? He separated his eyebrows into two again and straightened. He opened the door with caution, as though she'd clatter out like a pile of blocks and fall in a heap. She didn't, though. She was still gripping the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles showed white beneath the skin.

He reached in and gently, carefully, began to pry her fingers, one by one, from the steering wheel.

It's all right to let go now, he said softly. The sound of his voice was mellow, flowing over and around her like warm honey. Then, as carefully as he would handle a child, he slid an arm around her shoulders and helped her from the seat of the pickup.

It was then that Sage knew she was no longer numb. If she were numb, she wouldn't be feeling a surge of response to his arm around her and a fluttering of pulse that didn't arise from weakness or shock. She felt an unmistakable awareness of his masculinity. This is weird, she thought, but she didn't register her attraction to him. She ignored it, more or less. Sort of.

She blinked up at him, expecting him to remove his arm from her shoulders. He didn't.

Look, he said in an accent that wasn't Southern, I don't think you're in any shape to be walking around. You'd better sit down for a minute. His words seemed clipped, with a foreign inflection which she couldn't identify. His eyes, dark and lustrous, looked concerned. That is, until they spun dizzily in his face.

I—I think you're right, she said weakly. Everything seemed one degree removed from reality. She wondered if she should blame the cold capsule she'd taken earlier.

He eased out of his blazer, somehow not letting go of her as he did. And then he spread his jacket on the grass and folded her onto it in an intricate maneuver that Sage had to admire despite her giddiness.

She knew he was looking her over, but at the moment she was trying so hard to regain her lost equilibrium that she couldn't have cared less. She let her head keel over and flop against his shoulder, grateful for the solid strength of it beneath his blue sweater. He looked down at her, taking stock.

If Sage was beautiful, she didn't know it, and whether she was beautiful was a question open to conjecture. There was no doubt in anyone's mind, except perhaps her own, that Sage McKenna had presence, that special something that defined her and set her apart from all the rest. She had once been told she was beautiful by a man who found himself captivated by her amber hair and amber eyes, a combination so arresting that some people stared when they first looked her full in the face.

But those amber eyes could see for themselves, and what they saw when they looked in a mirror was a nose a bit too upturned to be fashionable, a mouth too ample and full of expression to be pretty, and eyebrows that grew naturally and wide, unlike the plucked and shaped eyebrows that framed the eyes of women most men would call beautiful.

Which, Sage McKenna thought resolutely as she sat on this stranger's gray wool blazer, knowing full well that he was assessing her looks, I am not. Especially since the aggravating head cold had left her skin so pale.

But he was thinking, why, she's beautiful! And once that thought existed in his mind, no one could have changed it. It simply was.

I'm Adam Hracek, he said, cradling her head possessively in the hollow of his shoulder. And then, frowning, he added, Maybe you should see a doctor.

There's... there's not a scratch on me, she said, swallowing as she glanced up at his arresting profile. He was strikingly handsome, she thought fuzzily, with that profusion of black hair and those high cheekbones surmounting the planes of his face, which squared so dramatically into a chin. And that mustache! Never had she set her eyes on one so luxuriant. She wanted to trail her fingers along his abundant eyebrows, down across the crinkled smile lines at the corner of his eye, over the high rounded cheekbone, and brush the hairs of that mustache ever so lightly until his lips turned up in pleasure.

Which they were doing even now as he contemplated the curve of her leg beneath the thin wool challis of her skirt.

You may not have a scratch on you, but I'm afraid you've scarred up your boots and lost a heel as well. He spoke kindly and solicitously.

Sage looked, and he was right. The soft caramel-colored leather of her right boot was scraped from the ankle to the top, and the boot looked pathetic minus its high heel. My heel caught under the accelerator—that's what made me drive through the fence and into the tree. Oh, I wish I hadn't ruined these boots. They're new.

I wish you hadn't ruined that nice fence. It's old. Adam smiled down at her.

Well, she said, beginning to feel as though she could hold up her own head now, tilting it sideways from his shoulder to see if it would stay of its own accord, of course, the fence was old and rustic-looking, but I'm sure it can be repaired. Her head had seemingly returned to normal, and experimentally she shifted her weight and disengaged herself from his arm.

What are you doing? he asked in alarm.

Getting up. I told you I want to inspect the damage.

Wait, he said, standing and pulling her along with him. He bent gracefully and scooped up his gray blazer, draping it across her shoulders. She ignored his too-leisurely touch when he attempted to brush away stray grass clippings.

She tottered resolutely toward the fence on her uneven heels. The front of the pickup had splintered the wood into smithereens. As she lifted one of the rotten rails in her hands, it crumbled.

I can have these rails up again in a week or so. I'll use the kind of split rails I can buy at the local lumber store, soak them in lye so the color will be gray like the old ones, and you won't be able to tell the difference. She brushed the wood dust off her hands. She was beginning to feel almost normal.

Sounds as if you know what you're talking about, said Adam Hracek.

I do. I'm the local handyman.

He looked down at her from afar, his eyes gleaming with disbelief. She hadn't realized he was so tall.

You're putting me on, he said.

No, I mean it. I'm a home-repair specialist. You need your flooring fixed, I fix it. You need draperies hung, I hang them. You need old paneling replaced, I—

Never mind, I get the picture. It's hard to visualize you in it.

Sage fumbled in her skirt pocket for her business card.

He looked at it, vaguely amused. 'Sage McKenna,' he read. 'Home repairs, Remodeling, Refurbishing, Redecorating.' Well, I guess that covers it all, doesn't it?

She nodded. Look, I've got to go, she said in a rush, remembering all of a sudden that she still had to drive all the way to Columbia for her appointment.

Don't hurry off, he said, becoming more and more captivated with the idea of this gorgeous woman wrestling with ladders and lugging around paint cans and scrubbing old floors with sandpaper.

But I have a business appointment in Columbia, she said, glancing at her watch. Her watch, never very reliable, had stopped at the exact time of her foray through the fence and into the oak tree. Do you have the time?

I have lots of time at the moment, especially when it involves rescuing a damsel in distress, he said, and then he laughed. Anyway, you're not going anywhere in that truck. You've smashed one headlight and a front tire has gone flat.

Only on one side, she shot back.

He glanced at her out of the corners of his eyes. I bet you could fix that, he said, barely keeping the chuckle out of his voice.

The suppressed laughter in his tone made her indignant. I know how to change tires. And fix headlights, too.

I suppose you do, he said lightly, looking amused. I wouldn't put it past you to know all about the internal workings of automobile engines and steam generators and other mechanical mysteries.

Right. Thanks for your help. Now I'm leaving. She turned away.

He caught her arm. Hey, not so fast. If you're going to Columbia—and it's already past three o'clock—you'll no doubt be driving after dark. You'll get slapped with a ticket or at least a warning by the first highway patrolman who catches you driving with only one headlight. Besides, he said in a reasoning tone, it's dangerous.

I'll borrow a car, she said, thinking of Irma at home. But Irma had to pick up Gregory at a scout meeting, and Hayley had a pep rally, and how would the kids get home if Irma couldn't drive them? There was Poppy, of course, but since he'd lost his way going to Wal-Mart a few months ago, he didn't drive. His old Taurus was probably out of gas besides.

Adam was persistent. I have a car with two perfectly functioning headlights and a full tank of gas that I am putting at your disposal. Won't you let me drive you?

All the way to Columbia? It's sixty-five miles!

Why not? I don't have anything else to do except go back to my lonely hotel room. And, he added ruefully, the Willoree Hotel is nothing to look forward to. They could use your handyman expertise, believe me.

Sage was familiar with the only hotel in town, a dilapidated stucco affair that she would never, under any circumstances whatsoever, occupy. She'd drive all the way to Yewville, the closest town with a decent motel, first. Somehow she couldn't imagine this well-heeled stranger, who looked like a person of some discrimination, staying at the roach-ridden Willoree Hotel. Bedbugs came to mind, and lice. It was all she could do not to shudder.

How did you end up at our local disgrace? she asked curiously.

That falls under the heading of my thumbnail introduction, which I am going to give you. I don't want you to think I'm a pervert who goes around picking up women who have mishaps in their pickup trucks, okay?

Fair enough, she said, relenting long enough to smile up at him. He was incredibly sexy with those dark eyes of his and the long curly lashes that seemed to know the exact opportune moment to droop with a hint of innate sensuality.

He smiled at her, maintaining exactly the right degree of casualness. I'm formerly of Hartford, Connecticut, but working in Willoree for the next year under contract as a freelance industrial engineer. I'm the one who is going to bring Wilpacko Industries into the modern age of package manufacturing. The words were spoken with disarming candor.

I've heard about you, she said. You're the savior of our only local industry, that intrepid provider of cartons for the voracious fast-food industry. Welcome to Willoree. She held out her hand. He clasped it in his larger one, and then, much to her surprise, he turned her hand over and inspected the palm.

No calluses, he mused. No roughness. I would have expected a handyman to show hands worse for wear.

There was a flirtatious flickering behind his eyes, and Sage caught it just in time. She snatched her hand away and stuffed it far down in her skirt pocket.

I wear gloves when I'm working, she said, wishing her heart wouldn't beat so loudly. The man had a wildly sexual effect on her.

I'll bring my car around, he said. You can't walk in those boots.

I don't— she began, but he was already gone, loping away in a highly coordinated jog. The slate-blue turtleneck revealed sharply defined pectoral muscles and tightly corded biceps. There was no fat on him, no flab anywhere. He was sleek-muscled, like a racehorse.

Sage wondered briefly how old he was. In his late thirties, she'd guess. She watched until he disappeared behind the curtain of azalea bushes, fascinated at the workings of his compact buttock muscles beneath his trousers as he ran. Adam Hracek was certainly something to look at, all right. The local women would have a field day with him. And he with them, no doubt.

Well, if he wanted to take charge, she'd let him. Her minor crash made her suspect that the cold medication had robbed her of some of her faculties. And she had to get to Columbia somehow.

She opened the truck door and hauled her purse across the seat, checking to make sure the contract and check for Mrs. Purdy were there. Then she pulled out her cell phone and auto-dialed Irma, who answered on the first ring.

Sage, Irma said, sounding distracted. What's up? Background noise nearly obscured her voice.

I should be asking that, Sage said, rolling her eyes. Is Joy screaming? Sage was remarkably tuned to her daughter's voice.

She's laughing. She and Poppy are playing hide-and-seek. He hid Watson in the potato bin. Watson, the one-eyed teddy bear, was four-year-old Joy's boon companion.

I'm having problems with my truck, Sage said. The new engineer at Wilpacko offered me a ride to Columbia to see Mrs. Purdy. I wanted to let you know in case he's an ax murderer.

Sage? You sure you want to do that? I've heard he's real nice and all, but why don't you get your truck fixed and go tomorrow? Irma sounded alarmed.

I told Mrs. Purdy I'd be there today. Adam's okay. I was only kidding about the ax murderer part.

That's nothing to joke about. Why, every day some woman gets kidnapped and has her ATM card stolen or worse. You can't be too careful. Irma raised her voice. Joy, don't climb on that chair. Go in the kitchen and I'll peel you a banana.

Irma–

I'd better go, Sage, before Joy runs amok, though maybe she already is. And you keep an eye on that engineer fellow. Don't let him lock you in the trunk and do not under any circumstances let him take any liberties whatsoever.

You'd think that Sage was a total nitwit from what Irma saw fit to warn her about. I'll stuff my ATM card in my bra, Irma. Not a chance he's going to find it there. Give Joy a hug from me.

Your bra? What was that? Sage?

But by that time, Sage had already clicked off.

Thank goodness for Irma, Sage thought. She didn't know what she and the rest of the family would do without the little birdlike woman who had swooped into the house and made it a real home by taking major responsibility for the children. The family wouldn't have worked nearly as well without her strong guidance, not to mention her expert home cooking.

Sage dug a screwdriver out of her tool box and went to work prying at the heel of her