Read Online Just Not Mine by Rosalind James - Free Book Online

“Sounds like a good idea. I think Mrs. Alberts’s husband must’ve laid that concrete back around the Dawn of Man. Made a dog’s breakfast of it, too, as cracked as it’s got since then. The spirit was willing enough there, but the flesh was weak. You’re probably living with a fair few of his subpar DIY projects. He was a banker.”
    “You could be right. That was why I could afford the place, because it didn’t show well. Still doesn’t, for that matter, but at least the concrete’s gone. First step toward the back garden of my dreams. And this,” she said, laying a caressing hand on the plastic, “is the second.”
    “Who’ve you got putting it in for you?” he asked.
    He had to wait for her to thank the driver, who wheeled his machine sharply round again, headed it back into the truck bed, and commenced to prepare for departure.
    “Hope you asked around, got some names,” Hugh persisted over the sound of the liftgate slowly grinding back into place. “I could’ve given you a couple.”
    She laughed. “Got a name, haven’t I. Me.”
    “You?” He couldn’t have been more gobsmacked. “You mean you’re helping?”
    That detached, amused look was back on her face, to his annoyance. “No, I mean I’m doing it. A couple of my mates came by and gave me a hand with the demo, because that sledgehammer’s hard to swing after a few goes, but I couldn’t really ask them to give me another weekend. But that’s OK. This bit’s just time and patience.”
    She’d been using a sledgehammer? Yeh, he’d bet it had been hard for her to swing. But that she’d done it at all … “Could be a bit more work than you realize,” he said cautiously, feeling his way over what he could tell was shaky ground as she raised a hand to the departing driver.
    “No worries. I’ve got all weekend to do it. More, if it comes to that. Brick doesn’t have a time limit. Not like a concrete pour, is it.”
    “Yeh, nah,” he agreed, still bemused. “It isn’t. But I’ll give you a hand, how’s that. Make it go a bit faster.” And avert disaster, he hoped.
    She looked at him, and he had the uncomfortable f eeling that she could read his mind. All parts of it. “A hand would be about what it’d be. Seeing as you’ve only got one.”
    He looked down at his cast. “Yeh, well, I’m not too bad with one.”
    “ Oh, wait,” she said. “This is cutting the grass.”
    “ Pardon?” What? What grass?
    “I appreciate the offer , but before I let you spend your day like that, I should tell you, I’ve got a partner.”
    Of course she did. Damn. He looked around. “Where is he, then?”
    “Oh, not here,” she said. “He’s in Aussie, working over there.”
    “So d’you have anyone here to help you, or not?”
    “Not.”
    “Then …” He shrugged. “You’ve still got the offer of my hand, for what it’s worth.”
    “ Good,” she said. “Fantastic. Thanks. Come over once you’ve had breakfast, see what your one hand can bring to the party.”
    * * *
    Well, that was disappointing, he thought as he headed back to the house. He couldn’t really have backed out of it, though. And anyway, he couldn’t have listened to her building a brick patio all weekend, known she was tackling that massive project on her own without offering to help. Not possible.
    She didn’t hear him when he returned an hour later, because she had her headphones in, was singing along to more bad pop, of which she seemed to have a limitless supply, as she crouched and hacked open a bag at her feet. He touched her elbow, and she jumped and whirled on her toes, not losing her balance, he noticed.
    “Oh. Hi ,” she said, and smiled at the kids with none of the distance she kept from Hugh, and her smile was like the sun coming out.
    “Thought you could be right about the one hand,” he told her. “So I brought five.” He looked at the work she’d been doing, and rapidly reassessed. “Did you do all this?” he asked.
    The amused look