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Her eyes seared into mine and my breath caught in my chest.

“Even if you ditched me today and I never saw you again, what you’ve already helped me with has made this whole thing bearable.”

Holy shit. I didn’t even know what to say to that.

Lacey flipped the screwdriver again and then went to work on a cabinet without another word. As if she hadn’t just dropped one of the best compliments I’d ever gotten.

“Wow,” I said to myself softly before I went back to the cabinet.

* * *

Lacey and I took turns scrubbing the paint from our hands when we stopped for lunch.

“I have gloves, if you want to use them,” she said as I scrubbed my fingernails.

“No, it’s fine. I’m not that much of a princess.” Sure, my manicure was ruined, but that was the price I paid for this job. I’d get everything fixed once I was done with this job. Perfect way to reward myself.

“Didn’t say you were,” she said as I dried off and followed her out to the porch.

“Since I obviously didn’t do anything exciting this weekend, did you?”

I shook my head. “It was a lot of nothing. Except for going to the beach. That was nice.” I leaned back and let the sun warm my face.

“I don’t get to the beach very often,” she said. “I’m not used to one being so close.”

My eyes opened and I glanced over at her.

“You should go. Even if you don’t swim, it’s just a nice place to be.”

Lacey flexed one arm. “I was on swim team in high school.”

And now I was openly ogling her.

“I quit before college, though, but I still enjoy it,” she said, when I couldn’t wrangle any sensible words to respond with.

“I did tennis. And golf,” I said. I hadn’t been good at either one, but they’d seemed like the right sports to play at the time.

“My ex-wife played tennis in high school,” she said, and I almost choked.

“Oh?” I asked when I could breathe.

Lacey frowned. “Shit. I promised myself I wasn’t going to talk about her.”

“I don’t mind,” I said, my brain exploding with so many questions. Lacey had been married to a woman, which answered the “is she queer, or just from New England?” question.

Lacey pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“That’s fine too,” I said. Now that I knew about her divorce, her grumpiness made a lot more sense. Or maybe she was just like that and the divorce was unrelated.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she muttered as she handed over a turkey sandwich.

“Like what?” I asked and she pointed to me.

“Exactly like you’re looking at me right now,” she said. “This is why I don’t talk about it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking away and focusing on my sandwich. “I’ll stop looking at you for the rest of the day.” My words came out more biting than I intended.

Lacey huffed out a breath. “You don’t have to do that. Just don’t give me pitying looks because I literally can’t take it.”