When in December (Home Haven #1)

Chapter 7

seven

. . .

Aaron

Poppy Owens was insane. Frustratingly, certifiably insane.

Poppy Owens stood outside in below-freezing temperatures, painting. A cloud of her breath swirled as she mixed the dark green paint before brushing it in long strokes onto a stretch of wood.

No wonder it didn’t take her long to all but bite my head off since starting her maddening twenty-four-seven work on the cabin. To be honest, I’d expected it to be sooner. It didn’t mean it didn’t feel just as sweet. Just as awful. Maybe that was why I’d kept trying to make it happen for the past week.

The first time, I admitted, had been an accident. When someone called her phone, which was sitting on the counter while she was talking to the construction crew, the ring felt like someone was stabbing an ice pick straight through my skull. So, I answered it. Turned out, it was the painters, confirming that they were rescheduled to paint the walls inside the house on Wednesday.

Irritated, I snapped at them that the walls were fine.

For a moment, especially when I saw the homemaker rushing around like a chicken with her head cut off, I felt bad. But then, more than that, I felt sweet, sweet satisfaction. Maybe that made me a bad person. It certainly made me a bad person. But for the past few days, since I’d started the charade to see how long it would take the homemaker to realize that her house she was determined to make a home wasn’t a lemon. The homeowner on the other hand?

It had become my favorite form of entertainment.

There wasn’t much else to do other than read the books I’d left behind, along with my grandmother’s tattered romances. There was no television or anywhere to sit since the furniture had been delayed as well.

“What?” Poppy snapped as I interrupted her work for what had to be the fourth or fifth time. “What else can I do for you today, Mr. Hayes?”

And Mr. Hayes? What the hell was up with that?

I didn’t think I had ever been called Mr. Hayes in my life, except for when I returned home and had to make a very painful trip to the bank to assess my finances, or lack thereof. I’d probably looked similar that day to the sad, pitiful face the homemaker had had when she watched the rest of the construction workers pack everything up and head out two days ago.

She now wore paint-splattered pants. The faded jeans hugged her hips a whole lot more than the fancy dress pants she wore every other day. But those pressed pants hadn’t given her enough stretch it seemed since she pressed down bright painter’s tape that wasn’t just to give the professionals she’d hired before I canceled the appointment a head start. Nope. Within twenty-four hours, the entire living room was coated in a warm forest green.

Power tools were also becoming involved in the setup in the once clean, albeit empty, living room, now crowded with crap.

Obnoxious Christmas music played through the old, dusty radio, once properly hidden in the cellar. Gone was the put-together homemaker, or whatever her title was, tapping away on her fancy silver tablet and ordering people around. Gone were her pleas over the phone for the people I’d rearranged and rescheduled behind her back after I snooped around on that fancy tablet, thinking that would be enough for her to call it quits.

Poppy was doing what she had to do for this project by herself. Everything.

She wasn’t calling it quits. She wasn’t leaving.

“What can I help you with?” She picked up her paintbrush so the paint wouldn’t drop and stared at me, waiting for an answer. Her oversize sweatshirt slipped over her smooth, freckled shoulder.

I still couldn’t understand why she was painting halfway out the front door, letting all the cold air in.

Every breath felt like ice stabbing at my lungs. “It’s fucking colder than a well digger’s ass in here.”

For a second, I almost thought I saw a curve of her lips.

“Air flow. In case you haven’t noticed since we haven’t painted yet, there’s no overhead lighting in the main areas.”

I hadn’t noticed. When I peeked over my shoulder, it was hard not to see the small, capped wires hanging from the center of the ceiling.

“It would probably help if you put on a shirt,” she suggested.

I forced myself not to look down at my chest. I had a shirt on. “I would’ve layered up if I had known my newly heated house was going to turn into a freezer.”

“I’ll be done soon. I appreciate the patience.” Poppy said her thanks like that was the opposite of what she could appreciate from me, turning back to her project.

“Can you turn that down?” I asked, swatting a hand toward the radio, which instructed to say merry Christmas in Hawaiian for the millionth time.

With a sigh, she paused her painting. The radio volume went down two bars, though until the song changed, it still sounded like nails on a chalkboard to my ears.

“Is that all?” she asked.

“No,” I said before I realized I wasn’t sure what came next.

But I was still standing here for some reason.

“Then, what can I help you with?” Poppy asked, reaching up with the back of her hand to brush a strand of strawberry-blonde hair away from her face.

A streak of green ran across her forehead.

I bit my bottom lip.

“What?” she said, a little more agitated.

Oh, now, she was getting angry with me.

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

“Okay.”

“Actually, that’s not true,” I corrected.

“Of course it isn’t,” she muttered, so low that I was sure she didn’t expect me to hear.

Most of the time, after having gunfire in my ears most days for the past few years and being stupid enough not to wear ear protection from the start of firearms training, I wouldn’t have heard anything that wasn’t directed right at me, but my attention was focused on her now.

I couldn’t pry my attention away from the tiny line that burrowed between her eyebrows, which were a shade redder than the rest of her hair.

“What was that?” I asked anyway, leaning in closer.

She shut her eyes. When she opened them again, a false sense of composure was plastered across her soft features. “What can I do to make this experience better for you?”

When I didn’t answer, however, the homemaker shook her head with a sigh, setting her brush to the side, along with her gaze, as if she couldn’t stand to look at me anymore.

“I know what you’ve been doing, you know,” she said.

To be honest, if she did, I was impressed. I hated to admit it, but for the past few days, it had been hard not to be impressed with Poppy Owens once I finally stopped my rampage of messing up her project whenever I saw the opportunity.

There was little doubt that the homemaker was determined.

And a little ambitious if she still thought she’d manage to pull off whatever designer cabin dream my sister likely wanted her to make a reality in the house that had once been all of one room and not much else until my grandparents built on.

“And what’s that?” I asked.

“You’ve been messing with my project and plans for this cabin,” she said. “I’m not stupid. I figure you’re just waiting for the right time when I’m almost ready to give up again so that you can rub it in my face for some entertainment.”

“Am I that predictable?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

I opened my mouth to reply that I had no idea what she was talking about even though she’d truly hit the nail on the head. She beat me to it, leaving me with my mouth hanging wide open.

“I get that you’re in a rough spot here?—”

“I’m not in a rough spot.” Even though I kind of was. I was pretty sure living in your grandmother’s old house with no job and no one to complain about it to, no matter if it had been rewired and had central heat now, was considered being in a rough spot.

Some might even say rock bottom.

But at least up until today, since Poppy had arrived, the place was somewhat warm.

“Look, you don’t have to deny it. I understand.”

“You understand?” I shifted on my feet. “Please then, enlighten me.”

“I understand that you lost your friend and you’re having a hard time this time of year?—”

“What did you say?” I clenched my fists. The words hit me harder than the wave of air snaking through the front door and hit me in the back of the throat, leaving me breathless.

Homemaker must’ve had at least an ounce of sense because she paused. “I said that I understand you’re grieving, but it’s no reason for you to be rude to anyone who’s trying to help here. I’m trying to be professional and polite, but I’d appreciate it if you let me do my work. I’m finding it extremely hard right now.”

“To be professional?”

“Yes.” Her eyebrows rose on her head as she stood in front of me like we were going to have an actual conversation.

Damn, I’d fucked with the homemaker quite a bit over the past two weeks, but this?

“Go on.”

That line on her forehead was back. It was much less endearing this time. “What?”

“What else ya got, homemaker?” I asked her. “You ready to share your condolences with me? Commiserate or something over a fish or even a fucking dog dying in your life, and then we can run off into the renovation sunset together, singing Christmas carols?”

“I can imagine that whatever you went through is?—”

“You can imagine?” I barked a laugh, feeling as if whatever pleasant ounce of emotion I’d had this morning might as well have been swept away and out the door. Good thing she’d left it wide open. “You have no idea what I’m going through, and to be honest, I don’t need you to pretend to care.”

“You’re right. I couldn’t imagine that trauma—” she tried to correct herself.

And failed.

“You think you have any idea how it feels for everything to be completely out of your control, all at once?” I asked her.

Sucking on the inside of her teeth, the homemaker turned pale. Either she was about to fall over or she wanted to scream and let it all out.

I kind of wanted to see that.

“And don’t spout that trauma is trauma bullshit.”

Homemaker swallowed. When she opened her mouth again, her lips hesitated around silence before she spoke. “Looks like I don’t have to. You seem to have it covered.”

She set her paintbrush in the container and brushed off her hands. I watched as her chest rose and fell with a deep breath.

“In fact …” She wanted to continue.

“What?” I wasn’t sure if I had spoken so loudly since I had come home. My voice sounded like a gunshot, sending my heart into a hammering beat to run far away from wherever it had come from.

But now, I yelled.

I wanted her to yell right back.

Yet it wasn’t happening. I had been an ass to her all week. I’d admit it. She knew it and then still tried to pull this kind of shit to get to know me.

“I don’t want to get to know you or bond, homemaker.”

“Trust me,” she mumbled, “I know that.”

“Then, say whatever it is you want to say, little homemaker. Maybe it will make me not see you as so pathetic.”

“I’m … I’m not pathetic.”

“Is that so?” I asked. She didn’t answer this time, but she looked closer to telling me to screw off. “What if I told you that I didn’t like that green color you painted everything?”

“Y-you don’t like the color?”

“You would probably run out and get a new one, wouldn’t you? It would throw you into a tizzy, but you’d do it,” I said, immediately seeing that I was right. “You’d get new swatches and rethink the entire design if I wanted. You will do anything I want here and put up with it because you want to make a pretty little house, like there’s nothing more important to do with yourself than be a people pleaser. From what I can tell, I bet you’ve put up with a lot to make people like you, homemaker. How is that going for you?”

“Could you stop being a jerk for five minutes?” she finally yelled just to get a word in.

“A jerk?”

She didn’t pause around my exclamation. “I get that you’re acting out like some kind of child because you’re lonely.”

“I am not lonely,” I snarled, though that might not be true as I jutted my chin out to her, goading her on. This was my entertainment. This was what I had wanted when I came out here to talk to her, wasn’t it?

Tell me more.

Tell me how terrible I am. Tell me I deserve to never speak again. Tell me to go to hell. It’s where I belonged. I needed to hear it, and finally, I was sure I had someone willing to tell me so.

“I seriously don’t understand what your problem is. There’s mold in your bathroom. Mold! Do you understand what that means?” the homemaker snapped, reaching to shut the front door, shoving the edges of what she had been working on inside.

The door creaked on its hinges before slamming shut with a bang.

I flinched.

The air inside was still cold, and she crossed her arms as if she was finally feeling it for the first time. “Of course you don’t because though you live here, you act like you couldn’t care less if the walls fell around you and you had to live in a tent in the woods.”

I snorted.

“Not only that, but all the stupid paint I chose, except for this green—which isn’t even the color I ordered—is backordered for some unknown reason, though I’m pretty sure you know exactly the cause. Don’t you?”

“I don’t?—”

“What a lie.”

I didn’t answer.

She took another deep breath, trying to calm herself down. “I see what you’re trying to do here, but it isn’t going to work. I don’t need you to like me, and the best thing I think you can do is to leave me alone. I’ll finish the house. Then, you won’t ever have to see me again. Okay?”

“Huh.” I followed her as she tried to walk away. “A homemaker here, in my house, trying to make everything perfect?”

“Yes,” she agreed.

“Is that what this all is? Does your job give you some sick satisfaction, living in a fictional universe where everyone just prances through their homes, cooking bread, and spreads kindness through the world so that everyone loves them?” I asked.

“Can you stop? You have no idea what you’re talking about. And in case you haven’t noticed, I don’t need you to like me, Aaron Hayes. I like myself just fine.”

“Good thing since you must, at this point, be desperate?—”

“This coming from the man who looks like he hasn’t showered in days.”

“Because let me guess what this is all actually about, homemaker,” I ventured, egging her on.

“I already told you what this is all about.”

“Maybe daddy left mommy one day? Is that it? Did your parents break your sweet little family up, or was it someone else out there who broke your princess fairy-tale heart, and now, you’re trying to make it all better by intruding into other people’s business? Trust me, sweetheart, none of this work is going to change anything in the end. You’re still going to finish this project, if you force yourself to, and my sister will have her perfect family Christmas she paid for if she doesn’t get wine drunk before the big fat man is supposed to come down the chimney. Then, you’ll walk out of here, sad and alone, and go home to some empty apartment somewhere, I’m sure. You’re still going to fail, and no one is going to want you?—”

I didn’t recognize the sting until after it happened, and I stared down at the homemaker, who was looking down at her palm, which was starting to turn red. Her lips parted. Her eyes widened as she realized what she had just done.

“I’m—” she stammered. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

I touched my cheek, where her hand had slapped me.

Her lips quivered, and her breaths came out in short gasps as she finally took a step back, as if to flee before I could come up with anything else to say.

Maybe I’d said enough.

“Have a great time here.” She shook her head over and over, not meeting my eyes. “Have a great life here then. I hope it’s worthwhile. Alone.”