Ryan's Renovation. Marin Thomas

the front and side yards. Apparently, the home had died along with the owner. Weeds had choked out the grass, and the bushes barely clung to life, refusing to shed their crusty brown leaves. Even the ceramic angel, with a broken wing and arms raised skyward, begged to be rescued from her desolate resting place.

      As they piled out of the truck, Eryk cautioned, “Watch the porch steps. The second one’s rotted.”

      Leon studied the damaged step. “We’ll have to slide the heavier pieces off the end.”

      The inside of the house fared worse than the outside. Ryan gagged on the putrid air—a combination of mold, rodent droppings and cat feces.

      “Jones, you take the second floor. Toss what you can onto the lawn. Eryk, clear out the garage. I’ll be in the basement.”

      Pop. Creak. Snap. Ryan gingerly navigated the stairs to the second floor. When he reached the landing, an object—big and black—dived at his head, and he ducked, losing his balance. The trip down the stairs lasted half as long as the climb up. Ryan bounced to a stop at the front door, shoulder throbbing and elbow on fire.

      “What the hell happened?” Leon rushed into the room and gaped. “Stair give out?”

      “Tripped.” Damned if Ryan would admit a bat had scared the crap out of him. He accepted a hand up and swallowed a moan of pain.

      “Maybe you’d better break out a window upstairs and drop the stuff into the yard,” Leon suggested, then returned to the basement.

      Two hours later, drenched in sweat and arms burning with exertion, Ryan wanted to quit. A half hour on the treadmill and a twenty-minute workout on the Bowflex machine three times a week hadn’t prepared him for pulling up carpet, dismantling light fixtures and shoving mattresses through windows. Adding to his misery was the fact that he couldn’t get Anna’s face—her big nose, her blue eyes, her strong jaw—out of his ever-loving mind.

      Wishing he’d thought to bring along a bottle of water, he rested his hands on his knees and sucked in large gulps of air. After a minute, the pinched feeling eased in his lungs and he returned to the first floor.

      Time crawled as he joined Eryk in the garage and carried load after load to the front yard. Hefting an old car tire onto his shoulder, he wondered whether the old man would call a halt to this life lesson if Ryan collapsed from physical exhaustion. There was always a possibility…. He heaved a second tire onto his other shoulder and staggered along the driveway.

      

      “BOSS SHOW UP?” Leon took a seat at the table in the break room. After the men called it quits, Leon stole a cup of coffee and a few minutes of tranquillity before heading home to a houseful of extended relatives.

      Anna placed the creamer from the fridge next to Leon’s elbow. “Bobby came in at noon, stayed an hour, then claimed he had a personal matter to attend to and left.” She allowed Leon one minute of peace and quiet, then demanded, “Well?”

      “Well, what?”

      How did Helga put up with the man? Climbing all 102 floors of the Empire State Building would be less taxing than extracting information from Leon. “Ryan. Did he say where he lives?”

      Ignoring the question, Leon winced. “I’ve got the knees of an eighty-year-old.”

      Guilt pricked Anna for badgering the poor man when he was obviously worn out. She fetched two ice packs from the freezer. While Leon adjusted the packs over his knees, Anna’s thoughts drifted to Ryan.

      The new employee had been on her mind all afternoon. Leon, Eryk and Ryan had returned to the station for lunch, but she’d been tied up on the phone with the company’s CPA and hadn’t had the opportunity to ask the anyone how things were going.

      She blamed her preoccupation with Ryan, not because he was a new employee, but that he was handsome and exciting in a mysterious way. Of course, she didn’t believe for a minute anything would develop between them, but a girl could dream, couldn’t she?

      Dreams don’t come true. Life had taught her that lesson more than once.

      Ignoring the voice in her head, Anna badgered, “C’mon, Leon, Ryan must have said something about himself.”

      “He’s not much of a talker.”

      “You mean Ryan was unsociable? Rude?”

      “No. Just quiet.”

      “He doesn’t appreciate us, does he?”

      “Leave him be, Anna. If he don’t want to fit in around here, he don’t have to.”

      “But I wanted—”

      “Everyone to get along.” Slurp. “Always watching out for the strays, aren’t you?” Leon shoved his chair back, but Anna pressed her hand against his shoulder.

      “Keep the ice on your knees.” She grabbed the coffeepot and topped off his cup, then added a dollop of nonfat dairy creamer.

      “A man can’t even enjoy a coffee with real cream,” he complained.

      After Leon was diagnosed with high cholesterol a year ago, Leon’s wife had enlisted Anna’s aid in monitoring her husband’s fat intake at work. “Helga would have my head if I let you have real cream.”

      “Helga should pick on someone her own size.” Leon grinned and Anna laughed. Two inches shorter than Anna, his wife weighed in at a whopping one hundred eighty. And Leon was hopelessly in love with every one of those pounds. Sometimes Anna wondered if she’d ever find a man who’d love her to distraction the way Leon loved Helga.

      Leon scratched the top of his bald noggin. “Jones mentioned he was divorced.”

      “Oh.” Not sure why the news unsettled her, she asked, “Any children?” Before Leon answered, the bell in the office jangled. “Probably Bobby.” Anna was halfway across the room when the door flew open.

      Ryan froze midstride, mouth tight at the corners. His habit of scowling when their gazes connected annoyed Anna. Didn’t he realize a person used more facial muscles to frown than to smile?

      Feeling mischievous, she flashed a wide grin. “Hello, Ryan. Forget your lunch box?” Or your manners, perhaps?

      Shifting his scowl to Leon and then back to Anna, he muttered, “I walked off with these.” He held out a pair of work gloves. An oil smudge marked the side of his jaw. A tree twig poked out of the top of his mussed hair and flecks of dirt dusted his cheeks and nose.

      Her attention bounced between the gloves and the lines of exhaustion etched in his face. His cranky expression prevented her from offering one of her special sympathy hugs.

      A throat cleared. “Think I’ll head home.” Leon placed his mug in the sink, grabbed his lunch box and nodded goodbye on his way out.

      The faint trace of Ryan’s aftershave drifted beneath Anna’s big nose. She hated everything about her nose except one thing—it was a good sniffer. Mixed with the sexy, sophisticated scent of Ryan’s cologne was the tang of sweat and hardworking male. An odor her nose insisted wasn’t unappealing.

      “You could have brought in the gloves tomorrow.”

      Ryan’s plan to sneak in and out of the station without anyone the wiser had bombed big-time. He cursed himself for wanting to return the gloves when he could have stuffed them into a mailing envelope, instead.

      “Are you feeling all right?” The touch of her feminine hand on his arm made his flesh prickle.

      “I’m fine.” What the hell was wrong with him? He’d known women more beautiful than Anna and hadn’t reacted physically to them. That was before 9/11. Before you crawled into your cave and swore off the opposite sex. What could he say other than the truth—he’d returned the gloves because he had no intention of showing up for work tomorrow. He tossed the gloves onto the table, then stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, where they wouldn’t be tempted