Too Friendly to Date. Nicole Helm

until the planned trip to Council Bluffs at the end of January. She’d finished almost all her work on the Bellamy project and Jacob’s little side project downtown. She wasn’t needed on anything in the big house for a while. So, it was just light fixtures until mid-January.

      The slowdown was purposeful for the holidays. Time to visit families, and most people didn’t want work done on their homes then, so it all made sense. In years past, she’d thrown herself into her own house, but this year she would actually have family around.

      The thought filled her with equal measure hope and dread. Hope she could repair the lingering rifts with her family; dread this whole Jacob thing was going to blow up in her face in more ways than one.

      She didn’t want Grace blabbing to Jacob she thought they had a thing or that Leah had admitted as much. Leah hadn’t been lying when she’d said she saw no scenario that would change her current relationship with Jacob. They might be friends and she might have a small investor’s hold in MC, but he was still her boss.

      And she had a lot more secrets than being all but in love with him. Secrets that would change the way he acted toward her, that would kill any idiotic feelings she harbored. Jacob would hover. He would micromanage. He would ruin the life she’d built, simply by knowing and being himself.

      Which was what she had to remember. Always. With her parents around, that shouldn’t be hard. In fact, worrying about this was silly. Everything would be—

      A knock interrupted her pathetic attempts to convince herself she wasn’t an idiot.

      When Jacob stepped in, she pointed a screwdriver at him. Antagonism was always the best shield against weakness. “You are not allowed in here, and you know it. Not after last time.”

      “I was trying to organize—”

      “And I couldn’t find my ammeter for a week.” She waved the screwdriver at him. “What do you want?”

      “Can you turn that crap down so I don’t have to yell?”

      Her music was not that loud, but she grumbled a complaint and walked over to push the off button. When she turned to him again, he was bending over to pick something up off the ground.

      “You touch that I will kick your ass.”

      He scowled at her, still bent over. “Because you’re leaving that screw on the floor for safekeeping?”

      She merely raised a brow, and after a few seconds he grunted and stood up, leaving the screw right there. Oh, she so did enjoy winning. Especially against Jacob.

      “At least take down the Joe Mauer poster. It’s not professional.”

      “So? Clients don’t come back here. Besides, he’s dreamy. Don’t be jealous because the Cubs don’t have a decent-looking guy on their team.”

      Jacob grimaced. “Girls are so weird.”

      “Like you wouldn’t have swimsuit models plastered all over if you had a workshop.”

      “I most certainly would not.”

      “Lies.”

      “Well, not all over.”

      “Ha!”

      “Listen, we need to talk.”

      Leah’s stomach sank. Nothing good ever came from a sentence that started with listen, especially if it ended with needing to talk. “Um, okay.”

      “We need a schedule.”

      Leah furrowed her brow. “For what? The Jasmine Street project? You haven’t even bought—”

      “For your parents.”

      So, it was about that. Hello, awkward city. “Oh. Oh. Well.”

      “We need a blueprint. We need to plan. We can’t go into this willy-nilly or we’re going to get burned.” He stood by the screw on the floor, businessman face on. This is what we’re going to do. It served him well as a business owner and contractor. She didn’t like it being transferred to real life, though.

      “God, you and your blueprints.”

      “You know I’m right.”

      Ugh. He probably was. She’d been so worked up about asking him for the favor, she hadn’t fully planned out the how part. How was this going to work? What did she expect him to do?

      She had to look away from him or that idiotic heat that had been stealing over her face a ridiculous amount lately would be blatantly obvious.

      Yes, maybe a blueprint was the way to go. If they had a set way to deal with it, nothing could go...awry. “Okay, so, what do you suggest?”

      “Well, we need to think about how this is effective. I come to dinner with you guys once or twice? They come see MC? And how do we handle Christmas? I don’t think getting my parents tangled in this is a good idea, so we need to make sure there’s no overlap there. Mainly, we need to start thinking like a couple.”

      Leah snorted. She might have the hots for the guy, but them seeing eye to eye had never been a strong suit.

      “Hey, you’re the one who told your parents you were in a yearlong relationship with me.”

      “Yeah. Probably because I wanted to strangle you that day, so you were the first name that popped out of my mouth.”

      He shook his head. “Anyway, stay for dinner. We’ll get Grace’s help. No reason not to get extra help to think through everything.”

      Leah couldn’t decide if Grace’s help would be good or bad. But what other choice did she have? “Thanks. You’re...going above and beyond here. Thank you. Really.”

      “I like you grateful. It’s a nice change of pace.”

      Leah rolled her eyes, but because she was an idiot, him liking anything about her made her feel weird and jittery.

      “What were you talking about today?”

      “Huh?”

      “You and Grace, when Kyle and I came in... What were you talking about that had you blushing?” He leaned against the door, studying her face intently as if looking for said blush.

      “I don’t blush.” But the heat was stealing over her cheeks and with skin as fair as hers there was no hiding embarrassment.

      “You’re doing it right now.”

      “It was nothing.”

      “I’m finding that harder and harder to believe.”

      “She just thought we had a thing and I told her we didn’t.” Before she told her they did. “And I told her nothing would ever change that.”

      “Nothing?”

      “Nothing.” In a fantasy world? Sure. But she didn’t live in a fantasy world. She lived in a sickly, shorter-life-expectancy, didn’t-handle-smothering kind of world. Jacob could only exist in that world as he was. No amount of pretend could allow her to forget that.

      “So, I’ll stay for dinner. Can I get back to work now?”

      He stood there staring at her for another minute and she purposely avoided his gaze. Whatever he was looking for, she wouldn’t let him find it.

      “Yeah, sure,” he finally said and left her little work shed.

      Leah let out a long breath and sat down on her bench. She’d known this wasn’t going to be easy, but she’d thought the hard stuff would start with her parents’ arrival, not before.

      Well, she didn’t have a choice, did she? Time to gird her loins, or something less...loin-related, and handle the hard stuff. Because the result was going to be a relationship with her parents and brother, whom she’d missed. And that was worth a little hard and a little embarrassment.

      She’d