Under His Skin. Nicola Marsh

door he spotted Hope waiting for him outside. It gave him time to study her and this time he reacted to more than her pretty face. His cock hardened as he realised that ugly kaftan ended mid-thigh, exposing glorious long legs, which were surprisingly tanned given her pale English skin. Smooth. Lean, with a hint of muscle, testament to a subtle strength, perfect for wrapping around him...

      Fuck, what the hell was wrong with him? He didn’t ogle prospective clients, especially ones who made him feel inferior with a single glance.

      Scowling, he bumped the door with his hip and backed out, carefully balancing the takeout cups. He didn’t think she’d be impressed if one drop of chai froth bubbled up onto the rim. He could smell the awful spicy blend and it tickled his nose.

      ‘Here you go.’ He sounded gruff and cleared his throat when she turned and flashed him another one of those smiles that made him stare.

      ‘Thanks.’ She took a sip, followed by a soft appreciative moan that made him want to shove her up against the nearest wall and see if he could coax a few more out of her.

      Instead, he took a gulp of his straight black and burned his throat.

      ‘My place isn’t far from here. Shall we go look at it now?’

      What the fuck? Why had she insisted they meet here and not at her studio if it wasn’t far?

      Another thing he hated alongside frou-frou coffees, artsy cafés and glitzy inner cities: game-playing.

      ‘If you’re wondering why we didn’t meet there, it’s because I wanted to get a feel for you first.’ She laughed, a little self-consciously. ‘Not literally, of course, but websites and recommendations can be misleading and I wanted to see if you were the right man for the job before I showed you what I want done.’

      He refrained from pointing out the obvious—they hadn’t really talked much yet so how did she know he was right for the job?—because her tone had taken on a husky edge and for an irrational moment he wondered what she really wanted done.

      It wouldn’t be the first time horny women had confronted him on jobs before. First as a naïve nineteen-year-old, when he’d rocked up to a new house to check the kitchen cupboard installation and the home owner’s new girlfriend had greeted him at the door in a loosely belted robe which she’d proceeded to undo when he stepped inside. He’d bolted.

      The second time he’d been a fully qualified carpenter on his first job, building a pergola for a rich couple in South Yarra. He’d been on a ladder in the back yard when the wife had stepped out of the pool house, naked, and invited him to take a swim. He’d been deferent and polite, but building that pergola had been the hardest job ever because she’d been a stunner with a body to match. Thankfully, he’d never forgotten his first boss’s advice—‘Don’t screw where you glue’—and it had served him well.

      So what was it about this woman that had him forgetting liquid nails and contemplating nailing her?

      ‘It would’ve been easier to meet at your place,’ he said, sounding rude as he fell into step beside her. He tempered it with ‘So what is it you want done exactly?’

      Her startled gaze flew to his and he bit back a chuckle. He hadn’t meant to sound remotely flirtatious but he needed to regain the upper hand, to show her that he jumped to nobody’s tune, so he’d lowered his voice, knowing she could misinterpret it. The fact she had meant one of two things: she was smart or she felt the unexpected buzz of sexual attraction too.

      When he returned her stare, deliberately guileless, she tilted her nose in the air and picked up the pace. ‘I’ll show you when we get there.’

      ‘I’ll bet,’ he muttered, so softly she couldn’t hear, unable to stop a smug grin breaking through.

      Not many women challenged him. Because he moved around a lot he dated sporadically, but never longer than a few weeks.

      He never, ever, wanted to leave a woman waiting for him to come back, the way his mother had constantly, tragically, waited for his father.

      ‘Don’t you love Melbourne?’ She reverted to distant and cool as she gestured at the graffiti-covered walls they strolled past. ‘So many hidden gems like this.’

      Personally, he didn’t get the appeal of the laneways that criss-crossed the city. Some Einstein had thought spraying a bunch of ugly murals and opening up dive bars, hole-in-the-wall cafés and boutiques with crazy clothes would spruce up the place.

      ‘It’s messy,’ he said, taking another gulp of coffee and ignoring her glare that read ‘you’re a Philistine’.

      She didn’t speak after that so he filled the silence by whistling his football club’s song. That was one thing he did love about this city: Aussie Rules, and the North Melbourne Football Club in particular. He attended every game he could because for those all too brief few hours when the elite athletes kicked an oval ball around the field he remembered the one and only thing he had ever bonded over with his dad.

      Stupid, he knew, but he didn’t hate easily. It was a wasted emotion. So he preferred to remember the good times rather than the bad. Eating pies and drinking soda while cheering for a long fifty-metre goal on the run rather than sitting at the kitchen window in their shitty two-bedroom weatherboard in the middle of outback Victoria, waiting for his dad to come home. Something Stephen Holmes had rarely done.

      ‘My place is just around the corner.’

      He stopped whistling as they rounded the final block, wishing he hadn’t been thinking about his dad. It always made him tetchy and he needed to focus on giving the princess a quote then heading over the West Gate Bridge to Williamstown to oversee a new project.

      ‘Here we are.’ She threw her arms wide and he found himself glancing at a hint of cleavage before dragging his gaze towards the glass-fronted shop, the window filled with music memorabilia and an ornately scrolled Hope and Harmony etched across the top.

      ‘I take it the harmony angle refers to your music and not a twin?’

      ‘I’m an only child,’ she snapped, her curt response belied by a hint of sadness.

      Great, he’d touched a nerve. This got better and better.

      ‘This is prime real estate.’ He pointed to the park opposite, flanked by apartments. ‘Inner city with the feel of suburbia.’

      ‘I like it.’ She shrugged, as though the fact a twenty-something woman could afford to teach music from an expensive place like this meant nothing. The fact that she wanted a quote on renovations meant she didn’t rent, she owned it, making it all the more startling.

      Yeah, Hope McWilliams intrigued him, so the sooner he focussed on the job at hand the better.

      ‘The quote will work better if you show me around.’

      He expected her to bristle again so her chuckle disarmed him. ‘The renovations I want done are out the back.’

      She unlocked the door and punched in an alarm code before locking the door behind them. ‘Follow me.’

      As they moved further into the shop, he couldn’t help but stare. The regular, square shop front opened into a hexagonal room that housed a grand piano, a cello and a drum kit. The wooden floorboards glowed, the walls were covered in framed sheet music and light poured into the room via an expansive skylight. His immediate impression was one of peace, and not many places made him feel peaceful these days.

      ‘You teach those instruments?’

      ‘No, I like the way they look in the room.’ She rolled her eyes and he barked out a laugh. Sarcasm. He liked that.

      Her nose crinkled. ‘Sorry. It’s just that I’m tired of teaching and I want to do something more, hence the need for renovations.’

      She opened the double wooden doors at the back, revealing darkness. ‘What I need you to build is through here.’

      When she flicked