Start Me Up. Victoria Dahl

just maybe, the perfect stranger would come along and coax her to slip those shoes off. Or, better yet…order her to keep them on.

      Lori gunned the engine and climbed toward the sky.

      “H I , Q UINN ,” a voice said from right beside him. Much as he wanted to keep taking notes for his latest idea, Quinn resolutely put the pencil down and turned toward his visitor. When he saw her familiar curly brown hair and green eyes, he smiled.

      “Lori!” He pulled her into a hug.

      “Oh…Hi!” she squeaked, and Quinn quickly let her go.

      “How’ve you been?”

      “Good. You know…the same.” She shoved her hands into the pockets of her gray coveralls as a gust of wind blew up from behind her. Her curls bounced, tugged by the breeze, and her cheeks turned pinker as he watched.

      “Well, you look great. Want a cup of coffee?”

      “Um, no, I don’t think so. I’d better just get to work. I got those parts in last night.”

      “Come on. Have coffee with me. I feel bad about last time.”

      “What about last time?” she asked, though she walked into the cabin when he waved her on. With her hands in the pockets, Quinn noticed the way the baggy coveralls pulled tight across her ass. He was pretty sure he hadn’t seen her in anything but coveralls in the last five years. Maybe ten.

      He edged past her to start up the small coffee machine he’d plugged into the generator line. When he spun back toward Lori, she was turning in a slow circle.

      “Are you actually living here?”

      He glanced toward the bed. “Sometimes.”

      Her boots clomped against the scarred wood floor. Quinn looked from the steel-toed leather up to the delicate shape of her face and shook his head.

      Lori frowned. “Why are you shaking your head at me?”

      “Nothing. Yeah, I’ve been staying up here most of the summer.”

      She cast another doubtful look around the tiny one-room cabin. “Where do you keep your suits?”

      “Back at my place in Aspen. I head there every morning to shower and dress. The solar water heater isn’t particularly effective after a cold night up here.”

      “I guess not! I can’t believe it’s so cold up here in the middle of August. It was nice in Tumble Creek.” She shuddered, eyeing the coffeemaker.

      Quinn laughed and grabbed a mug to pour her the first cup.

      She glanced out the window. “You must get a lot of bears up here.”

      “Bears? I don’t know…”

      She waved a hand. “They’re all around here, Quinn. So…what did you mean about being sorry for last time?”

      “When you came by to look at the backhoe I was a bit absorbed in my work.”

      “A bit,” she said with a grin.

      “I didn’t even realize you were here until you were gone, then I felt like a complete idiot.”

      Lori waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve known you long enough not to be offended. You’ve always been that way. What did your dad used to call you? Doctor Distraction?”

      “Yeah.” Quinn grinned.

      “But I am glad you emerged from your daze long enough to offer me coffee this time.” She raised her cup in thanks and then gulped half of it. “Nice. I’m almost warm enough to go back out in that wind.”

      “Hold on.” Quinn knelt down to rummage through the wooden box he kept next to the counter and dug out a knit cap. He tugged it over her hair. “This will help,” he murmured, as he concentrated on tucking a dozen stray curls under the cap.

      “Stop!” She tried to duck away. “I don’t like hats.”

      “It’s cold.”

      “The coffee is enough.” She finally evaded his hands and yanked the stocking cap off, then stood, straightening out her hair and glaring at him.

      “And I’ve always thought you such a simple woman. Who knew you were quirky and irritable?”

      Lori rolled her eyes and tossed back the last of the coffee. “I should be done in about forty-five minutes.”

      “Wait. Don’t storm out.” He pasted on a mock serious look. “This is turning out even worse than last time. I’m sorry I tried to put a hat on you. I apologize. That was inappropriate and horrible. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

      Amusement immediately replaced the annoyance on her face, and Lori laughed. “I just don’t like hats, okay? Drop it.”

      She’d always had a great smile. In the rare moments on the school bus when both of them hadn’t had their heads stuck in books, Quinn would sometimes hear her laugh and turn to see her brilliant, wide smile. Not often, but that only made the smiles seem more important. And now? Now she was just a mystery. Unknowable and completely self-contained.

      But she still had that smile.

      He realized just how glad he was to see her. “Thanks for coming up to fix my machine, Lori.”

      “You’re welcome, Quinn,” she called sweetly as she stomped toward the door in her big boots. “Give me an hour. Then we can discuss my bonus.”

      L ORI PULLED a few more curls back into sproinginess as she stared at the backhoe’s engine. She made very sure that she appeared irritated instead of slightly excited. Those hands she’d wondered about had stroked over her forehead, her cheeks. Elegant as they looked, Quinn’s fingers were slightly rough, raspy from the work he’d done here on the mountain.

      But it had been a fraternal sort of touch. As it should have been. Quinn was her best friend’s brother. He thought of her as a little sister or possibly not at all.

      “More likely the latter,” she muttered, and forced herself to get to work.

      “You say something?”

      She jumped and banged an elbow on the angled hood. But Quinn didn’t notice. He was already back to staring down at his drafting table. “What are you working on?” Lori couldn’t help but ask.

      He looked up, blinking as he always did when he surfaced for air.

      She repeated the question.

      “Oh, plans for the house.”

      “But you’ve already started building.” She glanced toward the gray lines of concrete she could just make out at the edge of the meadow. “The foundation looks set.”

      “Yeah, I’ve completed all the floor plans. Actually, I had everything done, but now I’m stumbling over the design details. I keep changing them.” He smiled in a self-deprecating way. “I do this every day for other people, but it’s much harder working on a house I plan to live in for decades. A brilliant new idea will come to me, then the next morning it’s clearly crap. I think I have a new sympathy for clients and their ever-evolving ideas.”

      “That’s probably a good thing.” Lori looked around at the meadow and the trees and the blank expanse of sky suspended above the cliff. “You come here for inspiration then?”

      His eyes lit up. “Exactly! The light, the color…shades and hues that change from minute to minute. I need to get the windows just right, the height and shape of them. The texture of the walls against the light. I need to know what the views will be in morning and afternoon and evening.” His hands gestured, and Lori greedily watched every arc, every twitch.

      “That evening you were here,” he continued, “right after you left, the sun burst through the aspen, and I finally realized just the type of window