Dirty Work: A Bad Boy Romance Read online

  DIRTY WORK

  Sophie Brooks

  Dirty Work

  Copyright © 2016 Sophie Brooks

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, events, locations, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  Note: This book was previously published as Fiona’s Fixer-Upper.

  Sophie Brooks

  www.sophiebrooksauthor.com

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  Sophie Brooks

  www.sophiebrooksauthor.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Mailing List

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

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  Chapter One

  COULD THERE BE anything better than a hot, naked man in my shower? And not just any man. I’d always liked the way Jake looked. Six foot two, with honey blond hair that a comb couldn’t tame. A sexy goatee and a trail of stubble lining his strong jaw made him look like the bad boy he was. He’d spent years working construction, so he had plenty of muscles in all the right places. His powerful arms were made for wrapping around me.

  I could go on about his chest for several days. Impossibly smooth, tan skin covered his hard pecs and abs. He also had the most piercing eyes I’d ever seen, deep pools of blue that were currently focused on me. Only me. “Let’s make this happen,” he said.

  And I wanted to. I wanted to tear off my clothes and join him in there. I knew he wanted me to also, because he got a commanding look on his face and said, “Did you hear me?”

  I took a step forward. He was still looking at me so intently it made me melt. His perfect lips opened and I wanted to kiss them, but then his actual words finally got through to me as he repeated them: “When did this happen?”

  What? Reality came crashing down on me as the hot, pulse-quickening image faded away.

  There was a sexy guy in my shower, but he was fully clothed and looking at me like I was crazy. “It isn’t a hard question,” he said. “When did the window break?”

  Oh! “Sorry, I was thinking about something else,” I said, trying to appear as if I were fully vested in this conversation and hadn’t been imagining anything even remotely inappropriate. “On Monday. I opened the window to let the steam out after my shower and the crank broke. Now it won’t close.” My house wasn’t exactly new, and things often went wrong. Which was why Jake was here in the first place.

  “Can you fix it?” I asked.

  He rolled those baby blues. “I can fix anything, Red.”

  The last trace of the delicious fantasy vanished completely, and I sighed. We were back to this again. “My hair is red. My name is Fiona.”

  “Got it, Red. I’m gonna have to get a new crank from the hardware store.”

  “Is that expensive?” The thought of spending yet more money I didn’t have to fix this house drove all thoughts of the annoying nickname from my mind.

  “It’s a hand crank for a sixty-year-old casement window. I don’t think it’s going to break the bank.”

  “Well, how would I know?”

  He glanced at me and then turned back to the frosted glass window. It was the old-fashioned kind that opened outward like a small door. It was usually controlled by a small crank that turned to open or close it. When it worked.

  Jake let his gaze travel from the open window back to me. His mouth settled into a wicked grin. “If you’re low on cash, you could sell tickets to watch you shower.” His gaze fell to the street beyond my front yard. “Looks like there’d be a pretty good view.”

  “Don’t be an ass. I taped a trash bag over it.”

  “Then I’ll cancel my plan to camp out on the sidewalk tomorrow morning.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and swiped at it as if he were changing his schedule. Such a comedian. But his act was made less convincing by the way his eyes weren’t on the phone at all, but instead sweeping up and down my body, pausing to linger on my straight skirt and tight t-shirt. His eyes moved upward, and he could have been looking at my face, but I knew better. He was focused on my shoulder-length wave of auburn hair. He’d always loved my hair. Said it made me look as Irish as my name.

  Jake stepped over the edge of the bathtub and suddenly it was very crowded in the small bathroom. He brushed past me as he exited. I was tempted to accuse him of trying to cop a feel, but truthfully, it was a very tiny room and he was a pretty big guy. Well, pretty tall, anyway. He wasn’t huge, like a body builder, but he was definitely ripped. His tight black jeans and white shirt showcased that nicely.

  I followed him into the living room and reached for my purse. I pulled out forty dollars, effectively halving the amount of money I had for the rest of the week. Unless I hit the ATM before then, which would be a very bad idea. For about the thousandth time in the past year, I wondered if I should’ve stuck with renting. This house was a money pit.

  Jake took the cash and raised an eyebrow.

  “What?” I said.

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said, even though I did.

  “I mean, Fiona, if you want me to do something else, show me now. Don’t pretend to forget and then call me while I’m at the hardware store. Don’t wait until I’m walking out the door and then say ‘Oh by the way.’”

  “That’s the only thing. Really.” I said. “Mostly.”

  He rolled his eyes again. “Do you have to waste my time and insult my intelligence? Maybe do just one or the other, but not both.” Jake had always had the ability to sound sexy and sarcastic at the same time.

  “Well ... okay. One of the cabinet doors pops open and won’t stay shut. Almost knocked me out the other day.”

  I followed him into the kitchen and watched as he ripped off the tape holding the cabinet shut. Sure enough, the door opened on its own, coming to rest at a ninety-degree angle.

  "I’ll get a magnetic catch. Anything else?”

  “Nope. That’s it. Thanks.”

  He nodded and headed toward the front door.

  “Well ... ”

  He sighed and came back into the kitchen.

  Forty-five minutes later, Jake was back with the new window crank and the other things I’d needed. Apparently, he hadn't had any qualms about spending the rest of my money on food. The scent of fried chicken had preceded him through the door.

  We ate on bar stools at the kitchen counter which the real estate agent had told me was a ‘breakfast nook.’ She’d been much more truthful about nice features like the breakfast nook than she’d been about how much upkeep the place needed.

  “How’s work?” Jake asked.

  “Pretty much the same.” I’d been an assistant at the local library since graduating from college three years ago. “How’s your job?” He was a contractor who did a lot of construction work.

  “Not bad.
Getting some overtime.”

  “Good, then you can pay for the chicken.”

  “I’m cheap labor, Red. Cheap, but not free.”

  I nibbled on a chicken wing, though I never much saw the point of those unless they were smothered in barbecue sauce. A question rose in my mind and escaped my lips before I could pull it back. “Are you seeing anyone? I heard something about Stacie.”

  He took his time, scraping the dark meat off a leg with his teeth. Finally, he put the bone down, stood up, and washed his hands at the sink. “I see a lot of people,” he said.

  Which, of course, was true but not what I meant. My friend Alison had seen him with Stacie a time or two at a local bar, but she said they hadn’t been all over each other. Not like Jake and I used to be. Lisa, whose husband was friends with Jake, didn’t know if they were a couple, either. It was maddening.

  Jake worked on the cupboard door while I cleaned up. Then I grabbed a new book from the stack I’d borrowed from the library today. I had to get my mind off Mr. Tall, Blond, and Evasive, or I’d go crazy. But first I asked if there was anything I could do to help.

  “No,” he said. "Okay if I go down in the basement when I’m done? I left my miter saw down there.”

  “Of course,” I said, and walked through the house to the front porch, settling on the creaky wooden swing. How unfair that Jake wasn’t just eye candy. And he wasn’t just a handyman or cheap labor either. He was my ex-boyfriend, and until three months ago, he’d lived here with me. And now he didn’t, and he might be seeing someone named Stacie. Maybe.

  Life would be so much easier if I could afford to hire a real handyman.

  Chapter Two

  “SO, HAVE YOU seen Jake recently?” my twin sister Bree asked. She was still far too tuned into my moods even though she’d recently moved to Florida with her husband, Alex.

  “No. I mean, he came over to get some of his stuff from the basement,” I said.

  “And to fix some things in that house of yours,” Bree said with a laugh. “Ever think that maybe you bought such a fixer-upper because it would force you to find a man to help you out?”

  I laughed, too, but I didn’t find it very funny. The man I’d loved had found it all too easy to walk away from me and my house.

  “I still don’t get why you guys broke up,” she said, with an irritating ability to follow my train of thought.

  “We were having some problems and it led to an argument. A big one. And then he just left.”

  “Because you told him to.” We’d been over this before.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t mean I wanted to break up with him. We were both so angry. He refused to admit there was anything wrong. He wanted to pretend that everything was fine. So I told him that if he hated talking about our relationship so much, he should leave.”

  It still confused the hell out of me. Nothing else I’d said had gotten through to him in the year we’d lived together. But somehow, that did. And he’d left. Just walked away. Couldn’t he have stayed and tried to work things out? The next day when I came home from work, his stuff was gone from the bedroom. I found the bulk of his belongings boxed up in a corner of the basement. And I heard from Mike and Lisa that he’d rented an apartment. It’d been clear that he was done.

  “But what exactly was the fight about?” Bree’s voice tugged me back to the present.

  “You know … regular stuff,” I said. And I wasn’t trying to be evasive. I honestly didn’t know exactly what that one had been about. We’d fought often over household chores, paying bills, spending money. The normal things that couples fight about. In romance movies, there was always a clear reason for a breakup. The guy stayed out all night drinking with his buddies. The girl lied about her past. One of them cheated. There was always a reason. But in real life it wasn’t that simple. Or at least it hadn’t been for us.

  “Well, hang in there,” Bree said. “It’ll get easier as time passes. Don’t make it harder on yourself. Do whatever it takes to avoid him. When a guy looks like that—probably out of sight, out of mind is the best way to go.”

  * * *

  A week later, the situation was dire at my house. “Come on, come on, you can do it.” But the garbage disposal was having none of that. It clearly couldn’t do it, judging by the three inches of water in the sink. Spinach, cheese, and grape tomatoes floated in it. Yuck. I’d dredged up lots of gross stuff when I stuck a wooden spoon down there, and all I’d gotten for my trouble was a sick groaning sound from the disposal. And now I needed a new wooden spoon.

  To top it all off, it was Friday evening. Even if I could afford a plumber, there was no way I could swing for the weekend or evening rates. And I couldn’t go all weekend with no kitchen sink. I had to eat—assuming my appetite ever returned after seeing that unappealing mess. In order to eat, I needed to cook. And that required a lot of things, including the kitchen sink.

  With a sigh, I called Jake, only realizing after the phone was ringing that he might be out tonight. On a date. With Stacie.

  But he answered on the fourth ring, and it was quiet in the background. He sounded like he was probably in his new apartment.

  I explained the problem and even did a pretty spot-on impersonation of the grinding noise the garbage disposal was making.

  Jake was somewhat less than sympathetic. “Red, it’s Friday night. I worked over fifty hours this week. Yesterday I hauled hundred-pound bags of cement. Every muscle in my body aches. I’m guessing that laying on your kitchen floor with my head under the sink is not going to improve that.”

  Probably not. I knew Jake truly was tired. He was a general contractor, and he ended up doing a lot of the work himself at the building sites he supervised. I felt guilty for asking, but I didn’t have any other choice. “Please, Jake. I need to be able to use the sink. I need to be able to cook.” Suddenly, inspiration struck. “Without the sink, I can’t make yummy things like that macaroni ‘n’ cheese you love.”

  “The one with the bacon and toasted bread crumbs on top?” He moaned a little as he said it, and even out of context the sound turned me on.

  “If you fix the sink, I’ll make you a huge pan and bring it over. And some of those chocolate chip cookies with walnuts.” From his silence, I could tell that I had his attention. I used to wonder if those cookies were the only thing he liked better than sex.

  “You’re killing me,” he said. “Can’t you just once call someone else? Like, say, a professional?” He paused, and I let the silence ride. At last he sighed and spoke again. “If you want me to drag my tired ass over, I want more than mac ‘n’ cheese.”

  “I said I’d bake cookies, too.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. I want a different kind of payment.”

  My breath hitched. My brain wasn’t entirely sure where he was going with this, but my quickening pulse showed that my body was already anticipating something dirty.

  “I want a back rub.”

  I froze, but I kept my voice light. “Sure, I can rub your shoulders, make those sore muscles feel better.”

  “You know that’s not what I’m talking about. If I wanted a few minutes of mindless kneading, I’d put a dollar in the massage chair at the mall. I want a Fiona’s Finest.”

  I tried—and failed—to stifle a small gasp. After a moment, I mustered a brisk tone. “We’re broken up. We don’t do things like that anymore.”

  “Yeah, but it’s also quite common when people break up for the gal to stop asking the guy to do a bunch of home repairs. Yet you keep calling me. C’mon. It’s not like I’m asking you to bang me and my five best buddies. I’m only asking for a back rub. It’s the most amazing back rub in the world, but it’s still just a back rub.”

  “You can’t ask for that,” I said feebly.

  “Actually, I can. As an independent contractor, I set the rate. You, the customer, get to decide whether you want to accept my services and pay that rate.”

  “But I don’t have any other choice!”

&nb
sp; “Yes, you do. You could hire someone else who charges rates you’re willing to pay. You could look online and try to fix it yourself. You could ignore the sink and eat a lot of take out. You have choices, so make one.”

  Damn him and his stupid, self-serving logic. We were still friends, weren’t we? Friends helped each other out. And this time, I was the one who needed his help. As I had been the time before. And the time before that. Okay, maybe he had a point. A small point.

  This was definitely a bad idea, but … “Deal.”

  “I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” he said, all traces of fatigue gone from his voice.

  What had I gotten myself into?

  * * *

  As he’d anticipated, Jake was on his back on the kitchen floor. What I hadn’t anticipated was that every time he reached his hands up to work on the disposal, his t-shirt would ride up, revealing a flat patch of tan abs, complete with dusty brown hairs leading under his jeans. I willed myself not to think about where that happy trail led.

  I’d spent the time until he’d arrived arguing with myself about what to wear. Part of me wanted to throw on sweats, remove my makeup, and mess up my hair. If I looked scary enough, maybe he wouldn’t make me keep my end of the bargain. Another part of me wanted to dress up in a teeny skirt and top to remind him of what he was missing. I settled for keeping what I had on—jean shorts and a yellow scoop-neck t shirt—but I spent some time on my hair and makeup.

  While Jake worked, and while I reminded myself not to stare at his abs, I paced around the kitchen.

  “Stop it.” Jake peered out at me from under the sink.

  “Stop what?”

  “Pacing. Every time you walk across the floor, I can feel the vibrations. Relax, Red. I don’t bite. Not anymore.”

  I rolled my eyes at that last part, but it was a wasted gesture because his upper body had already disappeared under the sink again. After a few moments he said, “Hand me that big wrench from my toolbox.”