First Love Again. Kristina Knight
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drive. The roof bowed in the middle, which didn’t bode well. One of the side windows was broken. The front door hung slightly askew. If the inside was as bad as the outside this was more than a surface remodel job. The city would need tens of thousands of dollars to fix it up. That didn’t give the other crew reason to walk out, but some guys took on jobs before knowing the full details.
Jaime led the way inside and his hand clenched across his clipboard as he watched her hips sway side to side. It was silly, really. He’d known he would see her sooner or later when he came back, and had tried to prepare himself for that by looking her up on the internet. He’d found a few pictures in the Gulliver’s Island weekly newsletter, and saw her profile on one of those professional social networks, but there were no personal social media pages. She pushed a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear. Nothing he’d found had prepared him for how much she had changed.
Or how much she had stayed the same.
Those brown eyes were still slightly too big for her face. Her bottom lip slightly too thin and her chin too determined. He hadn’t seen her smile yet, but he knew that would bring out a single dimple in her left cheek. And, if she were really amused, small flecks of gold would twinkle in her eyes.
Not that any of that mattered even a little bit. He was here for a few weeks to get his father ready for a move. That was it.
“Well,” she said as she pushed open the front door. “What do you think?”
He thought she looked good from the tips of her toes to the blond crown of her head. And that was so not what he should think. He wasn’t good for Jaime. That’s why he’d left Gulliver in the first place. It was why he hadn’t come back and why he needed to get off the island just as quickly as possible.
Why he should have kept his big mouth shut yesterday in the diner.
Why he should definitely, totally, not check out how her pants outlined the gentle curve of her hip. She moved away from him and for a split second he forgot not to look. His hand slipped off his clipboard and the clip snapped down on his finger. Emmett cursed violently.
“I think this place needs a lot of help,” he said, shaking his hand to dull the pain.
She clasped her hands in front of her. “Are you all right?”
“Old clipboard. Should have thrown it away years ago,” he lied. “Where should we start?”
Jaime led the way through the main room, pointing out where the other crew had started. As she talked about an open-floor-plan main room with display cases along one wall and high tables scattered throughout, the room seemed to take on new life. The broken-down walls disappeared and Emmett could almost see sunlight pouring through a newly hung stained-glass window onto to honey-colored wood floors. The room could serve multiple purposes from tourist attraction to rental hall.
“How did you get the trustees to sign off on a Cleveland crew?”
“They were available. And I was here to be the local lookout, to make sure they didn’t abscond with any nails or screws that were once sold at Island Hardware.”
Emmett chuckled. “No wonder the crew walked out.”
“I didn’t actually frisk them as they left.”
Emmett squatted to look at the warped floor. “Is that why you’re here now? To make sure I don’t steal a broken windowpane?”
“They wanted a local.” Her mouth twisted in apology.
“Local?”
“Someone who lives on the island. Has island interests at heart. You know the drill.”
Yeah, he knew the drill. He hated the drill of treating those who lived off Gulliver differently than those who resided on the island. People moved in and out of his neighborhood in Cincinnati all the time. His business, in fact, was based on people buying, selling and moving on to the next project. Still, it rankled that they didn’t think of him as local. His father still lived here, for God’s sake; had been the superintendent of schools until he’d retired a few years before.
And, again, none of this matters, he reminded himself as he made a notation on his paper. What the islanders thought of him was no longer his concern. He’d left; made something of himself. What a handful of strangers thought of the boy he’d been was so far off his radar it was barely a blip.
“The floors seem to be in good shape, other than the slight warp here in the old principal’s office,” Jaime began. He shot her a curious look. “I’ve been here for the past week, remember? We’re thinking of using this place for the reunion this summer.”
“Oh.”
“Our ten-year reunion,” she said, as if he was dense.
“I know how long it’s been since high school.”
“I wasn’t sure. Most of the class has RSVP’d.”
He’d tossed the unopened invitation onto his desktop as soon as it arrived, knowing from the off-white envelope with streamers embossed on the front what it was. “I’m not sure I’ll be here that long.” Didn’t want to be here that long was more to the point.
“I figured,” she said and sounded almost happy about it. That rankled even more. “With your big life in Cincinnati. Must be hard to get away at all.”
“It is. And I don’t have a ‘big life’ down south. It’s just a life.” Emmett picked at a bit of loose wood around one of the windowpanes and it flaked off easily. Rotten. Great. He made another notation on his clipboard and moved to the next window. “I’m here to renovate my dad’s house. He’s selling and moving to a place in Cincinnati.”
“Gib’s moving? Why? He loves the island.”
Emmett wasn’t sure how to answer that. His father hadn’t said he couldn’t tell anyone about his illness. But then, he’d also avoided leaving the house today when, in the past, he’d have been all over a trip to the mainland. Last night, he’d been upset that he lost himself for a while, and Emmett had to believe that was part of the reason. He didn’t want to lose himself in front of his friends. “He wants easier winters. Besides, the old place is too big for one person.”
“Oh. It looked, uh—”
“Like we’re thinking about torching it for the insurance money?”
“It’s not that bad.”
“He’s getting older. It’s harder to keep everything up.”
Jaime followed him as he tested the walls and floor. They started up the back stairs and he pointed to a loose board before Jaime tripped over it. She wobbled and he took her hand, the contact heating his skin.
“Emmett—”
“Don’t.” There was a look in her eyes that he remembered. A look that said she was going to say something he didn’t want to hear. Something he couldn’t hear. And it had to be about one of two things: prom night or Pittsburgh.
In either case, Emmett didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want her to tell him she was okay or that those events didn’t matter. They did. For better or worse leaving Jaime in Pittsburgh and then again on the island, changed his life.
They reached the summit and he released her hand. Emmett looked around. Not bad. The old wood floors were scarred but solid, and though the ceiling had a lot of water damage, neither the ceiling nor the floors below the water spots were warped. He’d need a ladder and an inspection of the outside roof to be positive.
“I just wanted to say—”
Emmett cut her off. “This isn’t as bad as I thought.” He pretended to push against the wall nearest him. Then continued down the hall, away from Jaime and the memories he wished he could forget.
She followed. “Can it be fixed?”
“Anything can be fixed with the right