Always and Forever (4 page)

She brought both hands up and rubbed her temples. Jamal was pretty sure she wanted to strangle him.

“What’s this?” she asked, pointing at a spot he’d X-ed out on the blueprint.

“It’s an odd little room on the other side of the house. Looks as if it was added long after the original structure was built.”

“I know about the room,” she said. “What are you planning to do with it?”

“Get rid of it.”

Her brows spiked in shock. “Why?” she asked with enough distress to give him pause.

“Because it sticks out like a sore thumb,” Jamal answered cautiously. “I want the house to be as authentic as possible, and the room takes away from the original design.”

“Authentic!”
she screeched. “You’re putting strawboard walls in a Queen Anne Victorian, yet you’re claiming you want authenticity?” Her expression darkened, those smoky brown eyes turning almost black. “Of all people, I cannot believe this house fell into
your
hands.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You are going to destroy it!”

“The house was abandoned,” Jamal pointed out. “It was already on its way to being ruined.”

“It was
not
abandoned!” she shouted. “I’m sick and tired of everyone saying the house was frigging abandoned!” She slapped her hands on the table. “I can’t do this.”

The emotion he heard clogging her voice shot a lightning rod of alarm through him. “Phylicia, what’s going on here?” he asked.

“I’m sorry.” She pulled in a deep breath. “You’ll have to find someone else to help you.”

She glanced up at him for the briefest moment, but it was long enough for Jamal to notice the sheen in her eyes. He caught her by the elbow, but she jerked away from him and half walked, half ran to her truck.

“Phylicia!” Jamal called, but her truck was already backing out of the driveway. Jamal stood in complete shock, trying to figure out just what in the hell he’d done wrong this time.

Chapter 4

P
hil pulled into her driveway and hopped out of her truck, making a beeline for her workshop. She needed a solid hour of mind-numbing work before she could even think about doing anything else. She wanted to hit something with her mallet. Hard. But she’d passed the pounding stage on all of the projects she currently had in the works.

The blowtorch would have to do.

Phil headed for the back of the shop. She lowered the safety shield over her face and ignited the blowtorch. Moments later, she was lost in the piece she had been working on for the past few months.

With painstaking precision she carved intricate loops and curlicues through the metal she’d found at a scrapyard, creating a lace effect. Immediately, the lace curtains that once hung in her mother’s painting room popped into her mind, and her hand slipped.

“Dammit,” Phil cursed. She released the trigger on the blowtorch and surveyed the damage her slip had caused to the metal. Nothing too noticeable, thank goodness.

“Phylicia?”

Phil nearly fell off the stool at the unexpected summons. She whipped around, the blowtorch still in her hand.

Jamal took two giant steps back, his hands raised in surrender. “Careful with that.”

Phil lifted the safety shield from her face but didn’t put down the blowtorch. “How did you get in here?”

“The door wasn’t locked.”

Of course it wasn’t. She lived in Gauthier. She never locked the door to her shop while she was working. She’d have to rethink that. This was the second time he had crept up on her.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want to know what happened back at the house,” he said. “Why did you run off?”

Phil’s entire being sagged in defeat. It was no use withholding the truth from him. He would eventually find out. With the way gossip traveled in this small town, she was surprised no one had revealed Belle Maison’s previous owner to him already.

“It’s my house,” Phil said. His confused expression would have been comical if there was anything even remotely funny about any of this. “The Victorian that you have all these fancy plans for? It’s my family’s home. It’s where I grew up.”

“But the bank said they owned—”

“Yes, the bank owned it,” she cut him off. “It’s a very long story that I’m not about to get into, especially with you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?
Especially with me?
When did I become the bad guy, Phylicia?”

“When you bought my family’s home and decided to make it into a bed-and-breakfast.” Phil raised her palm, stanching his protest. “This isn’t your fault, and I know you don’t deserve any of the disgust I feel toward you.”

He flinched at her harsh word choice, and Phil felt even worse.

“I’m sorry. That was uncalled for,” she said. Phil shook her head. “I just can’t do this, Jamal. What you’re doing? Opening this B&B? It’s a great thing for Gauthier. It’s going to be a huge draw for tourists, and I know the businesses on Main Street are going to benefit from it. But that’s my house,” she said, pointing east toward Belle Maison. “It’s hard to see it being destroyed.”

“I’m not going to destroy the house. How many times do I have to say that?”

“When it comes to this sort of thing, it seems we have different definitions of what it means to destroy. And you
are
planning to destroy a part of the house.”

“Just that one room,” he said.

“It’s the most important room in the house!” Phil yelled.

She covered her face with her hands and pulled in a deep breath. As the tears collected in her throat, Phil mentally cursed each and every one of them. But it was too hard to maintain a stoic facade. She was never one for wearing her heart on her sleeve, but when it came to her mother, she couldn’t hold back.

Phil bit her lower lip to help curb the wavering. She wiped at the tears that traveled down her cheeks.

“Twenty years ago, my father built that room for my mother. It’s where she painted. She needed a place with plenty of natural sunlight, and there wasn’t a room on the east side of the house that was suitable. She would spend hours in that room. Her painting meant everything to her.”

Phil sucked in a deep breath. “I’ve lost so much of her already. Hearing that you planned to tear down her room... It was just too much.”

She couldn’t interpret the expression on Jamal’s face. He just stood there, staring at her, and her discomfort grew with every nanosecond that passed.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I had no idea. About any of it. The bank never told me anything about the previous owner. Shit, Corey didn’t even say anything.”

“I was surprised neither Corey nor Mya told you it was my family home. But neither of them knows how Belle Maison ended up on the market. Mya believes I put it up for sale intentionally.” She looked up at him. “I never would have let the property go if I’d had a choice. I love that house. It’s been in my family for generations.”

His mouth dipped in a frown. “Phylicia, I’m really sorry that you had to sell your family’s home, but I’ve invested too much into this project not to see it through.”

“Oh, God, I’m not asking you not to go forth with the B&B. I’m a businesswoman, Jamal. I understand how these things work. You bought the house. It’s yours. I just can’t be a part of the restoration process. I thought I could, but to stand there and watch my mother’s room being torn to the ground?” Phil shook her head. “I just can’t do it.”

Several moments passed before Jamal asked in a gentle voice, “What if I don’t touch that room?”

Phil’s eyes shot to his. She didn’t want to believe the sincerity she saw there. “You would do that?”

He took a step toward her. “The room isn’t hurting anybody,” he said.

His deep brown eyes searched her face. When he reached toward her, Phil stiffened, but he only captured the safety shield and pulled it off her head.

“Besides,” he continued, “as you pointed out, I’m making a lot of other changes, so my authenticity argument doesn’t carry much weight. And the house holds sentimental value for you.”

“For
me,
not you.”

“It’s clear how much it would hurt if the room was destroyed. I don’t want to be the one who hurts you, Phylicia.” He reached forward and lifted her ponytail from where it draped along her neck. “I think someone did that already.”

She gazed at him, feeling as if she’d been drawn into a trance by his hushed voice. “Why do you always call me Phylicia?”

The edge of his mouth quirked in a smile. “Because it’s your name.”

“Everyone else calls me Phil.”

“That’s a man’s name. And despite that blowtorch you were wielding a few minutes ago, there’s no denying that you are all woman, Phylicia.”

As he dipped his head toward her, a tiny voice told Phil to move out of his reach. But a much louder voice told her to stay right where she was. It had been way too long since she’d been kissed, and after the day she’d had, Phil couldn’t think of a single thing she needed more.

The moment Jamal’s soft lips touched hers her heart melted. He was gentle in his coaxing, but insistent, his lips enticing her to join in. He cupped the back of her head and slanted his to the side to get a better angle.

Phil heard a moan but couldn’t tell which one of them had made the sound. Without fully recognizing what she was doing, she linked her hands behind Jamal’s neck and cradled the back of his head. She parted her lips and thrust her tongue inside his mouth, losing herself in the kiss.

An animalistic growl rose from his throat. Jamal held her in place as his tongue plunged into her mouth. He tasted like cinnamon, spicy and sweet, and as his tongue made itself at home in her mouth, Phil allowed herself to enjoy it. He knew just what to do, applying just the right amount of pressure before pulling slightly away, making her reach for him.

After she had enough fodder to fill her nightly fantasies for a while, Phil ended the kiss, leaving Jamal with a dazed expression, his eyes heavy with desire.

She took several steps back. “Did you offer to leave the room untouched just so you could get away with kissing me?” Phil asked, trying to add some levity to the sexually charged tension suffusing the room.

“No,” he said, a hint of humor tingeing his voice. “I promised not to touch the room because it’s the right thing to do, but I would have kissed you anyway,” he said. “I’ve been dying to kiss you since Mya and Corey’s wedding. And that was before I saw you holding a blowtorch. That just pushed me over the edge.”

Phil rolled her eyes. Despite the fireworks his kiss had set off within her, she needed to reiterate her previous assertion. “I meant what I said, Jamal. If we’re going to work together, you can’t do that again.”

“What? Kiss you?”

She nodded.

He blew out a ragged breath. “Are you really going to make me choose between kissing you and having you work on the house? That’s not fair.”

“Wait a minute. Didn’t we already have this conversation?” Phil asked. “There is no choice. The whole you-and-me thing isn’t going to happen.”

“Come on, Phylicia. You know we’d be good together.”

“I don’t know any such thing,” she returned.

A simple, sexy brow quirked. “Need me to show you again?”

Phil’s insides quaked with instant want. God, this man was dangerous to her undersexed body.

She picked up the blowtorch. “Stay back. I mean it.”

Jamal’s head pitched back with a crack of laughter. “You definitely have a dangerous side to you, Phylicia Phillips.” He leaned in close and whispered in her ear, “You should know that I like that in a woman.” He winked at her, then turned and headed for the door. “I’ll see you at Belle Maison tomorrow morning,” Jamal called over his shoulder.

She watched him walk out of her workshop, and a part of her wanted to follow him. How was she going to survive the next couple of months working alongside that man? Especially now that she knew how he tasted.

As she tapped the igniter on the burner head and connected the blue flame with the metal, Phil muttered, “Boy, you just love heaping trouble on your head, don’t you?”

Chapter 5

“G
ood morning.”

Jamal looked up from the board he was measuring. He couldn’t contain his smile as Phylicia walked toward him, carrying a thermos. He was constantly amazed at the way this woman could make faded jeans and a plain white T-shirt look sexy.

“Good morning,” he returned.

She took a healthy sip from her thermos before capping it and allowed her eyes to roam around the yard. Finally, she looked his way, giving him her full attention, and the current that zapped between them was enough to singe the hair on his skin.

Phylicia cleared her throat. “I thought about your plans on how to tackle the restoration,” she began. “I think you may be setting yourself up for more work if you go one room at a time. You should just tear down everything at once.”

Her all-business tone made it apparent that she had no plans to pick up where they’d left off after yesterday’s kiss.

Jamal folded his arms across his chest, one brow cocked.
So that’s how it’s going to be?

Phylicia lifted her chin.
Damn right.

His mind recoiled in protest, but Jamal knew it was for the best, especially with all the work that needed to be done and the limited time he had left before guests began arriving. But there were
after
-work hours. And the work crew he’d hired would soon add a lot more manpower to the project.

“Are you ready to get to it?” Phylicia asked, all business. “I could get started on removing the wainscoting today.”

“I thought you wanted me to leave the wainscoting untouched?” he asked.

“It’s your house, Jamal.” She scrunched up her nose. “You have no idea how hard it was for me to say that.”

“Phyl—” he started, but she put her hand up, halting him.

“It is
your
house. You agreed to leave my mom’s painting room intact, which I am unbelievably grateful for, but I don’t expect you to change all of your plans just to suit me. You hired me to help preserve elements of Belle Maison’s original structure; that’s what I’m here to do.”

“I also hired you for your input,” he said. “I’m open to suggestions. Doesn’t mean I’ll go along with all of them, but as highly recommended as you come, I’d be a fool not to listen to what you have to say.”

He tossed the measuring tape aside and moved toward her. “I want us to work together as a team.”

He reached for her, but she took several steps back. She held her hands up, her face resolute. “Look, Jamal, I already told you that if I’m going to work with you on this project, what happened yesterday afternoon cannot happen again. That kiss was...well, it was a mistake.”

“It wasn’t a mistake,” he disputed. “It was unbelievable.”

“Jamal—”

“Don’t shut me down without at least giving me a chance, Phylicia.”

“It’s not going to happen,” she reiterated. “I have too much going on in my life right now. And with you and this house and just... It’s not going to happen. Is that going to be a problem for you?”

He raised his palms up, giving her the universal hands-off gesture. What he really wanted to do was kiss the living daylights out of her again. Apparently, she’d quickly forgotten how explosive their kiss was yesterday. He, on the other hand, couldn’t get it out of his head.

“Good,” she said with a curt nod. “I’ll get to work on the parlor.”

Arms crossed over his chest, Jamal stepped to the side so she could move past him. As he watched her walk up the back steps and into the house, he couldn’t imagine how he would get through the next few months working alongside her.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to worry about running into Phylicia all that much. With him outside measuring the strawboard that would replace the walls in the bedrooms, and her working inside in the front parlor, he hardly saw her for most of the morning. At noon, Jamal tossed the carpenter’s pencil aside and entered the house through the door just off the kitchen.

He stopped at the arched entryway between the parlor and downstairs sitting room and watched as Phylicia carefully pried a section of aged wainscoting from the wall. She gingerly laid it next to an identical piece she’d placed on the floor, and turned to tackle the next section.

As she bent over, Jamal’s hands fisted at the way the faded denim cupped her ass like a well-worn baseball glove. It probably felt as soft and smooth, too. He reined in the urge to walk up to her and test it for himself.

Stop it,
he ordered himself. Phylicia had made her feelings known; he had to respect them, no matter how much it killed him to do so.

He shoved away from the doorjamb. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

She jumped and turned.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “Between the pounding and the music you’d have to wear a cowbell around your neck to announce your arrival.” She smiled, and that urge to kiss her roared back to life. “Did you need something?” she asked.

And isn’t that a loaded question?

Jamal bit back the answer that was on the tip of his tongue and held up his wrist to show her the time. “Lunch,” he said. “What are you in the mood for?”

“Mine is in the truck,” Phylicia answered. “I always bring my own lunch when I’m working on a site.”

“Will you give me a few minutes to run over to Jessie’s before you eat?” he asked, referring to the pseudorestaurant that was run out of a local woman’s kitchen. “I’m hoping you’ll share some of the history of the house over lunch.”

The look she gave him was guarded, as if she didn’t trust his motives.

Smart woman.

He held his hands up. “Information. I promise I won’t try anything else. I’ll need to know the history of Belle Maison when giving tours to guests.”

Slowly, she nodded, mistrust still evident in her narrowed gaze. “I’ll wait for you. Let me know when you get back.” She pointed at him. “But don’t sneak up on me this time. It’s not smart to startle a woman who’s holding a crowbar.”

“And I’m pretty sure you have several uses for it, too.”

“Bet your ass I do.” The musical sound of her laughter traveled along his skin like a caress. Jamal left the house before he went back on his promise not to try anything else with her.

* * *

“How long did you live here?” Jamal asked just as Phil took a bite of her sandwich. “Sorry,” he said, obviously realizing what he’d done.

She held up a finger. While she chewed, she studied his legs that hung off the edge of the truck’s tailgate, where they sat eating their lunch. The muscles were so well-defined they looked as if they were sculpted by hand. A faded four-inch line stretched across his knee.

“Surgery?” she asked, gesturing to it.

“Yeah, back in college. The bitter end to my dreams of playing in the major league.”

“I forgot you played college baseball with Corey. That’s how you two met, right?”

He nodded. “We were teammates for a couple of years. He was a junior when I was a freshman, but somehow we ended up being assigned together as roommates. Pissed him off, until the first care package from my mom arrived.” He chuckled. “He warmed up to me after one bite of her famous walnut chocolate chip cookies.”

“It must have been hard to see Corey go off to the majors,” she said.

“He wanted it way more than I did,” Jamal said with a casual shrug. “Playing major league baseball had always been my dad’s dream. I just happened to be good at baseball, so I played it.” He glanced at her. “I haven’t admitted this to very many people, but when I went down with that knee injury I was more relieved than anything else.”

“So, you spent most of your childhood trying to please your dad, too, huh?”

“You, too?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah. I was a total daddy’s girl. He hung the moon. Literally.” Phil laughed. “Back when I was in grade school my room was decorated with a solar system motif,” she explained.

“What was it like growing up here?”

“It was wonderful. Just look at it.” She gestured toward the Victorian. “How many houses are so grand that they warrant a name? When I was younger, I used to pretend it was a castle.”

“When did you move out?” he asked. “The Realtor said the house had been abandoned for some time.”

“Unoccupied, not abandoned,” Phil reminded him. “I lived at Belle Maison until I finished college. I went to Southeastern in Hammond, so I commuted back and forth. Who in their right mind would pick a dorm room over this, huh?”

“It sure beats that cubbyhole Corey and I shared back at Arizona State.” He laughed. His head tipped to the side in inquiry. “What does a restoration specialist study in college? Did you get a degree in design?”

“No, finance.” Phil rolled her eyes at his dumbfounded look. “I know, I know. How does a person with a finance degree end up restoring furniture?”

“It’s not that big of a stretch. Corey told me the restoration business was your dad’s. Did you work in the finance world before joining the family business?”

“Nope.” She shook her head. “I always knew this was what I wanted to do. But I figured I could help my dad grow the business with my finance degree.”

But things had not worked out as she’d hoped. Phil could recall verbatim the argument she’d had with her dad over her vision for the company. If she had known it would be the last words she would ever say to him, she wouldn’t have uttered half the things that came out of her mouth that day.

She took a sip of the iced tea Jamal had brought back from Jessie’s. It had a hard time finding its way past the lump in her throat. “As I was saying, I lived here until I finished college. It was just me, Mom and Dad.”

“This is a lot of house for three people,” he commented.

“I know,” Phil said, unable to suppress the nostalgic grin that drew across her lips. “According to the stories I’ve heard, my mom’s grandfather had anticipated a large family, but after three wives and several mistresses, he only managed to produce one son. The largest brood was
my
grandfather’s generation. There were four of them, but all of their descendants left Gauthier a long time ago. So the house passed down to my mom, and, eventually—”
unfortunately,
she thought “—to me.”

Jamal assessed her for several long moments. “You hate that I’m the one who bought this house, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she answered, not even considering lying, but Phil was solicitous enough to soften the blow with a modest chuckle. “I don’t mean to be harsh, but our styles differ a bit too much for my comfort. When I heard
you
were the new owner, I fully expected to find a wind turbine in the front yard.”

Jamal’s brow dipped with his chastising frown. “Everyone knows the wind turbine goes in the backyard next to the gazebo.”

Phil nearly choked on her tea. She started to speak, but he stopped her with upraised palms.

“I’m kidding.” He laughed. “There will be no wind turbine. I promise,” he emphasized, humor still coloring his voice. “What do you have against saving the environment, anyway?”

“I don’t have anything against saving the environment,” she answered with an affronted frown. “I just don’t like it when people ruin historic properties with their new-wave, save-the-trees green technology. Belle Maison has been standing here for more than a century and a half. It’s fine just the way it is.”

“And I’ll bet the utility bills are through the roof in the winter.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, this is south Louisiana, not Alaska. It may drop below freezing one week out of the year.” Phylicia reined in her indignation, cautious of allowing her emotions to get the best of her.

Jamal held his hands up, as if he too recognized that things were getting too heated.

“Look,” he started. “I get that you’re big into restoration, but I’m just as passionate about my work. Can you at least
try
to embrace what I want to do? I promise you I will not disturb the integrity of the house.”

“If you say so,” Phil replied, unable to stanch the skepticism that dripped from the words, despite her best effort. “But I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Jamal rolled his eyes, chagrin blanketing his face. “You just wait,” he said. “You’ll hardly be able to tell the difference between my eco-friendly improvements and the original structure. That’s what will be unique about my architectural firm, making the green technology unobtrusive.”

“How long before you get your firm off the ground?” she asked.

He shrugged again and stared at the house across the street for some time before answering. “Soon. I’m in no big hurry. My main priority is getting Belle Maison opened on time.” He scooted off the back of the tailgate. “Which is why we should probably get back to work.”

Something about the change in his tone gave her pause, but Phil didn’t want to dig any deeper. The less she intruded into Jamal Johnson’s life, the better.

She hopped down from the truck’s tailgate. “Were you planning to strip the paint from the woodwork in the parlor?” she asked.

“I figured I didn’t have a choice,” Jamal answered.

“Let me see what I can do,” she said. “I may be able to get it cleaned with the materials I have with me. If not, I can bring it back to my shop. Can you lay out some of that plastic sheeting over there?” She pointed to the area just off the gazebo.

He nodded and she went inside to grab a section of the wainscoting she’d removed. As Phil dabbed at the scuff marks with her least abrasive solvent, she surreptitiously studied Jamal as he sawed through panels of strawboard. Even though it was late September, the temperature was still hovering in the upper eighties, and his sweat-soaked shirt clung deliciously to the muscles that undulated with every push of the saw.

It was mesmerizing, watching the sinuous motion of his shoulders rise and fall. Her hands itched with the need to glide along the moist, hot skin underneath.

He turned abruptly and caught her staring. Phil jumped, nearly knocking over the bottle of solvent.

“Careful there,” he called, a knowing grin pulling at his lips.

“Oh, great,” Phil muttered. Mortified, she lowered her eyes and got back to work.