The Chesapeake Diaries Series (214 page)

“When you were eight or nine?”

“No, no, older than that. Fifteen, sixteen, maybe.”

“So you were always sort of friends with them.”

“You could say that.” Cam tucked the books under his arm. “Thanks again, Ellie. These mean a lot to me.”

He turned, and for a moment, she thought he was about to kiss her. All it would have taken would have
been for him to lean forward just a bit to close that tiny space between them. But he didn’t.

After she’d closed the door behind him, she wondered why he hadn’t.

Then again, why hadn’t
she
?

Chapter 14

D
une sat upright on the chair she’d been sleeping on in the corner of Ellie’s bedroom and tilted her head as if listening to something outside right before turning into a barking machine.

“Who needs a burglar alarm when you’re around?” Ellie stumbled out of bed and pulled back the curtain. It was barely dawn. Cam’s pickup was in the driveway, the driver’s-side door open, but Cam was nowhere to be seen. “Looks like we have company.”

She tossed on an old sweatshirt, traded her pajama bottoms for sweatpants, grabbed her slippers, and danced into them on her way to the stairwell.

“Hush, Dune.” She attempted to quiet the dog, which now stood howling at the top of the steps.

Ellie ran down the steps just as the pickup drove past the house. She unlocked the front door and found a ladder propped up against the wall, a bucket, a pile of plastic sheets, and an odd contraption that looked like something an exterminator would use to spray an infestation of ants. Two short-handled scrapers were in the bucket and a plain white envelope was
taped to the top step of the ladder three feet above her head.

She stared up at the white rectangle that fluttered in the breeze. “Cute, Cam.”

She dragged the ladder inside and rested it against the foyer wall, then brought in the bucket and the plastic while Dune danced impatiently around her feet.

“You need to go out, of course you do. Sorry. I got distracted.”

Ellie managed to get the ladder into the kitchen on her way to the back door. She stood on the back porch shivering while Dune went about her early morning business. The breeze out back wasn’t quite as stiff as the breeze that blew directly off the Bay out front. Still, there was no question that November had moved in, and as Jesse had said, was moving headfirst into winter. The dog paused in her patrol of the yard to scamper after some birds that had landed on the ground and were pecking at seed fallen from the bird feeder. Moments later, she was chasing a squirrel up a nearby tree and barking gleefully. When it became obvious that there was more pleasure than business being conducted, Ellie called her back to the house.

“It’s too cold to play outside,” Ellie told the dog as it followed her inside. “Maybe later it will warm up.”

Ellie put a pot of coffee on the stove, then opened the ladder. It was metal and had some age on it, so it seemed a bit cranky until she’d opened it all the way. She yanked the envelope free when she got to the top step and read Cam’s note.

Ellie
,

Just trying to keep you honest—here are the items you’ll need to scrape the wallpaper. Fill the tank with water and spray down the wall in small sections. Spray, wait a few minutes to give the water time to soften the glue, then scrape the paper pretty much the way I scraped the floor yesterday. Just be careful not to put holes in the plaster. Get some big plastic trash bags for the stuff that falls on the floor. It’s going to make a big mess
.

Tape the plastic over the doorway leading into the hall or you’ll have paper dust everywhere. Put one of the sheets on the floor to catch the stuff that falls
.

I think you know what to do with the ladder
.

Call me if you have any questions
.

Under the last line, he’d written his phone number, which Ellie programmed into her cell. She turned off the flame under the boiling coffeepot, then dialed the number he’d written down.

“Keep me honest, eh?” she said when he answered.

“I was afraid that without proper guidance you’d be painting right over the paper. I just thought I’d remove all possible excuses.”

“I admit to momentarily considering it.”

“Sorry I had to drop it all off so early. I had a meeting at seven with a potential customer in Ballard. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“I was awake,” she fibbed. “So am I going to be graded on the work I do on the kitchen walls?”

“No pressure but I can spot shoddy workmanship a mile away.” She could hear the smile in his voice as
he teased. “And since I intend on buying that house someday, I’d think you’d want to get the best price out of me that you can.”

“I get the point. I’ll follow your instructions to the letter.”

“I’ll be by later to check it out,” he said before he disconnected the call.

Ellie filled the tank with water and sprayed a mist of water onto a small section of wall. She waited a moment, then scraped at the paper until she got a tiny rip that she could exploit. It took a few minutes, but she got down through three layers of paper and several layers of paint to the plaster wall.

“This isn’t so bad,” she told Dune. She pulled the ladder across the floor and climbed halfway up. “We’ll just start in one corner and move right across to the next. We’ll be finished in no time.”

She sprayed more water, waited, then scraped. Spray. Wait. Scrape.

Spray. Wait. Scrape.

She found the rubber gloves Cameron had brought her, picked up all the pasty strips of paper that had fallen onto the floor, and stuffed them into a plastic trash bag that wasn’t nearly big enough for all the debris. She made a mental note to make a run to the market after lunch to purchase larger bags as she stuffed two more. She’d tossed them into the hall before she remembered about the plastic sheets that Cam had given her to tape up over the doorways and cover the floor. She hastily rectified the error and went back to work on the next section of paper.

Spray. Wait. Scrape.

By three in the afternoon, Ellie could barely raise her hands over her head.

“This looks so easy when they do it on TV,” she told Dune, fighting an urge to wail. “All those DIY decorating and remodeling shows make it look like a snap.”

Dune wagged her tail and hopped over the clouds of pasty paper on the floor to get to the back door, where she barked.

“Thank you for giving me an excuse to stop.” Leaving the scraper on the top ladder step, Ellie climbed down and pulled on the jacket she’d left in the back hall closet.

Walking around the backyard with Dune was both pleasure and pain. Pleasure because she was no longer reaching over her head and scraping away those little strips of paper that dispersed dust into the air and stuck to her arms. Pain because she had been reaching over her head for hours and she was pretty sure she would be useless for very possibly the rest of her life.

Cameron did try to warn me, she reminded herself. But who knew it would be so hard?

A cold rain began to fall in fat drops from a dark gray sky, so she headed back toward the porch, Dune at her heels. The dog apparently disliked the cold and wet as much as Ellie did. Once back inside, she made herself something hot to drink and decided a break was in order. She wrapped herself in a throw, curled up on the sofa, and fell asleep.

The next thing she knew, her cell phone was ringing.

“How’d it go?” Cameron asked.

“Pretty good.” She stifled a yawn and tried to figure out what time it was, day or night. How long had she slept?

“How do you feel?”

“Tired,” she admitted. “Actually, my arms are killing me. I doubt I’ll ever be able to wash my hair again. Volleyball and tennis are definitely out, probably forever. But I did a damned good job.”

“Did you finish?”

“Almost.”

“Well, open the door and let me check it out.”

She got up and looked through the blinds. Cam’s truck was parked in front of the house and he was standing on the front porch, a hand raised in a wave.

Ellie had already unlocked the door and opened it when she caught a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror. She cringed at her reflection. Bits of gooey paper stuck to her hair and her clothing. There were streaks of dirt on her face from the wet dusty paper.

“Looks like you really were busy today.” Cam pulled a clump of paper from the back of her head and handed it to her.

“Thanks.” She took the wad of paper but avoided his eyes. Could she look any worse than she did right at that moment? She wanted to kick herself for answering the door.

“So let’s see the progress.” Cam headed for the kitchen, Ellie trailing behind, picking sticky little flakes from the sleeves of her sweatshirt.

“Hey, you’re doing a great job.” He walked closer to the wall, silently inspecting, smoothing away tiny bits of wallpaper that clung tenaciously to the plaster. “No gouges in the wall, very little glue left behind.
Very nice.” He turned to her. “Best novice work I’ve ever seen. Some of my guys have left more residue than you have. Want a job?”

“A job?”

Cam nodded. “We’re in the midst of a big renovation and we’ve got an entire house with a lot of walls that need to be stripped. I could use you.”

Ellie couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not, but it didn’t matter. She would be totally useless. She shook her head. “Everything hurts. My hands hurt. My neck is all crinked up. It’s probably going to be days before I can raise my arms above my shoulders.” She lifted her arms chest-high and winced. “Noodles. My arms are noodles and my neck is so stiff I can barely turn my head.”

“That’ll all pass in a day or so. Here. Maybe this will help.” He turned her around and put those big hands to work gently massaging her neck. “Put your head down.”

“I can’t.”

“Little by little.”

She inched her chin toward her chest. His thumbs worked at the knot of muscles in the back of her neck.

“Ow.”

“Sorry.” He switched to her shoulders and she groaned. “Wasn’t this bothering you while you were working?”

“A little.”

“Why didn’t you stop?”

“Because it didn’t bother me that much at the time.” An
ohhh
escaped her lips when he hit a particularly sore spot.

“Sit.” Cameron led her to a chair and she sat. He
massaged the neck and her shoulders. “Better?” he asked after a few moments.

“A little. Thanks.”

“Do you have anything you can take for pain?”

“I don’t think so. I haven’t had headaches or anything since I got here.” She stood slowly.

“I have some Advil in my truck. Let me get it.”

He walked from the room before she could respond. She went into the hall and took the opportunity to pull more gunk from her hair. She balled it up in her hand and stuck it in her pocket when she heard Cam on the front steps.

“Here you go. Two now, two before you go to bed.” He handed her the container.

“And call you in the morning?”

Cam smiled. “If you like.”

Ellie tried to get the childproof lid off the container. Her fingers were stiff and sore and uncooperative.

“Where’s a four-year-old when you need one?” she grumbled.

He took the container from her hands, struggled with it for a moment before it opened, then handed it back.

“Thanks.” She dumped half a dozen tablets into her hand. “This should do it. If my muscles are still this sore tomorrow, I can run to the store in the morning and—”

She’d been focused on getting the lid back onto the container and hadn’t realized how close he’d moved, how near his face was to hers. When she looked up, she was looking into his eyes.

Ellie tilted her head to one side, her eyes locked on Cam’s. When he leaned down, she stretched up. His
lips brushed against hers so softly that at first, she barely felt them. She wanted to put her arms around his neck, but her leaden limbs wouldn’t move above chest level, so she sank one hand into the front of his flannel shirt, the tablets clutched in the other, and pulled him closer. The kiss that started out as little more than a feather’s touch deepened in the blink of an eye.

One thing she learned in that split second was that Cameron O’Connor kissed as if he meant it.

His lips were soft and warm and lingered just long enough for Ellie to want more of him, but his mouth moved to the corner of hers, teased her with his tongue before he rested back against the wall. His hands moved from her shoulders to the tops of her arms.

“So we’re good for Thanksgiving, right?” His words were soft against the side of her face, and somehow felt as intimate as the kiss.

“We’re good.” Ellie forced herself to breathe normally again. “What time?”

“I’ll check with Miss Grace but they usually serve their ‘family-and-friends’ dinner around two in the afternoon. They open the dining room to the public at five.” His hands began to caress her aching biceps.

“What’s the dress code?” She tried to ignore the warmth that was spreading through her, as if there was a direct line from the soft skin on her arms to the rest of her body.

“Just, nice. You know.”

“Nice casual or nice dressy casual?”

Cam looked at her blankly. “What’s the difference? Nice is nice.”

“I think I’ll ask someone else.”

“Maybe Brooke, or Steffie down at Scoop.”

“I’ll stop down there tomorrow,” she told him. “It’ll give me an excuse to get ice cream.”

“Maybe you should take tomorrow off.” His hands continued to gently knead her arms. “Give your muscles a chance to recover.”

“I was hoping to finish that last little bit of kitchen wall.”

“Leave it and we’ll work on it after dinner on Thursday, work off some of that big meal we’re going to have at the inn.” Unexpectedly, he kissed her mouth, a short sweet dip to her lips, then released her arms. “In the meantime, rest up. Take a hot bath, then some of the Advil. Pretend you’re a nine-to-fiver again and that tomorrow is a day off. Pretend it’s Saturday.”