She’s varnishing, looking gorgeous in her holey jeans and an old Clay Coolidge concert tee with the sleeves cut off. Her hair is pulled back in a red bandanna, and she’s singing low to something pretty and Italian—which I happen to find very, very attractive.

“I didn’t know you knew Italian.”

She doesn’t look up from her work. “I don’t. Not really. But I’ve learned a few songs. I know a couple in French, too,” she says, turning her head to wink, “if you’re into that kind of thing.”

I lean a hip against the banister and tuck my thumbs in my tool belt before removing them and placing them on my hips. “I might be.”

“Do you know any other languages?”

“I took a few semesters of Spanish in college. Conversationally, I do okay. It was a lot like memorizing scripts. But don’t ask me to conjugate anything.”

“Fair enough.”

“You called me up here?”

“Grab a brush. We’ll get this done twice as fast.”

I pull out a brush and a mask and squeeze on a pair of latex gloves. Then I move to the row of shelves next to her and get started.

We work without talking for a long time, until the sun is sinking in the sky and I can hear her stomach rumble. We’ve been leap-frogging each other’s progress on our way down the nook, which runs the length of the house, minus the bedrooms on either end. I get to my feet, carefully placing my brush down on the edge of a can of varnish and taking off my mask before drawing to my full height. I crack my neck side to side and stretch my arms over my head to soothe the bunched muscles in my shoulders.

“You sanded the railing, too,” I say, surprised that I hadn’t noticed before. Opposite the shelves is an intricate loft railing that was sturdy enough to keep as is, but pretty beat-up, aesthetically speaking. It was one of those improvements we initially put in the “leave for the buyers” pile.

Shelby wipes her forehead with her forearm and puts her brush down, then removes her gloves and pushes off her knees to stand. My eyes study her movements, drinking in the fit of her jeans: the contour of her strong thighs, topped by the flare of her hips. Wood finishing should not be sexy.

Nevertheless.

She drops her mask around her neck, sliding her fingertips along the railing. “I wasn’t going to, but it felt unfair. The bookshelves are so pretty. Don’t get me wrong; it was as much a pain in the ass as we assumed it would be. Took me most of the day, and I might need a second round to clean up the little crannies.”

I raise my brows. “Crannies? Is that the technical term?”