“My—“ Shaking his head, he let it drop. He was only twenty-nine, but people often thought he was older than that. He liked to think it was because he was a hard-boiled detective, but possibly it had something to do with his medical history too. He’d had to grow up early. He didn’t mind the mistake, but then again, he didn’t need a nineteen-year-old consigning him to an early grave either. “Hopefully I can find my room without my cane.”
The girl laughed. “If I hear a crash I’ll come running. Make sure to grab some firewood on your way up the stairs. The heater isn’t working and a cold front’s moving in.”
“I suppose the owner’s working on the heater too?”
“No, it’s summer, we’re not too worried about it. It’s in the shop and the repair dude promised he’ll get it to us by fall.”
“Thoughts and prayers.”
With another smirk, she pointed him toward a set of worn wooden stairs just past a display of fresh-baked bread. At the base of the stairs, opposite a side door, cut birch branches were stacked against the wall. He bent down to snag a bundle as he passed.
He found his room easily enough, since there were only four of them. Inside, he heaved a sigh of relief that it was clean and inviting, with a double casement window looking out toward the beach, and a four-poster bed with a quilt patterned with sandhill cranes. A vase of fresh sunflowers sat on the nightstand next to the bed. A small woodstove took up one corner of the room.
Dropping the firewood next to the stove, he abandoned his bags and flopped backwards onto the bed. Bliss. Apparently nothing felt quite as good as a comfy bed after a night behind bars. He should have gotten arrested years ago.
Laughing at that thought, he closed his eyes briefly.
At least he thought it was briefly, but when he opened them again, jerking awake at the sound of a shout, the light in the room had changed. It lay across the floor in strips of gold, making him wish he could skate across it into the glorious day outside.
A shout caught his attention, similar to the one that had woken him up. A woman yelled, “Need a hand up here! Anyone?”
Ethan waited for an answer, but no one came running up the staircase. He rolled out of bed and stretched his arms over his head, working out the kinks. He stuck his head out into the hallway. “Still need help?”
“Yes!” a woman hollered back. “Unless you want the whole place to float away into the ocean.”
Her voice sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it as he blinked the sleep out of his eyes. He locked his door and stepped down the hallway toward the room at the end, which had an old-fashioned WC sign on the door.
The owner must be working on the water heater. With any luck, maybe he’d get a hot shower after all.
He put his hand on the knob and pulled the door open, just as another shout rang out from inside the bathroom. “Watch out!”
Too late. A jet of water hit him right in the chest.
Cold water. Very, extremely, icy-ass-cold water that probably got pumped in from a Lost Souls glacier.
He swiped the water out of his eyes, scowling at the incompetent plumber who’d gotten him drenched from head to toe.
It was Jessica with the scones. She too was soaking wet, but at least she’d dressed for the possibility in a white tank top and paint-smudged cutoffs. Through the chaos of water he noted that her arms were strong and defined, and her auburn hair was pulled back from her face in a tousled ponytail. She had a wrench in one hand and was wrestling with some pipes behind a vintage water heater. Her legs were tanned and shapely, and she wore work boots with bright pink socks.
And despite the circumstances, he found all of that pretty freaking sexy.
Damn, this trip …
Chapter Four
Jessica scrambled to her feet, not sure if she should help Ethan or fix the valve first. The poor man was staggering backwards into the hallway. The water had hit him dead on, like a bullseye to the chest, but it had so much force that it had drenched the rest of him too.
“Step back and close the door!” she shouted over the noise of water jetting from the pipe.
“Didn’t you shut the water off?”
“Just get back!” She reached out with her foot and slammed the door in his face. Of course he would assume that they were on city water, because what else would there be in a place like Los Angeles? But the Sweet Harbor had a well, and she couldn’t very well shut all the water off while she worked on the water heater. The bakery was still open.
So she’d closed the valve that allowed water to flow to the upstairs…except something had gone wrong. Someone must have reopened the valve without checking. It had happened before. The whole system was absurdly complicated, probably because the plumber who had installed it had gone on a bender halfway through the job. That was life in Alaska for you.
She scrabbled in her pocket for her phone, which fortunately had stayed safe from the gushing water. As she clicked on the downstairs number, she did her best to reattach the old galvanized pipe into its connection. This whole system needed to be replaced. She wouldn’t be surprised if it all collapsed in a heap of scrap metal one of these days.
“Nia! Did you switch over the valves?”
“I don’t know…maybe?”
“Ugh. Just flip that switch you’re never supposed to touch.”
“But I’m not supposed to touch it.”
“Now! Before I drown in the bathroom or the entire floor disintegrates.”
“Okay. What’s that noise? Sounds like rapids.”
“Nia!”
A second later, the water stopped abruptly. Jessica shoved her phone back in her pocket and grabbed the wrench. She reset the pipe into its socket and fit the head of the wrench around the joint. This was the part where she could have used a hand before, someone to keep the pipe from shifting. Hopefully she could get it this time, before she caught a cold from being sopping wet.
But she didn’t have to do it alone; a strong hand appeared on the pipe wrench that she’d tried to clamp above the joint. Ethan, soaked to the skin, gazed down at her. “Go ahead, wrench away.”
“Thanks,” she muttered, though she didn’t feel especially grateful. First he’d been snide to her at the station, now he’d made that little comment about shutting off the water. Clearly he thought she was some kind of dimwitted country bumpkin.
Quickly, she tested the plumber’s tape she’d already wrapped around the pipe with the male end. Still good. Then she set it into the female end of the other pipe. She wrenched the fitting on until it was tight, then tested it with a tug. Solid. The entire time she worked, she was aware of Ethan’s attention on her.
Probably looking for mistakes.
She was also highly aware of his physical presence. Her intuition, that part of her that sent out feelers to people and gathered information like a busy bee, told her he had a lot of inner strength and determination, that he liked to laugh but that he wasn’t in a very good mood at the moment. He had a lot on his mind, she sensed. He’d been through something serious. And now he was here, laughing at her.
Not that she could blame him.
As soon as she was done, she took a step back from the overwhelming closeness.
“I appreciate your assistance,” she told him, using a formal tone to create a distance. “Although I could have done it without you, and have many times in the past, it was certainly easier with an extra hand.”