Page 17 of Something Like Shelter

And I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen someone so attractive.

“Hey,” he said, giving me a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes.

“I, uh, brought you a coffee,” I told him, holding out the cup. “She’s Bean Around is the best. I mean, Deja Brew is good too if you don’t want to deal with the lines. But I know someone,” I added. “I got a ‘coffee regular’ vibe from you,” I told him.

It was a weird thing to have a knack for, but I could almost always get someone’s coffee order right. Maybe that came from being such a coffee lover myself. Or being around so many fellow coffee lovers. But I knew my latte girls from my cold brew girls. And my black drip guys from my interesting coffee guys.

Everything about Owen said he liked normal, everyday kind of things. Like coffee with just a little milk and sugar to make it more enjoyable.

“You’re right,” he agreed. “Thank you.”

“How’s it going?”

“I got the noisiest work done while you were out. Might be a little banging, but it shouldn’t carry too much.”

“Can I see?”

“Of course,” Owen said, moving into the bathroom so I could look from the doorway.

The shower was stripped down to the beams and subfloor.

“Oh, God. Do I want to ask?”

Because that subfloor… it looked wet. Very wet.

Owen sucked in a deep breath and slowly let it out through his nose. “Yeah… about that…”

“Oh, my favorite words when it comes to this house,” I said with a humorless laugh. “Is that from the pipe?”

“It’s… soggy enough for me to think that you had a slow leak through the shower floor for a while. The burst pipe didn’t help, but this was likely a long-running problem.”

“Of course it was. How close was I to falling through this floor when I showered?”

“Getting close. It’s a good thing you wanted to gut the place.The thing is… you can’t just dry out a subfloor like you can the walls. I have to cut the damaged parts out and replace them. Thankfully, the joists are all in good shape. We are just going to need more drying time and then a repair before I can get to the waterproofing part.”

“It doesn’t sound too catastrophic.”

“It’s not. Just a couple more days of work. I know you probably want your house back, but—”

“No, I’m not worried about that. At least I know with you doing it that this will be done right. I’m just sorry if this is eating into your schedule. I know you’re busy.”

“I always have time. How’d your outing go?”

“Pretty well, actually. It felt good to get out of pajamas for a day.”

That had his gaze sweeping over me.

I’d gone with a simple outfit, knowing I’d be stripping down at the doctor’s office. So I was just in a loose, lightweight T-shirt material navy romper that made it easy to both take off and nurse.

I resisted the urge to pull the cardigan I had on over it closed, to cover up.

I had been in survival mode too much to give my new body much thought until right then. But I was suddenly very aware of my much heavier breasts, the way my belly was still squishy.

But I was thinking about it then. How my nursing bra kept things mostly contained but didn’t exactly provide the same kind of lifting and separating that my normal ones would have. How the material of the romper was probably a little clingy around my tummy.

It shouldn’t matter.

I didn’t want to be someone who was vain, especially right after giving birth. But logic told me it likely had less to do about a few body changes and more to do with my complicated feelings about my sense of self-worth when it came to men after what happened with Adelaide’s father. If you could call him that.