Page 1 of Show Me

Chapter One

Ruby

I own a farmhouse. That sentence sounds a lot more solid in my head than it does standing in the drywall aisle at Hart Hardware with a shopping cart full of things I’m ninety percent sure don’t belong in the same building, let alone on the same walls.

There are at least six kinds of drywall anchors. Six. Who needs that many options to hang a shelf?

I pick up a box and flip it over, pretending the tiny diagrams make sense. They don’t. The little cartoon man on the back looks confident. I resent him on principle.

The cart beside me is a monument to misplaced optimism. I have three shades of white paint because apparently paint has undertones and responds to light differently, and I don’t know which one will look best with whatever light bulbs I decide to purchase.

Warm. Natural. Cool. Frosted. What have I gotten myself into?

I also have a bundle of trim pieces because they were on sale. And then, there’s a roll of insulation that’s already shedding like a nervous dog, fibers clinging to my long-sleeved shirt and itching at my wrists.

Maybe the house doesn’t need to be warm. People survived winters in log cabins. With quilts. And spite.

It’s not like it’s a real farmhouse, not like the kind that’re in the middle nowhere with open space all around. My house sits at the edge of town with an acre of land in total. But when you have a pot-bellied pig for a pet, you kind of need a farmhouse. Or at least a yard large enough to hold a pen.

And I have more than one pig. There’s Squirt, who thinks he runs the place, Delilah, who’s the diva, and Samson, who can open the gate if I forget to lock it. They all snore louder than most people I know and absolutely refuse to stand in the rain.

“Planning to reinforce a bunker?”

I don’t turn around. I don’t have to. Only one person in Brookhaven sounds that composed while questioning my decisions. Xavier Cole.

Great. My day just got significantly more complicated.

I set the box of anchors into the cart basket with exaggerated care before looking over my shoulder. He’s leaning one hip against a pallet of sheetrock as if he grew there. His flannel shirt stretches across his broad shoulders, several buttons undone to reveal a faded gray T-shirt beneath.

He’s wearing worn jeans and work boots dusted with sawdust. His dark hair is a little too long, like he forgot to get it cut and decided it wasn’t worth the effort, as if he’s not even trying like he doesn’t have to.

He doesn’t. He’s too fucking hot for his own good. And he knows it.

His eyes drop to my cart. One eyebrow lifts. Heat swells in my chest before rising along my neck.

“It’s called being prepared.” I straighten as I turn to face him while trying to ignore the scent of his cologne. It’s a mix of cedar, musk, and the faint, ever-present hint of whatever wood he’s been working with. It clings to the air, to my lungs, to every thought I’m trying very hard not to have.

“Are you preparing to put in new sheetrock?”

What? Why would he ask that? I don’t even have sheetrock screws. Anchors? Yes. Sheetrock screws? Not on my list. At least not today. “No.”

“It’s called buying rolled insulation when you aren’t planning to take out the walls.” He tilts his head, looking into my cart as if it’s personally offending him. “Or were you planning to put this,” he points to the pink, shedding dog in my cart, “in the attic?”

“That sounds like a personal attack.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. “You need blow-in insulation if you’re not planning to gut the entire place.”

“Right.” Warmth floods up my neck. Blow-in for the walls. Got it. “Thank you for that piece of advice.”

Should I keep the rolled insulation? Probably. The house is drafty. But where does the blow-in insulation even go? I’m not about to ask Xavier. He already knows I’m in over my head.

“And….” He glances pointedly at the box in the basket. “I’m not sure you know what you’re doing there either.”

“I gathered that when the cartoon man started judging me.”

With a low chuckle, he pushes off the sheetrock and steps closer, reaching past me to grab a different box from the shelf. His arm brushes mine, barely, but my skin notices. Traitor. Heat lingers longer than it should.

“This,” he says, setting the box in my cart, “is what you want if you’re hanging anything heavier than a picture frame.”