Always and Forever (3 page)

The fact that he was a millionaire without a financial care in the world made this even worse. She’d been struggling just to raise the capital for the down payment on this house. He’d probably bought the Victorian outright with cash from his rainy day fund.

Phil stifled her irritation as she walked along the brick-laid walkway that led to the huge wraparound porch. Her heart broke a bit more with every step she took. She trudged up the porch steps, fingering the balustrade. It needed sanding and a new coat of paint. She should have taken care of this months ago, even if the house had belonged to the bank at the time.

“Phylicia?”

Phil turned with a start. Jamal approached her, wiping his hands on a tattered rag. He was dressed in shorts and another of those sweat-stained T-shirts that clung to his washboard abs.

Oh, yeah. This would be torture.

Phil pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing her eyes to concentrate on his face and not his six-pack.

Of course, his face could get her in just as much trouble as the rest of his body. His skin was smooth and light brown, his eyes a darker brown, but with flecks of gold. Phil remembered being stunned when she’d noticed the sparkling flecks as they danced at Corey and Mya’s wedding reception. Those eyes were framed by thick, beautiful lashes that any woman would envy, yet they didn’t detract from his masculinity one bit. They made his eyes richer, more seductive.

An embarrassingly swift shudder of need shot through her.

Not this guy,
she told her hyperaware libido. There were other eligible men in Gauthier. She would not allow herself to lust after the one who’d bought her family’s home out from under her.

Well, she wouldn’t lust after him more than she did already.

“Can I help you with something?” Jamal asked.

“Actually, I’m here to help you,” Phil answered, pushing thoughts of his eyes, abs and everything else out of her mind. “One of the projects I thought I would be working on fell through. It freed up space on my calendar.”

His relieved grin transformed his face into a thing of even greater beauty, if that were possible.

“You have no idea how happy I am to hear that.” Jamal stuffed the rag into his back pocket. “Well, I guess a tour is in order. Let me show you around the property.”

“Oh, you don’t have—” Phil started to tell him she probably knew this house better than he did, but she stopped herself. What if his Realtor had shared that the home he’d purchased had been repossessed by the bank because the previous owner had defaulted on the loan? Did she really want Jamal knowing that much about her personal business? No, thank you.

“Sure,” Phil said with false brightness. “I can’t wait to see it.”

Chapter 3

A
s they entered the vestibule, Phil tried to hold back the wistful smiles that threatened as dozens of bittersweet memories sprouted to mind. When she was younger, she’d had an army of imaginary friends whom she would play hide-and-seek with throughout the massive house. She even let them win sometimes.

When she got older, she and Mya would have slumber parties. Using a special scale they had devised, they would rate the boys at school. Corey Anderson, who eventually became Mya’s boyfriend, and finally, after fifteen years apart, her husband, always scored the top rating.

Phil glanced over at Jamal. He would have given Corey a run for his money back in the day.

“This is what sold me on the house,” Jamal said, running his palm along the ornately carved banister that traveled up the staircase. “Look at this detailing. The Realtor said it was all done by hand.”

“It’s beautiful,” Phil remarked. When she was eight years old, she had broken her arm sliding down that very same banister after seeing it done in a movie. As much of a tomboy as she’d been back then, it was a wonder she’d made it through the rest of her childhood without any more broken bones.

“Why don’t we start upstairs?” Jamal said. “There’s less work needed up there. We can take a quick look around before discussing the really intense stuff.”

She followed him up the stairs, gawking unabashedly at the way the shorts fit over his butt. It was too damn firm.
He
was too damn
fine.

Lethal. That’s the rating Jamal would have received on the scale she’d developed with Mya all those years ago. His smile, his naturally wavy hair, those sinewy muscles, his scent—clean, yet spicy. Everything about him was lethal, especially to a woman who had gone over a year without a man in her bed. Her battery-operated toys were fine for providing temporary relief, but she couldn’t snuggle up to a vibrator. She missed snuggling. She missed men.

But she sure as hell didn’t miss the heartache they caused.

That’s what she would remember when she caught a glimpse of Jamal’s gold-speckled eyes and charming smile. Kevin had nice eyes and a sexy smile, too.

“There are three bedrooms and another small room in the rear that the Realtor said was used as a sitting room, but I’m going to turn it into an additional bedroom. The biggest problem is there’s only one bathroom up here, which means if the B&B is at full capacity, I’ll have eight adults sharing one bathroom.”

“That can pose a problem,” Phil said. “I can only imagine what it would be like if you have a bunch of women staying here for a girls’ weekend.”

“World War Three.” Jamal chuckled.

Dammit, even his laugh was sexy. Accepting this job was
such
a bad idea.

“After growing up in a house with my mother and younger sister, I know what it’s like to fight over the bathroom,” he continued.

Phil twisted around to look at him. “You had to fight for bathroom time in the house you grew up in? I thought your family owned half of Phoenix?”

“My family doesn’t own half of Phoenix,” he said, then his smile took on a chastised quality. “Okay, so the fights for the bathroom happened at the beach house in Malibu.”

Malibu? Is he for real?

Phil managed to resist a well-deserved eye roll, but she couldn’t tamp down the bitter resentment that climbed up her throat. Jamal Johnson would never know how it felt to sweat over making next month’s mortgage payment.

He gestured with his head for her to follow him. “C’mon. We’ll discuss some of the ideas I have in mind for the house.”

As they made their way back down the stairs, Phil ran her fingers along the silk wall coverings.

Jamal glanced over his shoulder. “Beautiful, isn’t it? Everything in this house is great. I’m lucky it was still on the market.”

“Yeah,” Phil said, hoping the emotion that instantly filled her throat didn’t come through her voice. “I’m surprised Belle Maison stayed on the market for as long as it did.” And heartbroken that it hadn’t remained there just a little while longer.

“The house was in pretty good shape. I have a work crew coming in to give it a new paint job, both inside and out, and to take care of a couple of other details, but they can’t start for another four weeks. In the meantime, I’ve been working on a few things that needed to be addressed right away, like the cracks in the dining room wall.”

“The walls were cracked in the dining room?” Phil asked, unable to conceal the astonishment in her voice. When had that happened? She’d checked on this house at least once a month.

But then Phil remembered that her last few check-ins had consisted of a quick drive-by and cursory look from her truck’s driver’s side window. Too much work to do, and all that. The excuses had flowed like a waterfall, sounding good enough to her ears.

But as she took in the musty smell from the house being closed up for so long and noticed the dust that had accumulated on the walls and baseboards, the picture became clearer. And the shame it caused nearly suffocated her.

From the moment she’d moved her mom into Mossy Oaks, Phil had started to neglect this house, seeing it more as a burden than a part of her history. It took losing it to appreciate what she’d had.

Phil followed Jamal into the formal dining room. And stopped cold.

“Drywall?” she said. “You’re putting up
drywall?
”

“Only one section of the wall was cracked, but I figured I’d just redo the entire room.”

“With
drywall?
”

He measured her with a curious stare. “What do you have against drywall?”

“You mean besides the fact that it has no business in an 1870s Victorian? It also greatly reduces the resale value of the house.”

He waved off her concern. “I’m not concerned about resale value right now.”

This is no longer my house,
she reminded herself. Jamal owned it; he could do whatever he wanted with it. Even if it meant putting up freaking drywall.

“Just...show me the rest,” she said.

“Here’s one of the things I’m putting into your capable hands,” he said, pointing to the pocket doors that recessed into the walls between the dining room and kitchen. “They’re pretty banged up, but if at all possible, I want to keep them.”

“Of course you want to keep them. They add too much character to this house to think of getting rid of them.”

Phil glided her hand along the smooth mud where the panels of Sheetrock met. She could not believe the man was replacing the classic plaster walls with drywall, but at least he’d done a good job.

“You did this work by yourself?” she asked.

Jamal nodded. “Have I impressed the guru?”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Why not? Everyone else does.”

“First, I’m not a guru,” Phil sad. “My dad deserved that title, not me. And secondly, I work mostly in wood and wrought iron, so I’m not the one to properly judge drywall installation.”

“That’s too bad,” he said. “I was hoping you’d be impressed.”

Phil looked over at him and was caught off guard by the sexy smile pulling at the edge of his lips. She knew flirting when she saw it, and she was definitely seeing it in action right now.

That would
not
be good. She could not handle a sweaty, sexy, flirting Jamal Johnson.

“So, besides the doors, what else is there?” she asked.

“I’ve got my blueprints out here,” he said, motioning for her to follow him outside.

Phil stopped short. “If you’re not doing a renovation, why did you draw up blueprints for a house that’s already built?”

He shrugged. “You work in wood and wrought iron, I work in blueprints. It just makes it easier to have a map of the house so I can pinpoint each thing that needs to be addressed.”

She accepted his explanation with the same amount of guarded skepticism in which she took everything else he told her. Outside, the blueprints were spread out on the top of a folding table, held at each corner with pieces of leftover wood. She stood next to Jamal as he pointed out various jobs that needed to be done throughout the house. She tried to ignore the combination of sweat, sawdust and man that flooded her senses. Ignoring a ten-piece brass band blowing in her ear would have been easier.

“My biggest headache right now is fixtures,” Jamal was saying. “I’d love to get something comparable to what’s in the downstairs bathroom and kitchen, but I can’t find anything even close.”

Phil ordered herself to focus on the job at hand, and not on his scent. Or the muscles rippling underneath his T-shirt. Or the way she’d clung to them when they’d danced months ago.

“You won’t find them in hardware stores,” Phil said. “Your best bet will be companies that specialize in reclaimed fixtures. They salvage pieces and sell them to people restoring older properties. I’ve got several contacts I can check for you.”

When he didn’t comment for several moments, Phil glanced over at him. That smile was back, the one that made her heart beat just a bit quicker.

“I knew I’d come to the right person,” he said. “Together we’re going to take Belle Maison in a completely new direction.”

Yeah, that’s what she was afraid of.

* * *

As Phylicia leaned over the table, studying the blueprints, Jamal studied
her.
He couldn’t get over just how much of a contradiction she was. She worked in a decidedly male-dominated field, yet those high cheekbones, amazingly deep brown eyes and lush, full lips could easily grace the cover of a fashion magazine.

She was tall and slim, but years of manual labor had added definition to her arms and shoulders. Jamal remembered how they had looked in the sleeveless bridesmaid gown she’d worn at the wedding.

Why had someone so sexy, so feminine, decided to work with hammers and sanders? Probably because she was damn good at it. He’d noticed several pieces of furniture in various stages of restoration when he’d visited her workshop yesterday. She seemed to spend most of her time laboring over stuff most people would write off as useless. But in her hands, what was once decrepit gained new life.

She tilted her head to the side and her ponytail draped along her neck. Jamal had the strongest urge to run his fingers through it, lift it off her neck and taste the skin underneath. It would probably get him slapped.

Yet, if he’d done the same thing the night of the wedding, Jamal was certain his kiss would not only have been welcome, but reciprocated. He didn’t understand what had gone wrong. Unless...

“Are you seeing someone?”

Phylicia’s head popped up, her stunned eyes widening. “Excuse me?”

Okay, so maybe he could have been a tad more subtle. But he didn’t do subtle all that well, and he wasn’t in the mood for playing games.

“Are you in a relationship?” he asked. “Is that why you avoided my calls after Corey and Mya’s wedding?”

“No, I don’t have a boyfriend. But—”

“Good,” he said.

“No, not good,” she returned. “It’s none of your business.”

Jamal crossed his arms over his chest and challenged her with a direct stare.

“Don’t do this, Phylicia. Don’t pretend you didn’t feel that spark between us at Mya and Corey’s wedding. We were together the entire night.”

“I was the maid of honor and you were the best man,” she said. “Of course we spent a lot of time in each other’s company at the reception. But we were not
together
together.”

“What about after the reception? The sun was coming up by the time I brought you home. We talked for hours that night, Phylicia, yet when I called you the next day, it was as if you didn’t know who I was.”

“Jamal, please.” She put her hands up. “I’m not looking to get involved with anyone, even on a casual basis. If you want me to work with you on the restoration, know that it is the
only
thing I’m willing to undertake. I don’t mix business with my personal life. Now, what exactly are you looking for from me?”

He cocked his head to the side. “Let me get this straight. Are you saying that if I choose to see you on a personal level, you wouldn’t help me with the house?”

“Actually, you don’t have a choice. The two of us getting involved is not an option.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I said so. Now, are we going to go over these plans, or am I getting in my truck and going home?” The sharp edge to her voice brooked no further argument.

Jamal glanced at the pile of construction debris just over her shoulder, trying like hell to rein in the frustration that threatened to topple him. He was itching to make her admit that what he’d felt that night had not been one-sided. Pulling her close and kissing the hell out of her would accomplish that.

It would also guarantee that she would leave the property and likely never come back. And that was
not
an option.

“Blueprints,” Jamal bit out.

Phylicia bobbed a curt nod and leaned over the blueprints. Jamal studied her with a mixture of frustration and disappointment—heavy on the disappointment. Catching a whiff of the soft, flowery scent that drifted from her hair only made things worse.

She pointed to the materials list. “Exactly what is strawboard, and why do you need so much of it?”

“It’s a building material made from compressed wheat and rice straw,” he answered. “I’m redoing the upstairs bedrooms with it.”

Her eyes rolled. “This is another of your environmentally friendly things, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s considered green technology,” Jamal replied with a defensive edge he’d tried, but failed, to keep from his tone. “Strawboard is as durable as plaster and drywall and more fire- and mold-resistant than either of the other materials. It also provides better sound insulation, so guests won’t be disturbed by what may be going on in the next room.”

“But what about the wainscoting in the bedrooms? It’s over a hundred years old,” Phylicia protested.

“I’m not getting rid of the wainscoting.”

“But you can damage it by removing it. And if you think bathroom fixtures are hard to find, just try century-old beadboard wainscoting.”

“That’s why you’re here,” he said. “To make sure none of this valuable original woodworking gets damaged.”