Hands On

Dedication

For my husband, John.

Chapter One

The vintage rental house was old, but Ginnie didn’t expect it to fall in on her. Houses didn’t do that. Not even during Portland, Oregon’s famous rainstorms. And not even when stupid exes marched back and forth on roofs, making stupid, macho points.

Still, when the ceiling began to crack and sag ominously, weighted down by debris Rick kicked loose, she had a sudden premonition. “Get off my roof!” she yelled again, but this time louder—good and scared. “It’s going to fall in!”

“Say you’ll come back to me, then!”

To Ginnie’s relief, she heard his voice moving toward the edge of the house, toward the trellis he’d climbed in his misguided attempt to harass her into returning to Los Angeles with him. As if she’d ever consider it, no matter what embarrassing, intimidating tricks he tried. But he’d always been a mule-headed idiot, and mean to boot. Good thing she’d finally figured it out before marrying him.

“I’ll be back, Ginnie! You’d better reconsider!” She could just see him through the front window, sodden and hunched against the rain as he scurried to the pricey gold Cadillac Sport Wagon he loved so much.

She didn’t breathe easily until she saw the glow of its taillights move away. Then, exasperated, she knocked her long, unruly curls off her face. Her fingers caught in the damp brown frizz caused by the wet weather. Or was it the humidity?

A large, cold drop of water hit her forehead, splattering wetly over her nose and cheeks. She wiped at it and stepped backward, looked up.

The rental broker’s voice haunted her: “It’s a great find for the neighborhood. They don’t build ’em like this anymore. Better pounce quick, before someone else gets it.”

Ginnie laughed, watching as the wet stain on the ceiling spread. She knew she’d been a bit naïve in her eagerness to start a new life without Rick. The cute little Craftsman bungalow had charmed her, despite its evidence of neglect. Heck, the neglect had charmed her! The gently peeling paint, the unfinished basement, the foliage-shrouded porch, the untouched original ceilings, the dusty hardwood floors, the yellowing crystal doorknobs… It was everything Rick’s modern mansion wasn’t.

The rain pelted down with a thunderous sound. Ginnie’s gaze went again to the large window above her thrift-store couch. All she saw now was a gray sheet of water.

The rain pounded, a steadily increasing roar.

“It rains all the time in the Northwest,” Ginnie murmured nervously, backing out of the wet living room to the kitchen. “It’s famous for it. That’s all this is. A typical rainstorm. The landlord will repair the roof and everything will be fine.”

Her house groaned.

Suddenly, with a bone-rattling crack, the floor tilted.

Ginnie looked down and couldn’t believe her eyes. Her kitchen’s quaint vinyl floor ripped open, and the pressed wood beneath separated into two jagged edges.

Earthquake? Ginnie looked for a table to crawl under, then remembered she hadn’t saved up enough money to buy one yet.

And she was no longer in California, land of earthquakes. She was in Oregon, away from everything she’d known. Things would be different here. They had to be different.

More of the floor sank, making her stumble backward. She threw her arms out for balance, trying not to panic. So, not an earthquake. What was it? It felt as if the bungalow was actually coming apart.

It might crush her, along with everything that gave meaning to her world.

She panicked after all. “The puppets!”

Ginnie ran, skidding across the living room’s slick wood to the door leading to the basement. She flung it open and raced down the narrow stairway, even as she heard a window breaking above.

How long did these crazy rainstorms last, anyway?

Nothing could happen to her marionettes.

She flung her body over one of the trunks containing her precious marionettes.

Pieces of plaster and sheetrock particles pricked her skin.

Her puppets and marionettes would
not
be destroyed.

“Over my dead body!” she shouted furiously at the house.

As if in answer, a subfloor support beam cracked loudly enough to hurt her ears.

Suddenly more nervous than she’d ever been, she called out, “Kidding?”

Then the house collapsed.

Harry flicked the wipers on his Aston Martin up to full speed, but he could still barely see the road before him. It wasn’t safe. If he wasn’t so familiar with the area, and if this task wasn’t so urgent, he’d turn right around and head home.

But the house in question wasn’t far from his more upscale home farther up the hill. And after getting that outrageous news from Todd about Harry’s recently acquired property management firm, the situation demanded immediate investigation.

As a millionaire a few times over, and by now the owner of so many real-estate-centric companies he didn’t bother tracking them anymore, Harry Barrett Sharpe normally enjoyed involving himself with the down-and-dirty work. Necessity required sequestering himself in the catbird seat at the very top more often than not, so he appreciated touching base with the Joe Blows, joining the construction gang on occasion to work with his hands, reminding himself of his roots.

But this was different. Normally, middle-management matters didn’t sink to such levels of dangerous incompetence. Normally people’s lives weren’t at risk.

Not to mention leaving him wide open for a devastating lawsuit.

The woman running the property management firm had been criminally negligent. Sure, the administration, marketing and financials of all his rentals were technically handled and in the black. But the physical maintenance of his structures required capital expenditures she’d chosen to pocket instead. If her assistant Lara hadn’t clued in his assistant, Harry wouldn’t now be driving through one of Portland’s worst storms in a decade to check on the tenant—one Ginnie Anderson—who should never have been offered a lease on the small bungalow.

A half-hour ago, Harry had seen the home’s pictures, seen the state of it. He’d seen the copies of advised repairs. So many major repairs. The roofing and chimney problems worried him most, especially in this rainstorm.

He cursed the rain. He cursed the irresponsible woman he’d just instructed Todd to fire. He cursed the silly twit who’d moved into the ramshackle home. He cursed again as his car slid through a corner, but he corrected easily, some instinct making him drive even faster.

When he reached the street, skidded to a halt behind the small Volkswagen parked before the house and jumped out, his first thought was that he’d overreacted. The house seemed fine.

Harry wiped rain out of his eyes, his gaze focusing on the sharp line of one section at the juncture of the flatter roof to the steeply pitched dormer section. Was it darker? Sagging? It was!

And that wasn’t all.

As he watched with growing horror, the chimney crumbled as if it were the subject of a controlled demolition. Then a thick section of wood trim ripped loose, the wind guiding it through the yellow-lit kitchen window.

Lit. The tenant was home. The tenant was inside the house!

Without thinking, Harry immediately charged to the front door, used the master keys he’d brought and ran inside.

He heard her cry out, “Over my dead body!” right before pieces of the roof began to fall and an enormous thud from somewhere below jarred his feet with a deep bass that rattled his bones.

The basement.

Harry ran downstairs.

“Wake up. That’s it. Open your eyes.”

The face that swam into her focus was unfamiliar. More’s the pity, she thought woozily, smiling at him.

Dark brown hair framed a strong brow, sapphire eyes and a mouth wide but thin with a cynical twist to it. He had a ruggedness and vital power that attracted her. She especially liked his lips. His face and his lips floated closer, tilted for kissing, shaped like heaven.

“No, keep your eyes open. Damn it…”

She enjoyed the rich, deep voice that came from him as much as his warm, musky-male scent. She could feel the tickle of his sweet breath on her lips, nearly a kiss, a wonderful kiss… Wanting to touch him, she attempted to move her arm.

He slapped her.

“Hey!” she shouted, or tried to. Her eyes fluttered open. She could barely hear her own voice. She tried to shift away from him, feeling sluggish. Why did his warm blue eyes spark with anger? It disturbed her she’d disappointed him.

Her heart spasmed with the old ache. Her body didn’t hurt, though.

She tried to move again. She couldn’t feel her limbs. She couldn’t move.

Alarm flooded her.

He moved toward her again, and she cringed.

An enormous weight lifted off her arm, and she winced at the pain. Still, she welcomed the sensation. At least she wasn’t paralyzed.

“Move, now, get out of here!” he shouted, the roar of his voice hoarse. “This place is coming down. Please!”

Relieved she could move at all, she tried to concentrate. Her mind felt swimmy and had to play catch-up with his words. She frowned. She hated when people bossed her around.

But he’d said please. Rick would never have said please to her. Ginnie focused on the man, marshalling her strength, her focus. The man crouched over her, his arms bulging with muscle and his face reflecting strain. He struggled to hold up the support beam that pinned her arm.

With an effort that grayed her vision, she scrambled sideways, out from under the beam.

A second later, it crashed back down.

“Now, up and out.” He herded her, not gently.

Ginnie shook her head, as much in refusal as to clear her vision. She squinted with the pain it caused, but at least she was able to see. “Oh no.” Her basement was a maze of debris. The puppet clothes and fabrics that had hung on racks now protruded in unsightly heaps, and wigs and cracked-open plaster heads made new terrain of the sealed basement floor, as did the smaller puppet stages, a pile of clip-on lamps and more scattered piles of painstakingly collected picture books and DVDs. How had the spare wood, metal, leather and string gotten spread around everywhere? The mold-making equipment leaned against fallen speaker stands.

A mess.

Some of it was replaceable. Still, she’d worked days to get the pirate puppet just right, and he was little more than wooden splinters, his metal sword buried under cinder blocks.

What about her irreplaceable marionettes?

She wheeled about, searching. There! Under a diagonal sheet of particleboard and behind the extension cord and reel, next to an ugly crack in the basement’s concrete floor, were the two large trunks.

They gleamed with the sheen of lovingly polished wood.

She moved toward them.

The man grabbed her arm. “Are you insane?”

She considered. “Nope.” She shook loose and hurried to the trunks.

He spoke to her slowly, as if to someone of limited intellect. “You are in danger. The house’s ceiling is crashing in. The chimney already did. The foundation looks bad. The walls, the subfloor—they’re falling apart. There are gas and electrical risks. And you, you’re rummaging for keepsakes as if you were at an estate sale?” There was no mistaking the anger in his voice.

She spoke over her shoulder. “I understand time is short. So, help me with these, please.” She tugged at a trunk, trying to drag it out from underneath where it was wedged. It wouldn’t budge. “Pretty please?”

“This is for your own good.” It was all the warning she got before strong arms picked her up by the waist and slung her over a broad shoulder.

He’d just made a mistake. The side of her head bounced against one of his firm jeans-covered butt cheeks before he started to pull her to a mid-back position. The automatic outrage she felt at being manhandled, plus the resulting stabs of pain to the various parts of her bruised body, not to mention the sight of her precious trunks being left behind, made her seriously cranky. “Put me down immediately,” she warned.

He kept moving.

Clearly he didn’t know about a puppeteer’s hand strength.

She smiled grimly as she applied a muscular grip right where he’d least enjoy it.

“Sorry,” she told him after he dropped her and staggered back with a curse. And she meant it. He was only trying to help, after all. “I have to get my marionettes out. They aren’t keepsakes. They’re my career. My life. What’s left of it.”

He glared at her through slitted eyes.

She stared back. He was a lot better-looking when his features weren’t all scrunched up. She remembered from when he’d leaned in to kiss her.

Not that it was actually a kiss except in her imagination.

She sighed and moved toward her marionettes.

“What makes them worth risking your neck?”

She turned to see his mouth had compressed into a thin, pale line of displeasure.

“I crafted them all over a period of years. No one believed I could or should get into puppetry. But I did and I’m not leaving them behind now.”

First she had to drag the heavy trunks out from under the particleboard.

There was a lot of crap in front of the first trunk, and on top. She’d need to shift a broken cabinet door, chunks of paint and plaster, sagging wires and other random bits of house debris. She just hoped she didn’t electrocute herself. Or get crushed. Asphyxiated. Blown up.