Smitten
Authors: Janet Evanovich
Smitten
When Lizabeth Kane was five years old she wanted toâ¦
Billy and Jason Kane had their noses pressed to theâ¦
“Mom's home!” Jason yelled, looking out the front window.
Matt was in love with her. She'd run it overâ¦
Lizabeth snatched her clock in the darkened room and heldâ¦
Jason was the first to reach the bike when itâ¦
Lizabeth sat on her front porch and watched the sunâ¦
Lizabeth dropped a cotton nightshirt over her head. She fluffedâ¦
“This here's one heck of a barbecue,” Elsie said toâ¦
Lizabeth put Elsie's suitcase in the backseat of the Cadillacâ¦
When Lizabeth Kane was five years old she wanted to grow up to be a fairy. She wanted skin that was as smooth and white as milkweed silk. And she wanted hair that cascaded halfway down her back in a luxuriant cloud of waves and curls that shone a sunny yellow by day and silver when washed by the light of the moon. She thought she'd wear a buttercup blossom when she needed a hat, and she'd go rafting on curled magnolia leaves.
At five Lizabeth understood that she was a human child and it would take some doing to shrink herself into fairy size, but she had confidence in falling stars and wishbones and birthday candles. She knew that fairies were tiny creatures, no bigger than a man's thumb, but it seemed to her that if a girl could grow up, then she could almost as easily grow down.
And if she could eventually grow breasts, then probably if she tried very hard she could grow wings instead. Almost all fairies had lovely gossamer wings, and Lizabeth wasn't sure how comfortable that would be when she wanted to sleep on her back or lean against the gnarled trunk of an enchanted tree to daydream. She supposed that would be part of the price she would pay for growing up to be a fairy.
In fact, that was about the only price exacted on an adult fairy, because for the most part, fairies did just as they pleased. They weren't stuffed into panty hose and sent off on a bus to earn a living staring at a computer screen. They weren't polite to incompetent employers for the sake of career advancement. And they weren't expected to prepare gourmet feasts for boring men who had only one thing on their mindsâ¦lasagna.
Fairies were indulgent, playful creatures, and even though two decades and several years had gone by since Lizabeth first decided to be a fairy, even though Lizabeth Kane now stood five feet six inches tall in her stocking feet, even though she was thirty-two years oldâshe still had aspirations of growing up to be a fairy.
She no longer cared about whittling herself down to the average fairy height of five inches, or having milkweed skin or gobs of fairy hair. Lizabeth Kane wanted the pluck, the joie de vivre, the perfect thighs of Tinkerbell. Think positive, Lizabeth told herself. If she just put her mind to it she could be plucky, she could have joie de vivreâand two out of three wasn't bad.
She folded the morning paper under her arm and looked at the half-finished house looming in front of her. She had to be positive about getting a job, too. She was a single parent now, and if she didn't get a job soon, meeting her mortgage payment was going to be more elusive than obtaining Tinkerbell thighs.
She read the crude
HELP WANTED
sign stuck into the front yard and took a deep breath. She'd been on fourteen job interviews in the past five days, and no one had even given her a second look. She was overeducated. She was undereducated. She was inexperienced. She was unskilled. She was virtually unemployable. Okay, Lizabeth, she said to herself, pulling her shoulders back, this is a new day. This is your last shot. And this is the perfect job. Perfect hours, perfect location, decent wages. Go for it! she told herself.
Matt Hallahan had been looking out an upstairs window. He'd watched Lizabeth fold her paper and chew on her lower lip while she stared at the house. Not a buyer, he decided. Buyers came in pairs and usually had a reale-state agent in tow. This woman looked as if she were peddling vacuum cleaners and he was her first customer. She was nervous, she was anxiousâshe was cute as a bug. Even from this distance he could see she had big blue eyes, a little nose, and lots of curly brown hair that hung almost to her shoulders. She was small-boned and slim. Not skinny. Her pink T-shirt stretched tight over full breasts and was tucked into a pair of formfitting, faded jeans. He didn't know what she was selling, but he admitted to himself that he'd have a hard time not buying it.
Outside, Lizabeth stiffened her spine, pushed her chin forward, and tiptoed through the mud to the front door.
“Yoo-hoo,” she called. “Anybody home?” She gasped and took a step backward when Matt appeared at the head of the stairs and ambled down to her. He was big. He seemed to fill the whole stairwell. He was half-undressed, and he was gorgeous.
She felt her heart slam against the back of her rib cage while she made a fast assessment. At least six feet two inches, with broad shoulders and a flat stomach and slim hips. No shirt, jeans that rode low, a red heart tattooed on his left forearm. He had muscular legs. Great quads. And he was tanâeverywhere.
When she finally dragged her eyes up to his face she found he was laughing at her. Smile lines splintered from deep-set blue eyes that were shaded by curly blond eyelashes and a ferocious slash of bushy blond eyebrows. His nose was sunburned and peeling.
“Lord, lady,” he said, “last time someone looked at me that close was when I thought I had a hernia and the doctor told me to cough.”
Lizabeth felt the flush spread from her ears to her cheeks. Get a grip, she told herself. Thirty-two-year-old mothers do not blush. She'd delivered two children, she'd learned to pump gas, she'd seen Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding Jr. on screen in their underwear. She could handle anything. She ignored his remark and plastered a smile on her face.
“I'd like to speak to whoever is in charge of this construction project.”
“That's me. Matt Hallahan.” He held out his hand.
“Lizabeth Kane.” He didn't rub his thumb across her wrist. He didn't give her an extra squeeze or prolong the contact. He just shook her hand. She liked him for that. And she liked the way his hand felt. Warm and callused and firm.
“I'd like to apply for the job you advertised in the paper.”
Matt missed a beat before answering. “I advertised for a carpenter.”
“Yup.”
His grin widened. Life was full of nice surprises. “You have any experience?”
“Actually, I haven't done much carpentering professionally. But I've hammered a lot of nails into thingsâyou know, hanging picturesâand once I built a dollhouse from scratch, all by myself.”
The smile tightened at the corners of his mouth. “That's it?”
“I suppose I was hoping it would be an entry-level position.”
“Entry level in the construction business would be laborer.”
Lizabeth caught her bottom lip between her
teeth. “Oh. Well then, I'd like to apply for a job as a laborer.”
“Honey, you're too little to be a laborer. Laborers do a lot of carting around.” He squeezed her biceps. “Look at this. Hardly any muscle at all. You probably have one of those motor-driven Hoovers.”
Lizabeth narrowed her eyes. She didn't like being called a wimp. “I can do a push-up.”
“Only one?”
“One is pretty good. Besides, I've just started on my exercise program. Next week I'll be up to twoâ¦maybe three.”
“Wouldn't you rather be a secretary? You could work in a nice air-conditioned office⦔
“No,” Lizabeth said firmly. “I would not rather be a secretary. To begin with, I can't type. I break out in hives when I sit in front of a computer screen. I can't do
anything
! You know why I can't do anything? Because when I went to college I majored in history. My mother told me to major in math, but did I listen to her? Nooooo. I could have been an accountant. I could have been self-employed. And if that isn't bad enough, I've spent the last ten years of my life reading Little Bear books and baking chocolate-chip cookies.”
She was pacing, flapping her arms. “Now I need a job, and I can't do anything. If I don't get a job, I can't meet my mortgage payments. My kids will starve. I heard of a woman once who got so desperate she cooked her dog.” Lizabeth gave an involuntary shiver.
“You have kids?”
“Two boys. Ten and eight. You see, that's why this job is so perfect for me. I only live about a quarter mile away. I've been watching the new houses going up, and I noticed the carpenters stop work at three-thirty. My kids get out of school at three-thirty. I wouldn't have to put them in day care if I worked here.”
He looked at her left hand. No ring. He was doomed. How could he refuse a job to a woman who was about to barbecue Spot to keep her kids from starving?
“I'm much bigger than I look,” Lizabeth said. “And besides, that's another thing about the job that's perfect. It would get me into shape. And I would learn things about a house. I need to know about fixing toilets and roofs and getting tiles to stick to floors.”
“How soon do you have to know all these things?”
“The sooner the better.”
Matt grimaced. “Your roof is leaking? Your toilet has a problem? Your tiles are coming loose?”
“Yes. But it's not as bad as it sounds. I bought this terrific house. It was built at the turn of the century and has gingerbread trim and elaborate cornices and wonderful woodwork, but it's a little run-down⦔
“You're not talking about that gray Victorian on the corner of Woodward and Gainsborough, are you?”
Lizabeth nodded. “That's it. That's my house.”
“I always thought that house was haunted. In fact, I thought it was condemned.”
“It's not haunted. And it was only condemned because the front porch needed fixing.” She paused in her pacing and looked at him. “You don't think it's hopeless, do you?”
He wasn't sure if she was talking about her house or his life after this moment. It didn't matter. The answer would be the same to both questionsâyes. But he lied. “No. I think the house hasâ¦possibilities. It hasâ¦character.”
Lizabeth smiled. She loved her house. It had a few problems, but it was charming and homey and just looking at it made her happy.
She'd bought it in January, the day after her divorce had become final. She'd needed to do something positive. Give herself a symbolic fresh start.
“Maybe you could come over sometime and take a look at it. You could give me your professional opinion on it. I'm not sure which project I should start first.”
His professional opinion was that the house should be burned to the ground. He wasn't able to tell her that, though, because his heart was painfully stuck in his throat. It had happened when she'd smiled. She had the most beautiful, the most radiant smile he'd ever seen. And he'd caused it just by saying her house had character.
Lizabeth saw his eyes grow soft and sexy and worried that he'd misinterpreted her invitation. She hadn't meant to be so friendly. She didn't want to imply that she'd do
anything
to get the job. It was just that it was difficult for her to be less than exuberant when it came to her house. And in all honesty, she might have gaped at his body a tad too long.
“I didn't mean to sound so desperate for the job,” she said. “This is my first construction interview, and I think I got carried away. I
don't want you to hire me because you feel sorry for me with my leaky roof and two hungry kids. And I don't want you to hire me becauseâ¦well, you know.”
He raised his eyebrows in question.
Lizabeth was disgusted. She was making a fool of herself. She'd approached him about a job and had ended up telling him her life story, and now she was in the awkward position of establishing sexual boundaries. She'd been separated from her husband for a year and a half and divorced for six months, but she still wasn't especially good at being a sophisticated single. It wasn't a matter of time, she admitted. It was a matter of personality. She was an impulsive, let-it-all-hang-out, emotional dunderhead.
“Look,” she said flatly, “I'm willing to work hard. I'm smart. I'm dependable. I'm honest.”
She pulled a folded piece of lined notebook paper from her pocket and handed it to him. “This is my résumé. It's not much, but it has my name and address and phone number, and if you ever need a laborer, you can get in touch with me.”
Matt unfolded the paper and studied it, trying to keep the grin from creeping across his mouth. “This is a spelling list.”
Lizabeth snatched it back and winced as she looked at it. “I took the wrong paper. This is my son's homework assignment.”
“Don't worry about it. I don't need a résumé. And it so happens I do need a laborer.”
“You're not hiring me out of pity, are you?”
“No, of course not.” That was an honest answer, he thought. He was hiring her out of lust. He didn't think she wanted to hear that, so he decided not to elaborate. “You can start tomorrow, if you want. Be here at six o'clock.”
She did it! She got the job! If Matt Hallahan hadn't been so overwhelmingly virile, she would have kissed him, but she instinctively knew kissing Matt Hallahan would be serious stuff. It would start out as a spontaneous act of happiness and gratitude, and it would end up as pure pleasure. A fairy wouldn't have hesitated for a second, but Lizabeth Kane wasn't a fairy. She was a mother, so she gave herself a mental hug and smiled.
Matt couldn't help smiling back. Her joy was infectious. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, and wondered what the devil he was going to do with a soft, gullible, 125-pound laborer.
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Jason Kane looked at his mother with the sort of cynical excitement peculiar to eight-year-old boys. “Man, this is awesome. My mom, a construction worker. You're gonna bust your buns,” he said gleefully. “Those construction workers are tough. They have muscles out to here. They chew tobacco, and they have tattoos. Are you gonna get a tattoo, Mom?”
Lizabeth paused with her knife in the peanut butter jar. “Excuse me? âBust your buns'?”
“That's construction-worker talk, Mom. You'd better get used to it.”
Ten-year-old Billy was less enthusiastic. “You sure you can handle this, Mom? You're pretty puny. And you're old.”
“I'm not
that
old. I'm thirty-two!” She slathered peanut butter on a slice of bread. “I'm going to be fine. I won't be far away, and I'll have a good-paying job. You two can watch television until Aunt Elsie gets here.”