Page 9 of A Recipe Called Home
“Jules, what are you doing here?” he asked, trapping her in the aisle.
“She’s having some trouble with a leaky kitchen sink. Figured I’d try to help her before spending a fortune on a plumber. They’d try to take a young pretty woman like her to the bank, ya’ know?” Mike responded before Jules could get a word out.
Jules cringed.
“Is this at your grandma’s house?” Miles asked, ignoring Mike.
Jules nodded. “Her sink has been leaking, so I thought I’d try to fix it while I’m here. Turns out I’m no plumber,” she said with a sarcastic smile.
“Hmm, I could come take a look. I’m not a professional either, but I might be able to handle a leaking sink."
Mike cut in again, explaining that Miles had been renovating an old house in town by himself. “He knows what he’s doing, even if he is all self-taught,” he finished with a wink. He sure had a way with words.
Jules hesitated for a moment. Sure, it wouldn’t hurt to have a second opinion, especially after she’d made an even bigger mess of things earlier. But the feminist in her screamed she didn’t need a man swooping in to save the day. She could handle a leaky sink herself, right?
“Thanks, but I think I’ve got it,” she replied. “This seems to be the easiest of the issues that need fixing around that house.”
“It wouldn’t be a problem. I could use a break from my own projects,” Miles said, waving the package of O-rings in his hand. He wasn’t giving up, and Jules didn’t want to come off rude again like she had yesterday.
“Plus, you have a bum ankle."
“Oh, yeah. Well, my ankle is fine now,” Jules said in a flustered voice. She’d almost forgotten about it. The swelling had all but disappeared. “Just needed some ice and a night of rest. But I guess it wouldn’t hurt to have another set of eyes on the sink,” she gave in. “When can you swing by?”
“Glad to hear it. How about now?”
Jules couldn’t think of a reason why not.
On the drive home, with Miles following in his obnoxious white pickup truck, she checked herself slyly in the mirror. She wasn’t expecting to see anyone she knew at the hardware store, let alone Miles. Again. Thankfully, she had brushed her hair and put on some mascara this morning out of habit. She never felt fully awake until she had tamed her hair and washed her face. It was a habit she’d picked up from the other Cuccia women in her family over the years.
Nervous energy pulsed through her as they arrived at the house.Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, she thought. She desperately hoped her grandma was napping because she did not want to answer a thousand questions about this later.
Once in the house with Miles lying halfway under the sink, Jules didn’t know what to do with herself. Should she sit? Stand? Nothing seemed appropriate. Just as she leaned casually against the counter, the hem of Miles’ shirt rose, exposing the part of his tanned abdomen where his muscles formed a V shape pointing south. Jules’ mouth went dry, and her lower belly fluttered.
This was a bad idea.
Still unsure what to do, she slid over to the other side of the kitchen, where he’d be out of direct eyesight, and asked him about the house he was renovating.
“It’s the yellow house on Van Buren Street. Well, it used to be yellow, now it’s white. The one that had all those tacky garden gnomes out front,” he said from under the sink. “I bought it about a year ago and decided to renovate it myself. It’s the project that just keeps on giving.”
Jules remembered the house. She always wondered where someone could buy so many different gnomes, but mostly why someone would want that many.
“Do you still have the gnomes?”
“I kept a couple. Felt wrong to re-home all the gnomes,” he said with a slight chuckle. Clearly, he didn’t lose his taste for cheesy jokes.
She couldn’t help but wonder if he lived there alone, or maybe with a girlfriend. “Is it just you and the gnomes, then?”
“Nope,” he said, still under the sink.
Jules held her breath. Of course, he had a girlfriend, or maybe awife? Why wouldn’t he?
But then he added, “There’s also my cat, Sir-Toots-A-Lot.”
She let out a loud laugh and the breath she was holding.
“Sir-Toots-A-Lot? Like my flute?” she asked, amused.
Back in high school, Miles and Jules came up with silly names for their band instruments. He picked out “Sir-Toots-A-Lot” for her flute and she named his saxophone “Sir-Honks-A-Lot.”
