Ozzy shook his head. “Don’t make me regret this, you little shit. I’m still not happy you forced my hand on this.”
It took a few moments before Evander responded. “All right. We can be reasonable.” He extended his hand. “We’ll work onit together. I bet the TV folks will absolutely shit at the chance to show how we can still do a good damn job in spite of the breakup.”
“Or I’ll end up mounting your head on a stake and call it a yard decoration.”
Evander shrugged, keeping his hand out. “That’s more effort than the Trangs put into their back yard, so probably still an improvement.”
Ozzy couldn’t help but smile at that. He took Evander’s hand, and that smile faded. An actually shock passed between them, ending the handshake early.Fucking sparks. Like the universe hadn’t figured out not to bother.
Chapter ten
Evander
“You’re sure this isa great idea?” Bunny was in there priming the walls with Evander, and he’d filled her in on the clandestine deal.
“I’m not. But Oswald is good at his job, and so am I. It’s better than the alternative, where we scream at each other for the next three weeks and get a substandard product out at the end.”
“Sounds great on paper.” She finished rolling over the wall at the back of the bedroom, skirting just along the edges of the painter’s tape around the window. “Get back to me when you’re rolling on the grass and screaming at each other.”
“We never getphysical.” At least, not the way Bunny was suggesting. Evander’s mind slipped back to that intimate hotel room negotiation. It had taken everything in him not to run his hands up Ozzy’s shirt and whisper suggestions back and forth. They had a history of being very hotheaded with each other, butthere were plenty of times they were more than reasonable as well. Evander sighed and planted the butt of his roller against the floor. “Besides, there’s no grass out here to roll on. Anything like that would have to wait until they can get the sod down, which is apparently going to take, like, a week more? For some reason?” Much easier to ignore the heat between himself and Ozzy when he was complaining. Even about stupid shit. “Honestly, he wants total control of the back yard and can’t even put theyardpart in?”
“He’s laying out everything, and talking with the Trangs about how much time they’re willing to put toward maintenance.” She rolled up some more paint, then shrugged. “Last I heard about it, anyway. Made sense to me.”
It did. It made sense when he explained it to Evander at a tense little tête-à-tête that same morning. Evander had plenty to do to keep himself busy in the interim, too, but he needed that crutch of sniping and backbiting.
Especially when he could see Ozzy lugging bags of topsoil around in those damn overalls withnothingunderneath. Well, probably underwear, but no top. Just rippling muscles and sun-bronzed skin.
Ev couldn’t find a proper reason to complain aboutthat, so he moved his attention to the house. To the windows in the bedroom. “You can tell they didn’t think about this for a second. That’s definitely the view I want every time I wake up: fence on one side, slightly more distant fence on the other.” He gestured to the one with the worst view, the back wall with barely a footpath between it and the fence. “This could at least be short enough for them to seesomething.”
Bunny laughed out loud. “Jesus, Evander. I can’t recall a project where youdidn’twant to redesign the entire thing.”
“Not the entire thing. But come on, you have to admit this placement is tragic.” He gestured vaguely toward the door of thebedroom. “If this had been on that side, they could have at least seen the biggest part of the yard. Could have done a sliding glass door from the bedroom out to a second, private little patio. Or done a big door along the whole wall—all right, I’m starting to hear it.” He slid his roller back through the tray, picking up more primer, and grinned at Bunny. “You can’t honestly tell me I’m wrong, though.”
“I’m not sold on a wall-sized door connecting the bedroom and living room to the outside. But the rest, sure. It would be nice.” She smiled back over her shoulder. “Where’s the challenge if everything works out exactly like we want?”
“I’m a gay Hispanic interior designer from a small town. I’ve had enough challenges. My life goal is to live as much of my life reclining as possible. Like that romance author. Barbara Cartland.” He threw his arms wide and sighed, putting on a big, fake smile to drive it home. “She wrote seventy-five billion novels or something. All dictated while she stretched out on a divan, petting her dogs.”
“I await your magnum opus. Until then, stop flinging primer around.” She gestured with her toe to spots of off-white on the plastic-covered floor.
They fell into a comfortable quiet while they finished up the last bits of the bedroom, including touching up some spots on the ceiling that made themselves known as the primer had dried. Then they moved out and into the bathroom. They were using a moisture-rated primer on the whole house. Partially because it was so small, steam from the shower or the kitchen could easily reach every other part, and partially because the local hardware store that was donating supplies for the job—one of the best perks of doing this kind of work for Homescapes TV, since they never got anything like that when they ran their own VideoHead channel—had delivered nothing but the moisture-rated stuff. Probably easier to grab all the same thing for them instead ofsnagging two different primers. Or they thought it would make a good impression.
“Yo, Evander!”
He turned. Ozzy stood in the door to the bathroom, his face and arms streaked with dirt, sweat shining on his exposed chest and shoulders. It plastered his light brown hair to his forehead, and he was a bit red beneath his ever-present tan.
Evander definitely didn’t take stock of anything about that, definitely didn’t feel a familiar tingle in his pants as his breath caught. He leaned against the pole of his roller. “Yo? Is it ninety-three all over again?”
“Forgive me your fucking majesty.” He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “Need some consult on something out here. Unless you’ve seen reason and are willing to give me control over the patio.”
“Lead the way, lawn-monkey.” He nodded to Bunny as he leaned his roller against an unprimed section of wall. “I’ll be back as soon as I solve his little problem.”
Ozzy scoffed, but said nothing else, just leading the way back out. In spite of Evander’s complaints and sniping, there was alotof visible progress on the outdoor space. Beyond just having cleared it all out, which was a massive improvement on its own, Ozzy and the crew had already laid out a lot of the basic shapes. Flower beds lined the back wall of the house proper. Some thin, staked-out lines appeared to form the rough outline of a pathway from the side gate to the front door, with a branch that went to the sliding glass door into the actual house.
They followed along that and toward an inset frame of lumber near the garage. A few of the contractor crew members were there, digging out dirt and tamping it down. Jack was there, sponging off his forehead with a damp cloth. He was in a pair of loose jeans and suspenders over a green T-shirt.
Ozzy stopped next to a red cooler and pulled out two bottles of water. He handed one to Jack and cracked the other one. He swigged half of it down, some of it spilling across his bare chest.
Evander cleared his throat to break everything apart before he got caught staring.This is bad. He’s way too hot for my own good.“You need a sippy cup so you don’t spill?”
