I tried to hide the flush in my cheeks. “Be my guest.”
Noah climbed off his chair and ran for his trucks again. I would have moved on to clean-up and storytime by now, but this was a special circumstance and Noah seemed to be taking full advantage of the extra play time.
Ford ducked under the sink, toolbox open beside him. I hovered nearby, feeling ridiculous for not knowing what to do with my hands. He dwarfed the small cabinet opening, his broad shoulders barely fitting inside. His demin-clad legs were long and I had a fleeting moment of wondering what it would be like to sit on his lap.
Jeez. Stop.
But then he reached up for something and his shirt rode up the smallest bit, revealing a few inches of washboard abs. I could feel the saliva pooling in my mouth and turned around to stare at the wall.
“Can you hand me that wrench on top there?” He asked, pointing toward his toolbox. I reluctantly got closer to him, pointedly avoiding looking at the exposed skin of his stomach while I passed him the tool.
I watched as he loosened something with the wrench, then twisted off the old p-trap, laying the corroded pipe on a towel.
“Wow,” I said. “You really do know what you’re doing.”
He grinned, the dimple in his cheek appearing for the first time. “Don’t sound so surprised.”
“Sorry. I just thought, you know . . . with your background . . .”
“Tech boy can’t fix a sink?” He looked up, but there was no sting to it.
“Yeah. Something like that.”
He shrugged, then wiped his hands on the towel. “Don’t forget, I grew up on a ranch. We learned how to work with tools and fix damn near everything by twelve years old.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded.
“Did you always like to cook?” he asked after a while.
“I didn’t have much choice,” I said. “I grew up with three siblings. My mom worked nights, so I made dinner for everyone.”
I could almost make out him nodding, like this made perfect sense.
“What about you?” I asked. “Did you always want to run a company?”
He chuckled. “Not even a little. I wanted to be a pilot, when I was a kid, but was happy enough thinkin’ I’d be a rancher.”
“Really?”
He grinned, sheepish. “Yeah. I was too nearsighted to ever pass the vision test. And I found computers when I was a freshman. They made sense to me.”
“That’s a pretty big detour.”
“Not as big as it sounds.” He shrugged. “Coding is all about building and fixing things too. Just with less physical labor.”
There was a silence. Not the bad kind, but the kind that hovers just above your heads, waiting for the next good thing.
Noah reappeared to ask for ice cream, and I gave him a small scoop in a cup with his favorite blue sprinkles. “Be careful and eat this at the coffee table.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“He’s a great kid,” Ford said after Noah carefully carried the bowl into the living room.
“He’s my whole world,” I said, and then hated myself for how obvious that sounded.
Ford didn’t laugh. “That’s good. You’re good with him.” He grabbed another tool that he’d left within reach. “You ever get a break?”
I shrugged. “He goes to daycare while I work, and sometimes I get a sitter if I have to stay late. It’s just the two of us, really,so . . .” I let the sentence trail off, not wanting to explain about my ex-husband, or why we were alone, or why my only family left in town was the found kind, not the blood kind.
