Page 17 of Trading with the Boys

; “You mean the ton of useless crap that’s scattered everywhere?”

“Yeah,” I’d laughed. “That.”

“Well the plumbing’s solid, and the heat still works,” he’d said. “A few new fixtures, and the rest is cosmetic. Paint. Carpet. Maybe a drop ceiling.” He’d said the last part with a shrug of beautiful shoulders. They were the same wonderfully-hard shoulders he sometimes liked hooking my legs over while he devoured me until my eyes crossed. “It wouldn’t be too hard to fix it up, actually.”

“Really?”

“Really,” he’d nodded. “Plus, I know a guy.”

Moving past a row of ovens, I turned left into a steam-filled room. There was a chair near the dish machine I could sit down at. If I were lucky I could maybe rest my legs for a minute or two before I had to get up again.

My mind wandered back to the guy Tate was bringing over tonight. He was apparently a good friend of his, and another co-graduate of David’s. Whoever he was, I hoped he wouldn’t stick around forever. I had something I planned to do with Tate, later. Something… different.

“Yo!”

The distinct sound of my manager’s voice shattered my daydream. I looked up into a big round face that couldn’t get more Italian-looking if it were on the Sopranos.

“You just comp’d the fish at table seven?”

“Damn right I did,” I groaned, stretching my legs.

“You know she already ate half of it, right?”

“More like three-quarters, yeah.”

The man shook his head solemnly. He looked down at me, took one glance at my poor feet, then relented.

“Two more minutes,” he said, nodding my way. “Three, tops. Okay?”

“Thanks Maurice.”

My manager snapped his big fingers and smiled. “You got it.”

Eleven

SERENA

“Well the floors are shot, but we knew that already,” the man said. “The drain pan leaks in the bathroom, but I could pick up a prefab shower body. Change out the fixtures, the faucets, paint it all up… the whole thing will look like new.”

Cole came off immediately as the quintessential handyman, complete with tool-belt, tape measure, and a big, broad grin. His back tattoos were visible past his muscle shirt. And he had a lot of muscles.

“New sounds expensive,” I noted.

“Not really,” Tate shrugged from beside me. “The whole place is small enough that it wouldn’t be too bad. Besides, at some point chasing problems becomes more expensive than starting over. Right?”

Cole rubbed his bald head with one big hand and nodded. “Yeah, for a place like this that’s definitely true.”

I stared at him some more, wondering what it was that made the man so attractive. He was as Italian as they came. I liked Italian — hell, I even worked at an Italian restaurant. But that wasn’t it. He turned sideways, and that’s when it hit me:

He’s got a Vin Diesel thing going on!

Shit, I couldn’t believe it had taken this long to figure out. The broad shoulders, the square-cut jaw. I’d watched every Fast and Furious movie there was, and even the voice was the same.

“So what’s your budget?” Cole asked.

I outright laughed. Poking Tate in the ribs, I laughed again. “You tell him.”