Husband Under Construction

Husband Under Construction Read Free

Book: Husband Under Construction Read Free
Author: Karen Templeton
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of the testosterone cloud as she led Noah through the maze of crumbling boxes, bulging black bags and mountains of ancient Good Housekeeping s and Family Circle s sardined into the already overdecorated living room.
    â€œUm…cleaning?” she heard behind her.
    â€œAunt Mae’s…things,” she said over the pang, now understanding why it had taken her uncle more than a year to deal with her aunt’s vast collections. Even so, Roxie found the sorting and tossing and head shaking—i.e., a box marked “Pieces of string too small to use.” Really, Aunt Mae?—hugely cathartic, a way to hang on to what little mind she had left after this latest series of implosions.
    Except divesting the garage—and attic, and spare room, and shed—of forty years’ worth of accumulated…stuff…also revealed the woebegone state of the house itself. Not to mention her uncle, nearly as forlorn as the threadbare, olive-green damask drapes weighing down the dining room windows. So Roxie suggested he spruce up the place before, you know, it collapsed around their heads. Amazingly, he’d agreed…to think about it.
    Think about it, go for it…close enough.
    However, while Roxie could wield a mean paint roller and was totally up for taking a sledgehammer to the kitchen cabinets—especially when she envisioned her ex-fiancé’s face in the light-sucking varnish, thus revealing a facet toher nature she found both disturbing and exhilarating—that’s as far as her refurbishing skills went. Hence, her giving Gene Garrett a jingle.
    And hence, apparently, his sending the one person guaranteed to remind Roxie of her penchant for making Really Bad Decisions. Especially when she was vulnerable. And susceptible to…whatever it was Noah exuded. Which at the moment was a heady cocktail of old leather and raw wood and pine needles. And chocolate, God help her.
    â€œWhoa,” Noah said, at his first glimpse of the kaleidoscope of burnt orange and lime green and cobalt blue, all suffused with the lingering, if imagined, scents of a thousand meatloafs and tuna casseroles and roast chickens. She adored her aunt and uncle, and Mae’s absence had gouged yet another hole in her heart; but to tell the truth the house’s décor was intertwined with way too many sketchy memories of other sad times, of other wounds. Far as Roxie was concerned, it couldn’t be banished fast enough.
    â€œYeah,” she said. “‘Some’ work might be an under statement.”
    Just as this estimate couldn’t be done fast enough, and Charley would sign off on it, and Noah or Gene or whoever would send over their worker bees to make magic happen, and Roxie would get back to what passed for her life these days—and far away from all this glittery, wood-scented temptation—and all would be well.
    Or at least bearable.
    The Tootsie Roll pop—and Roxie—apparently forgotten, Noah gawked at the seventies-gone-very-wrong scene in front of him, clearly focused on the job at hand. And not even remotely on her.
    Well…good.
    â€œAnd this is just for starters,” Roxie said, and he positively glowed, and she thought, Eyes on the prize, cupcake.
    And Noah Garrett was definitely not it.
    Â 
    Despite the stern talking-to Noah’d given himself as he hiked up all those steps about how Roxie was no different from any other female, that he’d never not been in total control of his feelings and no way in hell was he going to start now— The second she opened the door, all dusty and smudgy and glowering and hot, all he knew was if the Tootsie Roll pop hadn’t been attached to a stick he would’ve choked on the blasted thing.
    Noah’d stopped questioning a long time ago whatever it was that seemed to draw females to him like ants to sugar, it being much easier to simply accept the blessing. So if he was smart, he mused as he pretended to

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