Blind Date Disasters & Eat Your Heart Out

work done. Yesterday. Which is why he often encouraged his clients to vacate for the duration, but Cami refused to go anywhere. She wanted to be involved, she’d said, each step of the way.

Oh, joy.

So at six o’clock on Thursday morning he let himself in with some trepidation, followed by a demo crew of four laborers. After all, he knew firsthand she wasn’t exactly a morning person. “Let me make sure the back half is clear,” he told his guys, leaving the mostly Spanish-speaking workers in the kitchen while he made his way down the hall.

As promised, Cami had boxed up the things in her bedroom and master bath and moved them out, except for the heaviest pieces of furniture, which he’d told her he would tarp and work around. He had no idea where she was. Maybe she’d heeded his advice and left, though he didn’t really care. He wanted to start. Calling his workers, he did just that.

The noise was extensive as they stripped the walls down to the studs. But Cami had supposedly forewarned her neighbors, and since no one came to complain or arrest him, Tanner and his crew kept at it.

Working again, with the weight of his tools in his hands, the plans in his head, felt incredibly good. He’d been out of it for too long. Not that Tanner regretted taking the time off-nearly a year-to care for his father after his stroke. He didn’t regret a moment of it. But he’d missed this.

That his father had improved enough to allow Tanner to resume his life was a huge relief. His checkbook was grateful, too, as were his mind and body. As much as he loved his father, he needed this.

Two hours into the demo, he headed into the kitchen for some desperately needed water. Leaning against the counter, he tipped back his water jug and spotted the client’s cat sitting near his box of tools.

“Hello, kitty,” he said, squatting to hold out a hand. Cami had told him Annabel hated everyone equally, except for her, of course, but the cat didn’t look as if she hated him. Sniffing his fingers, she preened a bit and then started to purr.

That was when he caught sight of the mess at her feet. The mess that looked suspiciously like a chewed pouch. His chewed pouch.

“Hey.” Tanner glared at Annabel, who sat on her haunches and appeared to smile at him. There was a piece of leather hung up on her front tooth. Expensive leather.

She’d eaten one of his pouches from his tool belt. “Foul play, cat.”

Before he could do anything about it, the back door opened and Cami raced in. She wore a harassed, harried look. Not even glancing his way, she pushed past him and down the hallway toward the bedroom.

Her nearly demolished bedroom.

“Wait-”

But she was gone, her heels clicking on the wood, her voice chanting softly, “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late for a very important date. Need a rose lipstick, dammit.”

Definitely, she was a little off, but he followed her anyway. “We’ve done the demo-”

“Ack!” She came to a skidding halt and smacked her forehead. “I forgot!” With that, she reversed her steps, rushed past him and out the kitchen door.

Without a word to him.

He shut the door behind her. “Nice owner you’ve got there,” he told Annabel, who’d stretched out lazily by his lunch box. “Real friendly.”

“Mew.”

“Oh, stop nuzzling my lunch box. I don’t feed cats who eat expensive pouches.”

Insulted, she lifted her chin and ignored him.

Amused at himself for talking to a damn cat, and also for agreeing to work for a crazy lady, he strode out of the kitchen, intending to get back to work.

Annabel followed him, winding her way between his legs as he walked, tripping him in the hallway. “Go back,” he told her. “No cats in the work zone.”

Obviously not caring about the sacred work zone, the cat licked her chops and sat in the doorway of the destroyed bedroom.

“You can’t stay,” he told her. “You’ll get dusty.”

Annabel yawned, turned in a circle and lay down.

Sighing, a complete sucker for animals-even ones who destroyed perfectly good leather pouches-Tanner went into the one good bathroom, grabbed a towel and set it on the floor. “There.”

As if it were her due, Annabel settled on it and proceeded to bathe herself.

Tanner went back to work.

Fifteen minutes later came a very loud, very outraged, very female screech.

Tanner ran out of the bedroom and tripped over Annabel. Again. “Dammit,” he said to her irritated growl. “I told you that was a bad spot.” He raced into the living room. Empty.

Kitchen was empty, too.

The screech came again, and just as he turned toward the bathroom door, it slammed closed in his face.

“I’m naked!” came Cami’s annoyed voice.

Okaaaay. He took a firm step away from the bathroom door and waved his curious workers to the bedroom. He’d seen a naked client once. Or clients, rather, as they’d been married and had been knocking it out in their linen closet when he’d inadvertently interrupted them. They’d been sixty-five, wrinkled and whiter than white, and he still had nightmares about it.

That Cami was alone-he hoped-and was twenty-something, heart-stoppingly beautiful and had no obvious wrinkles didn’t make him feel any better.

He didn’t like naked clients.

“Where’s my towel!”

Tanner looked at Annabel, who apparently lay on the towel in question. She yawned so widely he was certain her head was going to turn inside out.

“I said, I’m naked and I don’t have a towel and I just got out of the shower!”

Tanner’s vivid imagination went to town. He had no trouble picturing Cami on the other side of the closed door, wet and shiny and maybe a little chilly…hmm, maybe he could revise that no-naked-clients policy thing.

“Who stole my towel?”

Oh. Oh, yeah, the towel. Guiltily, Tanner kneeled by Annabel. The towel she lay on had been a lovely deep forest green, before he’d set it on the dusty floor and before she’d added myriad red, white and black cat hairs to it.

“Uh, Cami?” he said, eyeing the sleepy cat. “I appear to have your towel.”

“You- Why?”

“It’s a bit complicated. Is there another somewhere?”

“Sure. Shoved into boxes!”

“How do you feel about air drying?”

There came a thunk, the distinct sound of her head hitting the door. “Can’t we renegotiate this whole morning thing?” came the muffled plea. “Like noon. Let’s start work at noon.”

“We’d never finish. And anyway, you were already up and dressed, moaning about your rose lipstick and being late. Why would you take a shower now?”

“Dammit, it’s my lipstick!” she muttered. “Oh, never mind, just shove the towel in when I open the door. And keep your eyes closed!”

The door creaked open, and Tanner stuffed a corner of the towel in. “Really,” he said to the crack in the door. ‘Trust me, you’re not going to want to use that-”

“Your eyes are open!”

“Well, yeah. I’m just trying to-” But he stopped, because one, he’d just gotten a peek of what it was she didn’t want him to see, and oh man, she was better than his most wild fantasy.

And two, she’d slammed the door again, missing his nose by a millimeter.

“Go away,” she demanded.

Gladly. Because while she had a bod that could make a grown man drool, she was still a loon.

CAMI HAD DONE some interior-design jobs in college and also part-time work for other designers in the area.