“He can’t help you?” Jake said, just to be cheeky, jabbing a thumb at the door where Graham had just stepped out.
“No, he has to head back to work, and c’mon, he doesn’t know how to work on houses! He’s so obviously a city boy.”
“So I guess you haven’t lost all your senses,” I said.
“I most certainly haven’t!” Helena scrunched her nose at him. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop thinking it.”
“We’ll think what we want,” Jake said. “Baroness…” The way he said it, and the way Helena’s skin turned a familiar shade of rose, no, she definitely hadn’t forgotten our date.
“So he’s leaving?” I asked.
“You two are very subtle,” Byron said, but we ignored him. In the end, he was a ghost, and maybe he could haunt the next house. I could hear Graham on the phone sounding encouraged by what he heard. Then he poked in for a moment and gave a thumbs up.
“Really? Byron! You had more than one haunt all along?”
Eventually we were going to shake the ghost off. Right now, if he kept Graham distracted, that was good enough for me.
“We’ll help,” I said. “For a little cream off the top.”
“Ten percent of the profit,” she said.
“Ten percent of the total sale price,” Jake said. “Because you paid too much, and we’re going to work our asses off.”
“Ten percent of the total but you leave that wallpaper alone.” She held out her hand and we both shook on it.
But I was determined to get more than a handshake out of her.
“DOWNSTAIRS IS MOSTLY DONE. Upstairs, not so much,” Helena said, giving us the tour of the rest of the house. “Luckily, there isn’t as much to do here. The room that needs the most work is the room where you fixed the floor. It still has wall damage and the floors don’t match and the window is cracked. I would also love to finish the attic. I don’t know if there’s enough time or money.” She paused. “I mean…there isn’t. But it’s too bad. I need to do the bathroom tiles and then the garden.”
“Wait wait wait. You’re going to leave the master bedroom green?” Jake asked.
“You don’t like it?” Helena looked almost offended. “It’s a beautiful green. I would love a bedroom that color…” She clutched her hands together in an unconsciously girlish gesture. Sometimes she couldn’t hide that inner princess.
I knew Jake hated that green to the core of his being, but he actually didn’t press the matter. Because what my brother did like was a princess.
“I could do the tile,” he said.
“But I love doing tile!”
“Yeah, but…it’s tedious. And you said you were going to try and translate some of that book. That seems like no easy job. I can’t even remember what language that guy said it was in.”
“Cyprium. It has some relation to Latin, and I’m pretty good with Latin.”
“Must not be that good or you would’ve known about the box already.”
She sighed. “Okay. Do the tile. But you’d better do a really, really good job.”
“If I don’t,” Jake grinned, “you have permission to spank me.”
“I’ll shove a hammer up your ass, how’s that?” She turned back to the stairs. “Well, if that’s settled, you can get going on the bathroom and I just have a few more jobs to do downstairs. I’ll make coffee in the morning. Did you bring air beds?”
“We’ll just wolf out and sleep on the rug here,” I said.
“Oh.” She blinked. “How convenient that must be. Okay. I’m going to get to bed, then.”
Was it possible that she could be the perfect girl for Jake and the perfect girl for me at the same time when we didn’t even have the same taste in women? When we only knew her at auctions, I thought she was my kind of girl. A girl who could go toe to toe with us bidding and then tear down and rebuild things with the best of us, tough as the nails in her toolbox. I respected her, and…man, did I want to show her that respect in a raw physical form, the way only wolves could. She needed a little animal in her life, I’d bet.
But she definitely had another side too, one that was more feminine and betrayed some fragility, that would stir Jake’s fierce loyalty to protect his chosen mate. Of course, neither of them wanted to show that side to the other, I could tell.
I really thought we could both love her.
In the morning, we sucked down our coffee—and she definitely made better coffee than we ever did—and got right to work. She already had the bathroom stripped and ready to go, and the tiles she chose were fairly large, so it would be quick work. I cranked up the radio although the reception on the station was a little staticky. The blaring guitars and screaming rock vocals propelled us forward. I wasn’t sure Helena appreciated it as much, but at least she didn’t tell us to turn the music down.
It also provided good cover for talk. We usually didn’t talk much, but today I was restless.
I think Jake was too.
“So how about that fucking Graham guy, huh?” he said as we were setting out the tile for a dry run.
“We turn our backs and the incubi move in.”
“Figures.”
“Graham seems to think Byron is his competition.”
“A ghost!?” Jake made chalk measurements, his precision in the work a contrast to his irritable tone. He practically spit out the word. “Remember that time we had a cute lady ghost? She was still a ghost.”
“Byron is definitely sort of…substantial, as ghosts go.”
Jake snorted a laugh. “No kidding. Get some pants that fit.”
“I mean, ghosts are usually a little more ‘woo-ooo…’ Spacey. He seems dead focused for a ghost.”
“Dead focused.” Jake was still laughing.
“Well, what if…he’s actually still alive or something?”
“How?”
“Magic. Anything’s possible. He seems
