Chapter 7
Morgan barreled through the back roads to her historic fixer-upper in mannerly Squirrel Hill. Rush hour was over, and she was going against traffic to boot. The good time she made was but a hollow victory. She would be very, very late. And with Darren incommunicado – she had tried him two more times, to no avail – she had no one watching her back at the office. She would have to fend for herself, but she couldn’t do that until she primped and changed. It was one thing to be unexplainably late. It was quite another to show up desperate and disheveled.
The smell of fear and uncertainty was a highly discernible scent among the hallowed halls of executive office suites. Morgan would not make this mistake.
She zoomed up her driveway, and nearly rear-ended the dated, dented, shit-brown pickup truck hogging her parking spot in front of the side kitchen door.
“What the hell,” she mumbled as she kicked open the car door.
She stormed through the door and shouted for Ramona, her nanny/housekeeper.
Instead of the matronly Mexican, Morgan was greeted by a very masculine man, who climbed up from behind the Formica-covered island in the center of her badly-dated, lime-green kitchen.
“You must be the lady of the house,” the man said, as he casually wiped his rough-hewn hands on a rag. “I’m Travis.” He reached out a newly cleaned hand toward Morgan.
Morgan’s mouth gaped with incomprehension. The entire, disorienting morning had put her off her game, but this stranger in her kitchen was the capper.
“Who you are isn’t foremost in my mind at the moment,” Morgan said, refusing to extend her own hand in greeting. “Why don’t you start with what in the hell you’re doing here?”
Now it was the stranger who looked confused. The playful grin that had animated his lips dipped into a slight frown. He dropped his head as if just then comprehending an embarrassing truth.
“I take it Big Al didn’t tell you about me,” Travis said, shaking his head.
Morgan’s eyes narrowed at the mere mention of her firefighter father’s name.
“What’s he up to this time?” she asked suspiciously.
Travis raised his head. His amused grin was back. His warm, friendly eyes were ice blue and seemed to look right through Morgan. She noticed then how handsome he was.
“He kinda hired me to redo your kitchen,” Travis sheepishly said.
“He what?” Morgan bellowed.
“He said if it were up to you, you’d never get around to it,” Travis added.
“And is that the usual way you get clients?” Morgan pressed.
“Nothing’s usual when it comes to Al,” Travis pointed out. “But I guess you’d know that, being his daughter and all.”
Just then, Ramona burst through the swinging door separating the kitchen from the dining room.
“Ms. Chase, you home,” the nanny said. “No work today?”
Work, Morgan thought. I gotta get to work.
Morgan narrowed her eyes at Ramona now.
“I was just wondering why you decided to let a stranger into my house – into my kitchen.” Her words smoldered.
Ramona winced defensively, and then shook her head uncertainly.
“No,” she said. “No stranger. Mr. Al bring him. Mr. Al say everything A-Okay. Good guy. A-number-one good guy will fix the kitchen. Make it gourmet.”
By the time she finished her explanation, Ramona was smiling at a job well done and a decision well made.
“Hmm,” Morgan hummed, un-amused and still unconvinced. “That’s funny, because I thought I was the one who signed your paychecks.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ramona nodded. “You very good boss. Very kind.”
It was no use, Morgan thought as she stared at her smiling housekeeper. It wasn’t Ramona’s fault, anyway. It wasn’t Travis’s fault, either. Blame rested, as it usually did, with her meddling Old Man.
Morgan shook her head and held up her palms as if trying to push everything away.
“I don’t have time for any of this right now,” she said. “I have a multi-million-dollar project just hanging in the air, and I’ve got to get to work. We’ll discuss this tonight.”
Travis nodded. “Fine. By then, I should know what we’re looking at.”
“Just don’t do anything,” Morgan snapped. “Nothing more until you clear it with me.”
“Understood,” he added.
Morgan, exponentially more flustered than when she had arrived, turned on a heel as if to exit the house.
“Uh, you might want to change first,” Travis said in a low, gentle voice. “I love the dress, but it just doesn’t say, ‘powerful, professional female business executive.’”
Morgan stopped dead, and looked at herself.
Wordlessly, she reversed course, headed across the kitchen and went upstairs. But not before Travis added one more thing.
“Must have really burned the midnight oil last night,” he said, shaking his head in mock-awe. “Your old man was right about you – all work and no play.”
Morgan glared at the grinning, handsome handyman as she stormed from the room, her heels pounding the worn linoleum.