 by Raleigh Ruebins.jpg)
Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 79968 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79968 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
And my best friend’s brother has all the right equipment.
I swore I’d never be back in this little mountain town where I grew up. But Dad left me his old fixer-upper house and a brewery full of employees who seem to hate me, and both are in need of some elbow grease and charm.
Lucky me: my best friend co-owns a construction company, Fixer Brothers Construction Co, ready to hire for renovations. Luckier me: his formerly scrawny little brother Shawn has grown into a tall, built, knuckle-bitingly hot construction worker.
He looks damn good in flannel… and better with it off.
I can have a little fun, right?
I want him in my bed, and I’m good at getting what I want. Turns out all those years of construction work have done him good, body and soul. He’s the whole package.
Shawn’s sweet, sensitive, and has been through hell. For a heartbreaker like me, he should be off-limits. And his brother knows way too much about my bad habits from the past: get in, get out, never commit.
But he’s flipping my whole world, and I know I don’t want him to stop.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
1
SHAWN
I grabbed the sledgehammer leaning on the wall next to me and hoisted it up, getting a good, firm grip.
“First strike, goin’ in,” I shouted over to my brother Nathan, who was in the nearby bathroom tearing out old cabinets.
“First strike!” he repeated back.
I aimed, and after a few practice swings, I let the even, heavy weight of the sledgehammer come down hard. Drywall and plaster caved in like butter, shards raining onto the floor. The sweet, sweet sound of demolition filled the air.
I paused for an exhale, rolling my neck to the left and right.
Today had been nothing but meetings, paperwork, and being on my most polite “yes ma’am” behavior.
This was the real work.
This was what got my blood pumping. Why I’d gone into construction in the first place.
After some more heavy swings, I felt the muscles in my arms starting to come alive. Nathan turned on some Led Zeppelin tunes in the other room and I let my sledgehammer come down with the music, getting in the zone.
“It has been way too long since I’ve been able to use my hands,” I called out.
“Thought you used your hands every morning and every night?” Charlie, our main stone and brickwork guy, said, winking at me as he walked into the room. “Maybe one particular hand? You a leftie or a rightie, Shawn?”
I raised a middle finger toward him, biting down a smile. “I can go both ways,” I said.
Charlie laughed.
“Give Shawn a break,” Nathan called from the bathroom, in between satisfying snaps of wood cabinets being pried off of the wall. “He’s been in a dry spell.”
“It’s not a dry spell if you do it on purpose,” I corrected him. “I needed the dating ban. And it’s over now.”
“Has it really been six months?” Charlie asked. “I can’t imagine going six days without fucking someone.”
“That’s because you fall in love with anyone who smiles at you,” I told him.
“Fuck off,” Charlie said, helping me chip off a tiny piece of drywall. “Sure, I’ll hook up with anyone who smiles at me, but I only fall in love with the special ones.”
I snorted. “Drywall’s comin’ down,” I shouted, eliciting a cheer from my brother in the other room.
“Charlie, come give me a hand with this vanity,” Nathan called out, and Charlie headed over.
There was a time when I would have agreed with both Charlie and Nathan. I didn’t think I’d be capable of going so long without dating or hooking up with anyone. But six months ago, I’d been thinking about proposing to my last boyfriend, only to have him call me and tell me he’d cheated on me at a bachelor party in Cancun—not once, apparently, but twice, with two different guys, both on the same trip.
“Shit happens,” he’d said. “Neither of them had a cock as nice as yours, though, Shawn. Not even close. Just FYI.”
Nice. Real nice.
Thinking about finding love and starting a family one day had become an impossible mountain to climb. Screw trying to find The One. I’d had my six-month break and it was time to have some fun. Operation Fuck or Be Fucked. Either one would be amazing right about now.
Once I’d made enough holes in the drywall I let my hands do the rest of the work. I pulled and pulled, ripping down the wall piece by piece. It was only another five minutes before satisfaction turned to panic.
“Guys,” I shouted, calling them in. My heart twisted into a knot as I looked down at the lower portion of the exposed insulation. “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is?”
“Ho boy,” Charlie said as he walked back in. “I’m a brick and stone guy, not a GC, but I know that doesn’t look right.”
“Shit,” Nathan said, putting his hand on his hip as he frowned at the insulation.
I let out a long sigh. The insulation looked mottled with rot, and it seemed like it continued into the rest of the wall.
“You said you wanted to go have some drinks tonight, right?” Nathan asked. “I think that's a good idea. A great idea. And that we’re going to need several, very strong ones.”
“That’s a lot of damage,” Charlie said.
“Water damage from a flood that happened years ago, probably,” Nathan said.
“And we’re going to have to replace all of this,” I said, looking around the spacious living room that connected all the way to the kitchen.
“This budget was already tighter than an unlubed asshole,” Nathan said, bringing an arm up and scratching behind his head.
“Sounds like my first time,” Charlie muttered.
“So we fix it,” I said simply. “We do our projects right, or we don’t do them at all. Even if that means loosening the budget.”
Charlie cleared his throat. “Lubing up the budget, so to speak?”
“That makes it sound a lot more fun than it is,” I told him. “I’m going for moonshine tonight, by the way.”