“Do you enjoy it?”
“Beats sitting behind a typewriter,” she replied as she pulled a pair of side-cutting pliers from her pouch.
Her action drew Jeff’s eyes back down to her waist, which was just below his eye level. He was suddenly fascinated by the roll of black electrician’s tape that dangled from a chain on her belt, swaying against her hip as she moved. He cleared his throat and turned his eyes sternly upward. “You’re not from Florida originally, are you?” he asked.
“No, Arkansas. Hand me that set of cable cutters out of my toolbox, will you?” Autumn decided that keeping him busy might just keep his mouth shut, though she doubted it. She thought he had a very nice voice, but it was definitely distracting.
Jeff frowned into the open toolbox, staring at the assortment of tools there. The only thing he recognized was a big screwdriver. He’d never been much of a handyman—by choice. He preferred to pay people to do that sort of thing. Now he wished he hadn’t chosen extra science classes over shop. Using a rapid process of elimination, he grabbed something big and heavy and held it up. “You mean this?”
“Yeah, thanks,” she said casually, taking the tool from him and turning back to the service.
He just managed not to say “whew” and wipe his brow. He didn’t know why he was suddenly trying to impress this woman, but he felt as if he’d just earned himself a few points.
“Now would you hand me—”
Jeff tensed, glaring back down at the toolbox. What now?
“The hacksaw?” Autumn finished.
Thank goodness. Jeff snatched up the vaguely familiar instrument and offered it upward, grinning broadly.
Autumn took the saw, wondering why Jeff was suddenly looking so pleased with himself. Strange guy, she mused. Gorgeous but strange.
A particularly vigorous movement on her part shook the ladder beneath her, but Autumn wasn’t concerned as she steadied herself on the wall in front of her. After all, her feet were barely three feet off the ground. She’d fallen farther.
Jeff, however, was not so unconcerned. He reached out at the first shimmy of the ladder and steadied her, one hand on the ladder, one on the back of her leg, a scant few inches below the slender curve of her hip.
“You okay?” he asked.
Impatient, she sighed and looked down. “Yes, I’m…fine.” Her voice faded as she looked down into the face turned up to hers, their gazes locking. She was suddenly vividly aware of that warm hand on the back of her thigh. She cleared her throat soundlessly, “You want to, uh…”
“Do I want to what?” Jeff asked eagerly.
“You want to move your hand?” she continued more forcefully.
His mouth tilting into a one-sided smile that she secretly found devastating, he looked down the length of her body to the hand in question. “No, not particularly,” he informed her.
“Well, do it, anyway,” Autumn snapped. “I’m trying to work here.”
“Sorry,” he murmured, looking back up at her with sparkling blue eyes that showed not the faintest apology. He moved the hand but took his time about it.
Autumn tightened her jaw and turned curtly back to the job before her, telling herself that she was not blushing. Dammit, she hadn’t blushed since junior-high school! What was with this guy, changing from a rather sweet, shy, awkward type to a practiced flirt in the blink of an eye?
Rebuilding Jeff Bradford’s meter loop should have been a routine, if painstaking, job, requiring little more than perfunctory concentration on Autumn’s part. In reality, it became a test of her skill and professionalism as she struggled grimly to perform her job while her uninvited “helper” hovered beneath her, making cheerful conversation, offering assistance when none was needed, occasionally handing her a tool in response to a grudging request. Autumn had to ask herself more than once why she was being so patient with him. She had been less patient with other pesky males, customer or not, and had even been known to lose her formidable temper with a few. But Jeff continued to be so relentlessly nice and courteous that she would have felt like a complete shrew had she been anything less than tolerant of him, though her tolerance may have been a bit forced.
“Do you know that you have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen?” he asked her at one point, gazing earnestly up at her. “Are they naturally that green, or do you wear contacts?”
Autumn swallowed and dropped the stripping knife she’d been using, relieved that it fell nowhere near her uninvited assistant. “Jeff, do you suppose you could bring me a glass of water?” she asked with hidden desperation, unaware that she’d casually called him by his first name. “It’s, uh, it’s really hot out here.”
He grinned, as aware as she that the moist, late-October breeze around them was quite comfortable. “Sure, Autumn,” he answered without further comment. “I’ll be right back.”
“Don’t hurry,” she called after him.
The next four and a half minutes were the most peaceful time she’d managed since Jeff Bradford had answered her knock on his door. So why did she catch herself smiling when he returned with the requested water?
“Almost finished now,” she announced a short while later, relieved that she’d done a creditable job despite her uncharacteristic clumsiness. “I just have to connect these grounding wires to the back of the box and—”
Because her attention was more on the man beside her than on what she w