Wild Thing (The Magic Jukebox Book 3) by Judith Arnold Read Free Book Online Page B

and repair the wall quickly,” he
shot back.
    “I’ll
contact Parnelli’s,” she said, naming the plumbing service the inn used. “I’ll
tell them it’s an emergency.” It might not be the sort of emergency that
required every available staff member to grab a bucket and bail out a flooded
cottage, but with the Memorial Day weekend only ten days away, Monica
considered it critical to find and fix this leak ASAP.
    Yet
she was smiling when she called the friendly dispatcher at Parnelli’s and
explained the situation. She was still smiling after she left her office and
strolled around the pool to Rose Cottage to view the water stain. Still smiling
as she studied the oval darkening the parlor’s cream-colored wall.
    Tomorrow,
or the next day, or Memorial Day, or some time in an undefined future, she
might start crying again. But today she was a woman who had spent a night
having splendiferous sex with a hunky guy with whom she was going to have
dinner in just a few hours. She was going to sit across a table from him and
feast her eyes on his gorgeous face while her mouth feasted on whatever food
filled her plate. Maybe he’d shave and she’d have an unobstructed view of his
chin. Maybe she’d reach across the table and trace his cheeks with her
fingertips.
    Maybe
she would learn more about him. Maybe not too much more. That he was a mystery
to her added to his sex appeal. If she found out that he bickered with his
parents and complained about the barking of his neighbor’s dog, that he was a
slob and that salad dressing made him flatulent, his sex appeal would plummet.
The impetuousness of last night had heightened the experience for her. The
understanding that modest, well-behaved Monica could behave wildly with a man
she didn’t know was the main reason she couldn’t stop smiling, even as she
touched the water stain and discovered that the wall was wet enough to feel
almost pasty.
    “What
do you think is causing the leak?” she asked Frank.
    “We’ll
find out once we open the wall,” he told her. “There’s a pipe running behind
this wall from a second-floor bathroom. “I’m guessing there’s a leak somewhere
in that pipe.”
    His
use of the word somewhere should have tempered her smile, at least a
little bit. What would the plumber have to do if the source of the leak wasn’t
immediately evident?
    Two
hours and a gaping hole in the wall later, Monica’s mood had down-shifted
significantly. Despite cutting the hole as neatly as possible, in an even
rectangle of drywall that, ideally, could be fitted back into place like a
piece of a puzzle, Frank and the plumber had left the parlor looking as if it
had been blizzarded with nuclear ash. White dust and slivers of pasteboard
spread across the hardwood floor and Turkish rug in the parlor. Fortunately,
the furniture had been moved to the other side of the room first.
    The
second-floor bathroom above the parlor was in equally bad shape. The plumber
had dislodged the sink’s vanity, which now sat in the adjacent bedroom, looking
alarmingly out of place. The burgundy bath mat looked as if it had been left
outside during a snow storm.
    And
they still hadn’t pinpointed the source of the leak.
    Monica
wound up spending the entire afternoon at Rose Cottage, overseeing the mess
Frank and the plumber were creating as if there was a damned thing she could do
to minimize it. Every clank and clang and thump made her cringe. The flickering
beam of the plumber’s flashlight as he ducked his head through the hole and
surveyed the pipes made her flinch.
    But
the leak had to be found and stopped. The walls had to be reconstructed and
painted. Vacuuming up the white plaster dust was the least of it.
    Her
cell phone rang frequently. She did her best to manage other maintenance issues
from Rose Cottage. She supposed she could return to her office in the main
building—hovering over Frank and the plumber and wincing at each new indignity
they inflicted on the walls of the