Love and Joy Page 5

  “I guess.”

  Yes, that had been the point, and she’d played it up for effect. So why did she feel like crap?

  “Is he hot?” Amber asked.

  “Who?”

  “The landlord. Is he smoking, fiercely hot, and that’s why you’re worried about what he thinks of you?”

  “No. No, of course not.” But she couldn’t help thinking of the way his hair caught the sun, falling to his shoulders in thick waves. She couldn’t help thinking of his eyes, as pale blue as a gas-fueled flame.

  “Really.” Amber sounded as though she didn’t believe her. Of course Amber knew her well enough to spot the lie.

  “Okay. I admit, he’s … not unattractive.”

  “And what about the ring finger? I know you checked.”

  “Bare,” Joy admitted.

  “Excellent. Are you going to make a move?”

  Joy scowled. “Of course not. He’s my landlord. And anyway, I don’t think he’s too happy with me right now.”

  She got up from the sofa and walked around the tiny house, getting a feel for the place as she talked to Amber. In the kitchen, at eye level to the right of the window above the sink, a small wooden shelf held a trio of spice jars—basil, oregano, and thyme. But the herbs weren’t what caught her eye. The shelf had been stained and varnished into a warm hue the color of butterscotch. On the edge of the shelf, a trio of tiny frolicking dolphins had been carved into the wood.

  Had Nix done that? She imagined him shaping the dolphins, carefully committing them to the wood, then lovingly staining the shelf and polishing it until it gleamed.

  And she’d mocked him and this place.

  God, she really was an ass.

  Chapter 7

  Over the next few weeks, Nix applied himself to the task of putting the bathroom at Otter Bluff back together.

  He selected, purchased, and installed a water-saving toilet. When the tub he’d ordered came, he hired Leon to come over and help him carry it into the house and install it. Nix wasn’t a plumber, but he’d taught himself a lot when he’d built the tiny house. What he didn’t know, he learned from a YouTube tutorial.

  Then he and Leon installed the vanity, which he’d bought at The Home Depot. That had been tricky, since it was bigger than the one he’d taken out, and that required re-centering the thing on the wall—which meant he needed to move the plumbing for the sink a foot to the left.

  That took longer than he’d expected, and he’d had to hire Leon for an extra day to get it done. Which would have been easy enough except for the fact that Leon, like Nix, had a regular full-time job, and it turned into quite a task to find a day they both had available.

  When they finally managed it, there was a certain amount of swearing, false starts, errors that required correcting, and more swearing before the new vanity was installed.

  He’d barely gotten it done before his tenant called to complain that the stovetop wasn’t working.

  Given that their relationship had gotten off to a rocky start, Joy had been hesitant to call Nix about the stove. But it was his job to maintain the appliances—it was right there in the contract. What was she supposed to do? Just refrain from cooking in an effort to avoid an awkward conversation with him?

  She worked up her nerve and called late in the afternoon, after she’d written a blog post, gone shopping for groceries, and taken a walk on Nix’s land, which really was gorgeous.

  “Nix?” She sounded tentative even to herself when he answered the phone. “This is Joy. Joy Maxwell. Your tenant.”

  “I remember who you are.”

  And, yeah, he did sound irritated. He sounded as though he would have preferred to hear from anyone—up to and including an IRS tax auditor—rather than her.

  “Well, I’m calling because the stove isn’t working.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Uh … no. I tried to turn it on, and … nothing.”

  He sighed heavily, and she heard the weight of it through the phone.

  “I wondered if you could … you know. Come out here and take a look.”

  “I can get out there tomorrow. Early, before I go to work. Say, seven a.m.?”

  “See, the thing is, I was wondering if you could come now.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. Please. I want to cook dinner, and I can’t.” His irritation with her was contagious, apparently, because she delivered this last bit as though she were scolding a cranky toddler.

  “Joy …”

  “It’s in the contract. I have it right in front of me. It says you’ll maintain the appliances. And the stove is an appliance, Mr. Landry.”

  “Mr. Landry? What the hell is that? Mr. Landry is my grandfather.”

  “Fine. Nix. Will you come? Please?”

  This time the sigh was replaced by a grunt. “Give me half an hour.”

  Nix showed up at the tiny house after dark, freshly showered and fully annoyed. If the stove really was broken, that was irritating as hell because it was one more thing to deal with on top of the renovations at Otter Bluff. And if it wasn’t broken, that was even worse, because it meant his tenant was finding petty things to complain about.

  If she’d been nice—if she’d loved the house as much as he did, or really even a fraction as much—he’d have been gracious about the stove. He’d have seen it as an essential part of his job as landlord, and he’d have wanted to set things right for her. As it was, though, he just wanted her out—even if that wasn’t actually going to happen.

  “I’m here,” he said when she answered the door. “Let me just take a look at the stove so I can get out of your hair.” He sounded petulant. He knew that. But he couldn’t get her insults about his beloved home out of his head. She’d mocked him. She didn’t deserve his courtesy.

  She led him into the house and to the kitchen, where she turned the knob to start one of the two burners on the miniature stove. Nothing happened.

  “See? Nothing,” she said.

  He reached over and clicked the knob himself a few times, as though she somehow wasn’t doing it right.

  “Did you check the propane?” he asked.

  She looked at him blankly. “Propane?”

  Well, at least the fix wasn’t going to take long.

  He turned, went outside, and walked to the side of the house, where the propane tanks were kept.

  Yep, the tank was empty. It was a wonder she hadn’t called him about a lack of hot water, too.

  Fortunately, he kept a spare. He switched the supply indicator over to the full tank and opened the valve. Then he closed the valve on the empty tank.

  While he was working, Joy came outside and stood behind him. A light he’d set up specifically for this purpose illuminated the area where he worked.

  “You have to refill the empty propane tank every few weeks,” he told her, not looking at her as he finished the job.

  “I have to?” She emphasized the I, as though it should have been literally anyone else.

  “Well, no.” He straightened and turned to face her. “You don’t have to do it. You don’t have to do anything, unless you enjoy hot water and a working stove.”

  “But … I thought … usually you just pay the gas bill, and there’s gas.”

  “I told you the house is off the grid.”

  “You did say that. But …”

  “What did you think off the grid means?”

  She was looking at him wide-eyed, as though she’d been caught in some misdeed. In fact, her only misdeed was ignorance, but that was enough to set him off.

  “I thought it meant the electricity. And, you know. The water.”

  And, okay, maybe that was his fault. When he’d given her a tour of the place, he’d pointed out the solar electricity system and the water tank, but he might have forgotten to explain about the propane.

  He softened his voice and forced himself to be more polite than he had been. He gestured toward the empty tank. “If you take this and get it refilled, y
ou’ll be ready when the other one is empty. You’ll want to do that, because you don’t want to suddenly run out of hot water just when you need it.”

  She looked doubtful. “And how do I do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Get it refilled. I mean … where do I take it? Who does that?”

  He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, reminding himself that a girl from an upscale condo in Los Angeles likely had never had to deal with propane.

  “You just take the tank down to the hardware store and they’ll switch it out for you—they’ll take this tank and give you a full one. You see how I’ve got this hooked up? You put it here, tighten this bar—it holds the tank in place—then you screw on the hose. Make sure it’s tight. Then you just open the valve, like this.” He demonstrated for her benefit. “Then you push the supply indicator over toward the full tank. Like this. See how this one over here is on red? It means it’s empty. And this one’s on green.”

  “Which means it’s full,” she said.

  “Right.” He showed her how to remove the empty tank, then carried it to her car and put it in the trunk so she wouldn’t have to.

  “Okay.” She nodded.

  “Simple. And now your stove should work again.” He put his hands on his hips and regarded her. “You think you can handle that?”

  “Yes. Though you might have shown me all of this when I moved in. Then you wouldn’t be standing here annoyed with me because I didn’t know.”

  It was a fair point. “I’m not annoyed,” he lied.

  “Really. Are you telling me you always glare at people like this?”

  Was he glaring? He supposed he was. He took a deep breath, let it out, and told himself to stop the glare.

  “Only when people make fun of my house on YouTube. Which I guess you’re going to do again now that you’ve discovered I don’t have a gas line.”

  “I told you, it’s business. It’s entertainment. It’s—”

  “Yeah. I suppose it’s all of those things. You know what else it is? It’s kinda mean. Good night. Happy cooking.” He went to his car and got in before she could say anything else.

  Once Nix was gone, Joy was equal parts angry and embarrassed. The anger: how was she supposed to know about the propane when he hadn’t bothered to tell her? And the embarrassment: she really had hurt his feelings, apparently, with her blog and her video.

  Was this what it was going to be like for the next several months? Was he going to glare at her and treat her like crap every time she had to interact with him?

  That would be a shame, because she wasn’t what he thought she was. She was a nice person. Something he’d never find out if he didn’t give her a chance.

  Except, she hadn’t seemed like a nice person in the video or on the blog. She could see that. And after the care he’d taken building the house, and that darling dolphin shelf in the kitchen …

  She was going to blog and do a video about the propane situation, of course. That kind of thing was her job. But maybe she could make it more about her own ignorance toward off-grid living rather than the primitive conditions here.

  They were both true, weren’t they? The conditions really were more basic than what she was used to, but she really had been naïve.

  It was a fair approach, and maybe it would go a little way toward softening up her landlord.

  That hair, God. It had been loose tonight, all thick and wavy and luscious.

  Hair like that was wasted on a man.

  Or, considering how much Joy enjoyed seeing it on Nix, maybe it wasn’t.

  Chapter 8

  When Joy had imagined coming to live in the tiny house, she’d had fantasies of turning into a hemp-wearing, granola-eating woman of the earth. She’d thought she might even take up organic gardening, an idea that was certainly possible given the fact that Nix had a vegetable garden in raised beds a short distance up a dirt path from the house.

  But imagining organic gardening was one thing—doing it was another.

  Nix had never mentioned whether he expected her to maintain the garden, so she wondered whether he was upset with her when she came outside one day and saw him in a pair of gardening gloves, working in the planting beds.

  Uncertain whether to expect annoyance, friendliness, or something in between, she put on a sturdy pair of shoes and a jacket and walked up the path to meet him.

  Nix was pulling weeds from the soil and depositing them in a bucket. He must have heard her shoes crunching on the dirt, but he didn’t look up as she approached.

  “Hey,” she said.

  He glanced at her and she offered a tentative wave.

  “Hello.” He focused on his work, pulling a weed and smoothing the soil with his other hand.

  “I didn’t know whether I was supposed to … do anything with this.” She gestured toward the planting beds.

  “Of course not. I wouldn’t want you to mess up your manicure.” He probably intended to insult her, but she did have a nice manicure, and gardening would probably ruin it.

  “That was supposed to be rude. Right?” she asked. “I can’t really tell.”

  He looked up at her with a half grin. “If you couldn’t tell, then I have to work on my sarcasm.”

  “Very funny.” She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked one hip in a stance of irritable defiance.

  He offered a reluctant smile then turned his focus back to his work. “No, I don’t expect you to garden. Though you can if you want to. I kind of neglected things out here when I moved into town, so I thought I’d better get back to it.” He was kneeling on the ground, wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt that bore some sort of slogan that had mostly peeled off over the years. His hair was tied back to keep it out of his way.

  “What are you growing?” she asked.

  “Nothing yet. But once I get these beds weeded, I’m going to be planting beets, carrots, spinach, and Swiss chard.”

  “Huh. All organic, I suppose.”

  He gave her a side-eyed glance. “Oh, that’s right. You made fun of organic gardening in your first blog post, when you came up with the idea to come out here.”

  She felt a blush rise to her cheeks. Okay, yes, maybe he was right. Maybe she had. “Look. About that—”

  “You don’t have to explain or defend yourself,” he said, interrupting her. “Though you might want to look into the benefits of organic gardening before you judge it. I’m thinking your opinions aren’t built on a foundation of good, solid research, am I right?”

  She scowled. “You know, Nix, I can admit that the video I did about the house was … rude. And insulting. And I apologize for that. But if you insist on being unpleasant to me every time we speak, this is going to be a long six months for both of us.”

  Damn it, she was right.

  He really was falling into a habit of rudeness toward her, and it wasn’t useful or productive. And if she could manage to apologize for the video, then maybe he could come a little bit her way, too.

  He looked at her from where he was kneeling and shaded his eyes with one gloved hand. “Seems to me that when you were writing about organic gardening, you said you might be interested in trying it.”

  She blinked as though she was surprised he remembered anything other than the parts that had offended him.

  “Yes. I did.”

  “I’ll tell you what. I’m going to leave that bed over there empty.” He pointed with his free hand. “If you want to plant something, you’re free to use it. I’ve got a few books on organic gardening I can lend you. If you want.”

  He’d have bet that on Joy’s mental list of things she wanted to try at some point in her life, organic gardening ranked somewhere between coal mining and sewer maintenance. Still, to her credit, she nodded and smiled politely.

  “Okay, thank you. Maybe I will.”

  Another olive branch from Nix: “How did things go with the propane?”

  “Fine. I got the tank refilled and ready to go. That sucker was heav
y.”

  The tanks really were heavy, especially when they were full. If he hadn’t been so focused on acting like an ass, he’d have thought of that and would have offered to help her with it.

  “Next time you need one refilled, let me know and I’ll take it in. They really are a lot to lift.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No sweat.” He turned back toward his gardening feeling optimistic that he and Joy might be able to forge some kind of amicable relationship that would make her time at the house easier to manage for both of them.

  Well, that had gone better than she’d expected.

  Joy walked back to the house feeling better about things between herself and Nix. And she really should try organic gardening, if only because it would make some interesting entries for her blog—something for the whole city-girl transformation narrative. She didn’t have to like it, and she didn’t have to be successful at it. She only had to try it and document the results. In fact, it would make better content if she failed spectacularly.

  She kind of didn’t want to fail, though.

  One of Joy’s shortcomings—at least, she thought of it as a shortcoming—was that she needed people to like her. Why else would she have the career she had? And some nagging, needy part of her wanted Nix to like and approve of her.

  If she tried organic gardening and did a good job—if she managed to produce a passable head of lettuce, maybe—then she might earn his grudging approval.

  The fact that she wanted his approval was only a byproduct of her flawed upbringing, she assured herself.

  It had nothing to do with Nix himself, or the way his T-shirt had stretched across his back, making her want to run her hands over those shoulders.

  It had nothing to do with that at all.

  At Otter Bluff the next day, Nix began working on the bathroom flooring.

  Evan had selected a ceramic tile in the color of beach sand, and Nix was laying them out on the floor, trying to establish the arrangement of the tiles before he did anything permanent.