of a fence as you drag it along, or a playing card flicking against the spokes of a bicycle wheel as it spins.
How many siblings do you have? Terrific! I have three sisters too!
You hate sushi? Me too.
No, I’ve never been to Europe, but it’s always been a dream of mine, ever since . . .
But for Chip, the questions soon turned to the subject of his work, which for the past fifteen years had always been the same. Construction. Really, for a McBride boy, there was no other option. Every Abingdon girl he’d taken on a date knew the facts of his family background well in advance. Any riveted expression just showed him how well his potential future girlfriend could lie.
Folding her hands softly together and resting them under her delicate chin?
Lying.
Leaning forward with fluttering mascara-laden lashes as though what he just told her was positively fascinating?
Lying.
And some of the words that came out of their mouths as they tried to relate . . . frankly, it was comical.
“You are joking!” one had said with a tinkling laugh. “You know, just the other day I was breaking out my tile saw for a little she-shed project I was doing on the bathroom—”
“I’m not entirely sure what a she-shed is,” Chip had interjected, setting down his wine.
She had shrugged. “Oh, you know, just a little shed for gals. Like to hold all your little crafting and sewing projects.”
He remembered how distinctly his brow rose. “You sew?”
“Ha-ha-ha!” She laughed as though he had said something completely outrageous. “No. Anyways, I was on my way up the stairs—”
“I don’t think sheds typically have bathrooms. Or second floors.”
“And I tripped on the new hardwood floors—”
He had put up his hand. “I’m not entirely sure we have the same definition of a shed here. We might need to back up—”
“And realized those steps were entirely too narrow!” Her eyes had twinkled at his, like she had just shared an inside joke between handymen. “So now I’m having to go back and do it all over again, but it’s going to take me ages to find the right repurposed barn wood. Maybe if we happened to go together . . .”
This was Ashleigh. As it turned out, Ashleigh had no idea what to do with a tile saw. And after a revealing conversation he had with her sister weeks later, Chip discovered Ashleigh had shipped the saw to her house fourteen hours before their first date.
Just so they could have a conversation piece.
Ashleigh really did have a “she-shed” (with a full kitchen and two bedrooms) in the backyard of her “little bungalow” (with five bedrooms and three baths). He would have called them something else, but who was he to quibble over definitions with his girlfriend? College students occasionally knocked on her door asking to rent out that she-shed.
His beautiful, elegant, family-friendly girlfriend carried enough charm in this town for the both of them. At the moment, his girlfriend also happened to be standing with her cream-colored heels firmly on the threshold, her eyes scanning his gutted living room as though expecting the floor to collapse at any moment.
Chip set down the pry bar he was using to peel the baseboards away from the wall.
“Ashleigh, are you sure you don’t want to come inside?”
“I am inside,” she answered, her arms crossed over her chest. She looked pointedly down to her shoes, and he did too.
“Yes, well, would you like to come more than one inch inside? I could turn on the space heater.”
“Oh, I’m not cold,” she replied in an upbeat tone, though her shoulders visibly tensed at the sound of a creak upstairs. “I like the fresh air.”
“It’s thirty degrees.”
“I’m warm-blooded.”
“You’re shivering.”
She looked down at her slim forearms, lined with goose bumps, as though they weren’t hers. She began rubbing them furiously.
He sighed and reached for a towel. It was only 5:00 p.m. He had planned on getting in roughly three hours of work before their dinner reservation—hoped to, with a little luck, have the wall down.
“How about we just head over to 128 Pecan now? I could do with a meal anyways.” He cast a glance back to the inoperable oven and the cellophane-wrapped stainless-steel range beside it. It’d been days since he’d had a hot meal.
“Don’t be silly,” she replied with a smile. “I’m fine, Chip. Really. I said I wanted to see your work-in-progress and I meant it.” She bit her lip. “And I would be all for helping with that”—she