Hot for the Handyman

Bianca’s life is insane. A single mom to three kids, she moved back to her hometown of Seattle after her husband cheated and knocked up his secretary. She’s just trying to get to the next day without pulling out her hair. With a full-time job as a project manager overseeing the renovations on affordable housing, she’s doing her best to put food on the table for her kids while also proving to the world that she can make it on her own—she doesn’t need a man. She does, however, need a handyman.

Cue, Jack. He rides in on his Harley with his smoldering blue eyes, a beard, and sleeves of tattoos to save her from an abusive contractor. He’s also a handyman. A Jack of all trades. Is Bianca’s luck finally changing? But Jack has one condition before he takes the job to finish the renovations on the new four-plex—she cannot fall in love with him. An easy task for sure, right?

“I don’t care if you don’t
have matching socks. I am leaving this house in two minutes,” Bianca Dixon
called up the stairs to her six-year-old twins, Hannah and Hayley. “In other
words, get your scrawny asses down here,” she muttered under her breath.

“Scawnyass,” echoed Charlie,
her two-year-old son, sitting on the stairs heading down to the garage, kicking
his feet and poking the eyeballs of his dinosaur stuffed animal.

Bianca grabbed her purse,
her kids’ backpacks for school and day care, and her lunch bag, hoisted Charlie
onto her hip and headed down to the door to the garage.

“I mean it, girls. Get your butts
down here.”

Stomps and growls were followed by thundering size-one youth feet that rumbled the foundation of the house as
her bickering twins descended the stairs.

“You can’t leave without us,
Mom,” Hannah said with impatience. “The whole reason we’re even leaving is so
Hayley and I can go to school.” She sat at the top of the stairs and pulled on her running shoes.

Her identical twin sister,
just with a shorter haircut, joined her and pulled on her matching shoes.
“Yeah, Mom. We’re only six. You can’t leave us home alone. Otherwise, you’ll get in trouble.”

Bianca rolled her eyes. “In
trouble with whom?”

The girls looked at each
other, smiled and turned back to their mother with triumph in their brown eyes.

“Nana,” they both said.

Bianca rolled her eyes
again, placed Charlie on the ground beside her and opened the door to the garage. “Get your asses down the stairs, or you won’t be going to Nana’s soon.”

That was a big ol’ lie. No
way in hell was Bianca giving up her child-free moments and denying her parents
and children time together without her as a referee.

Hannah and Hayley’s mouths
dropped open.

“Mom said a bad word,”
Hayley whispered to her sister.

“We can tell Nana when we
see her. Just be good so we can see her,” Hannah replied.

“Get down here!” Bianca
yelled, heading into the garage to load up her Honda Odyssey.

She had just gotten Charlie
into his car seat and was closing the sliding door to the van with all her
children strapped in with socks, shoes and combed hair when her cell phone
began to warble in her purse.

“Fuck,” she murmured as she
swung in behind the steering wheel.

“Duck,” Charlie repeated.
“QUACK!”

She dug around in her purse
and found her still ringing phone.

Of. Fucking. Course. It was
her cheating-ass ex.

She canceled the call, hit
the button to open up her garage door, and turned over the ignition. He could wait.

The last thing she wanted
was to talk to the lying, cheating, wimpy, small-dicked douche. Particularly
with her children within earshot, because then she’d have to remain pleasant
with the fucker.

Glancing at the clock on her
dash, she took a deep breath. She still needed to run by the property she
managed to check in on the handyman before she took the girls to school.
Charlie didn’t start day care until nine thirty, so she had a bit of leeway
there.

A huge delivery of kitchen
cabinets was arriving today and Rod—the handyman—hadn’t answered the last three
of her text messages or the last four of her calls.

She needed somebody at the
house to receive the delivery, and she couldn’t guarantee that they wouldn’t be
delivered at nine sharp. She had to make sure Rod—her sixty-plus, round-bellied, chain-smoking, misogynistic handyman—was there and aware and didn’t dick off to the hardware store or something.

From the moment she’d met
him, she had reservations about the guy. He looked down on her, spoke down to
her and smoked like a chimney.

But her last three contractors had left mid-project. One because he hurt his back, another because he got a job with another company across town, and then the last one moved to an entirely different state.

So she took pity on her
kids’ piano teacher’s brother, out from Idaho, down on his luck, and apparently
good with tools. Rod had been “working” for her for the past ten days, but so
far, the guy wasn’t worth the four grand they’d agreed on for him to get the first two units where she needed them to be. The guy hadn’t earned five hundred in her opinion.

How long did it take to
paint one bedroom?

She painted the kids’ room,
her room and both upstairs bathrooms in two days. And that was with children running around like jammy-hand meth-heads.

“What did you pack us for
lunch?” Hannah asked as Bianca turned out of their townhouse complex and onto
the main road. Hannah was her loud, type A alpha-child. She had no problem voicing her opinions, taking charge and ruling any roost she set foot in.

Except Bianca’s roost, of
course.

Only one hen ruled that
house. Only one queen. And her children knew it. As hard as Hannah tried to run the show, Bianca pushed back enough that her child was finally—after six
long years—learning her place.

“I packed all three of you
turkey bacon, cheese and pickle sandwiches, a yogurt tube, a banana each, some
cucumber and pepper slices and one of those coconut bars you like.”

All three kids cheered.

“Yay! Candy bars!” Hannah
screamed.

They weren’t candy bars.
They were coconut- and cocoa-flavored bars made by some local health-food
company and geared toward children who were picky eaters. Somehow, the creators
had managed to jam spinach, dates, carrots, chia and hemp hearts into the bars
without tainting the flavor. Her kids thought they were getting candy, when in
truth they were getting two servings of vegetables and two tablespoons of
coconut sugar.

In your picky-eating faces,
you little crotch demons.