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joke his way past his treachery.
    When I know I won’t accidentally smile, I look at him again. “My sign is stop. It’s a stop sign, Robinson. I thought you were here to help.”
    “I am.” He goes back to his car and opens the trunk. “What exactly do you need help with aside from that porch, the front steps, the bannisters, and the landscaping?”
    Front steps? What’s wrong with the front steps? I turn around real casual-like, as if I just mean to go into the house, but I eye the stairs carefully. Okay, so some of the boards look a little sad. They could stand being replaced. But that’s not an emergency situation, is it?
    Robinson quickly catches up with me and meets me at the bottom of the first step. He leans over with a big sledgehammer and drops it on the middle of the second step. It goes right through the wood and buries itself halfway up to the handle.
    “What the hell, Robinson!” I turn and glare at him. “You just put a hole in my front steps! You call that helping?” My hands go to my hips. “Would you like to bash in a few of my windows while you’re at it?”
    He looks at them and nods slightly. “Might be better to keep them in one piece. It’ll make them easier to pull out.”
    “Pull out? Why would I want to pull them out? They’re fine.”
    He shrugs. “I figured since you bought it and planned on living in it for a while you’d want double glazing.” He looks at me, waiting for an answer.
    Double glazing? What the hell is double glazing? Is that a type of paint?
    “You don’t know what double glazing is, do you?” He starts to smile again.
    “Of course I know what double glazing is.” I shove past him, skipping over the second step.
    “So what is it, then?” he asks, coming up behind me. We stop at the front door.
    “Don’t worry about the windows. I have that covered. I need your help with something else.” I want to kick myself after the words are out of my mouth. I don’t need his help. I don’t even want his help.
    “Okay, what’s that?”
    “It’s inside the house.”
    He gestures at the front door. “After you.”
    It pisses me off that he looks so comfortable in those clothes. Since when is Robinson a handy guy? I’ve been in his office when he’s had crews putting up shelves, for God’s sake.
    I gesture at his flannel. “You have the clothes of a contractor, but how do I know you actually know what you’re doing?” I turn around without waiting for his answer and step inside, trying not to flinch at the pile of garbage just inside the entrance. I hate that having him so physically close makes me nervous. I hate him, so why can’t I control my pulse? It must be my anger that’s making me so jittery. Yeah. I’m going to go with that explanation.
    He merely glances at the trash before turning his attention to the living room. “My father was a general contractor. I started following him around on jobs when I was just a kid. Paid my way through college and law school on my construction wages.” He moves into the living room and stops in the middle, looking up at the hole in the ceiling.
    I’m standing in the foyer, staring at him. “You worked in construction?” I can’t see it. He gets a manicure every week. He wears cufflinks. His shoes get shined daily.
    He shrugs. “A little.” His attention is on the hole. “You probably have rats up there.”
    “Mice, actually.”
    He looks at me. “You saw one?”
    My smile comes out crooked. “One actually fell on my head.”
    He takes a quick step to the side. Finally, he’s acting more like the Robinson I know, and I can stop entertaining the idea that an alien has taken over his body and transported him over here in a BMW spaceship.
    He looks around the room and then toward the kitchen. “Looks like you have your work cut out for you in here.” His gaze shifts to me. “Do you know what you’re going to do yourself and what you’re going to hire out?”
    I shrug. “I guess I originally