Read Mister Fixit (Love in New York #3) for Free Online Page B

planned to do everything myself. Until that mouse fell on my head.”
    Robinson laughs, bending backwards in his enthusiasm for it.
    My smile disappears.
    When he notices, his humor peters out. “Oh, wait. You were serious?”
    I hiss out an annoyed breath and go into the kitchen, staring at the spot where I saw that rat. I almost imagine I’ll find another one in the same place, as if the little guy I swept across the room is actually a zombie rat and he’s going to drag himself back over to his final resting place. I shudder with the idea of reanimated rats. Live ones are bad. Dead ones are bad. Zombie ones? Breaking bad.
    I lift my chin, determined not to be cowed into surrendering. “I’ll have you know that I bought all the materials today to do that drywall repair, but after finding a dead rat and being attacked by a mouse, I decided to take a little break. You texted me on my break, that’s it.”
    “Caught you at weak moment?” he asks, being way too perceptive for my liking.
    “No.”
    He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Jana, we need to talk.”
    I tilt my shoulder down to escape his touch and move forward into the connected dining room. “I have nothing to say, and I can’t imagine that you do either.”
    “Oh, I do, believe me.” He follows me into the dining room, so I go to the far side of it, looking out the bay window to the ramshackle backyard. What a mess it is. What a mess I am. With Robinson so close, I’m way too jittery. He always could turn my equilibrium upside down and inside out.
    “Please, just hear me out.” He sounds sad. Enough so, that I’m tempted to turn around. But I don’t, because I’ll go weak when I need to be strong.
    “I really don’t care to hear it. Honestly, whatever you say, it’s not going to change my feelings or my mind.”
    “I’d like to try.”
    I shrug, waiting for the inevitable attempt on his part to erase the un-erasable, horrible thing he’s done.

Chapter Eight

    “YOU STANDING OVER THERE AND me over here in this musty dining room isn’t ideal, but I guess it’s the best you’re going to give me,” Robinson says.
    I look over my shoulder. “What were you expecting? A candlelit dinner?” That sounds so much like a date I’ve dreamed a thousand times of having with him, I nearly cringe. But then I control myself by turning around and facing out the windows again. I absolutely hate the fact that I can’t be in the same room with him and not think about one of the many times I dreamed of having him as my own. I wasted so many years drooling over him. All I can say is thank God I never made my feelings known to him or anyone else. Talk about humiliating. At least now I can walk away with my head held high and not with my tail between my legs.
    “No, not a candlelit dinner, but maybe a couple chairs would have been nice.” He sighs. “I understand why you’re angry with me, I really do.”
    I laugh bitterly. “That only makes it worse.”
    “Worse? How so?”
    I have to turn around and talk to him now. With that simple admission, he’s made me even angrier than before, which I would have thought impossible five seconds ago.
    “You understand why I’m angry, and yet you did what you did anyway? That tells me exactly how little you care about me or my feelings.” I can’t stop this confessional freight train from rolling down the tracks; now that my mouth is open, I can’t seem to shut it. “Do you have any idea how that feels for me? To know that this person, who I … admired very much, who I thought was practically a member of my family, completely disregarded my feelings, what was best for me and for someone who I love very much, and just did something completely thoughtless and short-sighted and stupid?” I shake my head at his expressionless face. “No, of course you don’t. I don’t know why I expected you to care about anything. You don’t have the necessary equipment.”
    “Equipment?”
    “A heart .”
    “Come on,