The scent of rain-soaked paper and mildew was a physical ache in Chloe’s chest. For two days, it had been the smell of her failure, the slow decay of her grandfather’s legacy. She stood beside a teetering stack of salvaged hardbacks, her arms crossed tight against the damp chill, and stared at the gaping wound in the ceiling. A pathetic, grey light filtered through the plastic sheeting her aunt had helped her staple up, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air like tiny, indifferent ghosts.
Every creak of the old building’s floorboards sent a fresh spike of anxiety through her. She was waiting for a man her aunt had described as a “miracle worker with a sledgehammer,” a carpenter so in-demand he barely had time to answer his phone. “Wrecking Ball” Carter. The name was absurd, conjuring an image of a barrel-chested, grey-bearded man with a booming laugh and hands like worn leather oven mitts. A professional. A solution. Someone blessedly anonymous.
The antique brass bell above the door chimed, a sound that was usually a welcome note in the quiet symphony of her shop. Today, it was a thunderclap.
Chloe turned, a polite, professional smile already forming on her lips. It died before it was born.
The man standing in the doorway didn’t just enter the room; he commandeered it. He filled the frame, broad shoulders stretching the seams of a dark grey Henley beneath a worn flannel jacket. Rain slicked his dark hair, causing it to curl just over the collar. His jaw was dusted with a day’s worth of stubble, sharp and masculine, and his work boots were scuffed and splattered with mud. He brought the storm in with him—the scent of wet earth, sawdust, and something else. Something clean and male and devastatingly familiar.
Her breath hitched. Her heart, which had been hammering with anxiety, gave a painful, sickening lurch and then seemed to stop altogether.
The lanky, insecure teenager who had haunted her dreams for a decade was gone. In his place stood a man forged from hard work and time, his features carved into a rugged handsomeness that was a brutal assault on her senses. But the eyes… the eyes were the same. A startling, stormy blue-grey, fringed with thick, dark lashes. And they were fixed on her with the same unnerving intensity that had once made her feel like the only person in the world.
Now, it just made her feel seen. Exposed.
“Chloe?” he said, and the sound of her name in his voice—deeper now, with a gravelly timbre it hadn’t possessed at eighteen—was a lit match to a frayed nerve.
“Liam,” she breathed, the name a ghost on her tongue. It felt foreign and yet intimate, a word she hadn’t dared to speak aloud in ten years. The pieces clicked into place with the force of a physical blow. Carter. Wrecking Ball Carter. Of course. The universe had a sick, twisted sense of humor.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. He closed the door behind him, the bell’s jingle a mocking little farewell to the last moment of her peace. He moved further into the store, his gaze sweeping over the damage—the tarp, the warped floorboards, the stacks of ruined books she’d cried over the night before.
“Looks like you’ve got a real mess on your hands,” he said, his tone infuriatingly level. Professional.
Chloe found her voice, forcing it out from behind the wall of shock that had risen in her throat. “I hired Wrecking Ball Carter.”
A flicker of something—annoyance? amusement?—crossed his face. “That’s a nickname from a demolition job years ago. It stuck. My name’s Liam Carter.” He paused, letting the statement hang in the thick, charged air between them. “You knew that.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation. You knew my last name.
“I didn’t… I didn’t connect it,” she stammered, hating the weakness in her voice. She took a breath, marshaling her defenses. This was her store. Her disaster. He was just a contractor. She could handle this. “My aunt made the call. She just gave me the company name and a reputation.”
“Right,” he said, the single word dripping with disbelief. His eyes roamed over her, a slow, deliberate appraisal from her messy bun down to her paint-splattered jeans and worn-out boots. It wasn’t sexual, not exactly. It was more… possessive. A cataloging of changes, a silent commentary on the decade that had passed between them. She felt a hot flush creep up her neck, a humiliating mixture of anger and a sudden, sharp awareness of how she must look. Frazzled. Defeated.
“The roof,” she said, her voice sharp, desperate to drag the conversation back to solid, impersonal ground. “It’s a load-bearing beam, I think. The inspector said…”
“I’ll take a look.” He cut her off, already moving toward the disaster zone. He walked with an easy, confident stride that owned the space, his presence an overwhelming invasion in the cozy, book-lined world she had so carefully curated. He was a force of nature in her quiet sanctuary, and she hated it. She hated him for it.
She followed a few paces behind, her senses on high alert. The subtle scent of his rain-damp jacket, the quiet creak of his boots on the floor, the way the muscles in his back shifted under his shirt as he reached up to test the edge of the damaged drywall. Every detail was a tiny, painful torture.
He ran a calloused hand over the splintered wood of a support joist, his touch surprisingly gentle. “This is older than the building code,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “Original framing. Good bones, at least.” He turned to face her, and they were suddenly too close. The cramped aisle, once a charming nook for poetry lovers, now felt like a cage. She could see the flecks of silver in his blue-grey eyes, smell the faint scent of coffee on his breath.
“Can you fix it?” she asked, her voice tight.
His gaze held hers, and for a heart-stopping second, she was sure he wasn’t thinking about the roof. “I can fix anything, Chloe. That’s what I do.”
The implication hung there, thick and suffocating. I can fix a roof, but what about us?
Ten years of unspoken words, of anger and betrayal and a deep, aching hurt, swirled in the space between them. She remembered the boy who had promised her forever on a picnic blanket under the stars, the boy whose sudden, unexplained departure had shattered her world. And now this man stood before her, a stranger wearing his face, acting as if he were here to simply patch a hole in her ceiling and not the one he’d torn in her life.
“I didn’t know it was you,” she said, the words coming out colder than she intended. “When my aunt said Carter, I never would have…”
“You would have what?” he challenged, his voice dropping low. “Hired someone less qualified? Let your family’s legacy rot because you can’t stand to be in the same room as me?”
The accusation hit its mark, and she flinched. “This isn’t about you.”
He let out a short, humorless laugh. “Isn’t it? Funny. When I heard the job was for a Chloe Morgan at ‘The Gilded Page,’ I had a feeling it was about to be.”
So he had known. He’d known and he’d come anyway. The arrogance of it stole her breath. He had walked in here deliberately, knowing the effect he would have, ready for this confrontation.
“Why did you take the job, Liam?”
“Because I’m the best,” he said simply, without a trace of ego. It was a statement of fact. “And because your aunt sounded desperate. Some things you don’t forget. Like how much this place meant to you.”
His words were a gut punch. He was using her own history, her own love for this store, as a weapon against her. He was reminding her that he had once been a part of it, that he had known her secrets, her dreams.
He reached past her, his arm brushing against hers. A jolt of pure, unadulterated electricity shot through her, hot and shocking. Her skin tingled where he’d touched her, a phantom warmth that spread through her veins. He picked up a slim volume of poetry from a nearby shelf, its cover warped and stained from the rain. Keats. Her favorite. His favorite. He’d read it to her once, his voice a low murmur in the summer twilight.
He traced the ruined gilt lettering with his thumb. “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,” he quoted softly, his eyes finding hers over the top of the book. “Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.”
Her throat closed. It was a memory, an intimacy, an entire world she had buried, and he had just unearthed it with ten simple words.
“Don’t,” she whispered, her voice cracking.
He set the book down carefully, as if it were a fragile piece of their shared history. His expression was unreadable, a mask of cool professionalism, but his eyes burned with a fire she recognized all too well. It was the same intensity that had drawn her in, the same fire that had left her scorched.
“I’ll draw up a quote,” he said, his voice all business again. He pulled a tablet from a pocket in his jacket. “I’ll need a signature to start on the preliminary work. Stabilize the beam, get it properly tarped before the next weather system rolls in tonight.”
He was trapping her. She couldn’t afford to wait. No other contractor could get here for a week, maybe more. She was hemorrhaging money every day the store was closed, watching her inheritance dissolve into a puddle on the floor. He knew it. And he was using it.
He held the tablet out to her. Their fingers brushed as she took it, another jolt of that traitorous, undeniable chemistry. The screen showed a contract, a quote that was surprisingly, almost suspiciously, fair. Her hand trembled as she scrawled her name, her signature barely legible.
She handed it back, their silent transaction feeling more like a surrender.
“I’ll have my crew here at seven a.m.,” he said, his gaze unwavering. “We’ll start with the demolition.”
Wrecking Ball Carter.
The nickname wasn’t about a demolition job. It was a warning. He had walked back into her life, and she knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the bone, that he was here to do more than just fix her roof. He was here to tear down every wall she had spent the last ten years building.