Chapter 10
Neville gaped at the shattered remains of the pipe in his hands. In all his years of professional work, even back when he was an apprentice, that had never once happened to him.
The perfect imprint of cement left behind explained what happened.
Well.
Sliding out from underneath the sink, he stood up and turned to face Pansy. As usual, she sat at the very end of the counter, perched on one of the stools with her laptop open and a steaming cup of coffee beside her.
She gave him the familiar wide-eyed look of faux innocence. “All done?”
“No,” he said. “There was cement in the pipes. I’ll need to replace most of the plumbing.”
“Oh.” She barely blinked. “That’s fine. I’ve been wanting to gut it for a while. You do renovations, right?”
It was his preferred work, even if clogged garbage disposals was currently his bread and butter.
It was how he’d met Pansy in the first place. She’d put celery down the garbage disposal, a common mistake. He’d been surprised to get a call a week later, that time for egg shells. An obscene amount of them. He’d carefully explained that the only things that should go in garbage disposals were things she would eat.
A week after that, it was coffee grounds. She’d tried to claim that she’d thought it would be fine since she ate chocolate espresso beans.
Week four, when she’d clogged it with carrot peels, he’d sold her a Lomi. Far cheaper in the long run than paying for him to come each week or constantly replacing her burnt out disposal.
Now, however, he was starting to suspect something else was going on. She was obviously too intelligent to keep making these sorts of mistakes.
“I do, and I’d be happy to start,” he said. “However, if I ask you out to dinner, will you stop trying to break your garbage disposal?”
A slow smirk spread across her face. “Well, I suppose I’ll be eating out for however long this takes anyway.”
As if it hadn’t been her intention all along.
“You could have asked me out yourself instead of breaking your sink.”
She shrugged, her smirk spreading. “Where’s the fun in that?”
She was going to be trouble. He couldn’t wait.
“I have a condition too,” she said. “If you do the reno work, I want you to do it without a shirt.”
Absolutely right about her being trouble. “Let’s see how dinner goes first.”