Restoration Hearts

Flynn

Leaning my heavily tattooed arms against my Volkswagen Amarok’s steering wheel, I peered through the windscreen at the rundown Queenslander house in front of me. “It looks like we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”

My beautiful passenger turned her head and studied the rusting verandah railings, the peeling paint, the crappy old shutters—basically, the never-ending list of problems noticeable with a fleeting glance. Her cute, button nose wrinkled, and her sexy, pouty lips contorted in disgust. “If this is the outside, I shudder to think what it will be like inside.”

“Whatever it is, Perie, we’ll handle it.” I ruffled her brunette hair and laughed when she pushed me away with a huff. I knew what was coming next, but I caught her arms as she lunged from her side of the front seat in retaliation. “Hey, you know not to mess with my hair! I spend a lot of time making it look good!”

Laughing, we grappled with one another as she fought to break free and complete her attack. She finally gave up and flopped against her seat. “You’re such a girl.” Perie unclipped her seat belt, and it zipped back into place beside her left shoulder. She opened the passenger door and slid out of the vehicle, her heeled boots hitting the firm ground. “God, the place is so overgrown. What were you thinking, Aunty Denise?” Perie grumbled as she stepped past the skip that had been delivered that morning and began to navigate towards the rickety steps.

As she gripped the crumbling railing, I placed my hand on her arm. “Careful. They don’t look safe.” I studied the brittle timber with my trained carpenter’s eye. “This will be my first job.”

“Building new stairs?” Perie guessed.

“Yup.” I held her arm tightly as we ascended to the verandah.

The house would have been beautiful in its heyday. The fretwork was outstanding, and the timber decking—although worn now—was made of high-quality ironbark. Whoever had originally built this place must have had a fair amount of money behind them.

I was a bit pissed at Perie’s aunty for letting the place get to this state. Sure, she’d spent the last six months of her life in Brisbane fighting ovarian cancer and had no children to take care of things, but this was more than six months’ worth of decay.

“Aunty Denise left me a dud.” Perie pouted.

“Don’t be like that,” I said, nudging her. “With you and me on the case, we’ll have this beauty glowing like she did in her heyday.”

“Hopefully, even better.” After appreciating the view across the paddocks for a few moments, Perie turned to face the front door. She peeked at it out of the corner of her eye. “Dare we go in?”

“Well, we came all this way.”

Perie dug a key out of her jeans pocket and pushed it into the old lock in the timber door. The door opened with a loud creak, and we stepped into the entryway. Perie shivered as the cool air of the house brushed her skin, and I saw goose bumps rise all over her.

I rubbed my hands rapidly along Perie’s arms to warm her as we turned left into the lounge. With all the furniture gone, the room felt cavernous. We had auctioned it off when Denise relocated.

“This isn’t too bad. It might be a bit sparse, but it’s nothing a few licks of paint and the Perie Miller flair won’t fix,” I said with a proud grin.

Perie continued into the next room. I followed her and saw her staring at the large, unmade bed. Its frame was wrought iron, and the mattress had an obvious indentation, a powerful indication of the exact spot Denise slept. When she sniffled and blinked back tears, I immediately hugged her. She burrowed her face into my blue muscle shirt.

“I know it’s been three months, but I still can’t believe Denise is gone.”

“It sucks, Per. But she clearly loved you and appreciated everything you did for her… taking her to appointments and helping her through her illness. This is her thank you to you. So, let’s do her proud, hey?”

Perie nodded and mumbled, “Okay.” She looked up at me. “I don’t think I can sleep in here. Do you mind if we camp out somewhere else in the house?”

“Luckily for you, I’ve still got our swags in my ute from when we went camping. We can sleep on the lounge room floor.”

Perie grinned. “Perfect.”

“Come on, we’ve still got the rest of the house to inspect.”

Perie wiped her tears away and followed me through the rest of the house. We covered three more dated bedrooms, the bathroom, and the laundry, containing dodgy fittings, loose tiles, and mildew. Then there were the tired kitchen, dining and family rooms, and finally, the back verandah, from which we could see the rickety old shed and overgrown garden.

“We’ve certainly got our work cut out for us,” Perie said.

“Three months, right? That’s our time frame?” I asked, flicking up three fingers.

Perie nodded. “November until the end of January. That’s the longest I can afford to take off work.”

“Me too,” I sighed and folded my arms. “We’ve got the entire summer. I reckon we can do it if we don’t fuck around.” When I realised what I had said, I backpedalled and dropped my voice to the low rumble I knew turned her on. “Let me rephrase that… with minimal fucking around. Because, Perie… we’re all alone in this big, old house in the middle of nowhere. You can guarantee there will be at least some fucking.”

A smart-arsed expression flashed across Perie’s face. “What makes you think that?”

“It’s our thing.” I shrugged. “We like to fuck on occasion.”

“You cocky bugger.” Perie laughed, but I knew her trying-not-to-ignore-her-desires laugh. “I’m going to get our stuff.”

I took off after her. “Watch those stairs.”

* * *

Perie

We found a spot in the middle of the lounge room to put our swags down, and then I made coffee. The drive down from Brisbane was long, and we’d left early to arrive at a decent hour. Now that we were here, my body was beginning to wind down. I didn’t want that. Flynn was right. We didn’t have time to fuck around.

As I sipped the invigorating hot beverage, Flynn silently went through some of my notes and papers. I watched him for a few moments. “What are you thinking about?”

“I’m figuring out a plan of attack,” Flynn responded.

“I think I want to turn Denise’s room into a big, fancy, luxurious bathroom and make this the main bedroom. I want to make the entire house a mixture of modern and country rustic.” The word vomit spilled out of my mouth so quickly it caused Flynn to raise his eyebrows at me. “What?”

“Duly noted. We should go into town and organise materials.”

“Probably hire a mower man, too. I feel like we’re camping out in the deep jungle.”

“We also need food.”

With a roll of my eyes, I flashed him a smirk and said, “Always thinking with your stomach.”

“A guy’s gotta keep his strength up.” Flynn turned up one corner of his mouth slightly, making my insides shiver with desire. Desire that I pushed down.

“I intend to stop by the bottle-o for some wine too. I think we can enjoy ourselves once a week, right?” I asked.

Flynn’s voice dropped an octave. “You know where wine leads us, Per.”

“Where’s that?” I averted my gaze and played with the tip of my boot.

Flynn suppressed a chuckle.

I always pretended I wasn’t attracted to him, but Flynn knew me well enough to know that wasn’t true. Our countless sexual encounters since puberty had attested to that fact. We even practiced kissing with each other, for Christ’s sake.

Flynn and I had been friends since birth. We were born around the same time and had even shared a room in Granite Ridge’s hospital back in 1987. We went to the same kindergarten, primary school, and high school and were inseparable growing up.

But at sixteen, we were stupid enough to allow someone to come between us, and we didn’t talk for four years. After drifting apart, we rediscovered each other in Brisbane while I was studying interior design at the Queensland University of Technology.

Now we were rock-solid again and had been for five years. Best friends for life, that was us. We loved each other more than anyone else and couldn’t bear to be apart, yet we were. We lived independent lives in houses twenty minutes away from each other. However, in a way, our lives were inexplicably intertwined, and so were our careers.

With the success of my interior design business, I’d been able to help Flynn find work when the bottom fell out of the building industry. It was tricky for an independent, small-time builder like Flynn to stay afloat in those days with all the land leases and housing estates going up all over the place. So, with my help, Flynn rebranded himself as a specialist renovator I hired for jobs my clients wanted done. Flynn took care of the building side of things, then I came in and made their places look pretty.

Our arrangement worked well. We were both more than happy with how things were.

Flynn leaned over and placed a kiss beneath my jaw. “You know exactly where wine leads us.”

My breath hitched at the feel of his lips on my skin. Instead of giving in to him, I made another suggestion. “Let’s head into town.”

“Okay.” As we got to our feet, he said, “Food first.”

“Honestly.” I giggled, patting Flynn’s hard abs through his shirt. “No one would ever believe what you have under there, given your appetite.”

“That’s a secret I keep for special people.” Flynn winked suggestively at me.

I felt a blush covering my cheeks, so I spun away from him. “We’re going now.”

I took off towards the front of the house, but Flynn grabbed my arm and guided me to the back door. “Front stairs are off-limits for the foreseeable future.”

I quietly agreed, and we left via the back staircase.