Needs A Little TLC (Spinning Hills Romance 2) by Inés Saint

eventually, his mom left.
    It was still early enough to get some work done and make up for the time he’d spent on Cassie’s bike, and he no longer had a family to go home to weekday nights, so Sam drove over to Grandma Maddie’s old house.
    Tons of ideas flooded in as he walked through it. It would be one of the easier rehabs, and he wondered why he hadn’t worked on it before. The place looked, as Cassie had said, as if it was in tatters, but nearly everything it needed was cosmetic.
    If his brothers knew the colors and materials he was thinking about using, they wouldn’t understand. But as he studied the house from all angles, intuition took over, and he knew it would all work. The house would be the way he remembered Maddie being, unprepossessing and warm, but full of charm and boundless energy. Except it wasn’t an image of Maddie that kept intruding into his thoughts.
    Tomorrow would be his and Cassie’s first official meeting as business partners, and he looked forward to letting her know she would not be calling all the shots.

Chapter 6
    S am headed to the Tudor on Manor Row. He planned on arriving there a full half hour before Cassie. When he pulled up, a ’74 Mustang was parked out front and Cassie was sitting on the front steps, a camera around her neck. He should’ve known she’d beat him to the punch. Once Cassie had ants in her pants, she couldn’t wait to get going.
    A warm breeze signaled winter’s definitive end in a way a calendar and mere dates couldn’t, and he walked up to her with renewed hope.
    Cassie hopped up and clapped her hands together. “Let’s get started. I can’t wait to see all the properties.” She was wearing the tight, athletic-type pants and zipped hoodie that were apparently trending in suburbia USA and that he usually hated. But the constantly-on-the-move look was a good fit for her. So good, he struggled to keep his eyes from traveling up and down her new-to-him curves.
    Her hair was in a dratted pigtail, though. Did she ever wear it down anymore? It was nonsensical, but he longed to see it in all its fiery, crowning glory.
    Sam shook the thought off and walked past her, pausing at the door while he looked for the right key number on the large ring where he kept thirty-four identical keys.
    “Wow,” Cassie said as she stepped through the door and took in the spacious foyer and cascading double staircase. “Can you believe I’ve never been in any of these?”
    “I’ve been in all of them.” He grinned back at her. “I’ve had to break in a few times.”
    Cassie shot him a mischievous, conspiratorial look, but the moment their eyes met, she looked away and became serious. “You said you were turning it into four condos. It looks complicated. Do you have blueprints yet?”
    “Not yet, no. This will be the last project in this round, and Dan, Johnny, and I want to work on this one together.” What he didn’t say was that if the other properties didn’t start selling soon, he might never get to it, much less to a second round.
    Cassie nodded, her attention focused on the elaborate wrought-iron rails and mahogany handrail. She ran her hands over it. “It’s so beautiful.”
    Sam watched her soft-looking hands running over the rugged, weathered wood. Her nails were uneven. He found that oddly endearing. Not wanting her to see how pleased he was with her enthusiasm and not wanting his eyes to stray, he shifted into business mode. “I’ll show you around, but we’ll have to make it quick. We have six properties to visit, discuss, and take pictures of, and I need to pick up Jake from school.”
    “Six? I want to see all twelve. I understand about Jake, but I can be here again tomorrow. I booked my go-to stagers for six houses last night—I just need to choose which houses they’ll be.”
    “I already let Lisa and Craig, the other two Realtors, choose the three they’d each get early this morning.”
    “You what?” She turned, hands fisted, eyes