Claimed (The Lair of the Wolven #1) by J.R. Ward

His stare got a faraway look as if he were running through his family tree. “Well, there was my Uncle Louie. He was the black sheep of the family, laugh wise.”

“How so?”

The man with the strange, beautiful eyes refocused on her. “Knock-knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Uncle Louie.”

“Uncle Louie who?”

“See? It’s not funny.”

“Wait, what?” Lydia shook her head and laughed again. “That’s not a punch line.”

“Which is my point. He tried one, pathetic knock-knock joke and it’s a disaster. It has no punch line.”

Holding up her palm, she really tried not to smile so much. “But I thought he was the black sheep of your—that would mean he can tell a joke.”

“No, that’s how far down the unfunny hole we are. Even the black sheep can’t get far at all. We’re just that sad.”

As Lydia shook her head, she didn’t dare try to hide her smile behind sipping from her coffee mug. She was liable to have something come out of her nose.

“You’re funnier than you think you are, Daniel Joseph.”

“Will it get me this job? Because if I need to stand up on a stage and—well, do stand-up, I will?”

“I’m not sure how that would help with the nuts and bolts of things.”

“Well, have you got anything that’s broken I could demonstrate on?”

Try our executive director.

“How much do you know about toilets,” she said under her breath.

“Take me to your plumbing, ma’am.” He got to his feet. “I’m in.”

“Really?”

“If the toilet’s broken, you’d call your handyman, right? Rather than waste money on a guy with a wrench decal on his truck. So let me fix it for you.”

Lydia stood up, too. “It’s in the women’s bathroom.”

“Show me.”

Coming around her desk, she felt a pressure of speech that made no sense—and a tingling in her body that made the kind of sense she didn’t want to think about. She also had the desire to flip her hair over her shoulder, which was ridiculous: Considering she was calling a man in to do a job she could probably figure out herself, she was not going the ingénue route. Nope.

Pride goeth before the flirting.

“Here we are.”

Out in the hall, she pushed a door wide, and got hit in the face with a wall of strawberry: Pink walls, pink stall, pink sink, pink pink. And the air freshener on the counter as well as the hand soap and the lotion followed the Nesquik theme.

As Daniel coughed behind her, she was not surprised. “Candy likes the smell.”

“There certainly is a lot of it to go around.”

“And here is the patient.” She hipped the stall door open. “We’ve been having trouble with it—well, since nineteen seventy-three if you go by Candy’s timeline.”

When Daniel came forward, she eased back against the tile wall—and still there wasn’t enough room. So she got a brush of his soft shirt on the back of her hand, and more of that cologne in her nose.

Which canceled even the fake Fruity Pebble air freshener.

There was a scrape and a clunk as he removed the back of the toilet and toggled the handle. And Lydia absolutely did not look at the fit of those Levi’s in the rear.

Really. She didn’t.

“You’ve got two issues,” he said. “One, the stopper is so old, it’s cracked and can’t make a good seal. Does this leak a lot?”

“Yes. I hate the waste, and when it gets really bad, I turn the water off underneath.”

“Yeah. And the second problem is that the chain arm is shot.”

“Do we need to get a new toilet?”

“I wouldn’t replace this. These old boys are worth their weight in gold. The new low-flush versions don’t work well with old pipe systems because there’s not enough water volume to them and this leads to stop-ups due to low pressure. Looking at this building, I’m guessing it was built in the late sixties, early seventies. So in addition to fifty years of buildup, you’ve got terra-cotta pipes running out to your leaching field.”

“Is that bad?”

“Tree roots. Big trouble.”

“I feel like you’ve just diagnosed our plumbing with tuberculosis before the era of antibiotics. Be honest, are we terminal?”

“You got slow drains?”

“Now that you mention it, Rick struggles with that in the clinic.” She went over to the sink and ran some water. “How’s this look?”

He leaned out of the stall. “Slow.”

Daniel ducked back in and there was some sloshing. A clank or two. The sound of a chain. Flushing. A grunt and some water running.

As he came out, he held his hands together and went to the sink. Using some of Candy’s strawberry soap, he washed things vigorously.

“ ’Scuse me,” he muttered.

When he sneezed into the inside of his elbow, she shook her head. “You’d swear we’re trying to kill you with fragrance. And God bless you.”

“Thank you.” He snapped two paper towels out of the dispenser and dried his palms in the same powerful way, clapping his hands. “Here’s the plan. I’ve jury-rigged the toilet, but it’s not a long-term solution. I can look online for a set of replacement guts, however, and keep it working well enough.”