Fixer-Upper

by Linda Seed

  Any spin through the real estate sites inevitably led to Martina fantasizing about her own house—the one she would buy one day, hopefully sooner than later, to transform into her dream home. A home where she would live with her eventual husband and children. She was just scanning the photos of a three-bedroom on Lodge Hill when Benny came home.

  At last, Martina could talk to someone about her odd encounter with Christopher Mills—something she’d been dying to do since the moment she’d left Cooper House.

  “Hey.” Benny tossed her bag onto the floor next to the sofa and went to the refrigerator for a bottle of iced tea. She came back into the living room with the tea, twisted off the cap, and took a drink. “How’d the Cooper House thing go?”

  “I got the job,” Martina said.

  “You did?” Benny let out a celebratory whoop. “Holy shit! Congratulations, that’s amazing!”

  “It is,” Martina agreed. “It really is. But …”

  “But what?”

  “But it’s weird.” Martina filled her sister in on the details of the weirdness—how Alexis didn’t work but had a full-time assistant; how Mills didn’t seem to care what Martina did with his house; how Chris and Alexis had only been together for a few months, but he was letting Alexis spend what would certainly be hundreds of thousands of dollars on Cooper House. “I mean, that’s strange, right? Usually at this stage in a relationship, you’re considering whether to give someone a drawer.”

  “And he’s turned over his whole house,” Benny finished for her.

  “Well, not his whole house. He’s not letting me touch his action-figure room.” Martina told her sister about the room, with its display of toys and its shabby, lived-in feeling in contrast to the fine polish of the rest of the house.

  Benny was perched on the arm of the sofa, her feet, now bare, resting on the cushions. She pointed one finger at Martina. “That’s the real him, I’ll bet my own ass—the action figures and the messy desk and the tacky sofa. The rest of the place is how he thinks a rich guy ought to live. But that one room, the one he won’t let you touch? That’s where he lets down his guard and lets himself just … be.”

  “And Alexis made fun of it,” Martina observed.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Just a little. When she brought me into the room, she told me about his ‘toys,’ and her tone was sort of … mocking.”

  “Yikes.”

  “Yeah.” They both considered the implications of that.

  Finally, Benny said, “If that room is so important to him, so personal, that he won’t let you change it, and his new girlfriend thinks it’s stupid …”

  “I’ll be lucky if I get halfway through the project before they break up,” Martina concluded. She’d be redesigning a house to the specifications of someone who would no longer be living in it.

  She was wondering if she’d be crazy to take the job. On the other hand, she’d almost certainly be crazier not to—so, of course, she would take it. She was about to embark on the biggest job of her career so far, possibly the biggest job she would ever have.

  Regardless of her clients’ relationship status, that called for a celebration.

  Martina called Bianca and Sofia, who stopped by a wine shop on their way home from work and bought a cold bottle of champagne. When they got to the house, Martina poured the wine for herself, Sofia, and Benny, and a Perrier for Bianca. Then they all stood in the kitchen and toasted Martina’s good fortune.

  “To Martina. May this job lead you to become a hot celebrity designer with your own HGTV show,” Benny said, and they all clinked glasses.

  “From your lips to God’s ears,” Martina said, and drank.

  Privately, she thought she could do without the HGTV show. She’d be happy if she just got to finish the work before the Chris Mills–Alexis Sinclair relationship blew up—and if she, herself, were far away from the destruction when it happened.

  4

  The first step in the Cooper House job was to create a preliminary plan and draw up a proposal to present to Chris and Alexis. For that, Martina needed her contractor.

  She consulted with Alexis’s assistant and with Noah Barrett, the general contractor she usually worked with, and arranged for herself and Noah to visit Cooper House.

  They arrived on a Friday at two p.m. A crisp November chill was in the air, and fog from the ocean covered the landscape in its soft, gray blanket.

  “This place looks like it should be in some Gothic novel about a ghost kid and her crazy uncle who lives in the attic,” Noah said as they crunched their way across the gravel leading toward the house.

  “I know, right?” Martina grinned. “I love it. I don’t think it needs as many changes as Alexis wants, but … still. I can’t wait to get my hands on it.”

  She’d expected Noah to be as giddy as she was over the idea of working on Cooper House. But she should have realized Noah didn’t get giddy. He was a highly practical man who’d been working in the Cambria area for decades, had built and repaired the houses of the rich, and was impressed by very little.

  “I just hope this guy and his girlfriend aren’t assholes,” Noah remarked as they headed up the front porch steps.

  Twenty minutes later, neither of them had much reassurance about the asshole factor. Chris and Alexis had both failed to show their faces, and Martina and Noah were working with Margaret instead.

  The woman was efficient and businesslike, which was a plus, but Martina had expected the couple to take more interest in how their house was going to look.

  “Excuse me, Margaret. Will Chris or Alexis be joining us?” Martina asked when she’d held in the question as long as she could.

  Margaret looked surprised, her carefully lipsticked mouth forming an O. “No. I’m sorry. I thought you understood you’d be consulting with me today.”

  “Oh. It’s just … I’ll be making preliminary plans for the first phase of the remodel, and I might have questions that—”

  “I’m here to answer your questions.” Margaret, who appeared to be in her mid twenties and who surely should have been doing something more fun with her life, smiled winningly. “Alexis has discussed her priorities with me, and she has given me her full authorization to go forward.”

  Martina could tell by the look on the woman’s face that few things gave her as much pride as having Alexis’s full authorization.

  “All right.” Martina rallied. “Let’s focus on the rooms I know she cares most about based on our conversation last week.”

  Noah kept his face neutral and his thoughts to himself until he and Martina were in the spare bedroom that would be turned into Alexis’s dressing room. Margaret had gotten a text on her cell phone and had excused herself to go God knew where and do God knew what.

  Once she was gone and they were left alone—ostensibly to assess which walls should be taken down or moved and what that would involve—Noah shot Martina a look she’d seen before, one that meant somebody was a real piece of work.

  “You said Alexis doesn’t have a job?” he asked.

  “That’s what Chris told me.”

  “And she’s got an assistant at her beck and call.”

  “Apparently.”

  “What for?”

  Martina peeked toward the door to make sure they were still alone, and said, “Chris says it’s a full-time job just being Alexis.”

  “He said that?”

  “Yes.”

  Noah’s eyebrows shot upward, and he let out a long, slow whistle. “Trouble in paradise.”

  “I guess so.”

  They’d barely finished the exchange when they heard voices coming from the next room—the master bedroom. At first, the voices were just murmurs, indistinct and undecipherable. Then the volume began to rise, and the gist of the conversation came through.

  “Well, if that’s how you feel, Christopher, then I don’t—”

  “Don’t. Don’t make it about me. Don’t pretend I’m the problem here.”

  “
The problem? Is that how you see me, Christopher? As a problem?”

  “For God’s sake, I didn’t say that. Alexis—”

  More murmurs, then a couple of thumps. Then Chris’s voice again: “What are you doing? Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Somewhere I’m appreciated! Somewhere where I can—” They didn’t get the next few words, but they did get the final three: “So fuck you!”

  Martina and Noah both flinched at the sound of something hitting the wall that separated the two rooms—something that had to have been made of glass or china, or maybe ceramics. Whatever it was, they heard it break into pieces.

  “Oh, shit.” Noah’s face broke into something like awed delight, and he let out a low laugh. “Rich people, man.”

  Martina felt close to tears. She could feel the biggest job of her life slipping away before it had even started.

  After a door had slammed and they’d heard the sound of feminine feet stomping through the hallway and down the stairs, Noah and Martina looked at each other.

  “Maybe we should take a break,” Martina said.

  “Sure. I’m gonna step outside and call my guys.” Noah had subcontractors working on a couple of different jobs across town, and he regularly called in to check on their progress.

  Once he was gone, Martina wondered what to do. She didn’t want to keep working if the job was off, but she didn’t want to leave yet, either.

  She decided to head down to the main floor to look for Margaret—maybe she’d know what the hell was going on.

  Martina gathered her things, walked into the hallway, and headed toward the main staircase. On her way, she passed the open door to the master bedroom.

  She peeked inside—she couldn’t help it—and there was Chris, standing with his back to her, looking out the window, his shoulders slumped and his posture saying he was a man in pain.

  Oh, God. She couldn’t just leave him like that, could she? She couldn’t just walk away and pretend she hadn’t heard what she’d heard or seen what she’d seen.

  She knocked delicately on the open door. “Um … Chris?”

  He looked up as though coming out of a dream, then rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. “Ms. Russo.”

  “Martina.”

  “Martina. Right.” He massaged the back of his neck with one hand, looking tired. “I guess you heard all of that. I’m sorry. That must have been awkward.”

  “Don’t worry about that.” She came into the room a few steps. “Are you okay?”

  When was the last time someone had asked Chris if he was okay, and then seemed to really care about the answer? He couldn’t remember. It had been so long he barely recalled how one was supposed to respond.

  You’re supposed to say you’re fine, even if you’re not. You’re supposed to lie.

  “Yes, of course. I’m good. I’m … everything’s fine.”

  Martina looked to one side of the room, where Alexis had dented the wall when she’d hurled a crystal vase into it. Hundreds of shards were sprinkled on the floor, glinting in the light from a nearby lamp. “It doesn’t look like everything’s fine,” she said.

  “Well …”

  “Come downstairs to the kitchen. I’ll make you a cup of herbal tea.”

  The idea of her making tea for him out of the goodness of her heart and not because she was being paid to do it appealed to him. Still, he felt self-conscious about having put her in this position.

  “You don’t have to do that. Besides, I don’t think we have any herbal tea.”

  “Let me take care of that.” She took his arm and guided him toward the hallway. “Come on.”

  Martina poked around in the pantry while Chris sat on a barstool nearby. He was right—they didn’t have any herbal tea. She was sure she’d seen an herb garden on her way in; that was even better.

  She found a pair of kitchen scissors in a drawer, told him to sit tight, and went outside and down the front steps. To one side of the front walkway, she found some potted herbs. She snipped some mint, then went back inside. In the kitchen, she rinsed the mint leaves, then hunted around for a kettle and put some water on to boil.

  “You’re making mint tea,” he observed.

  “Yes.”

  “From scratch.”

  “Well … yes.” She made tea from herbs nearly every day at home; surely it wasn’t some amazing feat.

  “I didn’t even know we had herbs out there.” He sounded exhausted.

  Martina put one fist on her cocked hip and gaped at him. “How is that possible? It’s your house.”

  He shook his head and rubbed his forehead. “We have gardeners.”

  “Of course you do.”

  The kettle whistled, and Martina turned off the heat. She poured the water into a teapot where she’d placed the fresh mint leaves. Then she put the lid on the pot and waited for it to steep.

  When it was done, she poured the tea into a cup, added a little of the honey she’d found in the pantry, and placed the steaming mug in front of him.

  “You didn’t know you had herbs, and you don’t seem to care what I do with your house,” Martina said. “Who’s living your life, anyway? Because it doesn’t seem to be you.”

  The second it was out of her mouth, she knew she’d stepped over a line—and she was desperate to get back to the other side of it. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m an idiot.”

  He looked at her impassively. “That would make two of us, apparently.”

  “Please, I didn’t—”

  “Forget it.” He took a sip of his tea. “This is really good.”

  “Oh. I’m glad.” She pulled up a barstool next to his and sat down. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  He looked into the tea, his mug in both hands. For a moment, it seemed like he might answer her honestly—like he might say something both true and real. Then a slight smile played on his lips. “Of course. I’m fine. Alexis will be back. She always comes back. She just needs some space.”

  “She’s done this before?” Martina was aware she sounded horrified, and she made an effort to control her tone. “I mean, you two have been having problems for a while, then?”

  Something changed then. That was the moment, apparently, when she’d pried too much, stuck her nose in too far. He put down his tea, stood up, and extended his hand for her to shake.

  “Thank you for coming today, Martina. Let’s call it a day, all right? I’ll be in touch.” He shook her hand, then led her toward the door. “I’ll see you out.”

  Before she could protest, Martina had been deposited on the front porch, and the front door closed behind her.

  She found Noah outside near his truck and told him he might as well go check on his other job sites.

  “So that’s it, then?” he said.

  Martina, near tears, shrugged. “I don’t know, Noah. We’ll see.”

  5

  Chris woke up alone the next morning after a night of too little sleep. He didn’t know when Alexis would be back, but he thought she would return eventually, after she decided he’d suffered enough.

  The fact that he was with someone who enjoyed making him suffer almost certainly bore some introspection. But not this morning. This morning, he just needed to have some coffee and clear his head.

  He got out of bed, ran his hands through his hair, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and headed downstairs to make coffee. If Alexis were here, someone would be making the coffee for him—she had people to do that kind of thing—but she wasn’t, so he was on his own.

  That was fine. He preferred to go through the details of his day without people breathing down his neck.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, a cavernous room full of professional quality appliances, he hunted up some French roast and got the coffee going. He leaned his butt against the counter and rubbed at his face while he waited for it to brew.

  When it was done, he found a mug and poured. The process made him think about hot drinks in general, which mad
e him think about tea, which made him think about Martina Russo brewing mint tea for him from leaves she’d found in the garden.

  He hadn’t known a person could do that. To him, tea came in tidy little bags that you dunked into your mug by their square paper tags.

  Intriguing.

  He took a sip of his coffee and winced because it was strong and hot—exactly the way he needed it to be. He carried the mug outside, where he stood on his front porch, looked out over the landscape of rolling hills dotted with oaks and pines, and considered his options.

  Alexis certainly wanted him to leave Cambria and come after her. He’d done this dance before, with Alexis and with women who had come before her: she wanted something, he failed to give it to her, she stormed off in a flurry of obscenities and broken glassware, and he chased after her, soothing her and ultimately giving her whatever she’d wanted in the first place.

  He was starting to think it was time to break the cycle. If he didn’t follow her—if he didn’t play his part—what then? She’d come back, probably. This relationship meant too much to her social status for it to end that easily. Maybe when she returned, they could talk—really talk—about what they both could do to stop playing this game.

  Chris didn’t think it was all Alexis’s fault. If it were, this would be an anomaly.

  It wasn’t.

  He seemed to get involved in one problem relationship after another, and it was time to get off the roller coaster—stop the endless dysfunction. If he could make things work with Alexis, he’d do it without playing into her efforts to manipulate him.

  It was best for him to stay the course, pretend nothing had happened, go about his life, and wait for her to come back.