Fixer-Upper

by Linda Seed

  No doubt, he was giving himself good advice. But how likely was it that he would take it? He was at a place in his life when he needed change. A new project, a new focus, a new direction that would take him into his future.

  Why not a new relationship?

  Because you keep screwing up relationships, asshole. You need to figure out why. You need to take some time.

  He closed the garage door, went inside, and headed to his computer to research how to replace a car door panel.

  Martina had a lot to do. She had to work on the schematic design for Chris’s kitchen so she could present it to him for his revisions and approval. She had to check in on projects already in process; two were in the construction phase, and she had to monitor them. And she had to work on her assignment for Sofia’s wedding: the bridal shower.

  She didn’t have time to obsess about Chris Mills or to visit pieces of property she couldn’t afford to buy. Still, she found herself doing both.

  Martina was a born multitasker, so it was no great feat for her to obsess about Chris at the same time as she was viewing the Maxwell Hall property on Lodge Hill.

  It didn’t take much time to drive from Happy Hill to Lodge Hill—given Cambria’s small size, it didn’t take much time to drive anywhere from anywhere else. But she used the few minutes to think about the questions of why Chris and Alexis had broken up; why they had been together in the first place; what mistakes, exactly, he was making in his personal life; and how he might fix them. With her help.

  She was still pondering all of that as she parked her car in front of the property, located in a woodsy neighborhood of single-family homes, many with a funky, working-class vibe.

  Martina already knew the Realtor, a perky, attractive woman in her early forties who worked out of an office on Main Street.

  Riley Whittaker’s car, a late-model Volvo, was parked at the curb when Martina arrived. As Martina parallel-parked her Prius, the Realtor got out of her car and waited with a polished, professional smile already in place.

  “Good morning,” Riley chirped as Martina approached her. “Will your client be meeting you here?”

  “There’s no client this time,” Martina said. “It’s just me.”

  A vertical line formed in the center of Riley’s forehead. “Oh. If you’re looking to renovate a place for yourself, I think you could do a lot better than this property. It’s a complete teardown. You’d have to—”

  “I’m not looking to do anything in particular.” Martina kept her voice light. “I just wanted to see it.”

  “Should we talk about your budget? The land alone—”

  “I just want to take a look, that’s all.” Martina tried not to show the mounting frustration she was feeling at the way the woman was presenting the property—as though the house itself were nothing but a pile of garbage waiting to be hauled away. “I’m not ready to talk budget.”

  “All right.” Riley’s perfectly painted lips curved into a practiced smile. “I’ve got the key right here. Let’s take a look.”

  When most out-of-towners thought about Cambria real estate, they thought about the oceanfront homes of Marine Terrace or Seaclift Estates, with their tiny lots and expensive houses—tide pools, barking sea lions, and frolicking otters just beyond the front windows.

  Lodge Hill was another species entirely.

  If you wanted a house surrounded by trees, frequented by wild turkeys and deer, and away from the chilly winds that buffeted the oceanfront properties during much of the year, Lodge Hill was the place to look.

  The Maxwell Hall property—which, in fact, hadn’t been in the Hall family for a long time—sat atop a woodsy hill overlooking a nature preserve. Riley and Martina walked up an unpaved track, past a fallen pine, and to the house, dirt and pine needles crunching under their feet.

  “I should have worn different shoes,” the Realtor said, wincing a little as she made her way up a cracked concrete pathway to the house.

  Martina stopped and took a good look at the building. Hard angles in metal and glass. The roofline jutting out sharply to shade the redwood deck. A variety of materials—stone and redwood, steel and concrete—forming the geometric shapes that gave the house its modern edge.

  “Wow,” she said.

  “I know.” Riley made a face, as though she’d smelled something bad. “It’s a wreck.”

  Objectively, she was right. The deck had collapsed in places, and a strip of yellow CAUTION tape was stretched across the steps leading to it. The largest of the front windows was broken, leaving the interior open to the elements. From here, Martina could see a bird’s nest under the eaves, and to her eye, the whole place was tilted slightly, as though the earth beneath it had shifted.

  “It’s been empty for more than twenty years,” Riley went on. “Of course you know it’s a Maxwell Hall. Hall himself lived here after he stopped working, and then, when he died, the place just fell to ruin. An investor bought it five years ago, but I guess his plans have changed, so …” She gestured toward the west and the forest preserve beyond. “If someone wanted to tear down and rebuild, the view would be spectacular.”

  Martina’s first instinct was to express the horror she was feeling at the suggestion of tearing down the house. What kind of monster would destroy an architecturally significant structure to build some new stucco-covered monstrosity? But there wouldn’t have been much point to that, so she stayed silent on the matter.

  “Can I see inside?” she said instead.

  “Of course.” Riley clutched her keys like a weapon against whatever they might find inside. “The front entrance isn’t safe. We’ll have to go around back.”

  It really was a glorious wreck.

  They’d had to pick their way through overgrown grass, ferns, and wildflowers to get to the back door. But now that they were standing inside what used to be the living room, Martina thought the effort had been worth it.

  “Incredible,” she murmured.

  “I know.” Riley’s dry tone indicated she’d taken the comment differently than Martina had intended it. “Can you believe what’s happened to this place? You’d think the family would have done something with it after Maxwell Hall’s death, but … I guess there’s no accounting for what rich people do.”

  The house hadn’t been occupied by its owner in years, but it had been occupied—by local wildlife and, from the looks of the food wrappers and discarded blankets tossed around the room, by at least one squatter.

  But that hadn’t been what Martina was referring to when she’d said the place was incredible. If you could look past the damage and the mess, if you could ignore the smell of mildew and the spiderwebs spanning the corners of the ceilings, you could imagine how the house had once looked.

  It was small, but the huge windows looking toward the forest, the high roofline with its sleek lines and heavy beams, the fireplace stretching toward the ceiling in clean and spare concrete block transported Martina to a time when the house had been new and exciting. When it had been a thing to treasure and not to tear down.

  “This space is amazing,” Martina said in wonder.

  Riley let out a barking laugh. “What, this? Oh, I doubt anyone’s going to want to put in the kind of money it would take to renovate it. For one thing, it’s far too small. People these days want space and luxury. This place is worth more as a pile of rubble than it is as a house.”

  Riley saw the look on Martina’s face and realized she hadn’t been joking. “Oh … I know you’re an interior designer, but—”

  “I want to see the rest,” Martina said.

  The Realtor looked bewildered but resigned. “All right. Suit yourself. But you’ll have to go to the second floor by yourself. I’m not taking a chance on those stairs.”

  “My God, you should have heard how she was talking about it. You’d have thought it was a pile of garbage instead of a significant piece of architecture!” Martina told Benny that evening as the two of them were standing in the kitchen, Benny w
ith a bottle of Coke and Martina with a cup of green tea. Benny had just gotten home from work, and Martina had been glad to have someone to tell about her day.

  “But it kind of is a pile of garbage,” Benny said. “At least, that’s what I’ve heard. Broken windows, trash …”

  “Trash can be cleaned up,” Martina said stubbornly. “Broken windows can be fixed. It’s not just a Maxwell Hall house. It’s Maxwell Hall’s own house! Doesn’t that mean anything? He was one of the most significant architects of his period. That’s worth something!”

  “I suppose.” Benny took a good-sized slug of her cola. “But what can you do about it? Oh, jeez. You’re not planning to buy it, are you? Do you have a winning lottery ticket we don’t know about? Because you borrowed twenty dollars from me last week, and if you do, I want it back.”

  “There’s no lottery ticket.” Martina frowned. “And, no, I’m not going to try to buy it. I don’t have that kind of money. And even if I did, the cost of making the place habitable would be … Well. It’s crazy to even think about it.”

  “And yet I sense you’re thinking about it.”

  Martina held her mug in both hands, as if to warm them. “I really want to save it.”

  “Speaking of saving things … how are things with the mangy mutt?” Benny grinned.

  “I don’t have a plan yet,” Martina said. “For the property or for Chris. But I’m going to save that house. And … I really want to help the guy.” She couldn’t bear the thought of him lonely, sad … so much like the Hall house, but without the spiders and the smell.

  “Hell, I’ll go out with him,” Benny said. “I’m sure I can make some time between all of the other attractive billionaires I’m seeing.”

  Martina froze and stared at Benny. Then a slow grin spread over her features.

  “Wait. You know I was just kidding, right?” Benny said.

  “I know you were. But that doesn’t make it any less of a great idea.”

  “No, that’s … no.” Benny shook her head and made a shooing gesture with one hand. “I’m not going out with Christopher Mills.”

  11

  Martina let it go, then brought it up again a week later.

  She and Benny were sitting at a window table at Jitters on a Saturday morning, each of them with a hot beverage and one of the coffeehouse’s signature scones. A light rain created droplets that ran down the window in slow, lazy patterns.

  “Why not? You’re not seeing anyone. He’s not seeing anyone.” To Martina, it seemed like the perfect solution to Chris’s obvious sadness. Not to mention the fact that Benny hadn’t had a date in a while.

  “Because. He’s a gazillionaire. I wouldn’t even know what to say to a guy like that. He should be dating one of the Kardashians. I’m just, you know. Me.”

  “He’s already dated the Kardashians. Well, not the actual Kardashians. But women like them. And it hasn’t worked for him. He needs someone real.” Martina stirred a packet of stevia into her chamomile tea and took a sip. “Plus, you said he was cute.”

  “He is cute, in a guy next door, I have no idea how I got to be a tech mogul kind of way. But that doesn’t mean I want to be fixed up on a humiliating blind date with him. Why don’t you date him? You’re real.”

  The idea of going out with him herself had occurred to Martina more than once. Something about the contrast between his wealth—and, therefore, his power—and his emotional vulnerability tugged at her. She’d felt a connection with him, like she’d glimpsed of a part of him that was honest and true. But she was working for him, and that complicated things. And he’d just ended a relationship with a woman much more beautiful and glamorous than Martina could ever hope to be, and that complicated things further.

  But that didn’t mean she could just stand by and do nothing when she knew she could help him. If she could get Chris and Benny together, she’d be helping two for the price of one. How could she go wrong spreading love and joy to two people who needed it?

  “I’m working for him,” Martina reminded her sister. “There are too many ways that could go sideways. And anyway, why not? When was the last time you dated someone?”

  “I think it was about the time the Yosemite supervolcano was rising through the earth’s crust.”

  “Exactly. What would it hurt to go out with him? You’re the one who suggested it.”

  “I was kidding.”

  “Well … I’m not.”

  Martina could see Benny was thinking about it. She was starting to crack. Of course, no woman wanted to accept the idea of being fixed up on a blind date without at least making a token protest. But now that Benny’s objections had been registered, she was softening—Martina could see it in the set of her jaw, the tilt of her lips.

  “Okay, so … how would it work?” Benny asked. “How would you set us up?”

  “I don’t know yet. But you’ll let me do it? You’ll let me try?”

  Benny shrugged, then allowed herself a grin. “Sure, go for it. Who am I to turn down a date with a super rich, kind of hot guy? Even if he is relationship-challenged.”

  “There you go.” Martina felt elated at the idea that she might bring her sister and Chris together. Under that, though, she felt something else—something she might have recognized as jealousy if she’d looked closely enough.

  Martina came up with her plan the next day. She would call Chris and ask him to meet her for dinner, saying she wanted to show him the schematic design for his kitchen remodel. She’d bring Benny along on the pretense that Benny wanted to ask him about creating an app to teach kids about sea life. Halfway through the appetizer, Martina would get a call on her cell phone about some “emergency” that needed her immediate attention. She’d leave, and Benny and Chris would have dinner together. Alone.

  Benny would have to take it from there, and if it worked, it worked. If it didn’t, at least Martina would know she’d tried.

  In the meantime, she had to finish the schematic design, partly to give her ruse some legitimacy, and partly because it was, after all, her job. She also had to figure out what to do about the Maxwell Hall property. She couldn’t afford to make an offer on it, but she had to save the house from being torn down.

  She got settled on the sofa on Sunday morning with her laptop, her sketches of Chris’s kitchen, and her notebook. As she worked on the Cooper House project, she periodically clicked over to the Hall property listing on Zillow.

  There had to be some way.

  She had a lot to think about, and she hadn’t even started work on Sofia’s wedding shower yet.

  First things first: Chris’s kitchen and his personal life. Both of them, she was sure, could be whipped into shape.

  Chris was unreasonably pleased when Martina called to ask him to dinner. He’d just spent the Christmas holiday alone, watching It’s a Wonderful Life on TV and drinking too much Scotch, and it felt good to have something social to look forward to.

  Yes, she’d presented it as a business dinner—she wanted to show him her initial plans for his kitchen. Still, she could have done that at Cooper House. She wanted to do it over dinner, and that was social. It was friendly.

  He wanted to be friendly and social with Martina—more so the more he thought about it.

  And he thought about it a lot out in his garage in the cool of midmorning, working to disassemble the passenger side door of his car.

  Chris had never worked on cars as a teenager. He’d never taken auto shop, and he’d never bought a beater and painstakingly coaxed it into shape in his parents’ driveway.

  He’d built a computer from scratch when he was seventeen, but never a car.

  He was probably crazy trying to restore the car himself now, considering his lack of experience, but he needed a project, and besides, what was the worst that could go wrong? If he failed, he could use one of his three other cars while he hired a professional to fix what he’d broken on the Mustang.

  The project was supposed to distract him from his loneliness
since Alexis’s departure and from his more and more frequent musings about Martina, but it was doing neither. There was too much time to think while doing a job that was mostly physical, rather than mental, in nature.

  Is she seeing anybody?

  That was one of the main things on his mind as he sat sideways in the passenger seat of the car, working to unscrew the arm rest and remove it from the door.

  I’d be surprised if she’s not seeing anyone. And if she is, then what the hell am I doing thinking about her?

  On the other hand, if she was dating someone, who was it likely to be? Some local who worked at the grocery store, maybe? A guy with a dairy farm? Surely he could compete with that. Surely—

  “Damn it.” His screwdriver slipped and smacked his leg. That was going to bruise.

  He focused again on his task—or tried to.

  Okay, so if she’s seeing someone and it’s not serious, I can deal with that. Gotta find out, though.

  That was one thing. And another was figuring out why he kept failing with women—why it started out well, then ended with yelling, name-calling (he’d been called names that made him marvel at their sheer inventiveness), and the inevitable leaving.

  What was the point in starting something with Martina if it was going to end with her throwing a vase at his head?

  Shit. Shit. He’d had to pull the door handle harder than he’d intended in order to get it off, and it had bent in his hand. He looked down at the piece he was holding and made a mental note to order a new one.

  He’d invented a dating app, for God’s sake—one that had made him a fortune and had brought thousands of couples together. It seemed criminally unfair he couldn’t manage to find someone for himself.

  Well, to be accurate, he’d found plenty of women for himself—just none who made him happy.

  So what if I date her and it doesn’t work out? So what? We’ll have some fun for as long as it lasts. What’s the harm?