by Melissa Tagg
And why—why—despite the alarm that should have been sounding, did it feel so very good to let out at least a partial truth? Even knowing Matthew could use it to ruin her reputation if he wanted?
Maybe, for some uncanny reason, she trusted him with the pain of her past. And despite the painful memories, the emotional bruises, all that mattered was Matthew’s next course of action. Her hope rallied. Because at least he’d come to her with his questions.
“You were in a tough spot.” At his acknowledgement, her gaze shot to his. “I guess if I were in your shoes, I don’t know what I would’ve done, either. Maybe it wasn’t the most honest thing in the world to transition men and let the public think what they wanted . . .” He took a step toward her, his honesty at once sharp and sweet, like the smell of cinnamon still permeating the woodshop.
She braved the question. “What are you going to do?”
“I know what I should do,” he murmured.
Run with the story, of course.
“Just not sure I want to.”
Miranda’s pulse slowed. “You mean . . . ?”
“I need to think.” He took a step back, then cocked his head. “Where did you and Blaze marry? Didn’t someone recognize you, your name, question it?”
“We thought of all that. So . . . we took a vacation. Got married in the Caribbean.” One lie bred so many others.
“Marriage certificate?”
“I know we signed something. I’ll look around and see if I can find it.”
And the lie began again. . . .
He studied her a moment longer, then turned and left her alone.
Chapter 8
Miranda’s body twisted at an odd angle in the close space of the studio bathroom. She stood to the side of the toilet, her hands at eye level, where she tightened the last screws of the over-the-toilet shelving unit.
Bathroom segments. The worst. Never mind that the set bathroom was triple the size that of most homes. With a craned camera lowered in her face, it still felt claustrophobic.
Add in the fact that she couldn’t get last night’s conversation with Matthew out of her mind, and this take was doomed from the start. She lowered the screwdriver and stepped around the toilet. “Sorry, Tom, I’ve got a crick in my neck like you wouldn’t believe.”
Tom called the cut. “Take five, Rand. We’ll get it on the next take.”
His patience had been unending today. She expected he, too, had heard Sam Toliver’s hints about the new show. He knew the toll it was taking on her, on the whole cast and crew. Had they worked together for more than three years only to face an abrupt end?
In all her worry about her own career, she needed to remember many other livelihoods hinged on From the Ground Up’s continuance, as well.
In an attempt to avoid Matthew and Blaze, both of whom watched from the edge, Miranda escaped the confines of the bathroom and plucked a water bottle from the cooler by the catering table. She tipped her head back for a cool drink, wishing the water could wash away her worries as easily as it soothed her scratching throat.
When she lowered the bottle, Whitney stood in front of her with a blotting sponge.
“I messed up my makeup?”
“No, but you’re perspiring like a glass of lemonade in humidity.” Whitney dotted the sponge over Miranda’s face.
“Lovely.”
“Hey, I could’ve said you’re sweating like a pig. What gives, anyway? Is it your husband watching making you nervous?”
Try the reporter standing next to him. “I’m fine.”
“You’ve dropped your screwdriver twice, once into the toilet.”
“I’m fine,” she repeated. “And now my face is dry, so all’s well in the world.”
Whitney dropped the sponge in a wastebasket, skepticism flashing in her eyes. “Why’d your husband start coming to the set, anyway? Is it that journalist guy? Is Blake jealous? And you know what else is weird? I just realized the other day, I never knew your husband’s name until he started showing up around here. Isn’t that odd?”
Well, it’s not as if Miranda and her assistant had ever been especially chummy. In fact, Miranda had always suspected the snippy woman didn’t care for her all that much. Certainly didn’t think much of her fashion choices.
“I suppose I talked about him so much on the show, I figured people didn’t need to hear my gushing off set,” Miranda said, the only answer she could think of to Whitney’s queries. Whitney only shrugged.
Miranda took another drink of her water, then stretched, arching her back, arms behind her. She’d be happy when this workday ended. Tonight she planned to stop by Open Arms and get in a couple hours of helping out with whatever projects Liv needed finished. The thought of more work should have exhausted her, but volunteering at the shelter always energized her.
Of course, she’d have Matthew along, documenting her every move. And while they’d certainly struck up a camaraderie, even bonded over the past few days, last night’s confession added a whole new level of awkwardness to their relationship.
Not relationship. Acquaintance. Professional association.
She was still waiting for a phone call from Brad, letting her know Matthew had outed her switch of fiancés on his blog. Even if he didn’t break the story now, surely he would later, when she couldn’t come up with a marriage certificate. Would he buy it if she said Blaze had lost it? That wasn’t so unbelievable, right?
At the sound of Tom’s voice, she chugged one more drink of water, but the liquid jostled in her throat when she saw Matthew approaching. She coughed, sputtered.
“You all right?” he asked as he reached her.
“Fine.” Her voice came out raspy, and she coughed again, then realized she was squeezing the water bottle so tightly, a trickle of water streamed down the side. “We’re doing the next take, so I’ve got to go.”
Uncertainty colored his hazel eyes. “Okay,” he said slowly. “But I just . . . I wanted to say . . . are we okay?”
He asked the question with such sincerity. It touched her heart in a place she knew it shouldn’t.
“Because I want to keep doing this blog. Let’s be honest: Yes, I’d love a scoop. My career needs a boost. But I realized last night, if I spill your secret right now, the blog’s over with. Everyone else will snatch up the story. No one will care about my little serial anymore.”
“So you’re—what?—saving it for a bigger article down the road?” Would he admit it if he was?
“I don’t know.” He raked his fingers through his hair, lowering his voice. “I just . . . Well, so many things make sense now. The fact Blaze knows nothing about construction. How you two don’t seem to have as much in common as the man you talk about in the first season. I’m glad you told me the truth. Knowing someone as private as you would tell me, that makes me want to be on your side. Even if it goes against my reporting instinct.”
She deserved to be hit over the head with her own screwdriver. Pushed over the toilet and given a swirly. Because she had barely scratched the surface of the truth last night. And now Matthew looked at her as if she’d given him some kind of treasure.
Telling Matthew a piece of the truth last night might have come with a temporary sense of relief. But in the hours since, her guilt had ballooned.
“I’ve got to go,” she said again. Because she had to focus. She had to do her job.
Even if it took another half a dozen takes.
Miranda’s scream sliced through the cool evening air and jolted Matthew to attention. He dropped his rake and craned his neck to the tree house perched in the massive maple in the backyard of the Open Arms home.
“Miranda?”
In the corner of the yard, Blaze was oblivious, apparently lost in the drone of the leaf blower they’d found in the shed.
Another trill from overhead, the sound of scuffling. Matthew abandoned his pile of leaves and scaled the ladder into the tree house. “Hey, you all right?”
Oh, she definitely wasn�
��t. A bird, flapping and panicky, flung from wall to wall, Miranda ducking, covering her head.
He climbed the rest of the way into the tree house as Miranda let out another squeal. “It’s just a bird, Miranda. It won’t hurt you.”
The bird smacked into the wall. “It’s trying to kill me.”
It was as if he’d walked into a Hitchcock movie. Only, Miranda played a much cuter and slightly more hysterical Tippi. He grabbed a couple badminton rackets from the floor and prodded the bird toward an open window. Its wings fluttered, chirps escaping from its beak.
Miranda huddled in a corner. Where was a video camera when he needed it? He finally sheepdogged the bird out the window and then turned slowly toward his frazzled blog subject. And it boomed from him, hearty laughter.
“I can’t believe . . . just a bird . . . you of all women . . . scared.”
She smoothed a hand through her hair, shoulders straightening. “That thing zoomed in here like a dive bomber.”
“Laughter . . . can’t stop . . .”
She picked up one of the badminton rackets he’d dropped and whacked him lightly. “Go on. You’ve got raking to do.”
“But I just saved you.”
“Scram!”
He laughed all the way down the ladder, back to the pile of leaves he’d spent the past hour raking. He couldn’t have asked for a more entertaining intrusion into his chore.
“Dude, your leaf pile is a kiddie pool to my ocean,” Blaze said, coming up behind him. He carried the leaf blower like an AK-47, an orange extension cord wrapped around his shoulder.
Matthew lifted his rake to pry loose a clump of leaves. “Maybe so, but there’s something wistful and nostalgic about raking leaves. Reminds me of my childhood.” The good part, anyway, before Dad’s disappearance and Mom’s cancer. “Leaf blowers sort of ruin the experience for me.”
He caught a view of Miranda leaning out the window of the tree house. She swiped a paintbrush against the mini shutters framing the window, cerulean blue vibrant against the dark wood. The glow of the setting sun fell through branches and lingering leaves, landing on the back lawn of the Open Arms home in freckles of color.
It shouldn’t surprise him, really, that Miranda had driven all the way across Asheville to volunteer at Open Arms after a full Monday of taping. Not after he’d witnessed her concern for that young family in the backwoods. Or the way she spent years of her life working in Brazil.
Maybe that’s why he wanted to believe every word she’d said out in the workshop last night. Because compassion didn’t mix with dishonesty.
But then, why the murmur of misgiving hovering under the surface? And why had she acted so nervous at the studio today?
Actually, the question he should have been asking was why he hadn’t gone to Dooley with the truth about Miranda’s marriage. Even if he chose not to blog about it immediately—in an effort to keep the blog going, buy time for further investigation, and maybe even find that Robbie guy—he should at least have let Dooley know he had material worthy of January’s cover story.
But each time he contemplated it, Miranda would go and smile at him—or freak out at a bird—and he’d soften. Plus, there was another concern he hadn’t considered until today. Cee adored the Randi Woodruff she saw on TV. She texted him practically every day, asking questions about Miranda, requesting photos. Did he really want to be the one to blow the image of her celebrity heroine? But that’s what he’d have to do in January’s article, right?
So instead of making a firm decision, he continued dallying around in indecision.
“Got to tell you, man, I never once raked leaves as a kid,” Blaze said now. “We hired a service. Maybe I missed out.”
Last fall, Matthew had spent three evenings over at Jase and Izzy’s, raking leaves with Cee. They’d swept the yard clean, one heaping pile in the center of the lawn rising like the hill of grain at a co-op during harvest. And then they’d jumped, Cee unable to hear her own giggles, but Matthew gulping them in like a proud father as they landed in a mess of crunchy leaves and twigs.
“Blaze, do you and Miranda plan to have kids someday?”
Blaze’s eyebrows shot up. “Getting personal there.”
“I’m a reporter. We do that.”
“I better let Randi answer that. I . . . we . . . tend to do things on her schedule.”
Like getting married in a rush? Waiting to let the public in on it until it would benefit From the Ground Up?
Wait a second. Could Miranda have married Blaze for the show? Maybe that’s why he’d felt unsettled about the whole thing.
He glanced up. She’d switched sides, now gliding fresh color over the cracked and faded paint of the opposite shutter. Surely not. Yet, now that his suspicion had a name, he had to confront it.
He nudged stray leaves toward the pile with his foot. “Well, if you won’t answer that, tell me about your and Miranda’s whirlwind courtship. For instance, how did your family react? Do you have family in the area? I know Miranda’s parents are down in Brazil, but what about yours? Any siblings?”
For the first time since Matthew had met Blaze, a steely sheen dropped over his expression like a shield. “Randi’s your subject, Knox. Not me.” Blaze flipped the switch on the leaf blower, and its gusty roar ended the conversation.
Questions gurgled to life as Blaze moved off, but Matthew swallowed them down. Because Blaze had a point. And because, after all, if he really wanted to know about Blaze’s family, there was such a thing as the Internet.
As for his other questions . . .
He propped his rake against the tree. Miranda was bending over a paint can when he once again emerged into the structure. “You know, this tree house is like something out of Swiss Family Robinson.”
Her head whirled at the sound of his voice. Wind fanned her hair, and the evening chill blushed her cheeks. “When I build a tree house, I build it right.”
If only he could jet her up to Minnesota, he’d ask her to build one for Cee.
Now that a bird wasn’t terrorizing the place, he scoped out the interior of the tree house, which was just as impressive as the outside—roomy, even homey, with curtains, knickknacks displayed on shelves, and two wooden chairs. “What’s that for?” He pointed to a thick rope dangling from the ceiling. He followed its trail overhead. Some kind of pulley system?
Miranda’s smile hinted at pride. “Watch this.” She stepped close, the apple scent of her hair mingling with paint fumes, and gave the rope a steady pull. The metal hub jangled with the movement of the rope as a section of the tree house roof creaked open.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. A skylight in a tree house. It’s like you saw inside my childhood imagination.”
Miranda shook her head. “No, I saw inside my grandpa’s imagination. When my parents sent me home from Brazil, my grandfather decided to cheer me up by building a tree house. He bought one of those sets at the hardware store with the rainbow tarp, put the thing together in an afternoon.”
A leaf drifted in from the open ceiling, landing between their feet. “It was a perfectly fine tree house, but the first time Grandpa climbed up with me, he took one look around and said, ‘We can do better than this, Miranda.’ And he did, customized that thing ’til it was the envy of the neighborhood. And that’s when I first got bit by the carpentry bug.”
“So you’re giving the kids here at Open Arms the same fun your grandpa gave you.” Tomorrow’s blog post had just written itself. “This place—not just the tree house, but the whole facility—completely surprised me. I expected something a lot more institutional looking.”
Instead, the shelter for orphans with special needs run by Miranda’s friend Liv made its home in a Victorian house. The structure stood three stories high, painted canary yellow with crisp white shutters. A wraparound porch hugged its front and sides, and a balcony extended from French doors on the third level. Mums lined the path from the street to the entrance.
Thinking back to a coup
le hours ago, though, Matthew remembered it wasn’t only the facility that surprised him, but also Blaze’s reaction. Miranda’s husband had gaped at the winding staircase that jutted into the mahogany-floored entryway, the curled carvings of the banister, the sight of the mammoth dining room table through an open doorway.
He’d stared as if he’d never seen the place before.
“Matthew, could you close the skylight?”
Miranda’s voice pecked unheeded at his continued musing. Did Blaze never come along with Miranda to volunteer at Open Arms? Blaze joined Miranda for photo shoots and publicity junkets, but other than that, they seemed to live different lives. On Sunday, she’d spent half the day in her workshop and he’d taken off for town. While Miranda disappeared for several hours last night, Blaze went running.
“Earth to Knox.” Miranda brushed past him to the floor opening where the ladder poked in. “Let’s go help Blaze bag up the leaves and then hit the road. I’m dog tired.”
Matthew turned, blurted the question pounding him like a gong. “Are you and Blaze for real?”
The paint can dangling from her hand squeaked as she turned slowly. “What?”
“I mean, is it a true relationship? Do you really . . . love each other?” A warning bell somewhere in the distant corners of his mind cautioned against anything more. Still, he pressed on. “Did you only marry Blaze for the show?”
Miranda’s pause stretched, flexing the silence into something heavy and awkward. He knew he should wish the question back. But even more than he needed a story, Matthew wanted truth.
And her trust. Not so he could mine for blog fodder, but so he could discover . . . her. The fascinating woman with calloused hands and a bruised heart who built homes by day and played Good Samaritan at night.
“I can’t believe you’d ask me that after what I told you last night.”
If only the lighting weren’t so dim inside the tree house, he might have read her eyes and discerned whether anger or hurt shadowed her words.
