by Tracy Brogan
Emily pressed her lips together. Ryan might be onto something, but she wasn’t ready to admit to it. “Okay, look, there might be a hint of possibility to that, but it’s not because my sister is some kind of gold digger. She would never hook up with some guy just so he’d take her on a few nice vacations. She must genuinely like him, for whatever reason, although I’m sure I can’t imagine what that is.” She could not resist adding that last dig.
He took a slow sip of coffee, still staring at her in a rather unnerving fashion.
“I’ll concede that after having met your sister, I don’t think she seems like the type of person to take advantage of someone else. She doesn’t seem conniving,” Ryan said.
Emily leaned forward and folded her arms on the table. “She’s not remotely conniving. If anything, she’s gullible. That’s why I’m so worried about her. I feel like your dad is going to break her heart.”
“Or she’ll break his. When she decides she doesn’t want someone his age, she’ll dump him, and I don’t think I can stand to see him grieving again. My mother died about eight months ago, and he had a hard time coping after that. Now he’s done a complete one-eighty, and at some point, he’s going to realize she isn’t what he really needs. No offense to your sister, but either way, they both get hurt.”
“So what do we do about it? Just . . . let them have at it and pick up the pieces later?”
“Probably. I guess. I think the harder we push them to break up, the more united they’re going to be in staying together, but maybe we can, you know, nudge that inevitable breakup to happen sooner rather than later. Before they get even more emotionally involved?”
She sipped her own perfectly plain black coffee. “How do we do that?”
“That is the big question, isn’t it?” He stared out at the bay for a moment. “I guess we need to just keep steering them toward their obvious incompatibilities until they come to the conclusion on their own. And maybe we should try to create some negative associations.”
“Negative associations?”
“Yeah. They have all these positive associations with each other because they’re having fun, but if they do some stuff and don’t enjoy it, maybe it’ll help them start to be a little more objective about each other.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
He leaned forward, putting his arms on the table just as she had. Those were some nice arms he had. Flutter, flutter, flutter. Damn it.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s say you go to a movie and eat all your favorite candy. That will make you like the movie more because your brain links it to pleasure you get from the candy. But if you ate brussels sprouts, you’d enjoy the movie less. And if you ate brussels sprouts every time you saw a movie, eventually you’d be convinced that you don’t like movies. It’s a positive association versus a negative association. We need to create negative associations between my dad and your sister.”
“You sound like a psychologist. Is that your background?”
“Nope.” He smiled. “But I watched a TED Talk once, so now I’m an expert. ‘Train Your Brain in Three Easy Steps,’ or something like that. It makes sense, though, right?”
“Sort of. So you’re suggesting we try to stop them from having fun? How do we do that?”
Ryan tapped his fingers together, as if it helped him concentrate. “Does your sister golf? My dad is horrible to golf with. It’s the only thing that makes him lose his temper.”
“My sister loves to golf.”
“Hmm. It might be worth a shot, but they might have fun. I know”—he snapped his fingers—“maybe we could get them to go horseback riding. My dad hates horses. He got kicked once when he was little, and he’s just sure it’s going to happen again. He’d be miserable for sure. If we could arrange for the four of us to go together, you and I could help each other out in making sure they, you know, didn’t have fun.”
“You would make your dad go horseback riding knowing he won’t like it?”
Ryan nodded sadly. “Tough love time.”
Emily pondered this for a moment. She didn’t like the idea of manipulating her sister, but she also didn’t like the idea of Lilly falling deeper into a doomed relationship. She knew from firsthand experience how much that sucked. She had been in Lilly’s spot, falling for a guy who wanted to whisk her away from the only home she’d ever known. Promising her a life of fun and excitement, when the reality was anything but. She knew how it felt to be rejected by someone else’s family, and the pain of dealing with the consequences of Harlan’s disappointment.
“Create negative associations,” she said, almost to herself. “It sounds pretty far-fetched, but I guess it’s worth a try. Of course, the other option is for me to tell my dad the truth, and then he’ll get his police rifle and shoot Tag right in the groin. Problem solved.”
Ryan’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Um, let’s leave that as plan B for now, shall we?”
Emily smiled. “I guess. If you say so.”
She was wearing a snug, faded gray T-shirt with a cartoonlike picture of a hammer about to strike a nail. Stretched right across her breasts were the words Nailed It! Quite frankly, Ryan didn’t think it was fair that faded jeans and an old T-shirt could be so sexy on a woman. It didn’t seem fair that her hair was every bit as shiny in the sunlight as he’d expected it to be, either. She had it pulled up in a ponytail that swung back and forth every time she moved. It was adorable, and the very fact that she seemed to be utterly unaware of her God-given adorableness made her twice as adorable. So how was he supposed to concentrate on the problem with his father and her sister when Emily was sitting there looking so . . . you know. Adorable? And the real kicker was, he couldn’t do anything about it. Emily Chambers was off-limits. She was obviously not a hit-and-run kind of woman, and since that was all he’d really have time for, it just wasn’t going to happen.
This made him irritable. It made him twitchy. It made him want to empty his pockets of any electronic devices and take a walk right into the cold water of Lake Huron. He’d just have to settle for a cold shower back in his hotel room.
“Well, hello, Peach.” Ryan heard a voice that sounded as if it came from deep within a rusty tin can—nasal and hollow, and not very pleasant. “I missed you at the lecture the other night. Remember? The one about the island’s bat population? Hmm?”
Ryan looked up at a rather severe-faced woman with straight gray hair that hung nearly to her waist. Her skin was red and splotchy with pores large enough to sink a golf ball into, and she wore a navy cardigan sweater even though it had to be eighty degrees outside. She squinted in the sunlight, giving her a very vicious expression, although Ryan suspected that was the expression she went around with most of the time anyway. He was so distracted by her appearance that it took him a second to register the fact that the woman had called Emily Peach.
Emily turned in her chair and offered up a tight smile. “Good morning, Mrs. VonMeisterburger. I’m sorry Chloe and I couldn’t make the meeting. We were still getting settled in at Gigi’s.”
“Well, be that as it may, white-nose syndrome is no laughing matter, and it’s up to each of us to do our part to reintroduce our nocturnal winged friends back to Wenniway. You know we need our bat population to take care of the flying insects. If your sister is serious about running for mayor, she needs to make sure this crisis is at the top of her political platform. We librarians are not a force to be ignored.”
Emily nodded somberly. “Yes, Mrs. VonMeisterburger, I’m sure of that. I’ll definitely pass your concerns on to Brooke.”
“If we wait too long, the mosquitoes will be so voracious they’ll drive away the tourists, and she’ll end up being mayor to a ghost town. You tell her I said so. And you tell her if she’s interested in my vote, she should come over to my house to see my bat cave.”
Ryan felt himself squinting just as squintily as Mrs. VonMeister-whatever.
“Your . . . your bat cave?” Emily responded.
“Y
es, I’m quite proud of it. I put those visiting Boy Scouts to good use building bat houses, and now I’ve got dozens and dozens of them lining the walls of my tool shed.” She ran a hand down her long, witchy hair. “Bat houses, I mean. Not Boy Scouts. I don’t have any Boy Scouts in my shed.” She looked around, and Ryan couldn’t help but wonder if anyone might indeed be missing a Boy Scout. “I’ve applied for a grant to reimburse me for my efforts, of course, but since those Lansing bureaucrats in the Department of Fish and Wildlife can’t seem to get their guano together, I guess I’m on my own. But you’re not on your own right now, are you? Hmm?”
Her head practically swiveled, and her laser-beam stare honed in on Ryan, thoroughly scrutinizing him. He’d felt less violated after a TSA strip search.
“Hello,” she said, and her voice went from nails-on-the-chalkboard to 1-800-SEXPOT. “Who might you be?”
Emily filled in the answer. “Mrs. VonMeisterburger, this is Ryan. He’s just visiting for a few weeks. We’re, um, discussing some business.”
Ryan nodded but kept silent.
“Business, huh? Monkey business, I’d say. Hmm?” She threw back her head and laughed, and it was quite possibly the eeriest thing Ryan had ever seen.
“No, ma’am,” Emily answered, quelling the woman’s cackle. “Actual business. Ryan is a consultant.” She looked at him and nodded, clearly hoping he’d pick it up from there.
“Ah, a consultant.” The librarian made air quotes around the word. He wasn’t sure why. She stuffed a hand deep into the purple canvas tote bag that dangled from her arm and pulled out a pink leaflet. “Well, anyway, we’re having another meeting next Thursday. I expect to see you there, Peach. Bring your sister, and bring this fine fellow, too.” She fluttered her short, pale lashes at him. He would have thought she just had something in her eye were it not for the waggling of her eyebrows.
“I’ll certainly try, Mrs. VonMeisterburger.”
“Excellent. Carry on your business, now, and if you see any mosquitoes you know it isn’t because I haven’t done my part.”
The woman turned and ambled away, and Ryan let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Nice lady,” he said, his tone implying just the opposite.
“She’s a pest, but don’t get on her bad side. Our family dog ate a library book once, and she banned my sister from the library for three months. It was wintertime, and Brooke cried and cried, but that old coot wouldn’t give in.”
“Brooke? That’s the sister running for mayor, right?”
Emily nodded and took a sip of coffee. “She’s thinking about it, and once she latches on to an idea there is really no stopping her, so she’ll probably win.”
“So you’d be sister of the mayor. Does that come with any perks?”
She shook her head, and the ponytail went sway, sway, sway. “None whatsoever. It would probably lead to more encounters like the one we just had with the bat-shit crazy librarian. You know, people coming to me to get favors from Brooke? Although, I won’t be here, so I guess it wouldn’t matter.”
“Heading back to San Antonio, I take it? More house flipping?”
“That’s the plan.”
Something about the way she said that made her sound indefinite, and he wanted to ask her more about that, but something about the way she said it also made her sound like she didn’t want to talk about it, so instead he said, “Why did she call you Peach?”
Emily covered her face with both hands and groaned. “Please don’t ask me that. It’s not a story I like to tell.”
“Tell me anyway.” Now he simply had to know.
Her sigh was a great big huff, but a smile played at the corner of her lips. “Fine, but only because you bought me coffee. When I was a baby, I had a really round head and kind of short, fuzzy, orangey hair . . . and everyone always said my head looked like a peach, and it stuck.”
She rolled her eyes, but her smile was full now, and he couldn’t help laughing.
“Even my family calls me Peach half the time. I don’t even notice it anymore.”
More adorableness. So much so he couldn’t resist saying, “That is totally adorable.” And so was the blush that suddenly rushed across her cheeks.
“If you say so.”
Chapter 12
“I’m telling you, wearing a white suit to a work site is just asking for disaster,” Gigi said as they walked down the hill toward the cottage. It was 7:00 a.m. Tuesday morning, and Emily was about to meet her crew. She was practically nauseous about it. Back in San Antonio, she and Jewel had established a rapport with several dependable subcontractors. Most of them Emily knew from her time as a secretary at a construction company. So she knew who they could trust, who was going to underbid a job and then overbill, and who was going to show up when they promised, but Emily had none of that to fall back on here. She was flying solo. The pressure to succeed was mounting, and she hadn’t even started yet!
“I have to establish myself as the boss, Gigi,” Emily said, “or they’ll never take me seriously. Trust me. Jewel and I have worked with enough men in this business to know that you have to set the ground rules right up front. I won’t have them talking down to me like I’m some dumb girl who doesn’t know a monkey wrench from an Allen wrench.”
“Do you know the difference between a monkey wrench and an Allen wrench?” Gigi asked.
“Yes. I do. I also know what a cotter pin is, and how to use a drill, and in a pinch, I can use a table saw except they scare the hell out of me. The point is, Gigi, these guys need to believe in me, otherwise they’ll take advantage, so don’t talk to me in front of them like I’m your sweet little granddaughter. Let’s make them think I’m a real ballbuster.”
Gigi shook her head slowly. “If you want them to take you seriously, you should wear some jeans and a T-shirt. Show them you’re not afraid to roll up those sleeves and do some of the work, too.”
“I’ll do that tomorrow. Today, I’m the boss. I’m wearing this suit like a boss, too.” She smoothed down the front of her jacket. Gigi tsk, tsk, tsked, but Emily ignored her. She was nervous enough without her grandmother making it worse.
They approached the cottage from the left, and Emily nearly stumbled on the rocky driveway. Even if her suit was a good idea, maybe the heels were not. It wasn’t so much the uneven pathway that caused her wobbling footsteps, though. It was the cluster of miscreants standing on the front porch. That was her crew? Good Lord, Gigi must have found them on the Island of Misfit Toys.
“There they are!” Gigi exclaimed, waving excitedly. Then she cupped her hands to holler, “Hiya, Tiny. Looking good!”
“Feeling good, Miss O’Reilly,” bellowed back the multi-tattooed, talking mountain leaning against the front post. He raised one beefy hand in salute, revealing that some of those tattoos went all the way around his arm.
“Miss O’Reilly?” Emily whispered, trying to plaster a smile on her face when what she really wanted to do was turn around and run in the other direction.
“Yes, Miss O’Reilly. You know I like to go back to my maiden name in between husbands. It makes me more marketable. That’s Tiny there, in the red shirt.”
That’s certainly what Emily would have guessed. Tiny was six and a half feet tall, minimum, and wore a tattered Red Wings T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. Calling him Tiny put the ox in oxymoron. Next to him was a reed-thin wisp of a man with dirty-blond hair. Wide, rainbow-striped suspenders held up his pants, and Emily was glad for that because if those trousers of his fell down, well, she did not want to get a look at anything going on under there. Sitting on the step was a stocky man with jet-black hair woven into a braid who Emily recognized from childhood. That was Wyatt Greenwell, and next to him was a . . . wow. A young man, probably twenty-five or so, with shoulder-length wavy brown hair who would look right at home on the cover of a historical romance novel. She could feel the pheromones just pouring out of him. Shoulders and muscles and dimples, oh my! Sexual harassment was never, ever okay . .
. but if she were to ever consider hitting on an employee, it would be him. She couldn’t, though, of course. Maybe she could steer him toward Lilly, though. He was age-appropriate, and really, someone needed to get a piece of that.
As Emily and Gigi reached the steps, Wyatt and the Adonis stood up, and another man, who’d apparently been lying down on the porch, lifted one hand to shield his eyes from the sun.
“What’s going on?” he asked, his voice rough and scratchy.
“Get up, Georgie. Boss lady is here,” Tiny said.
The prone figure rose and shuffled to the edge of the porch. Wearing baggy overalls and a white tank top, Georgie was slender, with blondish hair nearly shaved on the sides but long on the top and pulled into a ponytail. “Goddamn cramps are frickin’ killin’ me.”
Oh? Well, okay. Georgie was not so much one of the guys as she was completely and totally a woman. Emily was glad to see a female on the team. If the men accepted her to work with them, then they’d have an easier time accepting Emily, too. This was good news.
Suspender guy rubbed the back of his grimy hand under his narrow nose. “You know, Geo, if you got knocked up and stayed in the kitchen where you belonged, you could lie down on a nice soft sofa when Aunt Flo came to visit.”
“Go screw yourself, Garth,” the woman responded as the men chuckled, and Emily added create non-hostile work environment to her list of things to do.
“Boys and girl,” Gigi said, “play nicely. Not a one of you is so old that I won’t go tell your mother if you’re being rude.”
Each of them stood up a little straighter. “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry, ma’am,” Garth answered.
Gigi nodded. “All right, then. If you don’t already know, this is my granddaughter, Emily Chambers. She’s a real ballbuster, so don’t go giving her any sass. We can find someone to replace you if you don’t work out on this team.”
Emily’s smile stiffened. She knew Gigi was not one for subtlety but had hoped for a bit more finesse with that ball-busting thing. Oh well. It was out there now.
