by Deb Kastner
She told him about attending cosmetology school in Houston, how much she loved her work and the city and how her brother-in-law, Alexis’s husband, Griff, had helped her finance her first salon and spa. Apparently it had been quite successful, to hear her tell it, at least until the economy tanked. Then everyone’s business had taken a big hit.
“So what brought you back to Serendipity?” he asked, wiping his hands on a paper towel. Clearly she liked living in the city well enough and it sounded as if the business world was finally recovering from the economic downturn. “Or are you just visiting?”
Nick was positive he saw her blanch, and then her cheeks turned as red as the cherries in the slice of pie he was about to wolf down.
“I’m here for the long tow,” she said with a sigh.
He knew what she meant.
Her blond eyebrows lowered. “I sold my spa in Houston and bought a little shop here in town.” She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I guess you could say that I’m downsizing.”
“Why?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about it.”
Nick tried to catch her gaze but she wouldn’t quite look at him. Here was a woman who normally couldn’t stop talking. He’d clearly hit on a nerve. And she sounded so sad. It hit him right in the gut.
He rapidly backtracked out of the territory that made her uncomfortable. Anyway, he didn’t want to know the specifics. It wasn’t as if they were going to start hanging out together. Since he was stuck with her until he finished whatever task she had for him, he’d rather deal with the happy social butterfly, if given the choice, for as long as he had to be around her, even if her perky personality drove him half-crazy. These bipolar emotions of hers were creeping him out.
What he needed to do was focus on whatever she required of him. Clearly she had a reason for buying him, or she wouldn’t have approached his mother. And he suddenly realized that whatever it was she wanted from him hadn’t been addressed at all. It was the only thing she hadn’t talked about.
It probably had something to do with the shop she’d just bought. Hopefully she was just looking for a little remodeling help or something.
He hoped. That would be safe territory. And happily, nothing to do with dating. Even if his poor mother hoped otherwise.
Sorry, Mom.
“Where is the building located where you plan to build your new spa?”
For some reason he had trouble with the word spa leaving his lips. One little syllable and his tongue was tripping all over it. He supposed it was because he was picturing snowy white bathrobes and massages and people laying out in the sunshine with cucumbers over their eyes.
A spa in Serendipity?
The town had one grocery store. One café. What would it do with a spa?
“Two doors east of Emerson’s Hardware,” she answered, excitement seeping into her voice. “The red building. It used to be a barbershop, but it’s been vacant for a while, I think. I imagine it’s going to take a little work to get it back into usable condition.”
“A little work?” he asked, unable to smother an amused grin. Had she even seen the building since she’d bought it? “Lady, Emerson’s has been using the building as extra storage space for their feed. I doubt very much they worried about keeping up with internal appearances. And you’re looking to make it into some kind of fancy spa?”
“A beauty salon and spa isn’t that big of a stretch from a barbershop.”
Only night and day.
He snorted. It might have the plumbing and wiring setup she needed, but the interior was going to need a complete redesign—and that was after she cleaned out the mess that came from two years of being used as a storage facility. “It’s not going to take some work. We’re talking about a pretty major overhaul here. You’re going to have to gut the whole thing out and start from scratch.”
She tilted her chin up and smiled at him with a twinkle in her eye. His throat tightened. They might be as different as a tomcat and a spaniel, but he was a guy and she was an extraordinarily pretty woman, whether or not a man preferred blondes. And he’d always been partial to blondes.
“You mean you’re going to have to gut it,” she corrected, a giggle escaping from between her lips. Her impossibly blue eyes were alight with mischief. “That’s why I bought you. So I guess now my spa is your...challenge.” She reached over and playfully tipped his hat down over his eyes.
“And mine,” she continued, as usual not letting him get a word in edgewise, “is going to be trying to work with you every day without coming after you with a pair of scissors in order to trim that thick dark bird’s nest of yours.”
He pushed his hat back up and grinned.
“You can try, lady. You can try.”
Chapter Two
From the first second Jo had pounded the gavel and declared that Nick was sold to Viv, she’d been wondering if she had made an enormous mistake in bidding on him.
Now she was sure of it.
For one thing, Nick had stopped eating when she’d told him her plans, a chicken wing halfway to his lips. He’d actually had the nerve to gape at her like she was crazy—and then he’d practically laughed her off the community green for making the choice to buy the little barbershop. He hadn’t even bothered to ask if she had good reasons for it.
Which she did.
“We can start work as soon as you’re ready,” she told him, hoping for sooner rather than later. “I don’t know how much time you’re willing to give me on this project, but I’ll take whatever you offer. I’m anticipating maybe together we can do it in—what? A week? Two weeks?”
The expression that crossed his face was indescribable. The closest thing she could come up with was that he looked like he’d just swallowed a toad. His mouth moved but no words came out.
“What?” she asked, her guard rising. “Did I grow an extra eyeball on my chin?”
His lips twitched. “The expression is ‘forehead.’”
She ignored him. “Do you have a problem with my—our—new endeavor?”
He groaned and polished off the chicken wing he’d been holding, tossing it into the bucket of empty bones. He’d eaten half the bucket when she’d first offered it to him and was now finishing it off, and that was after having eaten a full lunch and an enormous slice of pie. Hot wings as an after-dessert snack was just plain weird, as was the fact that he’d polished off almost the entire bucket of chicken literally on his own.
And he thought she was crazy? Whatever.
In contrast to Nick, she hadn’t eaten much at all. Her morning sickness was catching up with her. She’d thought she was over the worst of it, but she suspected her nerves weren’t helping.
“Do I—er, we—have problems? Where do I begin?” he asked sardonically.
“Is this too big of a challenge for you? Because if it is, tell me now. There are a few men left on the auction docket I can bid on if you think this project is more than you can handle.”
He snorted. “I can handle it.”
She narrowed her gaze. She’d pricked at his ego on purpose to see what he’d do. But it wasn’t an idle threat. As far as she was concerned, if he was going to be a jerk to her, she’d follow through with her words and toss him out on his elbow.
She’d had just about enough of dealing with thickheaded men, and she definitely didn’t need his guff. She was resourceful and could always figure out another way to renovate her spa. With or without Nick McKenna. Worst-case scenario, she would hire a general contractor. Better than putting up with Nick’s less-than-stellar attitude. Talk about a glass-half-empty kind of guy.
“If you can handle the job, then what’s the problem?” she jabbed.
He wiped his sleeve across his chin.
Neanderthal.
“I’m not the one
with the problem, lady, because I’m not the one who picked up a piece of property that’s bound to be more trouble than it’s worth. Remodel it in a week? Yeah, not so much.”
“You don’t know that for sure.” Though she had a sinking feeling that he knew more about it than she did. Was one week a totally crazy estimate? She honestly had no idea how long these things usually took.
Heat rose to her face. He must think she was a complete idiot. She wasn’t—more like a wishful thinker. Her tendency toward always believing in the best-case scenario had gotten her into trouble more times than she could count, but Nick didn’t need to know that.
“No. I don’t.” He shook his head, his brow lowering. “But I can make an educated guess. Did you buy the shop at below market price?”
Now, how had he guessed that? Alexis and Griff were the only ones who knew the details of her own private financial affairs.
“I might have,” she hedged.
He chuckled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“So it’s not in as good a shape as it could be. What does that matter? When it’s finished, it’ll be amazing. You’ll see. I have an exciting vision for it.”
She’d made her decision the moment she’d seen the cute little red storefront standing empty in the middle of Main Street, especially when she’d noticed that it used to be a barbershop, no less, right down to the now-cracked twirling peppermint sign. It was locked so she hadn’t gone in, and the windows had been too dusty to see much more than shadows inside, but she was sure she could make it into something amazing. She didn’t care that it needed work. She’d made the right decision, and now she would stand by it.
Yes, the once-red exterior paint was peeling and the sign hanging from the outside eaves was dangling by a mere thread, but that would have had to have been replaced anyway, with a bright yellow sign declaring her new spa was open for business. When she was finished remodeling, it would be the most sparkling, eye-catching property in all of Serendipity. She’d have customers lined out the door, all excited to take advantage of her many services.
For the ladies of Serendipity, the blessing of being able to pamper themselves without the hassle of a long drive to the nearest city would finally have come. Full hair services and mani/pedi’s. Eventually she hoped to be able to hire a licensed masseuse so she could add massage to her list of services.
And it was her special blessing as well, her opportunity to prove herself, to turn her life around and make her world right again.
Her life—and her precious baby’s. She needed to be able to provide for her child, but it was more than that. She wanted her son or daughter to have a mother he or she could be proud of.
“Does your vision for this building include having to gut the whole interior before you can rebuild? I’ll have to take a closer look at it, but I’m guessing that’s what we’re going to be looking at.”
Her dreams hadn’t been overly realistic, she realized, but she wasn’t going to admit that. Not to Nick. It was just a slight hiccup in the big scheme of things. She wasn’t going to let that stop her.
“I’m not afraid of a little hard work.”
He leaned back on his hands and raised an eyebrow. “You know anything about carpentry?”
She shook her head. “Well, no. Not really. But I’m sure I can measure wood and hammer a nail as well as the next woman. And I’m a fast learner. Besides, that’s why I brought you in. Or bought you in.” She giggled at her own joke.
He snorted and rolled his eyes.
“I asked around town who might know a little bit about carpentry and your name came up once or twice. That’s why you were on my short list.”
“Well, that explains it, then,” he remarked cryptically.
“Explains what?”
He shrugged. “I was just wondering why you bid on me. Now I know. And you’re right. I know how to help you out. After my dad got sick, I remodeled my mom’s ranch house, where all three of us boys were raised. It gave me something positive to do with my anxiety and grief. And once I was done with that, I built cabins for Jax and me from the ground up.”
“See, I was right about you. An amateur expert. Or is that an expert amateur?” Vivian smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. With the way Nick had been hedging, for a moment there she thought maybe his skills had been overrated. She really did need someone who knew what he was doing, and Nick was that man.
He didn’t look convinced.
Why didn’t he look convinced?
He’d just told her he’d made a bunch of stuff, some buildings from the ground up. Remodeling her shop would be a piece of pie next to that. Surely he wasn’t second-guessing himself?
She stared at him a moment longer and then he shifted his gaze away from her and went foraging into the picnic basket as if it were a bottomless well of food.
He couldn’t possibly still be hungry. He’d eaten—
Oh.
The lightbulb in her brain flipped on at the very same moment she took a sucker punch to her gut. He was avoiding eye contact while he tried to think of how to phrase the bad news.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t build stuff. He just didn’t want to build stuff for her.
He might as well have taken a baseball bat to her fragile self-esteem. With the help of a therapist she was slowly crawling out of the tortuous abyss of being engaged to a verbally and emotionally abusive man. Derrick had fooled a lot of people with his public persona. His former best friend, Griff. Alexis.
And Viv most of all.
With Derrick, she’d always believed she wasn’t good enough for him. She’d tried to change to please him, to be what he wanted her to be, until she didn’t even recognize the woman in the mirror. But no matter what she did or didn’t do, it was never good enough for him. And when she’d discovered she was pregnant—
No. She wasn’t going to go there. Not right now. Derrick wasn’t the man she had to deal with right now—Nick was. He may not be the kindest or most tactful man, but she knew he was a good, decent person. He wouldn’t attack her deliberately. If anything, he probably thought he was helping her by pointing out the flaws in her plan. He didn’t know how much it hurt her to hear her ideas—her dreams, her hopes for the future—put down again. But no matter. If Nick didn’t want to help her, he just had to say so. If he was having second thoughts about doing the work, she’d even give him the out he needed, since he hadn’t made the most of the first one she’d offered.
“Just forget about it.”
His head jerked up. “What did you say?”
“I said forget about it. You don’t have to give me a hand with my remodel if you don’t want to. I’ll find someone else. Worst-case scenario I’ll have to hire a contractor. No big deal.”
“But the money for the auction—”
“—went to a good cause. No hard feelings.”
She didn’t want to be here at the auction anymore, hanging out on the community green with most of the rest of the population of Serendipity. She didn’t want to sit across from Nick acting like everything was okay when it wasn’t. She was tired of pretending.
She reached for the empty sandwich wrappers, stuffed them into the picnic basket and then slammed the lid closed. As closed as her heart felt right then.
She wasn’t lying when she said she would make it. Somehow, some way, she would. With or without Nick McKenna’s help. She shoved her hand forward, ready to shake his and be done with all of this.
Be done with him.
He frowned and stared at her palm as if it were an overgrown thornbush.
“Now, wait a minute,” he said in a gentler tone of voice. Instead of shaking her hand, he laid his large palm over hers and held it. “Don’t jump to conclusions. I never said I wasn’t going to help you.”
She sighed. “You didn’t have to say i
t out loud. It’s written all over your face, not to mention in your attitude. I know you think I’m a dumb blonde who couldn’t find her way out of a plastic bag, but even I can take a hint.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Paper sack.”
“What?”
He just smiled and shook his head. “I’m thick as a tree trunk sometimes. And I know exactly what my mama would say about that kind of stubbornness.”
“Yeah? And what’s that?” She couldn’t help it. She was intrigued.
He twisted his free arm behind his back as if someone in authority were holding it there.
“She’d say,” he responded with a grin, “that I need an attitude adjustment.” He paused and flashed her a truly genuine smile. “And you know what, Viv?”
“What?” Despite everything, his smile lightened her mood. Maybe because he only smiled when he meant it.
“My mom would be right.”
He snorted and shook his head. “And, Viv? I don’t like to hear you beat yourself up. I don’t think you’re dumb—and you shouldn’t let anyone else tell you that, either. Besides, I don’t let anyone talk about me that way, and we’re in this project together now.” This time, he held out his hand, and she couldn’t help grinning back as she gave it a shake.
* * *
Two weeks following the Saturday of the auction found Nick standing next to Vivian in front of her property. He had tied up all the loose ends that would keep him from his commitment and wanted to get started on this project as soon as possible. Construction was already beginning on the senior center and he planned to volunteer as many hours to that as he could, especially since his uncle James would soon be a resident.
Just thinking of his uncle, an eighty-eight-year-old man with late-stage dementia, was an added weight on Nick’s already burdened heart.
His plate was full to overflowing, but he wouldn’t allow himself to complain. Ranch work kept him plenty busy on its own, and he couldn’t count on his brother Jax to lend a hand as much anymore, since Jax’s miserable harpy of an ex-wife had come to town the day of the auction and abandoned month-old twin babies on his doorstep. The baby girls were adorable and an absolute blessing through and through—but that didn’t stop them from being a lot of work. With the hours they kept Jax up every night, it was a struggle for him to get through his own horse training work every day, much less help with the ranching responsibilities. Slade had his family and his work at the sheriff’s department to keep him busy. So that meant it all fell to Nick.
