Mr. Fixer Upper

by Lucy Score

  Cat had tried to talk to him out of it on the flight home, but he’d shut her down and taken a cab from the airport to Paige’s apartment.

  He should have his head examined.

  Fuck it. He knocked and looked up and down the hall. They’d been “together” for roughly two months, and this was the first time he was seeing her place. Was that weird? He shook the thought out of his head. Everything about them was weird.

  He was just raising his fist to knock again when the door opened.

  The woman had wild black hair shoved back from her face with a wide purple headband and scraped in at five feet even. She definitely was not Paige.

  She eyed him skeptically. “You must be Cheater Magee.”

  He bit back a defensive retort. “Is Paige here?”

  She shook her head, and her thick hoop earrings jiggled. “Nope, she got a text from an anonymous source that a jackass of a carpenter was headed her way.”

  He was going to have to kill his sister.

  “You might as well come in.” She walked away from the open door, and Gannon followed her in, dropping his bag and slipping his backpack off his shoulders.

  The woman reappeared with two beers and jerked her chin toward the couch, the only place available to sit besides a pair of rickety-looking barstools tucked under the two feet of kitchen counter. He sat, accepted a beer, and stared at it.

  “Why are you letting me in and giving me beer if you think I cheated on Paige?”

  “I’m Becca by the way.” She offered a small hand, which he took in a perfunctory shake.

  “Gannon. Not a cheater.”

  “I figured.”

  “So she didn’t tell you?” Gannon ventured.

  “Oh, she told me. I’ve just been in and around the industry long enough to recognize a narcissistic, loose cannon who doesn’t care who she hurts to get what she wants.”

  “Meeghan.” Gannon spat out the name. “She’s psychotic.”

  “So you were not dating Meeghan.”

  “No,” he said emphatically.

  “But Paige doesn’t believe you, or she’s just humiliated enough that it doesn’t matter that you weren’t dating her. A woman still showed up at her place of work, laid claim to you, and then treated her like garbage.”

  “Yep.”

  “And what did you do immediately after the claiming and the garbage treating?”

  Gannon’s hand cruised the back of his head. “Not enough,” he admitted.

  “Why not?” Becca pulled her feet up on the cushion looking comfortable and relaxed.

  “Paige and I were trying to hide our…”

  “Go ahead and say it. Relationship,” Becca said with a royal flourish of her hand.

  “Relationship. She didn’t want anyone to think she was sleeping with the talent for… perks.”

  “Sounds like Paige.”

  “I had no idea what was happening. One second I’m working with power tools, and the next someone’s kissing me. When I pulled back, I saw Paige’s face…” he shook his head. “And then Meeghan’s strutting over to her, throwing her purse in her face, and giving her a coffee order.”

  “Bitch,” Becca said with enthusiasm.

  “This is after the network mic-ed Paige and made her start doing onscreen interviews to feed the interest in a potential relationship between us. I couldn’t say anything. Or if I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop, and everyone would know.”

  “Well, clearly you’re screwed,” Becca announced, taking a swig from her beer.

  “I love her.”

  “Which you should not have told her in the middle of a fight when it looked like you had cheated on her.”

  “Shit.”

  He took a long pull from his beer and looked around. “She wasn’t kidding. You guys really don’t even have a coffee table,” Gannon said, eyeing the apartment. His childhood bedroom had been bigger than this living space.

  “Want to make us one?”

  “Will that get her back?”

  Becca grimaced. “Look, man. I hate to be blunt like this, but Paige is a ‘fool me twice’ kind of girl. In her book, you’re a mistake, and she won’t be inclined to repeat you.”

  “That can’t be the end of it,” Gannon argued. He wanted to get up and pace, but there was nowhere to go.

  “It doesn’t have to be, but it’s not like sending some other girl flowers and she instantly forgives all your transgressions. Totally works on me,” she said jerking a thumb at her chest, “but not so much on Paige. If you’re serious about getting her back, and you’re not going to give up after a quick fix attempt, there’s hope.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  Becca leaned forward, looked him dead in the eye. “Whatever it takes. Go big or go home alone.”

  ––—

  Gannon left Becca feeling marginally more hopeful. She’d made him promise that if the topic ever came up, Becca had slammed the door in his face, not fed him beer, and definitely did not conspire with him against Paige.

  She’d given him a few guidelines:

  1. Stop blowing up Paige’s phone.

  2. But don’t go cold turkey on the contact either. Stay in her head.

  3. Identify Paige’s life priorities and find a way to become part of them.

  4. Be patient.

  5. Build them a damn coffee table.

  He hated the fourth and was pretty sure the fifth was just Becca’s fee for her “free advice.”

  Paige’s priorities were easy. She had one: work. Unfortunately for him, their season had just wrapped, and if he’d been picking up on Becca’s hints correctly, Paige was looking for a way out of working with him again.

  He stared down the hallway with its threadbare carpet toward the paint chipped stairwell and hefted his backpack over one shoulder. This was not the last time he’d see Paige St. James’s place, he vowed. She was his, and she was just going to have to get used to it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The walls in Leslie St. James’s dining room were covered in a lovely linen paper in delicate blues and greens that gave dinner guests the impression they were dining underwater. The conversation around the dining table had a similar effect on Paige.

  Her mother, cool and beautiful as always in a sleeveless ivory sheath, continued her well-reasoned and methodical dissection of where Paige had gone so wrong as to end up on reality television.

  “Honestly, Paige.” Her mother dabbed her napkin delicately at the corner of her mouth. “I don’t see why you won’t take some time off to recover from your mishap and reconsider your path in life.”

  Paige, used to the criticism, slid her fork through the pepper tuna steak her mother’s cook had prepared.

  “I like what I do,” she reminded her mother. She wasn’t about to tell her mother and her sister that she was desperately trying to find a new job. Something, anything, that meant she didn’t have to go back for another season of Kings. She couldn’t stand the thought of working with Gannon side-by-side again, and the further she distanced herself from the situation, the more clearly she saw the role that the production company had played in her humiliation.

  The interviews, the suggestive show teasers? There was no way Meeghan Traxx just happened to show up on set that day.

  Leslie rolled her eyes in dramatic fashion. “I don’t see what there is to like about it,” she insisted.

  Frankly, the only thing Paige liked about her job in this moment was the fact that it irritated her mother.

  Her sister Lisa, her long dark hair worn in a sleek French braid over her shoulder, smirked over the rim of her wineglass. “I take it you haven’t gotten a good look at her co-star, Mom.”

  Paige shot her sister a warning look, but everyone was a target around the St. James dining table. Pot shots were taken with abandon until someone surrendered.

  “I assume you mean that Gannon King.” The disdain in their mother’s voice rang out clearly.

  “Rumor has it our Paig
e is involved with him,” Lisa said, topping off her glass with the very nice Spanish rosé and handing the bottle to Paige.

  Paige dumped a generous portion into her own glass before handing the bottle to her mother.

  “Involved?” Leslie arched a well-manicured eyebrow at her wayward daughter. “I certainly hope that a rumor is just a rumor in this case.”

  Paige stabbed a steamed green bean with more force than necessary. “We were having sex, and now we’re not. Happy?”

  Lisa sputtered in her wine glass. Paige had said it for the reaction, but Leslie was too experienced to let anything like surprise show.

  “Sex is one thing, but a relationship with someone like that? Ill-advised. At least you’re smart enough to not tie yourself down to someone like that,” Leslie said primly.

  “What is it exactly that you have against Gannon, Mom? Besides the fact that he called you out for being rude on the phone?” Lisa asked.

  “He accused me of being rude. I wasn’t actually being rude,” Leslie clarified the semantics. Their mother thrived on semantics. “I was having a very natural response to learning that my daughter had been injured.”

  Wait for it, Paige counted down.

  “The fact that she didn’t see fit to call her own mother to tell her what had happened and that she was all right, well, I feel that’s more of a reflection on Paige’s attitude than my own.”

  Paige hid her sigh. Her mother was nothing if not consistent. “So he accused you of being rude, and that’s why you don’t like him?” Paige asked. It shouldn’t matter that her mother didn’t like the man that Paige herself couldn’t stand now, except for the fact that it made him the tiniest bit less horrible in her mind. But that was the rebellion talking. And she should be old enough to know that just because she and her mother agreed on something didn’t mean she was wrong.

  Leslie jabbed her fork in her direction. “That’s not the only reason. In my profession, one must have a sense about people, and my sense about Gannon is he’s a loose cannon. And before you even say it, it’s not that he’s a tradesman and works with his hands. Lots of respectable men work with their hands.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Paige intoned. She had accused her mother on a handful of occasions of being an insufferable snob. It was one insult that seemed to have stuck.

  “For god’s sake, Paige. Sit up straight when you’re being passive aggressive,” Leslie snapped.

  Paige straightened her shoulders, a reaction as rooted as Pavlov’s drooling dog.

  “I don’t know, Mom. He comes across as more than just a loose cannon on the show,” Lisa insisted.

  “You watch my show?” Paige asked, eyebrows winging up.

  “Of course I do. I don’t love it, but it’s yours. You read my journal articles,” her sister pointed out.

  “And I don’t love them, but they’re yours.” Paige tilted her wine glass in Lisa’s direction in a silent toast.

  “I can’t believe both my daughters waste their time on that show.” Leslie shook her head in disappointment.

  “We read your books,” Paige and Lisa said in unison.

  “Well, of course you do,” Leslie sniffed.

  Once the subject changed to Leslie’s new book that she was working on, Paige breathed easier. She was used to being a target for her own work. The criticism usually didn’t do any lasting damage. But with that area of her life as sensitive as an open wound now, she didn’t think she could survive too many hits tonight.

  And if her mother caught even a whiff of her dejection, Leslie would have her scheduled for six grad school interviews by noon tomorrow.

  ––—

  By the time dessert was over, all sniping was brushed under the rug as Lisa spoke in broad terms about a paper on epileptic seizures she was researching for a medical journal. Paige did her best to grill her about Malia’s cancer trial but got the patent and expected answer citing HIPAA and patient confidentiality.

  They went their separate ways at a respectable nine o’clock. Leslie upstairs to her study to transcribe her case notes, and Lisa home to grab a few hours of sleep before her early morning shift at the hospital.

  Paige stood on the sidewalk outside her mother’s lovely home, debating what she wanted to do. Finding there was nothing, absolutely nothing, she headed east toward the metro station. Her phone rang in her bag, saving her from the monotonous six-block walk to the Great River Train Station.

  The picture of Cat mugging for the camera glowed on her screen. Paige debated for a second. She’d been avoiding Cat since shooting wrapped, mainly because she didn’t want to put Cat in an awkward position with her brother… and also so Paige could pretend that Gannon didn’t exist.

  It was petty and stupid. She sighed. “Hey, Cat. What’s up?” she asked in what she hoped was an upbeat tone.

  “You sound terrible. Where are you?” Cat demanded.

  “I just had dinner with my mother and sister in Great River.”

  “Well that explains the sounding terrible,” Cat joked. She was aware of and fascinated by Paige’s family dynamics. In the King household, everyone yelled at everyone else and then sat down for a meal. That was their normal.

  “You’re not calling on behalf of He Who Better Not Be Named, are you?” Paige asked.

  Cat snorted. “I know better than to stick my nose in my brother’s love life,” she promised. “Now yours on the other hand…”

  “Ha. Ha. How’s your offseason? What are you up to?”

  “So we’re just going to pretend that you and my brother didn’t have a steaming hot affair before some asshat at the network sent that shithead inflatable doll on set to make you look like an idiot?”

  “Pretty much, yeah,” Paige sighed.

  “Okay. Just checking. So I landed this women’s work wear endorsement deal—super cute flannels, jeans that won’t show your crack or rip if you actually move in them, tank tops that don’t ride up to your armpits. My parents were in town visiting for the week. They flew back to Florida wondering what the hell is wrong with their son who’s basically locked himself in his workshop and refuses to come out unless it’s for beer or red meat. How about you?”

  “I just had dinner with my mother and sister who think I’m a disappointment in the family because of my job in reality television. A job I can’t go back to after being puppeteered into said scorching hot affair based on lies for a network that made it its goal this season to humiliate me for the sake of ratings at every turn. So now, my only option is to start looking outside the network, which means I’m probably going to end up as a PA on some vapid, disgusting dating show.”

  “Oh, so everything’s normal then?” Cat said blandly.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Then this will just make your day,” Cat announced. “Invites for the network’s real estate hottie guy’s party just went out. You, Gannon, and Meeghan are on the guest list.”

  Paige wanted to throw up her tuna steak. “Guess who out of that cozy threesome isn’t freaking going?”

  “Guess who isn’t going to have a choice? Rumor has it you are going to be ‘compelled’ to attend.”

  “What are they going to do? Fire me?” Great. Then she really would have zero options.

  “Probably. Or maybe they’ll threaten to get rid of the rest of the production crew if you don’t play ball.”

  Paige growled in frustration, scaring a guy in gym shorts and a tank top walking a fluffy dog that couldn’t have weighed more than five pounds. “That’s not fair! And yes, I know that life isn’t fair, but when I signed up to be a field producer, I wasn’t signing up to be talent and a puppet!”

  “Wanna meet for a drink?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Paige scowled at her reflection and stood on her tiptoes trying to see more of the dress. The tiny bathroom vanity mirror only afforded a boobs-up view. “We need to move,” she announced.

  Becca stuck her head in from the hallway. “Damn, you look amazing. Why are we moving?” />
  “We need a bigger mirror. And a dining room table. And I sleep on a twin mattress. I’m twenty-eight, and I don’t have any real furniture. My life is sad, and we should move right now so I don’t have to go to this thing.”

  Unperturbed, Becca twirled her finger in the air. “Spin, babe.”

  Paige complied, not feeling any excitement at all when Becca applauded.

  “It’s perfect.”

  The dress was the color of crushed cranberries. The skirt was a short A-line that hit at mid-thigh. The top was fitted with a modest scoop neck. But the modesty disappeared when she turned around and the back was almost completely open, framed from the neck to the waist with a scalloped opening. It was gorgeous, but Paige wished that she was wearing it anywhere but where she had to go tonight.

  “I don’t want to go.”

  Becca crossed her arms and tapped her fingernails on her arm. “Okay. It’s time whether you want to hear it or not.”

  “No. It’s not time. I definitely don’t want to hear it. I want to wallow.”

  “You’ve wallowed for twenty-five days. Time’s up. You are going to this party. You are going to smile for the cameras. You are not going to burst into tears when you see Gannon King. And you are not going to shrivel up and die when you see Meeghan Traxx. You are going to go be your fabulous, professional, strong, independent, hot-as-hell self.”

  “But I don’t wanna.”

  Becca jabbed a finger in her face. “Uh-uh. Does that sound like something the director of a society-changing, award-winning documentary would say?”

  “No,” Paige grumbled.

  “What would a director of a society-changing, award-winning documentary say.”

  Paige pasted on a brilliant, phony smile. “Fuck off.”

  “That’s what your eyes say to Meeghan, to the camera,” Becca told her.

  Paige noted she didn’t mention Gannon. It was probably because her roommate was enamored with the custom King coffee table he’d had delivered to their place. Sure, it was beautiful, sexy, stunning. All of Gannon’s furniture fell under that label. But it fit so perfectly into their space that Paige had wondered just how quickly Becca had booted Gannon from the apartment. It looked as though he’d had ample time to take measurements.