Mr. Carrots was a fighter? How had she not known this?
I didn’t know him at all.
“You should press charges.”
A new sensation banged around her chest. Embarrassment. “I can’t afford the time off from work to fill out police reports or show up in court.” What a flimsy fib. “Which makes me sound—”
“Practical.”
There he went, being nice again. This time it sent tears to her eyes. She didn’t want his pity or his kind words. That would destroy the carefully constructed image she had of herself as The Woman Who Could Do Anything.
Which in hindsight was a lie, too.
“How about we call it a day?” Vince stood and offered a hand to help her up, flashing that grin that’d gotten her into trouble a few weeks ago. “Pack your tools and let’s get out of here. First beer’s on me.”
Harley shook her throbbing head, pushing to her feet with the aid of the wall. “Thanks for the offer, but we both know that’s not happening.”
“No worries.” The grin disappeared and, just for a moment, she thought he looked disappointed. “But we are getting out of here. Pack up your tools. I’ll lock up.”
Agreeing with Vince that she’d finished for the day, Harley loaded her tools into a bucket and headed for the driveway where she’d left her tile saw. It’d been hot inside the house, but it was hotter outside in the sun. It beat down on her head as if its goal was to melt her out of existence.
Speaking of existence, the table she’d clamped the tile saw to had been upended. And dragged. And shoved half into the bushes.
“No. Oh, no.” Harley’s stomach fell and fell and fell, all the way to the pavement. Her bucket clattered next to it. She needed that saw to make a living.
She righted the saw, which was still plugged in, and turned it on. It ka-clunked a bunch of times and began smoking. She shut it off and stared at it, unable to move.
“That doesn’t sound good.” Vince approached her, carrying a bulky black tool bag. His eyes narrowed. “I wondered what all that racket was when he left.”
“Dan... He smashed it.” The same way he’d sort of smashed her.
“There are two things a man needs,” Vince said. “Pride and honor. This Dan has too much of one and none of the other.”
Harley nodded miserably.
Vince peered at the saw. “This is totaled. You sure you don’t want to press charges against your boyfriend?”
A weight dropped on Harley’s shoulders so hard and heavy she didn’t correct his presumption about Dan. “I... Can’t you fix it?” By tomorrow when she had to tile the outdoor kitchen? Vince was always fixing something for Jerry, their boss.
Vince set down his tool bag and examined her saw. “See those dents in the casing? When it collapses like that, parts inside get damaged.”
“I can’t afford a new one.” She’d gone from a starting architect’s salary to a tiler’s paycheck. And she’d just put a new truck transmission on her credit card.
“You can take it to that shop on Polk. They’ll give you money for whatever parts they can salvage and apply it toward the purchase of a new one.”
She couldn’t afford that, either, not without a second job. Until then, she’d be cutting tile with a low-tech manual saw and nippers. “Thanks for the advice.”
Demoralized, Harley released the base from the table and carried the dead saw to her truck, returning for her tool bucket and the worktable.
If only she could figure out how to make playhouse balconies float on air.
Vince was still loading his stuff into his truck’s lockbox when Harley opened the creaky door to her hot cab and climbed in. She missed her Lexus. She missed auto-start and powerful air-conditioning. She turned the key in the ignition.
Nothing. Not so much as a tick of the starter.
She missed reliability.
“Not today,” she muttered. The truck was finicky. It didn’t like to run when the temperature dropped to the thirties or in thunderstorms, but the day had been hot, the skies clear. “Come on, baby,” she chided the old vehicle.
Don’t leave me stranded with Mr. Carrots and that grin.
Vince locked up his tools and leaned on his truck, staring at hers.
Still nothing. Her backside was growing damp with sweat.
Vince came forward. He walked with the swagger of a man who knew what his purpose was in life. And, right now, that purpose was to rescue a damsel in distress.
“Pop the hood.”
She did, hopping out and joining him at the grille. Not that she knew anything about engines. Her mechanical ability stopped at turning power tools off and on.
Vince tsked and gave Harley a look that disapproved and teased at the same time.
“Hey, don’t judge,” she said. “It runs.”
“It’s not running now.” He drew a blue rag from his back pocket. It was the kind of scrap mechanics used to wipe their hands and touch hot engines. “You might want to spray your engine off every once in a while.” He used the rag to check battery connections, hose connections and to prod the engine compartment as if he knew what he was doing.
“I barely clean my apartment. Why would I clean my engine?”
“So a mechanic can see if you’ve got leaks anywhere, for one thing,” Vince said straight-faced. “Why don’t you try it again?”
She hurried back behind the wheel. The truck started right up.
“Traitor,” she accused under her breath.
Vince shut the hood and came around to her window, wiping his hands.
“Thanks.” Harley gave him her polite smile, the one she reserved for helpful salesclerks and the receptionist who squeezed her in at the doctor’s office. “I owe you.”
“Yeeeaah.” He wound out the word and ran his fingers through that thatch of midnight hair. “About that. I need a favor.” Those kind black eyes lifted to her face.
Don’t believe in fairy tales... Don’t believe in fairy tales...
Despite their history, despite knowing better, silly fantasies about princely rescues and Mr. Right fluttered about her chest like happy butterflies on a warm spring day.
She should go. Instead she lingered and asked, “So what’s the favor?”
The devilish grin returned, making the butterflies ecstatic. “I need a date to my brother’s wedding.”
CHAPTER TWO
WHEN HAD A man ever asked Harley to be his wedding date?
When was the last time she’d felt like going to a wedding?
She couldn’t remember on either count.
Harley had turned Vince down, of course. The wedding was in California the weekend after next, but he’d wanted her to fly out with him this Saturday.
Take to the skies with Vince?
Thunderclouds lined the southern horizon.
There was a time when Harley O’Hannigan thought the sky was the limit. A time when everything she’d touched had turned to gold.
Daughter of a couple who owned a tile and granite outlet in Birmingham, she’d been the girl most likely to succeed in high school, valedictorian of her college class, the young architect hired to design beautiful structures for a boutique agency in Houston.
And then reality struck. The balconies she’d dreamed up for a uniquely modern theater couldn’t be built with today’s construction techniques. She’d only shared the drawing with Dan because unbuildable designs could be entered in architectural theory competitions. Winning those awards brought agencies and architects prestige. But Dan had done the unthinkable. He’d presented her design to a client as doable. And they’d bought it.
She’d begged Dan to back out of the deal. But the press he’d received from the sale was amazing, and had led to more architectural business and more requests for impossible, pie-in-the-sky ideas. Instead of admitting the balco
nies couldn’t be done, Dan had found a contractor willing to begin construction with the interior still up in the air. Literally.
Backed into a corner where all she could do was put Fail on her résumé, Harley had quit, only to be told she’d signed a non-compete clause when she’d been hired. Oh, and since her employment package included the firm paying her college debt, she couldn’t work as an architect if she didn’t work for Dan. Not for four more years. He’d told her he’d reconsider the four-year limitation if she came up with a solution that didn’t compromise the design. Her mind was a blank slate.
She wasn’t qualified for any other job that could support her former lifestyle. She’d moved out of her high-rise condo. She’d sold her Lexus SUV. She’d let go of dreams of greatness in the clouds.
And she couldn’t tell anyone why. There was a nondisclosure clause, too.
Clause-clause-clause. Harley wanted to go back to a time when the only clause she knew was Santa. For the girl most likely to change the world, it was humiliating.
Her parents told their neighbors Harley was discovering herself. Privately, they’d counseled her to find a lawyer, not that she or her parents could afford one. Harley’s friends thought she’d finally cracked under the pressure of perfectionism. They’d offered platitudes and shoulders to cry on. Harley had rejected them all. Taylor, Harley’s older brother, had just shaken his head and told her she should have known buildings always came back to straight lines and right angles. That’s how he and their parents approached tile work and life—eyes on the task in front of them—unlike Harley, who was always dreaming.
Without any professional avenues open, Harley had taken a job as a tile installer, a trade her father had taught her growing up. She’d rented a small studio apartment in an almost up-and-coming neighborhood. She kept her head down, away from the clouds. But her eye occasionally drifted toward the architectural elegance of the Houston skyline. And she wondered what she’d do in four years when her non-compete restriction expired. Straightforward lines or curvature that challenged?
In the meantime she lived day-to-day, job-to-job, paycheck-to-paycheck. But the only way she could do that was to have a functioning tile saw.
She stopped at the tool repair shop Vince had mentioned. It was open late because it catered to construction companies. She carried the saw inside.
“Were you in a traffic accident?” Bart, the owner, looked like he’d forsaken years of trips to the barber and opened a running tab at the tattoo parlor next door. He had long brown hair, a haystack beard and line upon line of ink on his arms. “You need to secure your equipment when you drive.”
Harley didn’t care about Bart’s body art, his hair style or his sad attempts at humor. She cared that his hands were nicked and greasy. It meant he was busy making tools go again. “This happened at a job site. Some idiot trashed it.” Because some idiot couldn’t figure out how to make balconies float like clouds. “Can you fix it?”
“Give me two weeks.” Bart stood back, possibly because he’d given customers bad news like this before. Possibly because construction workers could be as volatile as stiffed loan sharks.
Harley fought shoulders that wanted to hunch in defeat and reminded herself that nothing was ever set in stone. There was always another card to play. “How about two days?”
“It’ll cost ya.” Bart’s mouth rolled around before he admitted, “And I might not be able to fix it.”
Harley felt sick. Her hand drifted to her waist. “And when would I know that?”
“When I’m done.” Bart curled his scarred fingers around the handle of her saw, as if preparing to claim it. “No matter what happens, you’d owe me a hundred dollars just for taking it apart. Fixin’ costs extra.”
One hundred dollars and days of uncertainty. Her eye caught on a used tile saw in the corner with a six-hundred-dollar price tag. “What if I sold it to you for parts?”
“I’d give you sixty bucks.”
That’s all? He must have sensed she was desperate.
Harley tried to look like she wasn’t. “How about a hundred?”
Bart shook his head. “I can come up as high as seventy. And even then, I don’t think I’m gonna get seventy dollars’ worth of parts out of it.”
A good, new tile saw would cost around a thousand dollars. Seventy wasn’t going to get her close. And she hated the idea of taking out more credit. What would she do if the truck broke down again?
Harley thanked Bart for his time and lugged the saw back outside.
Her head was pounding. All she wanted was a cold shower and someone to make her dinner.
She thought of Vince and his talent at the grill, of his invitation to his brother’s wedding, of the tenderness of his kiss.
That cold shower. Sadly, it was the only one of her fantasies going to come true tonight.
Tomorrow, however, she might have one more card to play.
* * *
VINCE SAT ON a corner of the deck he’d built yesterday and wondered if he could parlay Harley being unable to go to the wedding into him not going to the wedding, too.
It wasn’t as if he was a beloved favorite son in Harmony Valley. His return might make it hard on his younger brother Joe, the bridegroom, who’d only just begun to earn acceptance in town. He and his brothers had been hellions as teenagers—cutting class, speeding through streets on deafening motorcycles, wearing black leather jackets instead of the school colors. Vince could use his misspent youth and consideration toward Joe’s tentative standing in town as an excuse not to go. But they would only be excuses.
His real motivation for not wanting to go to the wedding? There were things he hadn’t told his brothers. Secrets he’d kept for years about their mother leaving. Those secrets. They sat on his chest when he couldn’t sleep at night, clambering to be free.
Sleep-deprived, Vince blinked at the blazing sun. He had the case of Jerry’s auger motor open and was cleaning the spark plug because the hunk of junk wouldn’t start. Pretty soon, Jerry was going to be wondering why Vince wasn’t setting fence posts. Soon after that, Vince might lose his patience and tell him his equipment sucked. If Jerry took offense to that Vince might admit why he’d applied for a job with Jerry in the first place. After that revelation, it was a toss-up as to whether he’d quit or be fired.
Secrets. They were dangerous to his family’s happiness. Nothing had turned out the way he’d once hoped it would.
He’d left Harmony Valley sixteen years ago, fresh out of high school, determined to find his mother. She’d had a three-year head start, but he recalled she had family somewhere in Texas. He’d needed to know if she was okay and if the decisions he’d made the day she’d left had been the right ones. He’d located her in Sugar Land, Texas, outside of Houston. He’d located her, but he’d never contacted her. Not directly. Though he kept tabs on her all the same...thanks in part to Jerry.
Out front, a truck door creaked and slammed. Harley.
She was trouble. She still saw stars when she gazed at the night sky. She’d earned a degree in architecture, only to give up after what she’d called a colossal failure.
She’d failed once? Boohoo. She needed to learn that life required a strong backbone and the ability to pick yourself up after you got knocked down, no matter how many times it happened.
And yet, looking back, he’d enjoyed his time with her. They’d clicked. After a few weeks of dating, he’d asked her to go to Waco for a weekend. They’d taken the home tour and visited the showrooms of that famous designer. They’d eaten great Tex-Mex. They’d walked along the river and he’d kissed her beneath a rambling oak. And then they’d driven by Baylor University. One conversation thread had led to another and Harley had confessed she’d graduated from Rice in Houston. She was an architect!
She was an architect working as a laborer?
Vince had gotten mad on her behalf. He
’d lectured her about how privileged she was to have the opportunity to go to college. He would’ve liked to have been a mechanical engineer, but his high school grades hadn’t been that hot. And Harley had just thrown her chance away? It made no sense.
She’d told Vince he’d never had to stare down the face of ruin, forced to admit defeat. She’d told him to take her home.
And that had been the end of dating Harley O’Hannigan.
Vince shoved the spark plug home. The heat was rising even though it was only midmorning. Digging post holes and setting them in concrete was going to make for a shirt-drenching day. Vince had heard one of the big airlines was hiring aviation techs and mechanics at the airport. Better pay. Better working conditions. But no—
“Vince.” Harley appeared as she always did for a job site—jeans, T-shirt, braid. She carried a bucket with her tiling tools and a manual tile cutter. She set everything down near the outdoor kitchen on the deck, frowning at her next project.
He’d been relieved she’d turned him down for the wedding. After the way things had ended between them, he never should’ve asked her in the first place. “How’s that bump?”
She reached up to touch the back of her head. “Better.”
He resisted the impulse to see for himself. “And how goes the tile saw repair?”
“Worse.” Harley came to sit nearby, a light sheen of sweat on her forehead. “I’ve been thinking about your brother’s wedding.”
The humidity in the air pressed in on Vince.
“Is it a formal affair?” she asked.
“It’s outdoors and I’ll have to wear a suit. Does that qualify as formal?” Whatever the answer was, he hoped she hadn’t reconsidered being his date.
“That’s not too formal.” She smiled the way a woman does just before she says yes to something she isn’t exactly thrilled about agreeing to.
Reflexively, Vince smiled back. And then he remembered he’d changed his mind about taking her.
Marrying the Wedding Crasher Page 2
