On the Market (The Ballard Brothers of Darling Bay Book 1)

by Rachael Herron

  Felicia stood as she were going inside, and then sat again. Her eyes flared wide. “I want the treehouse.”

  Liam felt a hollow thump inside his chest. “Can you…can you do that?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. It has to be against the rules, and I’ve looked. But I can’t find anything about it in the contract. Or in any of our other contracts. It’s never come up.” Her hands flew to her cheeks. “I’m not thinking about this. No. I’m being crazy.”

  Liam realized that if Felicia bought the treehouse, then she’d be the woman with the bought-and-paid kisses on the line.

  Huh. Funny. He was suddenly much more amenable to the contact clause.

  Her forehead uncreased, and she reached to grab her laptop from the small glass table. “No, I’m not going to do that. Okay, we’re talking about the bonus schedule. Sure. We had a contestant on our Lost and Naked show who wouldn’t accept that we had a bonus built in for nighttime cuddling, and I’m trying to remember what we replaced it with—”

  “Felicia.” Was it his imagination or did she feel the electricity that crackled between them, too? Like a storm moving in off the ocean—he could almost smell the sharpness of it.

  She jerked up her head and met his gaze. “Yes.”

  “Let’s just say you did it. Bought the house. Had us fix it up.”

  “But I have a condo. In LA.”

  “So call it a vacation home.” She probably had the money.

  “But I have a job, also in LA.”

  “If you bought the treehouse, how would you feel about the contact clause?”

  “Um.” She tilted her head and appeared to be stalling. “I guess it would depend on the brother.”

  Liam didn’t hesitate. “Me. Say it’s me.”

  “Oh.” The word was breathy.

  “So me kissing you. For the first time. Five thousand dollars?”

  She grabbed the contract, and flipped the pages. “Okay. Sure, but no one says you have to kiss anyone. It’s just a potentiality.”

  Liam leaned forward over the paperwork.

  Her head came up quickly.

  And in just the right place.

  Without thinking too much about it, without wondering if he should stop himself, Liam put his hand behind her neck and kissed her.

  For a split second, she tensed in surprised. She gasped against his mouth, her neck muscles rigid. He stilled so he wouldn’t frighten her.

  Then she leaned into him. She tasted like peppermint and honey. Her lips were as charged as the air around them. As her mouth moved against his, as her fingers tangled in his hair, he realized he was in control of nothing at all.

  She gave a quiet groan in the back of her throat. He was suddenly so hard it hurt. And the kiss was becoming something else, something he couldn’t predict.

  He pulled back.

  Felicia blinked and touched her lips. “What the hell was that?”

  “Just getting five thousand dollars out of the way, in case you end up being the client. That’s the first kiss, right?” Oh, he liked the sound of that. It implied there would be a second kiss and a third and fourth and a hundredth and a thousandth.

  Every single one of those he wanted.

  Felicia stared up at him blinking, as if she’d never seen him before. “What?”

  Some women were made for fun, for speed, for a nice friendly sexual hit-and-run. That kind of woman didn’t scare Liam.

  This kind did. This woman’s eyes said to believe her. Then she’d leave and go back to where she’d come from.

  He could fall in love with a girl like this.

  So each and every one of those kisses that he wanted would be a bad idea.

  He touched the balcony railing to steady himself. “That was the wrong thing to do.”

  “I have to agree with you on that one.” But her words were breathy, and her chest rose and fell in the same rhythm as his.

  Bad idea or not, Liam liked kissing this woman.

  Felicia rubbed her forehead, as if it suddenly hurt. “I can’t buy the house. I’m not—anyway. Okay, I’ll be in LA for the next three weeks while we work on casting the client—I’ll talk to Natasha about getting that clause removed, but honestly, I doubt she’ll go for it…” She touched her bottom lip, and then looked up at him. Her eyes were dark pools of heat. Something inside his chest tugged tightly, as if there were a string between his body and hers.

  She was leaving for three weeks, and of course she was. “Yeah.” He needed to run, to get out. It was cowardly but who cared?

  Felicia stood and pushed back her chair, so he’d have enough room to get around her. But the thought of being so close to her, of going through that terrible chintz-filled bedroom again, of making his way down the stairs that smelled of old rose petals and strawberry jam made Liam shudder.

  So he just said, “I’ll see you.”

  Then he sat on the balcony railing, swung his legs over, and in a move he and his brothers had perfected over the years, twisted himself so that he was hanging from the edge of the railing with his hands. He stretched his body as far as he could to the ground, and at the last minute, he let go. He absorbed the shock with his knees, and knew that he’d feel it in his right ankle tomorrow.

  Felicia spoke from above. “Really?”

  It didn’t matter what she thought. She’d be gone for three weeks, and surely in that time, he’d figure out a way to be around this woman without losing his mind.

  Right now it mattered only that he got away from her.

  She made him feel something he’d wished to never feel again.

  Hope.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Did you get the email I sent you last night?” Natasha, as usual, was doing three things at once—walking at her treadmill desk while editing show notes and haranguing Felicia, who was sitting on the office couch, going through applications. It seemed like a lot of single women wanted to own property close to a beach. And close to three handsome brothers. Felicia shuffled through the men’s headshots, pairing them idly with applicants. Did rugged Aidan look better with a blonde or a brunette? Who wouldn’t want to kiss a handsome Ballard brother?

  Felicia had kissed one, after all.

  And Liam had leaped off a balcony to get away from her.

  That was a low point for kissing, even for Felicia, who’d had some spectacularly bad kisses in her life. The sad thing was that it had been a phenomenal kiss, really one of the best, even as ill-advised as it was. It had been intensely hot. Knee-knocking. Scorching. Until he’d leaped.

  Natasha tossed a sharp look over her shoulder. “Hello?”

  “Yes, I got the email.” Felicia had been ignoring it, that was all.

  “I want the treehouse.”

  “We can want whatever property we want, but we can’t make our client buy something she doesn’t want, can we?”

  “Why not? What does legal say? Can we sell it for her after we wrap if it’s not the one she wants?”

  “No.” That wouldn’t be fair to whoever was chosen.

  Natasha’s stride grew quicker and she pushed her straight black hair over her shoulders. “Treehouse. It’s perfect, you can’t tell me it’s not. It’s so run down that a whole remodel will show incredibly well on camera. Plus you have the whole novelty thing going for it. People will eat that shit up. We’ll find a pretty treehugger who’s looking to start a new life in a small town. Oh! What if she hits it off, like for real, with one of the brothers? Do you think we can add a wedding bonus?”

  “It’s too small. Tiny rooms.” Felicia fumbled in her purse for the emergency granola bar she usually kept in it. “And the newer house has a view of the water. The treehouse doesn’t.”

  “Nothing in that town could be too far from the water, right?”

  Natasha was right. That was the galling thing. They could legitimately include shots of the marina, no matter which property they went with. “The treehouse looked like it was about to fall down.”


  “Even better. With luck, they’ll find something majorly structurally wrong, and have to scramble to fix it. It’s perfect.”

  “You can’t.” Felicia couldn’t help the words.

  “Sorry?”

  Natasha wasn’t sorry, Felicia knew. That was the very edge of Natasha’s scary voice. Felicia should tread carefully, or she’d have to woo not only the brothers to do the show, but her boss to get back into her good graces. “I mean, it’s just not a good idea. You didn’t see the place.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Felicia grimaced. Then she took a breath. “No, it’s just not right for us. Trust me.”

  “I have no intention of trusting you. Not now. Not with whatever this is you’re not telling me. Spill.”

  “Nat—”

  Her boss shot her another glance over her shoulder. “What happened? They’re all alcoholics? I mean, I met them in a bar, and that older brother was drunk as hell, but he’d just been jilted.”

  “They’re not alcoholics. Well, at least not that I could tell.”

  “What is it? They’re part of a polygamous cult? Because that could work too. I’m ready to shape this show into a moneymaker, and I know you’ve got my back. Right?”

  Maybe just chewing on something would help. Felicia stuck a piece of gum in her mouth. “Sure.”

  “Then what?” Natasha jabbed at the face of her phone.

  “I want it.”

  “What?”

  “The house.”

  “For yourself?” Natasha hit the stop button and let the treadmill carry her to its edge. “You can’t do that.”

  Felicia couldn’t agree more. “Obviously.”

  Natasha’s voice was even sharper than her gaze as she stepped off the machine. “You have a life in LA.”

  “I do.”

  “And a job. The best job in the world, which is working for me.”

  “True.” Most days Felicia loved working for Natasha. She was fast and regimented and oftentimes difficult, but she got the job done, and she didn’t apologize for doing things her way. She was a champion and a fighter, and Felicia had thought she’d wanted to be just like her.

  Until this afternoon.

  Natasha took a quick sip of water. “You’re suffering holidayitis. You know, when you go to Hawaii and you love it so much you think you want to buy a house there, and then you find out that gas is like twenty dollars a gallon and lizards live on inside walls.”

  “Geckos.”

  “Whatever. They’re horrible. What you really want is to make a shit-ton of money on this show, because you’re a sensible person and my very favorite employee.”

  Felicia sat on the very edge of the sofa. She made her back ramrod straight. “I want the house.”

  Natasha took an audible breath. “Okay. Because you’re my friend, explain this to me.”

  Were they friends? Felicia had never been quite sure. “It’s going to sound stupid, and I’m not even going to try to sugar-coat it. I had a dream about it when I was little.”

  “About this house.”

  “It can’t be, I know that, but it was close enough to my dream to be really spooky.”

  “Hmmm.” It was a dismissive sound. “It’s a huge coincidence.”

  “It is. I know that. If I imagined another house right now, I know it would actually exist somewhere. There’re just not that many ways to put together a house.” That was what she’d been telling herself since they left the property. It was just commonsense. If you imagine something, somewhere it existed just because it was possible. That’s how doppelgängers worked—there were only so many ways to put together a human face.

  And even as Felicia told herself that, she couldn’t help think it was her house. Where she’d finally be home, and live a real life, one that had nothing to do with hiding behind television. “So that’s why I can’t support using this house for the show. I’m going to buy it.”

  “What about your job?”

  Was that a threat in Natasha’s voice? Felicia gripped her pen tighter. “Call it my vacation house.”

  “Can you afford it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if you lose your job?” It was a threat.

  Felicia’s heart fluttered in her chest. “I have money put away. It’s the perfect house for me, even if I don’t live in it now. I can rent it out or put it on Airbnb.”

  Natasha shook her head, as if disappointed in her. “Perfect doesn’t exist. That’s your problem. You’re always hoping that Prince Charming will swoop in on his white horse.”

  The image of Liam rose in Felicia’s mind. He’d look good on horseback.

  And wow, was that ridiculous.

  “It’s just a house, Natasha, not a prince. I saw it first. I’m going to buy it. You need to choose another house for the show’s selection. This one is mine.” Even as she said it, it felt right. It was a fantasy, yes, just like the shows she loved and helped create. But this was the first time she’d felt like she could make the fantasy come true.

  “Goddammit, Felicia. What’s it going to take for me to convince you to put this house on camera? Do you have to be the target buyer for the episode?”

  Felicia laughed. “Don’t joke. I thought about it.”

  Natasha was silent, and the space above her upper lip went white. It only went like that when she was thinking about something that would mean a lot more work for Felicia.

  Oh, no. “I was just joking—”

  “That’s exactly it. Did you film when you were there?”

  “Of course not.” She’d been scouting. Not filming.

  “That’s fine, we can have you run through it again. You think you could act like you’d never seen it before?”

  “No! I’m not an actress.” And she wasn’t interested in becoming one.

  “Yes. This is wonderful. Which guy do you want to date while they’re redoing the house?”

  “What? None of them.” Liam.

  She could see Natasha shifting into high gear. “We’ll pay you, of course.”

  “Natasha—” She would not get steamrolled by her boss.

  “A lot.” Natasha named a figure that would cover the entire down payment.

  “You can’t—” But Felicia had lost her breath. If that’s where Natasha started negotiations?

  “Just a bonus.”

  “It’s not morally right. To have a producer be the talent?”

  “That’s true. You’re fired.”

  The tips of Felicia’s fingers went numb as a chill ran through her. “What?”

  “I’ll rehire you when the episode is in the can. I love it. We can advertise it that way, too. The house that a producer was willing to be fired to have. I’ll have to re-fire you on screen, of course.”

  “I am not an actress.”

  “Two lessons. That’s all it takes. I’ll get you Angelina’s guy. She couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag till he got his hands on her. Anyway. Which guy?”

  “I’ve only met Liam.”

  “Hot, hot, hot. Not as dirty-hot as the other two, but if you want a guy in a suit, he’s the one you should go for.”

  “I’m not going to date a guy on camera.”

  “You don’t have to sleep with him on camera, for crying out loud. Off camera, though, of course, would be nice for us. What’s the big deal?”

  The big deal? Felicia lost the air in her lungs as she imagined Liam naked. Those shoulders—she’d been able to see their definition right through his shirt, and she’d wondered if he was as well-defined all the way down. His hands—so big and wide—on her body, moving, stroking… No, what was she thinking? “That’s basically prostitution, you know. Paying a woman to hook up with a guy just so she can have a little more cash to put toward a house?”

  “Don’t forget, you loved this idea.” Natasha pointed a thin finger at her. “You’re our target market, that’s one of your best qualities. You think this stuff is real.”

  �
��It can be.”

  “My darling girl.”

  They made fantasy shows, yes. Felicia could admit that. But the love that happened as a result could be real and lasting and true. She just knew it.

  So maybe a fantasy house could be obtained in a fantasy way.

  It would still be her house. She would just be getting it in a different way, a way she hadn’t planned on. She’d be using the show to acquire it.

  Or would she be using Liam Ballard? Was that right? Fair?

  “What’s the real problem here?”

  “He is. Liam Ballard. There’s no way he’ll swallow the contact clause.” It was a lie—she’d already told him they could negotiate and she knew they could. The real problem was that Felicia fell in love with men on reality shows as often as she could. It was her favorite thing to do, bar none. But this time the man was real, flesh and blood. Felicia wouldn’t be sitting on her couch, watching, popcorn bowl at her left, remote at her right. She wouldn’t be at work, setting up the shot. She would be in the shot. She would be the one making innocuous comments that the producers would twist into something more, something embarrassing, or worse, something vacuous.

  And Felicia herself, the real girl, would tumble head over heels for Liam. She knew herself too well.

  She just wasn’t cut out for real life. She never had been.

  “Look.” Natasha’s voice was softer now, and she dropped into a cross-legged position in front of Felicia. “I get it. It’s scary, thinking about being on the wrong side of the camera. We’re hidden when we’re on this side, yeah? The end justifies the means, though, doesn’t it? You love that house. And I’m your champion. I want you to get that house, the vacation home of your dreams. I can’t wait for you to show me around. I bet you’ll fit into that little old small-town like you were born to be there. You’ll wear fancy aprons, and be the hit of the bake sale.”

  Felicia blinked hard. Unsure if it was a compliment or an insult, she let herself wonder: what would that be like? To be a real part of the town, to live where people knew her name, said hello to her on the street?

  “You still haven’t given me a good reason why you won’t do it.”

  Because I would fall in love with him. Because he’s real. Because he kisses like an angel on rumspringa. “I just don’t want to.” God, how juvenile. It wasn’t an answer.