by Sarah Remy
“A week?”
“My clients expect big, Abby. Especially during Christmas. And it’s my job to make them happy.”
“I get that.” Chris guessed his mom was thinking about Mrs. Carlyle and her etched limestone moldings.
“I need your help.”
She picked up her coffee and sipped. She watched Everett over the brim, stared at him for so long that Chris began to worry. Then she balanced the cup between her hands on her knee.
“We can do the flagstones. It’ll cost you to get it done, especially as the ground freezes, but we can do it, if I juggle a few jobs around. And I’m willing to finish furnishing the house, but that’ll cost you, too. Christmas is only two months away.”
“As for the rest...” She shook her head. “I don’t do caterers or transportation.”
He nodded. “I’ve an assistant for that. You’ve got an eye for this house. Would you consider handling the seasonals?”
Her forehead wrinkled. “It’s called Chesapeake Renovations. We’re not party planners. Jackson wouldn’t know a bayberry garland from a snake. And I’ve got three jobs in the wings.”
Everett shifted slightly, and Chris’s heart stopped, sure he’d been seen. But Everett only walked around the counter, and dumped his mug into the sink.
“How much work do you get done in the winter?” He turned on the tap. “I’ll pay time and a half, so long as Pierce doesn’t wrap my banister with adders.”
Chris took a deep, quiet breath. Time and a half was a good thing. His mom usually danced in the shower after a day of time and a half.
“Double time,” she returned. “I hate the Christmas rush.”
“No rush if you start now, Abigail.”
“Double time,” she repeated. “I’m a contractor, not a fairy godmother. I can’t work miracles without cash flow.”
“I’ll want multiple trees. Decorated. Colonial style. No silly themes.”
“I’ll want twenty-five percent in hand before you fly back West.”
“Get me the bid tomorrow.”
“Done.” She slid off the stool and set her coffee cup in the sink.
Chris crouched against the wall, waiting. But his mom just stood there next to Everett, back to the room, which was dumb because he was pretty sure she couldn’t see anything in the dark past the kitchen window. He couldn’t even see the their reflections in the glass as they stood shoulder to shoulder. The lights were too low.
He was glad she wasn’t crying any more. He guessed she was probably thinking about work. And even though Everett hadn’t exactly said anything to get him out of the dog house, it looked like he had managed to scrub some of the mad off.
And double time wasn’t as good as a rich dad, not really. But Chris could tell his mom was pleased, so maybe Everett had handled things his own way, given Chris and his dad a little more time to make things right.
Because Chris just knew that somehow, they would.
Pierce lived on several acres of land just outside Williamsburg proper. Everett’s car slipped on the muddy road, then clattered over a cow grate. Three big dogs greeted his arrival with loud enthusiasm, and herded the Spyder farther along until the road dead ended in a clearing occupied by a late model Airstream and Pierce’s dingy truck.
Everett braved the dogs, and rapped on the trailer door. When there was no response, he knocked a second time. The trailer was silent, the door securely locked.
The dogs - labs, he thought - sat politely in a row alongside the truck and watched, tongues lolling. One brown, one yellow, one black. He suspected they might be laughing at him.
“Where’s your master?”
One of the dogs barked sharply and bounded from the clearing. Its companions followed after, tails wagging. Somewhat less eager, Everett slogged through high grass in their wake.
Behind the Airstream a trail had been mowed into the grass. The dogs ran three abreast. In the near distance Everett heard the chop of an axe against wood. He could smell wet sap and crushed grass and the faint, sweetly acrid perfume of a cigar.
The second hollow was smaller, clearing just begun. Felled pines lay where they had dropped, waiting to be trimmed and split. A smaller pile of what looked like oak had already been stacked in a neat pile.
Pierce glanced up at the dogs’ arrival, and then buried his ax in a pine log. He took the cigar from his mouth, and eyed Everett with a distinct lack of welcome.
“Come for a rematch?”
Everett nodded at the ax. “You’ve an unfair advantage, I think. Nice bit of land.”
“It suits my purpose.”
“Which is?”
“Keeping the likes of you out of my hair.” He sucked on his cigar, then exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Makes me wonder how you managed to find my place.”
“I asked Chris. He told me all about pizza nights in the trailer. And the fence he’s going to help you build once you finish clearing pasture.”
“Damn. Sold out to a midget with a fancy car.” He whistled at the dogs, and started back down the trail. “What do you want?”
Midget, hell. The man didn’t seem quite so large walking beneath the overhang of old forest.
“I have a proposition.”
“You’re not my type.”
“For which I am eternally grateful.” One of the dogs slobbered against Everett’s leg. He set a hand on the massive head, and the dog wiggled with joy. “I want to buy you out.”
Pierce stopped in front of his trailer, turned, and dragged again on his cigar. He shook his head. “Nothing I have is for sale.”
“I want your half of Chesapeake Renovations.”
“Like I said,” the man fished a key from under the trailer’s top step and used it to unlock the door, “nothing I have is for sale. Especially to you.”
“I’ve got a talent.”
“Lucky you.”
Pierce propped the door open with a chunk of what looked suspiciously like Carrera marble. He ducked his head, and stepped inside. The dogs followed. Everett stood in the grass and waited. He was wondering if he would have to go in after the carpenter when Pierce ducked back out again, a bottle of tequila dangling from his fingers, the quenched stub of his cigar tucked behind one ear.
“Fact is, I know all about your talent.” He set two mismatched shot glasses on a stump that was obviously being used as a make shift table, and poured tequila. “I have one, too. And when you started sniffing around Abby again, I decided to use it.” He handed Everett a full shot glass.
“I’ve seen your birth certificate, your bank accounts, your books. I know what brand of toothpaste you brush with in the morning, and what size rubber you use when you get lucky. I know you’ve got a scar behind your left knee, and that you’re allergic to penicillin.”
Pierce lifted his own shot glass in a mock toast and drank. “Cheers.”
Everett said nothing. Pierce shrugged, and refilled his glass. “You didn’t finish high school and you didn’t go to college, but you did get your G.E.D. You spent some time off the radar the year you turned nineteen, but as far as I can tell you didn’t spend any time in the tank.”
“Not for want of trying.”
Pierce tossed back a second shot and smiled, teeth bared in an even, white grin. “You had your nose broken in a bar fight the day you turned twenty-one. After that, seems you settled down, mostly. And developed a talent for taking small, mom and pop businesses and turning them into profitable branded entities.”
“I like making money.”
“For yourself and for other people,” Pierce agreed. “Going to drink that?”
Everett downed the shot, and set the empty glass back on the stump with a click. Pierce drank a third shot and smiled again.
“Another?” He offered.
“No. I don’t play games.”
“Only with your fists?”
Everett looked the other man straight in the eye. “You were trespassing.”
Pierce turned his empty glass over th
e mouth of the tequila bottle. “I’ve got at least three signs posted on my gate. But I don’t suppose you noticed that. And I’m guessing you’re talking about the lady and not the land.”
Everett kept his hands at his side and said nothing. Pierce rolled his neck from side to side, and then crossed his arms.
“You’ve learned by now that I have a sociable interest in the particular lady and nothing more. I like working for her. And I’ve got a particular soft spot for her son. But I’m not set up for a family, and I don’t screw around. That doesn’t mean I want to see either of them hurt.”
“I don’t plan to hurt anyone.” As soon as Everett said it, the weight that had been living in the center of his chest lifted. “I won’t let anyone hurt them. Not me, not anyone.”
“You’ve an overly expensive house on the left coast. The majority of your clients are located in Seattle, Scottsdale, and New York. Abby’s not going to pick up her kid and move him, not now. And she’s not going to leave Chesapeake Renovations.”
“Let me buy you out.”
“Isn’t much of a market for carpenters around these parts. I lucked out. And I’m mortgaged to the hilt.”
“As you apparently already know, I’ve got deep pockets.”
“She won’t like it.”
Everett tilted his head in acknowledgement. “That’s my problem.”
“We both know she’d tan my hide after she finished with yours.”
Everett laughed. Up in the Airstream a yellow dog smeared his nose against a window and peered out.
“I’ll pay you twice what it’s worth.”
Pierce looked up at the sky and then around at the clearing. His smile stretched further.
“I’ll sell you half my share for twice what it’s worth.”
“Twenty five percent of the company.”
“Twenty five percent. For twice what it’s worth. And your fancy little car, to put the cherry on top.”
Everett laughed again.
Chapter Fifteen
SEATTLE WAS EXACTLY AS HE’D LEFT IT. Grey and wet, and smelling of fish and flowers and gasoline and leather. And money. Always money.
He could almost inhale the perfume of new wealth as he drove drenched streets. It was in the brilliant glass palaces being built into green hillsides, in the jazzy electric cars skipping from lane to lane on the freeway, in the low lying strip malls catering to health nuts and astrophiles, and in the boxy corporate factories sprouting up between pine trees.
He was part of the new wealth. He had become accustomed to the small measure of fame success brought, used to the articles with his name in bold. He’d even become less startled at the numbers in his bank account.
But he never forgot the boy who had grown up in Edward’s basement, and he never let himself assume that the bank accounts would continue to grow on their own.
He still worked as if his future depended on it, as if every penny was his first, every multi million dollar deal signed his last. He was good at what he did, and he enjoyed turning a profit.
He was looking forward to time spent back in the office.
Or so he told himself. His head agreed, preferring logic to frustration any day of the week, but his heart and body registered continuing, painful protest.
He buttoned the collar of his coat against the rain as he dashed from car to building, pausing only to greet the doorman. Mirror, chrome, and shiny black granite greeted him, old friends and the height of Seattle architectural style, at least for the year.
He wondered what Abby would think of the stark surroundings, and decided they would take time to find out. Maybe in the spring, when the Sounders’ season started up again and he could take Chris out to catch a game.
Someone had affixed a wreath of fall flowers to the penthouse door. Probably his house keeper. The woman seemed determined to fill his home with blossoms and potpourri.
The wreathe was crooked, but it was also pretty, and it smelled of nutmeg. He straightened the orange and yellow leaves as best he could, and decided he would leave it up for as long as the flowers lasted.
Abby would approve of the color.
“Christ.” He unlocked the door and shoved it open with his foot.
The foyer was black and white marble, and almost completely bare of decoration. Everett had never before noticed quite how cold it seemed. He stood for a breath, feeling lost, then tossed his wallet onto the single black lacquered bench that served as both a seat and mail depository.
He shucked off his shoes and went in search of lunch.
The very expensive and incredibly beautiful bromeliad he’d picked up in March at a local farmers’ market drooped in its pot on the kitchen counter, near death. The orchid he’d nursed for the last five years looked like it had already succumbed. And the shelves of his industrial fridge were bare.
“Hell.” Everett scrubbed a hand through his hair. His housekeeper had a mind like a steel trap when it came to clean toilets and spotless windows, but when it came to some basic needs she could be severely lacking.
He turned in a baffled circle. The huge, state of the art room he’d been so proud of seemed newly cold and sterile and full of echoes. Empty as the front foyer, gleaming and free of dust but welcoming as a tomb.
Every utensil he owned had a place behind closed doors. Only the two suffering plants and a single blue glass vase adorned the counters.
He’d forgotten that there were no windows. Somehow he’d come to expect sunlight in his kitchen.
He ground his teeth together, hard, and then grunted in reaction.
Restless, he cranked open the kitchen tap and let water rush into the sink.
She’d smiled at him when she’d said goodbye, lithe and full of energy in grease stained dungarees and workman’s boots. She’d kissed him on his cheek in front of her son, and then turned away, focused on the plans she had drawn up for his flagstone patio.
Kissed him on the cheek, as if she hadn’t arched beneath him in a wild summer storm.
The tips of his fingers remembered every inch of her body, every angle and swell.
Scowling, Everett set the bromeliad gingerly into the filled sink. Once he was sure the pot wouldn’t tip over in two inches of water, he swiped damp hands across his jeans, and reached for the sleek black phone that hung on the wall alongside the fridge.
Dinner, first. Takeout. Chinese, and lots of it. Then, work. Which was just fine.
Because he didn’t think sleep would come easily.
Voice mail spooled from the speaker phone on Everett’s desk as he stood in his bedroom and watched the sun rise above Lake Washington. Here, at least, the windows were floor to ceiling. Black vertical blinds parted around his body as he set his palm against cold glass.
He’d been missed, but not sorely. Windsor had handled everything that needed handling. Everett had laid well oiled tracks, and business chugged along as it should without him.
“Everett?”
Startled, Everett whirled from the window, and then relaxed.
“Speak of the devil.”
“Should my ears be burning?” Thin and wiry, Mike Windsor tended to overcompensate lack of bulk with color. He wore a bright yellow tie and a pleased grin. “Vivian let me in. How was the flight?”
“Uneventful. You got my latest messages?”
Windsor sobered. “All of them. I can’t say I’m happy.”
Everett crossed to the desk he used as a home office and picked up a file. He weighed it in his hands, and then passed it over. “Notarize these, will you? And then get back to me. I’ll have a memo out before breakfast. And I’ll need you to draw up a list of caterers.”
It galled, some, that he already looked forward to December with an intensity that approached desperation.
The other man sighed. “Maui’s a hard one to give up.”
Everett clapped Windsor on the shoulder. “We’ll manage.” He turned back to his desk, forced himself to think only of business. “We can’t afford not to.�
�
For the first time in as long as Abby could remember, Williamsburg had a white Halloween. Snow fell in sheets, covering the skeletal woods in clean drifts. Grey clouds in the darkening sky made the evening dour.
Creepy, Abby thought in appreciation. A truly ghostly night, perfect for the holiday.
Although, as she stood in the drive way and lifted her face to the blizzard, the air felt decidedly more of January than October. Still, the turning seasons always brought her joy, and she whooped a little out loud as she whirled a circle.
