by Wendy Wax
Avery flushed with anger and bit back a retort as the hair person did as instructed and the wardrobe mistress tugged on the back of Avery’s fuchsia sweater, which had to be a full size too small, so that the deep V dipped even lower.
When they’d sold the first season of Hammer and Nail to HGTV, she and Trent had been cohosts in the truest sense of the word. Married for three years at the time, she’d been designing single family homes for the Bradley Group, an architectural firm in the Nashville area. Trent was sales manager for a well-known cabinet manufacturer and dabbled at designing custom furniture on the side. On a whim, they’d documented their own home remodel and then turned the footage into a demo for a weekly do-it-yourself show.
For the first three seasons their on-camera time and billing had been pretty equal. But then the network had hired a new program director who’d wasted no time turning Trent into the main spokesperson and “expert.” Avery became his “assistant.” Over the last twelve months, during which their marriage had deteriorated and then limped to an end, her role had shrunk even further until she was little more than the Vanna White of the remodeling set.
“Stand by. We’re on in ten.” The floor director held up both hands and then began the countdown. When only an index finger remained, she pointed it at Trent. The light on his close-up camera glowed red.
Trent flashed an easy smile directly into the camera’s boxy lens. Sliding the hammer back into his tool belt, he read the lines on the teleprompter that explained how he’d affixed the cabinet to the wall. The light on Avery’s camera blinked on and she turned her gaze to Trent’s face.
Just over six feet tall with broad shoulders, strong, even features, and a Cary Grant–like cleft in his chin, Trent Law-ford was just as good-looking now as he was the day he’d first called on the Bradley Group. She’d been attracted to his air of calm confidence infused with ambition and swept along by his easy charm. It was only later after the yearlong courtship and the planning of their wedding followed by the excitement of buying and remodeling their first home that she’d begun to realize still waters did not necessarily run deep. And the air of confidence masked a deep-seated need for attention.
One day she’d realized that her frantic treading of those too-still waters was barely keeping them afloat. Her father’s death had stripped away all patience for pretense.
“Cut.” The director’s voice rang out on set. “Avery, you can’t roll your eyes like that when you’re in the shot. You’re supposed to be pointing and smiling. And nodding in agreement.”
Avery sighed. She’d done so much nodding lately she felt like a bobblehead doll.
Trent raised an eyebrow in her direction. His lips twisted into a bit of a smirk. He’d been shocked when she’d first questioned the direction, or lack thereof, of their marriage. Given the number of women who’d pursued him over the years, it had clearly never occurred to him that any woman, especially his wife, might question her luck in landing him. In Trent’s estimation, if neither party was lying or cheating, there was no problem and certainly no reason to put the relationship under a microscope. His shock had turned to anger when, in the wake of her father’s unexpected death, she’d pulled out not only a microscope but a dissection kit. By the time it was over, the dissatisfaction had been all his; the fault all hers.
“Let’s try it again,” Jonathan said.
Trent smiled into the camera and removed the hammer from his tool belt to start the second take. Over the top of the three cameras Avery spotted Victoria Crosshaven, the network’s program director, watching intently. Somewhere in her early fifties, Victoria had a good fifteen years on both Avery and Trent, but she was still beautiful in a knife-edged, well-preserved way.
The red light on the center camera flashed on as the floor director lowered her hand once again. Trent slid the hammer into his tool belt and delivered his lines. This time Avery flashed her most admiring smile, batted her eyelashes, then pointed happily at the cabinet, even though she could see that he’d hung it more than a little off center.
“Cut! That’s the look!” Jonathan’s voice boomed through the intercom. “Let’s break for lunch. I want everybody back in exactly one hour.”
The set began to empty as Victoria Crosshaven strode past the cameras to where Avery and Trent still stood. James, their producer, followed.
“You were great,” Victoria said to Trent. “You are golden on camera. And I’m going to make sure everyone knows it.”
She motioned James closer. “I thought we might add a viewer mail section for the next season. Maybe Trent could answer questions about architectural design and home styles.”
“That’s a great idea,” James said. “We’ve had viewers asking for something like that.” He shifted his weight uncomfortably. “But Avery is actually the degreed architect. Maybe we should have her handle that segment.”
There was a brief but potent silence. Avery stepped into it, forcing her way into Victoria’s line of sight. James put a warning hand on Avery’s shoulder.
“I’ll give it some thought,” the network exec said without an ounce of sincerity. She looked Avery up and down. “Great sweater.” Her smile was dismissive as she hooked her arm through Trent’s and led him off the set.
Avery spent most of their lunch break fuming. “The whole idea for Hammer and Nail was mine,” she pointed out to James. “I’m the one who pitched it. And I’m the one who sold it to the network. And now I’ve been reduced to smiling and pointing like I don’t have an architectural degree or a thought in my head. I grew up on my dad’s construction sites. I redesigned Barbie’s Dream House and the interior of her Motorhome when I was eight.” She took a sip of ice water but could barely swallow it. “Can Victoria just do whatever the hell she wants?”
“Yes,” James said with complete certainty.
Avery touched a hand to the poufy blonde do. “I feel like a Dolly Parton imitator.” She shoved her plate away. “It’s so humiliating.”
She saw agreement in James’s eyes along with something else she couldn’t identify.
“All I know is I’m not signing any contract that doesn’t give me equal billing and promotion.” She glanced down at the sweater that would have been too tight on a B cup, let alone her D. “And I think a wardrobe clause might be in order.”
“That’s assuming there is another contract.” James cleared his throat. “Are you certain your agent is still representing both your interests?”
Avery shook her head. “We’ve been negotiating since before the divorce became final. Trent says we should leave well enough alone, but I’m really fed up with so many things.”
“It’s not Trent’s contract I’m worried about,” James said.
“Oh?”
“Seriously, Avery. You’re no longer a package deal and the network knows it. Not to mention that Victoria clearly has the hots for Trent. And he’s not exactly fighting her off.”
“No, he isn’t, is he?” Avery picked up her fork, then set it back down. She had no appetite for the Cobb salad staring up at her. Trent had always been attractive to women. She didn’t think he’d actually started sleeping with any of his admirers until they’d separated, but he was highly susceptible to admiration and flattery. For such a good-looking guy he was surprisingly needy. She pushed her plate away and set her napkin on the table as she forced herself to accept the truth. Trent might not actively throw Avery under a bus, but he wouldn’t necessarily throw himself in front of her and pull her out from beneath the wheels, either.
In the end she felt as if the bus had mowed her down, then backed over her a couple of times just to make sure all signs of life had been squashed out of her. Less than two weeks after her lunch with James, Avery was, in fact, dropped from Hammer and Nail, which would now be hosted by HGTV hottie Trent Lawford. James and Jonathan and the rest of the crew took her out for a very dispirited good-bye dinner the evening after her departure “to seek other opportunities” was announced. This time Avery didn’t eve
n bother to order food, concentrating instead on the pitchers of margaritas that James kept coming. Neither Trent nor Victoria Crosshaven attended. Avery went home with her former coworkers’ best wishes and the makings of a hangover.
Now as she sat in the condo that she’d once shared with Trent, Avery realized that she no longer had a real reason to be in Nashville. Her closest friends were scattered around the country and kept in touch via phone and Internet. Those friends she’d made at the Bradley Group and with Trent seemed uncertain which of them to claim. After five years on television, the idea of going back into architecture held limited appeal.
In her rattiest bathrobe, she channel surfed and ate junk food even though a few extra pounds were something a five-foot-three person could not afford. Her nails were ragged and her roots had begun to show. She clutched a picture of her father and herself in hard hats on one of his construction sites. She figured she must have been about ten at the time, based on her Farrah Fawcett shag and the absence of breasts—just a couple of years before her mother had left them. Looking at the loving smile on his face and the sturdy arm around her shoulder, Avery felt the potato chip she’d been munching go gooey in her mouth. Her vision blurred.
Her dad had died just over a year ago. He’d dropped dead of a heart attack on a construction site. One minute, according to his longtime partner, Jeff Hardin, he was arguing with a drywaller; the next he was toes up on the unfinished subfloor. Avery had done her best to feel grateful that he hadn’t suffered and had died doing what he’d loved most. She’d gotten through his funeral by picturing him in a contractor’s version of heaven with the smell of sawdust in his nostrils and a tool belt slung around his hips. Numb from the loss of the person who’d loved her most, Avery sleepwalked through her divorce. Despite her attorney’s advice she’d asked for little. She’d been the one who’d wanted out. Besides, she had a decent salary from Hammer and Nail. And from the day her mother deserted them, her father had made it clear that everything he had would go to his daughter. After his death, his attorneys had confirmed this, assuring her his estate was significant and it was a simple matter of probating the will.
So while Avery was somewhat embarrassed by how pathetic she felt, the truth was she could afford to wallow a bit. It was all right to take a little time getting her bearings. It wasn’t as if she was going to be out on the street.
She was lying on the couch, clutching the photo and the bag of potato chips to her chest, when the phone rang. The sound seemed shrill and unaccountably loud. The bag of chips rustled as she reached across it for the phone.
“Avery?” It was Blake Harrison, her father’s attorney.
She sat up on the couch, ignoring the crunch of potato chips inside the bag.
“Um-hmm?” She swallowed the last of a soggy potato chip and wiped her free hand on her robe.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.” She stood and walked to the window. “I’m fine.”
“Well, we finally have some news about your father’s estate.”
“That’s good.” She couldn’t really whip up any enthusiasm for the subject. It had dragged out so long now, it hardly seemed real. She would have traded every potential penny to have her father back.
“Well, not exactly.”
Her gaze stalled on the car in the next driveway. She watched it back out slowly, saw her neighbor’s garage door go back down. “What’s going on?” she asked. “I thought it was just a matter of paperwork. ‘Dotting the i’s,’ I think you said. ‘Crossing the t’s.’ ”
“Yes, well, that’s what we thought. But there’s been a bit of a wrinkle.” There was a pause. Avery stared out at the budding tulip tree. The condo’s front yard was small, about the size of a walk-in closet, but pretty much everything in it was in bloom. “We’d like you to come down to Tampa so we can, um, explain things in person.”
Avery hadn’t studied the law. Nor had she dealt with lawyers any more than she needed to, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that “wrinkle” was not a word you wanted crossing your attorney’s lips. She reminded herself that her father had used the firm of Harrison and Hargood since before she was born and had complete faith in them. She looked down at the ancient bathrobe. Her slippers were scuffed, the fake fur matted. “This isn’t really a good time for me to travel. I don’t think . . .”
“Avery, I wouldn’t be suggesting a meeting if I didn’t think it was absolutely imperative. We need to talk about this in person.”
“Blake, I’m not coming unless you tell me what’s going on.”
There was another pause. Avery could feel him weighing the alternatives, trying to figure out how to couch whatever it was in the best possible light.
“Just spit it out. Really. I need to know what’s going on.”
“Well, there’s a reason it’s taken so long to get your father’s estate out of probate.”
She waited.
“And it’s not good, not good at all.”
“I’m getting that part,” Avery said. “Just tell me the rest. I can’t take another cloud hanging over me.”
“Your father’s estate was sizeable. He left you over two million dollars. Two point two to be exact.”
This didn’t sound bad. In fact, it was far more than she’d expected. She didn’t have expensive tastes or particularly bad habits. She could . . .
“Unfortunately, every penny of it was invested with Malcolm Dyer. You may have read about the Ponzi scheme he perpetrated and the, um, fact that he disappeared with most of his clients’ assets.”
“He took all of my father’s money? All two point two million?”
“He took a lot more than that. Over three hundred million at last count.”
“But they’re looking for him, right? They’re going to make him give it back?”
“Oh, they’re looking. But so far he’s the invisible man. It’s possible that the majority of the money is so far offshore it’ll never be found.”
“You’re telling me there’s nothing left?” The numbness was starting to dissipate now. How dare this crook do that to her father. What right did he have to steal what it had taken her father a lifetime to accumulate? She couldn’t even let herself think where that left her.
“There is one asset. It’s a beachfront, um, well, it just says ‘mansion.’ According to the letter we just received it’s located out on the tip of Pass-a-Grille.” He named the beach just thirty minutes southwest of Tampa that she’d played on as a child.
“I have a beachfront mansion on Pass-a-Grille?”
“Well, actually, you own a third of the alleged beachfront mansion. We had filed a claim and we now have a letter from the trustee assigned to award and distribute Dyer’s seized assets. We haven’t had a chance to send anyone out there yet.”
“Which third?” she asked dully. Maybe the roof was hers. “And what do you mean by ‘alleged’?”
“I can’t really answer any of that. But there are two other co-owners. Two other investors who were taken by Malcolm Dyer. How soon can you get here?”
Avery looked down at her food-stained robe and the bag of crushed potato chips on the floor. She didn’t have a job or anyone to check in with. Of course, she no longer had an income or, apparently, an inheritance.
“Well, it doesn’t look like I can afford a last-minute airline ticket or a rental car.” What little she had in the bank wasn’t going to last long. “I guess I’ll be driving. Why don’t we say the day after tomorrow?”
Five
Nicole Grant, dating guru and founder of Heart Inc., sat at a prime table on a two-story deck overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The restaurant was one of thirty owned by her new client Darios Thomolopolus, who had made his first fortune in shipping and was currently amassing another under the brand of Darios T, which included the thirty Mediterranean restaurants spread across America and a packaged food division that had brought Greek cuisine to grocery freezer cases everywhere.
Darios Thomolopolus was
seventy-five years old. In addition to his massive fortune, he possessed a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, thick, expressive eyebrows, and bold, if slightly bloated, features.
A widower with little patience for dating, Darios was in the market for a new wife. And this time he wanted a tall blonde with large breasts, long legs, and what Nicole understood to be a brain large enough to handle herself in social situations but not so large as to question anything her future husband might say or do.
“And she cannot be a day over thirty-five,” he said adamantly. “I have noticed that after that the fruit becomes . . . less firm.”
Nicole nodded and made a note on her legal pad. Sellby date—35. She’d been in the matchmaking business for more than a decade, had a presence in New York and Los Angeles, and had a long string of successful and high-profile matches to her credit. She appeared often on the morning and noon talk-show circuit and had published one book of dating advice.
Despite all of this, she was still occasionally surprised by the laundry list of requirements and features each client demanded. Though these people negotiated every day in their business lives, they were unwilling to compromise in any real way when it came to their personal requirements. Long legs, big breasts, and moderate brain size were nothing compared to some of the things Nikki had been asked to deliver.
She herself was a decade beyond Thomolopolus’s expiration date and nothing about her was as “fresh” or as firm as it had once been. The Tina Turner song “What’s Love Got to Do with It” played in her head, but it had been years since she’d heard a client gush about falling in love. Which was probably a good thing. Because after two failed marriages of her own, Nicole could still deliver a laundry list of attributes, including brain size and personality; “happily ever after” was much harder to sell and deliver.
