A Marriage-Minded Man

by Karen Templeton

  As far as listings went, that is.

  She pulled up in front of the secluded old adobe and got out, getting a scolding from a crow atop a nearby telephone pole, a thick layer of pine needles cushioning her footsteps as she walked up the flagstone path. From the outside, the pinon-smothered house didn’t look too bad—the adobe was solid, the pitched, tin roof seemed in fairly decent condition. On the small side, maybe, but not everybody needed or wanted a big house. And—she turned—the setting was spectacular, with great, sweeping views of sky and mountains and valley.

  Location, location, location…

  Shivering in the frigid breeze, Tess tiptoed around the house’s perimeter, peering inside cloudy windows, the turquoise-painted wooden trim peeling and pockmarked with dry rot…an easy-enough fix. Heck, once the trim was replaced, she could paint it herself if she had to. The inside, though…oh, dear. Even through the murky glass, she could see the outdated kitchen cabinets and countertops, the scarred, smoke-smudged walls, the worn shag carpeting in the living room.

  She got back in her car, giving the poor, neglected house a final glance. Were these people off their nut? Who on earth put a house on the market in that condition? Especially these days?

  Was she off her nut, even considering taking the thing on?

  Twenty minutes later, she walked into the office, nearly giving Candy Stevens, their receptionist, heart failure. “What in the blue blazes are you doing here?” the well-past-forty redhead barked from behind her desk by the front door.

  “Got a divine message I was supposed to come back today,” Tess said, crossing to her side of the one-room office. Dust of postapocalyptic proportions lay thick on her desk.

  “You might’ve given us some warning,” Candy—whose fashion philosophy pretty much began and ended with pushup bras, fringe and Aqua Net—said, following. Today’s ensemble included a snuggly sweater, tight jeans and cowboy boots never meant to come anywhere near a horse. “I haven’t even dusted or anything over here in weeks.”

  “So I noticed.” Tess set her coffee and roll on top of her printer, then shrugged out of her jacket, hanging it on the back of her chair. “Where’s Suze?”

  Who, knowing her partner, would be less than thrilled by her return. Suze wasn’t real big on sharing. Except for rent and utilities.

  “On vacation,” Candy said, madly taking a feather duster to shelves and things, stirring up a lot more dust than she was dispatching. “She’ll be back Monday. Oh, my goodness, honey—you got a rash or something on your neck? You’re all red—”

  “It’s nothing!” Tess said, only to be suddenly squished against Candy’s copious bazooms.

  “God, I missed you,” the older woman whispered, as though somebody might be eavesdropping. Then she let Tess go. “You know I love Suze to death, but she’s…”

  “Suze,” Tess said, smiling. Heaven knew why Suze had taken Tess under her wing, mentoring Tess into as good an agent as she was. Or at least had been. But the four-times-married blonde’s piranha-esque tactics were legendary. Woman could probably sell property to the dead. So why hadn’t she been able to unload the house up on the hill?

  “So I see she dropped the Coyote Trail listing?” Tess said, settling in front of her computer.

  “More like the sellers dropped Suze,” Candy said, butt twitching as she returned to her own desk by the front door. “Birdbrains. They wanna dump it but won’t spend a dime on updates. Suze took a stab at selling it as a fixer-upper, but in this market? No way.”

  “So there’s no lockbox?”

  Candy’s eyes snapped to hers. “You went up there?”

  “Just a little bit ago, yeah. I think it has potential.”

  “For the Addams family, maybe.”

  Tess smiled. “You got the clients’ contact info?”

  Now Candy frowned. Carefully. “Well, sure, it’s still in the system, but honey…you can’t be serious.”

  “What can I say? I’m up for a challenge.”

  Anything to take her mind off Eli, she thought, catching herself moments before she touched the aforementioned “rash” on her neck. But not before the memory of how that rash got there started up the tingling. Again.

  “There’s challenges and then there’s banging your head against a wall. Sugar, I hate to break it to you, but business hasn’t exactly picked up while you were gone. In fact…” She sighed. “Suze said if things didn’t improve by the end of the month she’d have to let me go. So I’m thinking this might not be the best time for you to be thinking about getting back in the groove.”

  A feeling like hot steam flashed up the back of Tess’s neck. “Nobody’s letting you go, Candy,” she said, even as she wondered how she planned on making good on her promise. A moment later, she had the contact info on the screen in front of her; five minutes after that, she’d arranged to meet Fred and Gillian Harris at the house the following Monday.

  She hung up the phone to see Candy wagging her head. “Honey, you are one serious glutton for punishment.” Yeah. Tell her about it.

  Once inside the house on Monday morning, Tess decided it reminded her of a tired housewife who’d given up the good fight. Unfortunately, houses were not capable of dragging their saggy butts to the gym or touching up their own roots.

  According to Fred and Gillian-please-call-me-Gilly, the late-middle-aged, well-heeled sibling duo currently dogging Tess’s heels on her preliminary walk-through, their father had succumbed to Alzheimer’s more than a year before, necessitating their putting him in a care facility. Clearly the poor guy hadn’t been able to keep the place up for some years before that. Still, there was a lot of charm left in the old girl, if you knew what to look for.

  How to bring her back to life.

  But it hadn’t taken Tess five minutes to size up the pair as the “just make it happen” type. These days, though, making it happen took a bit more effort than simply sticking a For Sale sign out by the road and slapping the place up on the Internet.

  “It’s already been on the market more’n a year,” Fred said to Tess’s back as she frowned at the worn, fake brick flooring, the dark, depressing cabinets. Big difference between retro and regressive.

  “So I heard,” Tess said with a slight smile as she peered inside the good-size pantry, recoiling at the telltale scent of rodent droppings.

  “We really need to sell it,” Gilly said. “For Dad.” The neatly coiffed brunette glanced at her brother, then back at Tess. “The place we’ve got him in…it’s good. And, well, pricey.”

  As were, Tess surmised, the gal’s diamond earrings and Fred’s watch. So she wasn’t exactly getting an indigent vibe here, even if she didn’t doubt Charley’s new “home” was costing an arm and a leg. Still, she knew she had to tread very carefully if she wanted this listing. Which she did, so badly she could taste it. To feed her sense of self-worth almost more than her bank account. Not to mention help Candy keep her job.

  “I suppose…” Fred exchanged another glance with his sister. “We could lower the asking price…”

  “Actually, I think you should raise it. A lot.” As expected, four eyes popped wide open. While Tess had them in stunned mode, she moved in for the kill. “Slow market or no, there’s still some demand for these old adobes—”

  “Then—”

  “—as long as they’re in tip-top condition,” she said, and both faces fell. Gee, big surprise. “For the most part, people are looking for vacation homes,” she continued, “someplace to spend weekends skiing or escape from the summer heat. Soon as they get the keys, they want to walk through the front door, kick off their shoes off and run a hot bath, not start gutting old kitchens. And cleaning up mouse droppings.”

  Gilly’s eyes darted around the kitchen. “You think there’s mice?”

  “Oh, I’d stake my life on it. Look,” Tess said, gently, but firmly, when they both made a face, “you gave the fixer-upper plan a year and it didn’t work. Be honest—would you want to live here? In the shape it’
s in now?”

  Another shared glance. Then the woman said, “What…do you suggest?”

  Tapping her pen on her clipboard, Tess looked around, pretending to consider. “I’m not talking major remodel, but the kitchen and bathrooms need some serious updating. New cabinets and countertops, tile floors. And the shelves in the den? Really awful.”

  “Dad built those himself,” Gilly said, sighing. “He was so proud.” She looked at the seventies-era harvest gold stove. “And the appliances?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt to change them out. Don’t have to be top of the line, but they should at least be from this century.”

  The siblings looked at each other, then back at Tess. “What kind of money are we talking?” Fred asked.

  “Well…you could easily sink forty, fifty grand into the place—”

  “Good God!”

  “But twenty-five should cover it.”

  “Forget it—”

  “Oh, come on, Freddy, it’s not as if we don’t have it. And if she can get us—” Gilly turned to Tess. “How much?”

  Tess wrote a number on her pad, then turned it around to show them.

  “Oh, my,” Gilly said, hand on cheek.

  Fred frowned. He seemed to do that a lot. “But there’s no guarantee it’ll sell.”

  “No, there’s not,” Tess said easily. “And I understand your concerns, I really do. But you know, we’re so close to Taos and Santa Fe…once the house is fixed up, even if it doesn’t sell it would make a terrific vacation rental. So there’s another option. We could manage the property for you. You wouldn’t have to do a thing.” When the two exchanged another glance, Tess picked her purse up off the chipped Formica counter. “Tell you what…why don’t I give you a few minutes to talk it over between you? I’ll just wait outside.”

  Tess crossed to the kitchen patio door, the glass practically opaque from God-knew-how-many years’ worth of grime and dust. French doors, both in here and the living room, would be spectacular…

  Five minutes later, if that, she heard the door slide open behind her. “Ms. Montoya?”

  Tess turned, trying not to look too eager. “Yes?”

  “Tell you what,” Fred said, hiking up his designer jeans as he walked out onto the redwood deck. “If you can bring in the renovations for twenty grand, we’ve got a deal. I’m not real keen on the vacation house idea, but Gilly seems to think it could work. And we like your style.” He extended his hand. “So. You’ve got the listing. Until Christmas.”

  Tess’s stomach dropped. “But…that’s less than two months! Six is more customary.”

  “If you can’t sell it before the holiday vacation season starts, we might as well rent it out.”

  That’ll teach her to come up with brilliant ideas.

  “And one more thing—long as you’re hirin’ a carpenter anyway…you know Gene Garrett?”

  “Uh…sure…”

  “He and I went to school together, I know he’s got a cabinetry shop in town. If I gotta spend the cash to fix this place up, might as well toss some of it his way, you know what I mean? Especially these days, I imagine he could use the business. Betcha also if you mention my name? He’ll give us a good deal.”

  Lord save her from cheapskates. And heaven knew there were other carpenters in the area she’d much rather hire, for obvious reasons. But if Gene Garrett was part of the deal, she’d deal.

  “I’ll get in touch with him this afternoon,” Tess said, shaking Fred’s hand.

  “For crying out loud, dog,” Eli yelled at Blue, his father’s old Heeler, when the mutt started yapping up a storm at the front of the shop. “What’s your problem?” A moment later, light flashed across the front room as the door swung open.

  “Anybody here?” Tess called out.

  Thinking, What the hell? Eli set down the sander and walked out front, his fingers jammed in his jeans’ pockets. Busy with the dog, Tess didn’t see him at first, giving him time to give her a nice, leisurely once-over. Tight jeans. High-heeled boots. A soft, body-hugging sweater too long for her leather jacket. Big old dangly earrings. An aura of purpose he still wasn’t used to.

  “Slumming?” he said mildly, making her jump. She straightened, clutching a purse bigger than she was to her side, out of which she dug his sweatshirt.

  “Um…I brought this back,” she said, handing it to him, then looking around. “Your dad here?”

  “Nope. Out on that install. So’s everybody else. Just me and the dog holdin’ the fort. What can I do for you?”

  Yeah, the double meaning had been sorta deliberate.

  Not that she’d give him the satisfaction of reacting. Except for her eyes. Gal’s eyes gave her away every time. And why he was goading her, he had no idea. Wasn’t like he expected, or wanted, anything to come of it. Then again, maybe that was the point. That, knowing he was perfectly safe, he could goad all he wanted.

  Safe from her anyway. Safe from himself? Maybe not so sure about that.

  “I just got the Coyote Trail listing,” Tess said, and he dragged his head back from wherever it had wandered.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

  “Because the place is a dump?”

  “It’s not a dump, it just needs…a little TLC.”

  “Honey, what that place needs is ten years of intensive care.”

  “In an ideal world, maybe. But what I got the Harris spawn to agree to is the rehab equivalent of Botox. In any case, Fred Harris apparently went to school with your dad, wants to give him the work—”

  “Wait a minute…you actually talked them into fixing the place up?”

  She almost smiled. “I can be very persuasive,” she said, her voice all low and sexy, and Eli literally bit his tongue to keep from saying something stupid. Instead he squatted to scratch Blue’s ears.

  “Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Dad’s booked through January. Unless y’all can wait until February—”

  “No, it has to be done immediately. I only have the listing until Christmas.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “Tell me about it.” For the first time, doubt wrinkled her forehead. “Are you sure he couldn’t squeeze this in? Somehow?”

  “You’re talking, what? Kitchen and bath update?”

  “And redoing some of the built-ins, and the window trim…”

  “Then I think it’s safe to say Dad’s not gonna be able to ‘fit you in’.” To prove his point, he walked over to the old, beat-up desk on the other side of the room and picked up a bulging folder.

  “Crap,” she said. “Not that I’m not thrilled for your dad, having so much work.”

  “Of course, if you’re really hard up…” Eli grinned. “There’s always me.”

  “Um, I think I’ll pass.” But she didn’t sound all that happy with her decision. Or him, hard to tell. “Were you always this…cocky and I somehow missed it?”

  “I prefer to think of it as charming.”

  “As I said.”

  Eli crossed his arms. “How come you didn’t call first, save yourself a trip?” Saved yourself the awkwardness of having to talk to me.

  “I did. Nobody answered. Kept getting the machine.”

  “But I’ve been right here…” Eli glanced over at the phone, blinking its little butt off. Messages, 3. “How many times you call?”

  “Three.”

  “Guess I couldn’t hear over the sander.”

  “Guess not,” Tess said, starting for the door.

  “You’d rather lie naked on an anthill than work with me, wouldn’t you?”

  Slowly, she turned, her brows drawn. “Something like that, yeah.”

  “Funny, I would’ve never pegged you as somebody who’d judge a person without having all the facts.”

  The frown deepened. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

  “Frankly, yeah. Because apparently what I said, about how I’ve changed? Didn’t even register. And excuse me, but
it’s just the tiniest bit annoying that you’re assuming a lot based on what basically amounts to hearsay.”

  “You’re saying…the gossip’s untrue?”

  He hesitated. “Not all of it, no. But…” Digging his fingers into the back of his neck, Eli tried to pull in enough breath to ease the tightness in his chest. “But what you hear…I’m more than that, Tess. I swear.”

  “Then if there’s some salient fact I’m missing, by all means, clue me in.”

  A couple of beats passed before Eli walked over to an old futon on the other side of the room and sat on the arm. Unfortunately, this wasn’t just any random piece of furniture, but the very one where they both lost their virginity many moons ago. When Tess sucked in a breath, Eli softly laughed. “Yep. It’s still here. Even if the two kids who enjoyed each other on it aren’t.”

  “Eli…don’t—”

  “You know, I still see glimpses of the crazy, funny girl who could light up a room just by walking into it. Not to mention the one who never had a bad word to say about anybody. It’s not that I don’t understand why she doesn’t come around much anymore,” he said quietly, “but I sure do miss her. Like I said, I know I hurt you back then. And I don’t even expect you to accept my apology. But seems to me that girl wouldn’t still be obsessing about a failed high school romance.”

  Tess gave him a long, penetrating look, then let out a sigh that seemed more perplexed than mad. “First off, that girl? I’m not all that sure she ever really existed. Secondly, I’m hardly obsessing about our breakup. What still bugs me, though, is that you never gave me an explanation. Not even when you called to apologize the other day. So, combined with your reputation? The anthill’s looking pretty good.”

  Eli’s brow knotted. “You never asked.”

  “I shouldn’t have had to ask! Because I deserved an explanation. I deserved…” She pushed out a breath. “More. And I’d expected more from you. Hence the mop. And the anthill thing—”