Build it Strong (The Ballard Brothers of Darling Bay Book 2)

by Rachael Herron

  Liam and Jake both frowned.

  Aidan, though, smiled. Maybe this could work.

  A commotion rose outside the front windows of the café. As if he’d summoned her (had he, perhaps? had Norma?) Tuesday walked past, trailing cameras.

  “Speak of the devil.” Aidan stood. He ignored his brothers’ protestations. “I believe I’ll go see how’s she’s enjoying her time in town.”

  Chapter 7

  D

  arling Bay was so quaint that it almost made Tuesday wonder if the whole was a mafia-run front. What town could possibly be this sweet? The café they’d just passed, the Golden Spike, reminded her of Luke’s Café in the Gilmore Girls. It appeared to be connected to a saloon of the same name across the parking lot, a building so old-western looking that she expected a posse to come riding up to the doors, desperate for cool whiskey and warm women.

  Just a bit beyond the café, a gazebo nestled in a pocket park. The white wood of the building was surrounded by low pink roses, and white tulle hung from its beams, as if a wedding had just ended. Tuesday looked at her feet—sure enough, grains of rice were embedded in between the paving stones. “Did someone get married here?”

  Felicia Turbinado said, “Oh, yeah. There’s a wedding a week here, sometimes more. It used to be a popular place for locals to get married but since the show, a ton of tourists are taking up the tradition. Last spring, during El Niño, it rained so much that this little park became a rice paddy.”

  “Literally?”

  Felicia nodded. “White rice shouldn’t have sprouted, but someone brought organic brown rice, and it did. We had rice growing right here on the coast. They cut it down, of course, and resodded the grass, but I’ve always thought that was a shame. I bet the rice grown from it would be so sweet from all that wedding love, it could probably cure a disease or two.”

  “Well, that’s a delicious flight of fancy, ain’t it?”

  The voice came from behind them. Tuesday knew who it was before she even turned around.

  Aidan stood tall, his boots spread on the sidewalk like he’d earned the right to fill the space.

  “Aidan!” Felicia stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. Right, she was kind of a sister-in-law. She looked happy to see him.

  Tuesday wasn’t happy to see him. She was something but she couldn’t quite name it, and she didn’t like things she couldn’t name. They made her nervous.

  “Where’s the handsome brother?” Felicia asked.

  “Obviously.” Aidan stuck a thumb into his chest. “I’m right here.”

  “No, the really good looking one.”

  “Oh, that one. He’s in the café.”

  “Plum muffins.”

  “It’s hard to resist their call.”

  He hadn’t acknowledged Tuesday at all. He looked at the camera crew, and nodded to the guys holding the mics. He smiled widely at an older woman who walked right through middle of the rather impressive traffic jam they were creating on the sidewalk.

  But he hadn’t looked Tuesday in the eye once.

  It irked her. “Hi, Aidan.”

  He appeared to jump. “Oh, hey. I didn’t notice you.”

  Jackass. His jibe worked, though. Tuesday immediately felt drab in her black knit dress that had seemed professional when she’d put it on that morning.

  “Hey there.” She pushed up her glasses with one finger and tried to meet his gaze directly, but he’d already looked away.

  Felicia pulled a small notebook out of her pocket and flipped a couple of pages. “Since you’re here, can we get a walk and talk with you?”

  Wait. What? With Aidan? “I thought this stuff was all planned out in advance.”

  “It is. By me.” Nothing seemed to flap Felicia. What would that feel like?

  “Yeah, okay.” Aidan pushed at his hair. “I look all right?”

  “You’re putting the reality back into reality TV. You look fine,” said Felicia. “The wind would destroy anything we did with your hair, anyway.”

  Like it mattered. Men. The makeup person had spent thirty minutes on Tuesday that morning, and she still felt disheveled. She’d worn a dress for the first time since she’d last been in a classroom, but it was a wool-nylon knit. She’d thought it had been going to rain again but thirty minutes ago, the clouds had evaporated into nothing. Was that what fog did? The mugginess had stayed, though. Sweat trickled down the base of her spine into the back of her underwear. She felt sodden. They had fog in Duluth (they’d once had a fog horn in the harbor) but she’d heard that ocean fog was different. This was. She knew her hair, which went frizzy on a good day, was probably triple the size it had been when she’d last looked in a mirror.

  Aidan, though?

  Damn.

  He wore a dark green T-shirt that read “I’ll get my tool kit” over the image of a roll of duct tape. His jeans were old, light blue in most places. A dark blue patch had been sewn on near the knee, and it didn’t look like the pre-distressed jeans that came from the store. Who loved him enough to sew on a patch for him? A girlfriend? Not his mother—it had come up a couple of times on the show that they’d been raised by their mother’s second husband, Bill. She shouldn’t have jibed him about it the day before. But he’d needled her so hard she hadn’t been able to help it.

  Network people hooked up Aidan’s mic pack, sticking it into the back of his jeans. For a moment, Tuesday wanted to be the one with the excuse to touch him. His face managed to look rugged and grumpy at the same time, his jaw stubbled and his brows drawn close. “Ow! Do y’all really have to be so far into my pants?”

  Into his pants. Tuesday’s brain flashed white, as if snow-blinded by a freak Minnesota blizzard.

  “We’re walking.” Felicia pointed forward. “And we’re talking. We’ll flash back to this as if you just got to town, Tuesday. Can you act like you’re seeing it for the first time?”

  That was easy. It felt as if she were. Darling Bay lived up to its name, but at the same time, it appeared real. A guy on a bike whirred past, his bell dinging cheerfully. A father led a crying toddler toward a car. A woman wearing a lot of makeup, twin slashes of color at her cheeks, didn’t look up from her cell phone and almost walked straight into Gene, one of the camera operators.

  Felicia poked Aidan in the arm. “So Aidan, you’re a long-term resident as well as the head of construction in On the Market. I’m sure Tuesday would like a quick tour. Do you mind?”

  Aidan nodded. “You bet, Felicia. This town really means a lot to me, and I’d love to show you a little bit of it, Tuesday.” He pointed down a small alley. “You mind if we detour down here?”

  Tuesday didn’t trust his tone of voice, but she trooped on, trying to forget that one of the cameras never left her face. She plastered on a half-smile and hoped it didn’t look too much like a grimace.

  “Down here, yeah, follow me.” Aidan half-knelt and gestured into a drain at the edge of the street. “You see that?”

  Everyone looked at Tuesday, and she realized, belatedly, that she was the star of the show.

  Oh, crap.

  “The grate? Yes.”

  “This right here was the starting point of the Great Rat Standoff of 2006.”

  Definitely not what she’d thought he was going to lead with. “Oh?”

  “As far as we can tell, Ira Higgins, who was five at the time, released his sister’s two rats here. He’d read that they liked to be in fields and wanted them to be free. But they were Norway rats, and though we didn’t know it at the time, they’re larger and hardier than any of the other rats we had living under the town.”

  Tuesday frowned. “Okay?”

  “Within six months, rats had taken over the town.”

  Felicia laughed melodically. “Oh, Aidan.”

  He stood. There wasn’t a glimmer of humor in his face. “That was a rainy year, you might remember, one of the wettest on record. And as you might guess, the water table underground is pretty high, since we’re so close to sea level. In
certain parts of town, we’re actually below it.” His voice lowered as if he were telling a ghost story. “And every time it rained, rats came crawling out of every toilet in town.”

  Tuesday jumped backward, as if rats were pouring out the grate toward her. She bumped into Felicia, and then skittered sideways, trying to regain her balance. “No, they didn’t.”

  “They did.” Aidan nodded solemnly. “I have to admit, I never saw one come up my own toilet—”

  “Ah-ha!”

  “But I did hear a noise in my bathroom trash can.”

  Tuesday swallowed her shiver. “A rat?”

  “A mama rat. With nine tiny little rat babies.”

  Oh, God. Tuesday did not like rats. At home they’d stayed in the barn, where rats were supposed stay. “You’re making that up.”

  He held up his palm. “Scout’s honor.”

  Felicia inserted herself between them. “All right, how about show us something else. Something nice.”

  “Nice? Okay. Follow me!” Aidan wove his way through the group and led them out of the alley and across Main Street.

  Damn, he had a great ass. His jeans looked just right. Tuesday felt her whole face heat. Could the camera tell where she was looking? She aimed her gaze over his left shoulder and kept walking.

  Good. They appeared to be headed for the beach. Another block, and she was certain. “Careful crossing the street here,” Aidan called over his shoulder. “Two pedestrians have been hit right in this spot.”

  Doubtful, Tuesday looked around. “There’s, like, no traffic.”

  “Not the time of day for it.”

  She followed the direction of his pointing finger to the clock tower that sat on top of a short, square building. Just after nine. “If now isn’t, when is?”

  “School time. All those mothers picking up their kids from school. The whole town slows almost to a crawl. It’s like a Bay Area traffic jam, right at two-forty. You would not believe what it’s like.”

  He was right. She didn’t. “I don’t drive.” Anymore.

  He looked quizzical, his eyebrows drawing together briefly, but then he said, “Okay!” He stuck his hands in his front pockets and rocked back on his heels. He turned to face the ocean. “Can you guess what we’re looking at here?”

  Tuesday looked at the water. Waves thundered against the beach, pounding with a force she could feel in the balls of her feet. Gulls circled overhead, calling loudly down to them. The air smelled clean, as if the color blue had a scent. “The Pacific Ocean?” She tried to make it sound funny. Cheeky. Instead, it came out like she actually wasn’t that sure.

  “Correct! But that’s not the only answer. Anyone else?” Aidan didn’t give them much of a chance before he answered his own question. “This is also the most treacherous stretch of coastline on the Northern Coast. Any guesses as to the number of people drowned out here in the last century?”

  Tuesday shook her head. She was pretty sure Aidan was working hard to rattle her, so she kept her mouth shut.

  “I’ll tell you then. Two hundred and fifty-seven.”

  “Holy—”

  “And the majority of those are in the last fifty years, since surfing caught on.”

  “That’s awful.” Why was he telling them this? Was he trying to scare her for some reason? “But I don’t surf, so I should be okay.”

  “We’ve had six tourists swept off Bald Cypress Rock by rogue waves.”

  Tuesday squinted at him. What was he playing at? “Did they live?”

  He shrugged, slowly. “Who knows? Their bodies were never found, if that’s what you’re asking. Some could argue they washed up somewhere else and were fine, but I think we would have heard about it.”

  “Is this the haunted tour of Darling Bay?”

  Aidan appeared to brighten. “No. But it should be! Follow me, we’ll go look at Miss Bridget’s old boarding house. It’s been closed up for years, but on nights with no moon, you can hear moaning from the garden.”

  “Cats having sex?” Tuesday guessed.

  “Maybe.” He frowned her direction. “But maybe not. Who can tell?”

  “I’m pretty sure I could tell the difference between feral cats mating and a ghost, but maybe that’s not a common talent.” Tuesday temper was getting frayed. What was the point of this?

  A dog walker leading six or seven dogs of all sizes approached. At the same time, a mother with a baby in a snuggly on her chest caught up behind them. She led a toddler by each hand.

  Tuesday smiled at her. “Three of them? Your hands are full.”

  The mother looked exhausted, but she smiled back. “Yep.”

  “Everyone, let’s move out of the way over to the left here,” said Felicia to the camera crew.

  Aidan stood next to Tuesday, so close she could smell the aftershave he’d used—pine and mint and something else like mulled cider, maybe. “That’s a lot of dogs,” he commented.

  “And a lot of kids.” Tuesday froze in place so that she didn’t accidentally touch him.

  A screech went up from one of the toddlers, as if he was startled by one of the dogs.

  In response, a tall reddish dog barked sharply in the child’s face. A black and white dog skittered sideways, pulling its leash out long.

  The mother, distracted by the barking and the shriek, didn’t notice the leash. She caught her ankle and tripped.

  Tuesday held her breath. Jesus, the baby on the woman’s chest—

  But the woman hit the sidewalk on her shoulder, shielding the baby from the fall with both her arms.

  Confusion reigned. Dogs barked, the baby set up a howl, and every person on the camera crew rushed forward to help the woman up.

  Tuesday felt ice-bound in place next to Aidan.

  The toddlers, suddenly released from holding the woman’s hands, raced away from the dogs, all of whom were straining to sniff at them. Both children shot into the street.

  Without stopping to think, Tuesday hurled herself after one of them. She felt, rather than saw, Aidan do the same.

  She scooped up the child closest to her and threw him onto her hip. Then she jumped back to the curb, her heart lodged somewhere in her throat. The child in her arms screamed blue murder, as if he’d been hit and thrown by a passing car.

  Tuesday gasped a breath. Aidan was next to her, the other child sitting on his hip.

  There was still no traffic. The danger had been minimal. It had just been a gut reaction. She’d imagined mortal danger when it hadn’t existed.

  The dog walker had raced down the sidewalk, apologizing over her shoulder, probably trying to get out of the melee. The mother stood, her leg scraped, but the baby didn’t appear to be much bothered by the tumble. “Oh, God, thank you. Thank you!”

  Tuesday met Aidan’s eyes.

  He looked amazing with a baby on his hip.

  Totally, completely not acceptable.

  Chapter 8

  S

  he looked amazing with a baby on her hip.

  Oh, man.

  That wasn’t the thing that Aidan needed flashing through his mind right now.

  Focus.

  He set the toddler on his feet and led him back to the mother. “No problem. Automatic. Sorry. Hope I didn’t scare the guy.”

  Tuesday relinquished her kid to the mother who said she was fine, reassuring the dog walker it wasn’t her fault. Felicia said something about walking toward the property. Fine, whatever. As long as he didn’t have to think about Tuesday and the way she’d lunged, without looking, into the street after the kids.

  The way he had.

  The way he would have done had there been a truck barreling down the silent road.

  She would have, too. He knew it.

  The Callahan house wasn’t far, less than four blocks away and up the small rise, but it was a long enough walk for Aidan to bring his heart rate down.

  His idea to scare her away from town was stupid. It wouldn’t work—he’d been dumb to think it might have. She
was too brave for that.

  What he needed to do was get her to hate the house itself, just enough so that by the end of construction, she’d want to sell it just to get rid of it.

  But he had no bright idea how to do that. He fell back, using the excuse of asking Gene a question about camera stability. When Gene answered him, he forgot to listen.

  He was too focused on watching the way Tuesday walked. She had short legs. Nothing like Felicia’s, who was walking next to her. Felicia walked gracefully, like a cat in a jungle.

  Tuesday walked with shorter strides, purposefully, as if she were holding down the ground as she trod over it. Her legs were pistons, accurate and energetic.

  How could short legs be that sexy? She was in a black dress that reminded him of an old school uniform. It looked scratchy. It didn’t fit her well, hanging loose at her waist, and tight at her hip. It didn’t give her the sexy-student look, but he didn’t think that was what she’d being going for. On the contrary, the skirt gave her the look of a grad student too busy studying to bother with the way she looked, the look of a woman who didn’t much care what other people thought.

  It was an ugly, unsexy dress.

  Damn, it made her legs look amazing in comparison. Had he ever watched such strong calves move before?

  “You shoot?”

  Gene was still talking to him, and Aidan hadn’t heard but the last two. “What, like with a gun?”

  Gene looked confused. “What? No. Are you a photographer?”

  “Oh, no, I don’t. I can barely figure out where the camera app is on my phone.” He did his best to pay attention to the conversation but there they were, right in front of him: Tuesday’s incredibly shapely, powerful calves.

  Finally, they reached the Callahan house. Felicia asked if he had any stories about it. “Maybe not like the town stories, though. What about a nice tale or two?”

  “Sure.” Aidan didn’t feel very sure about anything, actually. He led them into the living room, where the view looked down to the beach they’d just walked from. “You know the wood of the house is Douglas fir, right? This was built in 1905, and it’s built on bedrock. They say that when the great quake hit San Francisco in 1906, the top level of the house slid right off.”