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

by Rachael Herron

  The group tromped into the house, and Tuesday made her way up to the porch, her knees feeling loose and hot, as if she’d been drinking. She sat on the top step. “At my new house.”

  Her mom made a small exclamation. “She’s at the house, Ron!”

  “Tell her to send us a picture!”

  “Daddy says to send us—”

  “Didn’t you get the dozens of pictures I sent you on Facebook?”

  “Well, yes. Ron, we have some.”

  “Send more!”

  Her mother’s voice got stronger. “How’s it going with the young man?”

  “Good.”

  “Good good?”

  There was such hope in her mother’s tone. Tuesday’s heart ached like it had been nicked by a small, sharp knife. “Just okay good.”

  “Really? Did you throw up on his boat, lovey? You know it’s okay if you did—remember what happened to you when we went sailing when you were five? Did you, honey?”

  It took a second for Tuesday to track what her mother was thinking. “Oh! No. I’m dating Aidan now.”

  “You are? I knew it. I knew he was the man for you. Ron, she’s dating Aidan now!”

  “The big guy?”

  “Mom, can you just talk to me right now? You can talk to Daddy anytime. I want to talk to you.” The last few words came out in a pathetic whine, and Tuesday was irritated with herself.

  “Of course. Honey, of course.” A bang could be heard over the phone, and Tuesday knew without asking that her mother had moved out onto her own porch. The creak of the glider was next. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Mom…” Tears welled, and her voice thickened with salt.

  “What is it? You want to come home? You can come home.”

  If only her mother would just listen. “I think I’m falling for him.” As soon as the words were out, they hung in the air in front of her, so real she could almost touch them.

  They were true.

  “Oh. Oh, honey. That’s so good.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Why not? Does he drink?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Is it drugs? Because all sorts of people are on opiates now. I saw it on a docudrama the other night. Heroin is the thing you have to watch for with people getting off of Norco. And Aidan works hard, I bet he’s hurt himself in his job before—is it heroin?”

  “Mom, just stop for a second.”

  “Okay. But—no, okay.”

  “He wants kids.”

  An indrawn breath, and Tuesday could almost see her mother’s fingers tapping at her upper lip. “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Surely you’re not there yet. Talking about children. You’re just dating.”

  “I would have thought so. But there’s something about this man…” There was something about Aidan that made Tuesday want to throw caution to the winds. Her best friend Diana had been single her entire adult life, not falling in love even once, but when she’d seen Nicholas, she’d known instantly that he was the man for her.

  The man she’d have babies with.

  Babies who’d turned into Maddee and Maggee. Babies who’d turned into children that Tuesday had injured, irrevocably.

  “I think he’s the one.” Another partial lie. She didn’t think it. She knew it. Deep in her bones, she knew it.

  Her mother took a breath, but didn’t yell it to Tuesday’s father. Thank God. “Really, honey?”

  “What about the baby thing?”

  A pause. “Well, surely he’ll be fine with adoption.”

  Despair felt black as tar in the pit of Tuesday’s stomach. “He wants them to look like him.”

  “Surrogacy. Remember, the doctor talked about that?”

  “No, like, he said he wants his kids to have their mother’s mouth.”

  Her mother’s voice grew brisk. “Well, he just doesn’t get a say in that, that’s all I’d like to tell him.”

  And that’s why it was good this was all happening so far from home. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “You sound like you’re getting a headache. Are you getting a headache?”

  Tuesday hadn’t been, but the more she thought about it, the better it sounded. “Yeah, I think I am.”

  Maybe a good old-fashioned headache would drown out the pounding in her blood.

  Chapter 27

  T

  he next morning, Aidan tried out the words in the kitchen of the Callahan house. “I’m falling in love with her.” He wanted to see if they sounded out loud anything like they sounded in his head.

  Jake barked a laugh and dropped a box of nails on the sawdust-covered floor.

  Socal gave girly squeal and then laughed so hard she choked on her bagel.

  “Fuck you guys.”

  Jake punched him in the shoulder, which hurt. “You’ve known her for two weeks. You’ve been on one date. Today. And I should point out that I’ve been on the same number of dates with her. You thought we wouldn’t laugh at you?”

  Aidan wouldn’t give his younger brother the satisfaction of rubbing his shoulder. “I thought you would listen carefully and support my emotional needs.”

  Jake rubbed his eyes. “Oh, man, I wish Liam were here to witness this. This is the dumbest and best thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Aidan arched an eyebrow. “You forget, On the Market is how Liam and Felicia got together. Speak of the devil, here’s the happy woman now.”

  Felicia entered the kitchen. “This is a disaster zone. Is it actually worse than yesterday? Is that possible?”

  Aidan was so stupidly giddy he couldn’t tell. It looked great to him.

  Socal said, “Those cabinets we got at the salvage yard turned out to be full of dry rot.”

  Well, that would knock a guy’s happiness right out from under him. Aidan frowned. “That sucks. What’s your plan?”

  “No big deal. The yard took them back, and Socal and I are going to run to Eureka this afternoon. We’ll get something good.”

  Aidan took a breath.

  Jake picked up on the hesitation. “Unless you don’t trust us to go.”

  He didn’t, not totally.

  But if Aidan left the job site, then it decreased his chances of seeing Tuesday, and besides the damn cabinets and pipes and his lists and the million other things he should be thinking about, there was nothing else he could focus on.

  Just Tuesday.

  He’d gone by the Cat’s Claw last night, after she’d left the site so abruptly, claiming a sudden headache.

  Some headaches were the product of sunstroke, or dehydration. Was she sick? Did she need someone to take care of her? Would she tell him if she did?

  He hadn’t been surprised when Pearl Hawthorne had insisted on going upstairs to knock on her door for him. “This isn’t a bordello, Mr. Ballard.” Aidan was pretty damn sure she knew that it had been one, back in the 1890s, but it sounded like that maybe wasn’t a feature in Pearl’s eyes.

  She come quickly down the stairs. “She’s asleep.”

  “How do you know?”

  Pearl hadn’t thought this through. “Um. I mean, I guess she’s asleep.”

  “Did she answer your knock?”

  The more a person like Pearl got tangled in a lie, the worse they freaked out. “Um…”

  “Because if she said to tell me she was asleep, she wanted you to lie on her account, right? What else is she lying about? Have you run her credit card? What if she’s an international assassin, here to spy on the way Americans produce reality TV?”

  Pearl’s eyes were wide as the doll heads on the shelf behind her. “Oh!”

  “I’m teasing. Did she say she had a headache?”

  “Yes!” Pearl’s relief was colored with the sound of truth. “She said she just wanted to sleep.”

  “Can you give her this? I know it’s weird, but it helps my headaches sometimes.” He passed over the ice cold orange Gatorade. “She was in the sun a lot today.”

  Pearl had smile
d, promising to take it right upstairs, which, if he couldn’t visit Tuesday, was as good as it got, he supposed.

  Aidan had gone to bed, trying his best not to think of her. He’d managed the task for almost thirteen seconds, and then the image of her creamy breasts and those darkened nipples filled his brain. When he’d finally reached sleep, he continued to dream of her. In the dream, they sat in the Callahan house, eating dinner at the very table Caleb had carved his initial into, the tabletop Aidan had painted his name underneath in yellow. In the dream, Tuesday was just as beautiful—her hair a bit shorter, but warm brown. Her eyes twinkled behind her glasses. And her belly was round and high, her hands folded on top.

  Aidan had woken with embarrassment that made him sticky with instant sweat.

  He hardly knew Tuesday, but something in his very DNA recognized her.

  He didn’t have much interest in being anywhere that she wasn’t.

  And he hoped to God she might someday feel the same way because first, he wasn’t a stalker, and second, it had been a long time since his heart had been broken, but he could guarantee that she would be able to do a number on his heart like no one ever had.

  Now, in the kitchen with Jake and Socal and Felicia, three people he would literally trust with his life, he wanted to say it again.

  “Yeah. I think I’m falling in love with her.” He looked at Felicia, his new practice audience. If Aiden said it enough beforehand, maybe his voice wouldn’t shake when he told Tuesday.

  Felicia scowled. “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “No, I’m happy for you.” She flapped a hand and pulled her walkie talkie off her hip. “It’s just that I never see either of you coming, and I need a camera for this. Anna,” she said into the mic. “Where are you? I need a diary cam in the kitchen.”

  Someone pushed Aidan across the floor until he was leaning against the wall next to the naked water standpipe. A woman swiped at his hair with a comb and a bottle of smelly spray, but he ducked the powder lady. Anna arrived, and perched a camera three feet in front of his face. Felicia stood to the side of it. “Look at me,” she said. “Just have a conversation with me.”

  “With all these jackals around?” He gestured to his brother and Socal and half the camera crew. “How is this a diary anything?”

  Felicia turned, shooing the rest out. “Go. Go! The bathroom upstairs—the skylight still isn’t seated right. Go fix things! Anything.” She turned back. “Okay. This is important. Forget that I’m here.”

  Nerves twitched at the base of Aidan’s neck and he rubbed the top of his shoulder. “I thought I was supposed to be conversating with you.”

  “Conversating isn’t a word.”

  He felt his eyebrows fly upward. “You’re correcting me? On camera?”

  “Future brother-in-law, I’ll do a lot to protect you. But you have to trust me.”

  Irritation crawled along his skin. “But you just called me dumb.”

  “Is that what you think I did?”

  “A big dumb blue-collar builder.”

  Felicia tilted her head, and her professional voice turned on. “Is that how you see yourself?”

  “Only when people correct me about my English skills.”

  “It must be weird, then, dating a teacher. Are you self-conscious about your speech in front of her?”

  Not until now. “No.” But he dropped his eyes, and his voice was a mumble, and he knew how that would look on camera. Goddamnit.

  “Tell me, then, in your own words, how you feel about the buyer of this house, Tuesday Willis. Please make the responses into full sentences.”

  Aidan glared.

  “What?”

  He pointed at the camera. “Ain’t you gonna explain what a full sentence is to me?”

  Felicia looked at him kindly. She waited.

  Gah. This was probably going to be a mistake, but hell. What did he have to lose? The first time this played on TV, people would be able to tell how he felt about her. A long time ago, a girlfriend had warned him that poker wasn’t his game.

  Thinking about Tuesday?

  Yeah, he could feel his face reacting.

  Smiling.

  “Tuesday Willis is incredible.” He waited to see if that would be all that was needed.

  “What about her strikes you as incredible?”

  He thought. He kicked one boot over the other and rested a hand on the ungrouted tile of the new countertop. “The fact that she’s doing this at all. Think about it. Would you be able to start over in a small town?”

  Felicia drew her finger across her neck. “Talk to me, yes, but pretend I’m not here. And yes, I did start over in a small town. With your brother.”

  “Damn.”

  Felicia groaned. “Okay. Starting over. What’s the most interesting thing about Tuesday to you?”

  His heart sat up happily in his chest, a dog begging for a treat. “Everything. Everything Tuesday does and says is interesting to me. I think she could read me the card catalog at the library, and it would sound like the best book ever written.”

  Felicia smiled and made a go-on motion with her hands.

  “There’s just something about her—I want to get to know all of her. Have you seen her laugh? She lights up. Speaking of that, you should see her without glasses. She’s model gorgeous. It’s like maybe she hides herself in plain sight—she looks regular. Just a short girl with brown hair and brown eyes, right?” He could see her in his mind’s eye. A brown robin. “And then she talks, and it’s like the sun hits the top of her head with this golden crown, and her eyes sparkle like her soul is right there, in plain view, and she turns into the most…”

  “The most what?”

  Aidan looked down at his hands. “She turns into the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  “Because of the light falling on her?”

  He shook his head slowly. “It’s because I see her for who she is. I guess it’s like this: beautiful people walk around all over the place, and you get to know them, and then they get ordinary. Her, she’s the opposite. She’s normal until you get to know her and then she’s like this supernova, all light and clarity and—” Aidan cut himself off. He was embarrassing himself again. “Jesus.”

  “Would you say you’re…?”

  It was easy to see what Felicia wanted. And it was even easier to give it to her. “Am I falling in love with her? Well, I thought I was.”

  Over Felicia’s shoulder, he saw a person enter the dining area of the kitchen.

  Tuesday. She was wearing a faded yellow T-shirt and ragged jeans. She curved at the breast and the hip. She had no makeup on, and her skin was a little paler than it had been yesterday. She looked as if she might still be fighting a headache, the space between her eyebrows pinched.

  Aidan’s mouth dried up. She was even prettier than he’d (repeatedly) imagined. He wanted nothing more in his whole life than to step away from the camera and kiss the hell out of her for the next three years or so.

  Instead, he brought his eyes back to Felicia. “Sorry, what?”

  “You said you thought you might be falling in love with Tuesday Willis, the buyer of the Callahan House.”

  “Yeah, But I was wrong.”

  Felicia stared. Behind her, Tuesday blinked, her eyes looking suddenly bruised.

  “I was so wrong. I’m not falling in love with her. That time already came and went. I’ve done fallen. I’m in deep. I need one of those Darling Songbirds to write a song about the way I feel because my dumb words don’t help what I want to say at all. But yeah.” He looked directly at Felicia. He was too scared in the pit of his stomach to look past her at Tuesday. “I’m totally in love with Tuesday Willis, and America, I did not see this one coming.”

  Tuesday made a small noise, a cross between a squeak and a sneeze.

  “So what are you going to do now about it?”

  He had no idea. But he had a guess. “I’m gonna build her a house.”

  Tuesday had her
fingers pressed to the top of her lip.

  Aidan had a little more to say. “Did I mention what kind of house? Yeah. I’m going to build her the house of her dreams.

  Chapter 28

  T

  uesday had never worked harder physically in a long time, and certainly not since the accident. As she helped in the upstairs bathroom, laying tile, she nicked herself twice with the tile tool, and she couldn’t stop sneezing from some kind of sealant the crew was using on the ceiling, putting in the new skylight.

  Her back hurt.

  Her fingers were killing her.

  The headache she’d gone to bed with was still perched right between her eyeballs, as if it were waiting for her to let her guard down.

  But she wouldn’t do that. She couldn’t let her guard down.

  If she did, something insane would happen, like she’d walk back into the kitchen and find Aidan professing love for her.

  Love.

  She’d almost turned and run when she’d heard him say it to Felicia. It would have taken her ten seconds to be out of the house, and four hours to be at the airport, buying the first ticket back to Minnesota. She would leave everything she’d brought with her behind at the Cat’s Claw. She didn’t care.

  But she always ran away.

  At the same time, she’d almost run at him, too. That would have taken only five seconds, and most of that time would have been spent dodging Felicia and the camera guy. Tuesday could have jumped into Aidan’s arms, knowing he’d catch her. She could have kissed him.

  She could have told him she’d fallen in love with him, too.

  Except that was crazy.

  And God knew, Tuesday couldn’t trust her emotions. Not since the crash.

  Who fell in love with anyone on a first—albeit crazy and wild and awesome and scary and wonderful—date?

  No one.

  Except all the people who said they did.

  Tuesday carefully laid another tile, cursing when it didn’t sit the right way. Again. There was something she wasn’t getting about tiling, and it didn’t matter how many times Aidan showed her.

  It didn’t help that every time he put his fingers on hers, showing her the way to slide on the thin-set mortar and press down, she got the shivers, deep in her stomach. She felt redness suffuse her face, and when she’d stood to peek in the old vintage mirror she’d asked to keep, she looked like a tomato wearing a banana-colored shirt. She should teach pre-school, not fifth grade. She looked like a photo essay on primary colors.