Building Home

by Dee Ernst

  He grinned. “What, and retire from that glamorous life of construction?” He chuckled. “No, not me. Even if I wanted to, I don’t have any extra millions lying around.”

  I was shocked. “Millions? For that place? I mean, that building isn’t in such good shape, and she doesn’t even own the inventory…”

  He shook his head. “Not the building. The twenty-some acres it sits on. Highway frontage. That’s where the real value is.”

  He stuck his hands in his pockets. We were standing fairly close, and he seemed to be trying to decide something when Joe suddenly barked. We both looked. Joe had jumped into the open window of Mike’s truck and was looking out the window.

  “Well, I guess it’s time to go,” he said slowly. “See you Monday.”

  He walked to his truck, and I watched his truck turn up the drive, then got in my car and drove back. It wasn’t until I was almost back to Cape Edwards that I realized I’d been grinning the whole drive home. Terri asked me, hours later, what on earth I was so happy about.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Then why are you smiling?”

  “I ran into Mike McCann at the Coop and he did something that made me…laugh,” I said, trying to act like it didn’t matter at all.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, Mike?”

  I waved her off. “I know you want everyone to have a happily ever after, Terri, but he’s not my type.”

  She believed me, even as I was having a hard time believing myself.

  Judd, I found out, was in his late forties, gay, and had come to Cape Edwards on a photo assignment and never left. He and I spent about half an hour on Sunday morning walking through the bare bones of my house.

  “Well,” he said. “You’ve got the derelict part down pat.”

  I nodded. “You should have seen it before they cleared the back. And put up the new roof. And the floor. This is actually a few steps up.” We finally sat on the porch steps and watched traffic stream by, toward the beach.

  “You’ll like it here,” he told me. “The people are warm and friendly, and there’s always something going on in town. And you can almost smell the bay.”

  I sighed happily. “I know. That’s the best part, knowing I can walk down to the water any time I want.”

  He looked at me quizzically. “But…you’re from Rehoboth?”

  I laughed. “Yes, I know. But I was always working. I rarely got to the beach. Kinda stupid, isn’t it? But here, I’ll have the time.”

  “What are you going to do? Job-wise?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t know yet. I was in real estate.”

  He made a noise. “Forget that. You can’t swing a cat around here without hitting six starving realtors.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of. Maybe I’ll wait tables at Sam’s on Main.” I wasn’t all that worried about money right now. I’d be selling my share of my real estate business to my two partners, and we’d agreed on a five-year payment plan. I had scaled back on the day-to-day work of the business during the last months that mom was sick, and found, after going back, I really didn’t enjoy it anymore. My two partners were more than willing to buy out my share. Between that and the rest of the money from Mom’s house, I didn’t really need a job. But what else was I going to do all day? And, eventually, I’d need to pump up my income if I wanted to do anything besides pay for the basics.

  I heard some activity behind the house, and seconds later, Steve McCann came around and up the steps.

  He shook hands with Judd. “I was driving by and saw you, so I thought I’d let you know that your kitchen cabinets have been ordered,” he told me. “There’s a six-week lead time, so the timing is perfect.”

  “Good to hear,” I told him. I had spent half the day on Thursday agonizing over glazed versus unglazed cabinets before making the decision, and Steve had called and placed the actual order based on Susan’s plans.

  He looked at Judd. “You taking pictures?”

  Judd nodded. “I’m thinking it would make a nice photo essay, the saving of a traditional bungalow. Most folks would just tear this down.”

  Steve grinned. “Well, if you want to photograph someplace that probably will be torn down, then you might want to head over to the Coop. Rumor has it, that’s on the block and my favorite ex-sister-in-law has her eyes on it.”

  I sat up. Did he just say ex-sister-in-law? As in, Mike’s ex-wife? And the Coop?

  “I love that place,” I blurted. “I’ve been there every time I’ve come down to visit. I was just there yesterday and bought a whole bunch of great stuff. Mike was there.”

  Steve made a noise. “Mike is always there. I sometimes think he buys all those tools of his just to throw Celeste some extra cash.” He shook his head. “Mike loves that place, but then, he likes all sorts of cramped places full of rusty junk. But yeah, Amy may come back to town and sink her teeth into it, and I guarantee that she won’t be as thoughtful a planner as Daniel Russo Associates.”

  Daniel had always been meticulous in his commercial spaces, doing everything he could to make sure the new blended in with the old. I had visited many of his projects and always marveled how aesthetically pleasing they ended up. Which was why, although I didn’t relish a commercial property across the street from my house, I knew that at least it would be quite pleasant to look at. But maybe the ex-Mrs. Mike McCann…

  “So, Mike’s wife is in commercial development as well?”

  Steve rolled his eyes. “Ex-wife, thank God. She’s into commercial bulldozing, commercial don’t-leave-a-tree-standing, and commercial big bucks. That’s what she’s into.”

  Well.

  Steve waved a hand. “Later. Have fun taking pictures.” He went around to the back of the house. I looked across the street to the quiet job site.

  “I’d hate to see the Coop go,” I muttered. “I love Celeste and Connie.”

  Judd shrugged. “It’s outside the city limits here, so any zoning or planning goes through the county, and the county is more interested in tax revenue than whether or not a developer has the best interest of the community at heart. If the sale goes through, Amy McCann will be able to build whatever she wants there, and no one will stop her.”

  “She doesn’t sound like a very nice person. How did she end up married to Mike?”

  Judd chuckled. “That is an excellent question, one that we all asked at the time. She lives in Virginia Beach, and came across the Bay for some project or the other, met Mike, and in just a few months they were married. I think the phrase “whirlwind romance” is often used to describe the two of them. They lasted less than a year, then she filed for divorce and he, apparently, swore off women for the rest of his life. She still has business interests over here, and since they run in the same circles, it makes for awkward Chamber of Commerce dinners.” He looked thoughtful. “The thing of it is, she is a nice person. I’ve met her, oh, maybe a dozen times over the years, and she’s quite bright and articulate, has a wicked sense of humor, and genuinely enjoys talking to people. She’s also a complete barracuda in her business practices, and people tend to remember only that side of her. Still, she and Mike were…an odd combination.”

  “Was she involved in the project across the street?”

  He shook his head. “No. Although I believe she had put out feelers a year or so back. This company from Rehoboth did a real stealth job in getting that land. Amy was pretty upset that she lost out, I understand. And now Mike is doing the construction…” He grinned. “We’re a pretty small town, but we are not without our intrigue.”

  We sat for a bit longer before he stood and stretched and then shook down the leg of his jeans. “I’ve got a shoot at noon. This was good. Good work. Let me know what the schedule is, and I’ll try to stop by every few days, just to take a few shots.”

  I agreed and watched him walk down the sidewalk, back toward the beach.

  I glanced at my watch. Terri had slept in, and we had a quiet day planned: lunch, the beach, and dinner and a
movie over in Norfolk.

  I locked up my little house and walked back to town. Mike had an ex-wife who apparently ruined him for other women. She’d been beaten out of a choice project by my ex-boyfriend. And she wanted to tear down one of my favorite shopping places in the world and possibly put up a tacky strip mall.

  Suddenly, life in Cape Edwards had gotten a bit more interesting.

  As I walked down to the house Monday morning, I decided that Mike McCann just might be worth not only a closer look, but a lot of other closer things. Now, maybe he was gun-shy around women, and maybe he wasn’t, but there had absolutely been a moment there at the Coop, and I could play off that, be charming and sweet, maybe flirt just a bit…

  Who was I kidding? I’d never flirted. I’d always been the one flirted with. By my high school boyfriend who became my ex-husband. By the much older Seth Somers, who had wanted a cute young lover to make his ex-wife jealous. And by Daniel, who couldn’t understand why, upon our first meeting, I didn’t think he was the most interesting man in the world. After trying for months to prove it to me, we finally agreed to live together and the rest, as they say, was history.

  I’d never chased after anything I’d really wanted in my whole life, because I’d always been afraid of how badly I’d feel if I didn’t get it. But I was in Cape Edwards now, and I’d already made a few steps in directions I never thought I’d go. And in my mind I had already christened this year as The Year of Taking Chances, so maybe, since I really wanted to get to know Mike better…

  As I got closer to my house, my resolve got firmer, and by the time I reached the walkway, I was feeling like an Amazon: fearless, determined, and totally in control. I could do this. I could walk across the street, make charming small talk, bat my eyelashes…in fact, I turned and waited at the curb, then shot between the cars and rounded the corner of the job site.

  And stopped dead.

  Daniel Russo was staring at me, an understandably confused look on his face. He was dressed in a beautifully well-cut suit, his shirt gleaming white, tie perfectly knotted. He was standing next to Mike McCann, who was dressed in jeans and a rumpled button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and scuffed workbooks.

  “What on earth…” Daniel said.

  Mike ran his hand through his beard. “That’s right, you two know each other.”

  Daniel raised an eyebrow. “Know each other? Why, we…”

  I gave myself an internal slap upside the head. In my mind, I imagined that, upon seeing him again, I’d be cool and completely in control. But my heart was doing funny little jumps and I felt a little out of breath, and as I tried to figure out what could be causing that kind of reaction, it occurred to me that maybe it had nothing to do with Daniel at all, and maybe, just maybe, everything to do with Mike.

  I stepped closer, tugged on Daniel’s very expensive lapel and reached up to kiss his cheek. “Daniel, how lovely to see you again. You can’t even imagine my reaction when Mike told me that you were the developer here.”

  This was a rare treat for me, seeing Daniel actually surprised by something and at a loss for words. He glanced around. “Is there, do you suppose, anywhere we could go and talk?”

  Mike was grinning. “Chris, why don’t you take Daniel here across the street, show him your new place and, ah, bring him up to speed?”

  Daniel’s eyebrows shot up. “Your new place? Across the street? My God, Christiana, don’t tell me this is where you’re living now?”

  He was the only person, besides my mother and Celeste, to call me by my given name, and I felt a sad little turn in my heart. But of course, he had to be just a little bit of an asshole. What was so terrible about Cape Edwards? I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “What’s wrong with living here, Daniel? You make it sound like I just moved into the third circle of hell.”

  Daniel ran his fingers through his hair, which was rather long and marvelously thick, dark and shot with gray, with all sorts of curls that fell down around his forehead. He was not too tall, maybe 5’8”, and slim, with a wide forehead and close-set eyes. He was not handsome, but attractive in a Lord Byronish sort of way, with a wild-haired, bad boy kind of sexiness. Right now his brown eyes were wide, and I could practically see him backpedaling.

  “Of course there’s nothing wrong with here. After all, I’m here. It’s just—” He looked at Mike. “Will you excuse me? Us? For just a few minutes?”

  Mike nodded. “Of course. You two take all the time you need.” He gave me a smile, and I saw that glint in his eyes again. Was he enjoying this little drama? Yes, of course he was.

  Daniel and I crossed back to my side of the street, and as I started up the walk, I could hear him chuckling. “Of all the gin joints in all the towns, you have to be living across the street from mine?”

  As it had countless times in the past, his humor put him back on my good side. I stopped, put my head down, and started to laugh. “I know. Can you believe this? Honest to God, Daniel, when Mike mentioned your name, I almost dropped over in a faint.”

  I turned to him. He was smiling at me, that dear, funny smile that had melted my heart so many times. It was good to see, and it was also good to realize that it didn’t have the same effect. At all. “I’m happy to see you,” I said. “And it’s good to know you haven’t changed one bit.”

  “And why should I change? I was practically perfect, you know. I’ve missed you,” he said. “I mean, I have moved on, but…well, I always thought you and I had something rather special.”

  “We did have, Daniel. And I hope we can be friends.”

  He took a deep breath. “Well, as one friend to another, can I tell you that you have terrible taste in real estate? How on earth were you so successful at it for so long?”

  “I know it looks rough, but you are a man of vision, Daniel. Don’t look at what it is, but what it could be.”

  “It could be a major financial burden, that’s what it could be.”

  “Don’t be mean. Come on in. I can actually give you a tour because I have a floor now.”

  He put his arm through mine as we went up the walk. “Why are you making it sound as if having a floor is a big deal? Aren’t you supposed to have one?”

  “Yes.” We went up the porch steps and into the house. “But it’s a fairly new development.” Inside, there were a few of the guys on tall ladders installing sheetrock to my very vaulted ceiling. There was also someone I didn’t recognize, a big man with very dark skin sitting on the floor, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He was studying blueprints, and looked up as we walked in.

  I looked around for Steve. Not visible. I looked down and cleared my throat. “Hi. I’m Chris. I’m the owner. And you are?”

  He got up. “I’m Alan Jones. I’m the electrician.”

  Daniel nodded. “Daniel. Just passing through.”

  I clapped my hands together. “Well, now that that ordeal is over, please tell me how easy this is going to be for you, Alan.”

  “Everything has to be replaced. You knew that?”

  I nodded and listened, and mentally added up everything he was telling me and tried to remember what the McCann’s estimate had listed for electrical. “Did Mike know this already?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yes. I had a quick look-see right after your friend? Terri? Anyway, right after she closed.”

  I felt a surge of relief. That meant the McCann’s estimate was probably close.

  “But you might want to think about a generator,” Alan said. “During hurricane season, power goes out all the time. And maybe motion detector lights? You’re right on Main Street here, and they’ll be, ah, lots of foot traffic during the summer.”

  “I’ve already been warned about drunks wandering on my front yard. Let’s go with some motion detectors.”

  Ka-ching.

  “And your plans call for pot lights,” he went on, “which means every time a bulb goes out, you’ll need a very tall ladder. Might want to think about pendants.”<
br />
  Double ka-ching. “I just thought about them. An excellent idea. Is that all?”

  Thankfully, he nodded, and Daniel stared at me. I caught his look.

  “What?”

  “All this off-the-cuff decision-making. It’s quite unlike you. Don’t you want to run a spreadsheet and do a week’s worth of comparisons?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Not anymore.”

  Daniel and I walked through the framed bedrooms, had a lively discussion as to where I was planning to put my low-flow toilet, and then took a quick tour of my back yard. My PODS container had finally arrived, and it stood there close to the alley, along with three trucks, and two covered pallets of lumber. We finally ended up back on the sidewalk.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “I’m still trying to formulate my vision.”

  “Daniel, be nice. I needed a change. I needed a new start. And here, I know a few people, and there’s the bay. Did you notice it? That big bluish thing off to the east?”

  “Ah, yes. Chris Polittano and her love of all things beach related. You’re even closer here than in Rehoboth. And I must say, the proximity to town is ideal. And when I’m done here, you can walk across the street for banking and bagels.”

  I looked across the street. “Isn’t this a bit small time for you?”

  He nodded. “Yes, but this area is going to explode in the next few years, and I wanted a foot in the door.”

  “You’re not going to buy up everything and ruin my neighborhood, are you?” Daniel, once he found a location to his liking, tended to look for ways to sprawl.

  He laughed. “No. I don’t think so. I try very hard to not ruffle the locals. Although I’d love a larger project. You know, for years I’ve been trying to find a juicy mixed-use project, like a mini-village, with shops and cafes and things all at street level and lofts and studios above.”

  “That sounds great, Daniel, but not in Cape Edwards, okay?”

  “Deal. But it seems that I’m not the only player in this game. Is Mike married?”

  I looked at him. “Divorced. Why?”