It Takes Two

by Judith Arnold

  “—surrounded by landscaping to create an almost reverse greenhouse effect. The plants are outside, the people are inside, but everything is open, visible, welcoming…”

  He continued through his slides—blueprints, floor plans, renderings of glittering chrome-trimmed elevators, sleek offices, and spacious public rooms. “The town owns land that can accommodate this structure on…Sea View Avenue?” He shot the town manager a look, and she confirmed with a nod. “That would allow Brogan’s Point to repurpose this building into something better suited to its archaic features. A library annex, perhaps. Or the town could sell it to a developer.”

  “But it’s on the town green. Your new Town Hall wouldn’t be on the town green,” a man from the audience shouted out. Brianna glanced in the direction the voice had come from. The bartender? Had he been the one to ask that question?

  If he had, why was he looking at her and not at Rollie? Why was she so aware of the sparks of silver and gold in his hazel eyes? Why was he smiling the way he was?

  Why did gazing at him make her want to stand up and state that it would take two? Not state it, sing it.

  Flustered, she steered her attention back to Rollie’s PowerPoint slides.

  “Moving the building from the town green would make it more accessible. The new placement would allow us to expand the off-street parking and create a much smoother traffic flow.” On and on he went, with his gorgeous drawings of lounge areas, storage areas, seminar rooms, and an auditorium as large as the high school’s theater, “for gatherings bigger than this one.”

  Though it pained Brianna to admit it, she was impressed. His design was spectacular. Her renovation proposal was going to look tame and lame compared to his.

  “How much is this going to cost?” the same voice called out. The bartender. She couldn’t prove he was the one challenging Rollie, but… It had to be him. She didn’t know how she knew this, but she was positive. It was the bartender.

  Rollie’s smile lost a watt or two but remained in place, his teeth flashing as white as lightning. “We’re looking at a price tag on the order of twenty million dollars,” he said, which elicited a chorus of gasps and groans from the audience. “But this cost will be mitigated by the energy efficiency of the building, as well as by whatever the town can recoup by selling the old Town Hall building.”

  “This site isn’t zoned for commercial,” a woman in the audience spoke up. “I don’t know who we could sell it to, but if we have to sell it to a non-commercial buyer, we’re not going to get much money for it.”

  “Any new building is going to cost money,” Rollie reminded them, his tone smooth and calm. Brianna noticed the slight hunch of his shoulders only because she knew to look for it. He always hunched them when he was tense. His voice betrayed none of his tension, however, and his smile remained in place. “You have to look at the new Town Hall as an investment. Obviously, there will be a greater expenditure up front, but if you amortize it over the life of the building, it won’t seem quite so steep.”

  Brianna kept her own expression neutral. His proposal might be more dramatic, but hers was more economical. The New England Yankees who lived in towns like Brogan’s Point tended to be frugal; a fancy brand-new building might be exciting, but they didn’t like throwing away money on lofty atriums and reverse greenhouses.

  “Of course,” Rollie continued, “we can make adjustments to the design to bring down the cost some. But Brogan’s Point needs to think big. It needs to be creative and daring. You’re not a little seaside village anymore. You’re a bustling town with a growing population. You want a Town Hall that reflects your success.”

  There were a few more slides, a few more questions, and then Rollie returned to his seat next to Brianna and gave her a cocky smile. He knew that, compared to her far more modest proposal, his design would win on style points.

  The selectwoman in the eyeglasses leaned toward her microphone. “Thank you so much, Mr. Davenport. We’ll now hear from Brianna Crawford of North Shore Design on her proposal for renovating rather than replacing our current building.”

  Brianna drew in a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and marched to the computer to insert her own flash drive of PowerPoint slides. “Thank you, Brogan’s Point,” she began, “for inviting me to discuss my proposal to preserve your beautiful Town Hall building and bring it into the twenty-first century.” She sounded calmer and more confident than she felt—thank goodness. Because she didn’t feel the least bit calm or confident.

  But she could do this. She had to do this. She couldn’t let Rollie with his fancy design and his smug grin undermine her yet again.

  “The front façade of the current Town Hall building faces the town green, and of course, we want it to maintain its stately appearance. The town green is surrounded by colonial-style architecture, and the Town Hall fits right in. The renovations will blend in with the building but won’t impose on the green. What we propose—” she clicked through her slides as she spoke “—is to expand out the back of the building. We would move the main entrance to the side, flush with the pavement so no ramp would be necessary to accommodate wheelchairs, strollers, and anyone else who can’t navigate stairs. We’d create a bright foyer area inside this new entrance. We’d install new elevators—plural. Right now you’ve got only one elevator, and if two people in wheelchairs, for example, wanted to ride upstairs, they might not both fit in. So…” clicking her slides “…we’d be widening the shaft and installing two spacious new elevators. The expansion out the back would be composed of brick and glass, bringing in natural light while matching the brickwork of the original building. Storage space for archives and paper records will go downstairs. As more and more records are digitized, your archival storage needs won’t increase much. We would widen the halls, break down the walls between some of the offices in the old building while adding office space in the new wing. We’d replace the roof and add solar panels to improve energy efficiency.” And on she went, describing the flooring, the triple-pane windows and the updated plumbing and wiring, reciting the speech she’d practiced silently in the bar.

  “How much?” someone from the audience asked. A man, but not the bartender. His voice came from the other side of the room.

  “We can bring this in for under four million dollars,” she said.

  No gasps this time. Four million for an entirely renovated building was apparently not too outrageous for these frugal Brogan’s Point citizens. Someone asked what would happen to the parking lot behind the building, and Brianna explained that it could be expanded on one side. Someone else asked if the building would be able to “grow” if the town continued to grow, and she discussed various sections of the new extension that could be built out further if the need arose. Someone mentioned the boring landscaping around the building—Brianna’s plan was nothing like a reverse greenhouse—but she reminded them of the building’s proximity to the town green, a generous swath of lawns, trees, and walkways through the heart of the town. Surely, if the Town Hall remained on the green, it didn’t need much more in the way of landscaping.

  Once the questions died down, Brianna took another deep breath, a bookend to the one she’d taken at the beginning of her presentation, and returned to her chair. The selectwoman in the eyeglasses reminded everyone in attendance that both Brianna’s and Rollie’s PowerPoint slides would be available on the town’s website, and printouts of their proposals would be available in the town clerk’s office and also the Brogan’s Point library. “We’ll be voting on these proposals at the end of the month,” the selectwoman said, “so if you have comments, submit them to us as soon as possible.” With that, she gaveled the meeting to a close.

  “Well,” Rollie said, standing and twisting his head back and forth, as if to loosen the cricks out of his neck, “I think we both acquitted ourselves well.”

  “We did our best,” Brianna said pleasantly. May the best woman win, she added under her breath.

 
; In the audience, people stood, donned jackets and coats, greeted neighbors, and—who knew?—maybe argued among themselves over which proposal they preferred. Brianna crossed to the table to thank the Board of Selectmen for hosting the gathering, Rollie close behind her. “A most edifying evening,” he gushed. “I hope your town residents got a good sense of what’s at stake here.”

  “Absolutely,” the woman in the eyeglasses said.

  The town manager released a huff of breath. “Half the residents won’t bother to vote, and then they’ll complain about whichever design wins, when it’s too late. We always have more complainers than voters.”

  “Human nature,” Rollie said, beaming his smile at the town’s representatives. Brianna sensed that he was trying to charm them, as if that might tilt the scale in his favor.

  It might. Unfortunately, Brianna had never been particularly good at charming strangers.

  After shaking all the board members’ hands once more, she returned to her chair to collect her bag. When she straightened, she noticed that most of the room had cleared. Just a few stragglers lingered among the rows of chairs.

  One of those stragglers had worked his way toward the aisle at the end of the row. The bartender. His gaze remained steady on her. She wondered if the song was going through his head the way it was going through hers.

  It takes two. Me and you.

  “How about a drink?” Rollie murmured into her ear. She hadn’t realized he was standing so close behind her until she felt his breath on the skin beneath her earlobe. The sensation sent a chill down her spine. “For old time’s sake,” he purred. “I’ll drink a toast to you if you’ll drink a toast to me.”

  “I don’t think so.” She wanted to be polite, but no. She didn’t want to drink a toast to him. She didn’t want to do anything with him for old time’s sake.

  The bartender was still lingering at the end of the row of seats, just a few steps from the platform. Watching her.

  “I’m afraid I have other plans,” she told Rollie, then stepped off the platform and strode to the bartender’s side. “Hi, sweetheart!” she greeted him cheerfully, hooking her arm around the bend in his elbow and leaning into his warm, solid chest.

  Chapter Three

  Sweetheart?

  The woman—Brianna Crawford; he now knew her name—angled her head in the direction of the other architect and sent Will a pleading look. Okay. She was apparently trying to convince Roland Davenport of something. Will could play along. He could help her out.

  Besides, even if she seemed a bit too straitlaced for his taste, she was damned pretty, her cheeks rosy, her lips delicately curved, her jawline taut yet dainty. She smelled of peppermint. Her hair fell in a smooth tumble of brown mixed with reddish-gold highlights past her shoulders, and her eyes, the color of dark chocolate, glowed with something that could be relief, or maybe desperation.

  What the hell. He’d noticed the Davenport dude kissing her when she’d reached the front of the room an hour ago. If Will was going to be the sweetheart in this scenario, he could kiss her, too, couldn’t he?

  He brushed his lips against her cheek. Her skin was satin-soft.

  Yeah, he could get into this. If he was going to put on a performance, he’d shoot for an Academy Award. “You did great, honey,” he said. “You had the room in the palm of your hand.” Not quite true—he had to admit he found Davenport’s design a lot more exciting—but if he’d been cast in the role of Brianna Crawford’s sweetheart, he’d speak his lines as convincingly as possible.

  She averted her eyes and blushed. Giving his elbow a tug, she hurried along the aisle to the exit. No doubt she wanted to get out of the room and away from Will as quickly as possible—even if kissing her cheek was a perfectly reasonable thing for her sweetheart to do. She was play-acting as much as he was, but he shouldn’t have taken that liberty.

  Yet why not? She was the one who’d started the whole “sweetheart” thing. She needed him as cover for some reason. Whatever that reason was, she clearly felt the situation would be better if her performance wasn’t a solo act.

  Sometimes, as that jukebox song claimed, it took two.

  Strolling through the door and into the hallway, he heard the catchy song echoing inside through his head. Those few minutes back at the tavern, when the song had been playing and he and Brianna Crawford had stared at each other, were at least as odd as this moment was. An evening that had begun with his trying to persuade his mother to expand her cocktail menu now seemed to be chugging along on a track parallel to reality.

  Ordinarily, he’d want to analyze what was going on. But right now, he simply wanted to enjoy the feel of Brianna Crawford’s fingers curved around his arm—a contact that was bound to end any second.

  It didn’t end in the hall. She slowed her gait slightly but didn’t release him. He glanced over his shoulder. No one had followed them out of the meeting room. Was she still acting?

  Of course she was. Will was a complete stranger to her. No one in this little skit was anybody’s sweetheart.

  He took another peek behind them. Several board members had gathered in the meeting room’s doorway, along with Davenport. Whether or not Brianna Crawford knew her rival for the building contract was lurking in the hallway, she tightened her grip on Will’s arm. Fine with him.

  Eventually, they reached the Town Hall’s front door. They stepped outside into the brisk spring evening and strolled past the pillars. Only after they’d descended the majestic front steps did she release her hold on him. “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’ve got some history with Davenport?” he guessed.

  “We…used to work together,” she said.

  Will might not be the most intuitive guy in the world, but he’d bet good money she did more than work with Davenport. “I suppose the architecture universe in Boston is pretty small, huh.”

  “Too small, sometimes.” She gave him a shy yet dazzling smile. “Anyway, I appreciate…” She seemed unsure of how to finish the sentence.

  “No problem.”

  She gazed up into his face for a moment. “That bar, where you work—they serve food, right? Those men were eating pizza.”

  “They’ve got bar food,” Will told her.

  “Good. I’ll go back there. I could use some supper.”

  “If you’re really hungry,” he said, then paused. Not because he was hesitant to steer a paying customer away from his mother’s bar but because the wings he’d scarfed down in the bar’s kitchen hadn’t really filled him up. And this woman had called him “sweetheart.” And he’d kissed her cheek.

  And…the song.

  “I’m hungry, too,” he completed the sentence. “Why don’t we head over to the Lobster Shack?”

  Her brows twitched, angling into what might have been a frown or just a look of puzzlement. “It’s too late for a big, heavy lobster dinner.”

  “Lobster rolls,” he said. “The Lobster Shack has the best lobster rolls on the North Shore. Come on. It’s a long walk from here, but—”

  “I have my car,” she said, gesturing toward the parking lot behind the building.

  “You drive. I’ll pay,” Will said. He was smiling—and he was sure his smile was nowhere near as shy as hers.

  ***

  Ordinarily, Brianna would not have invited a strange man into her car, even for a five-minute drive to this lobster restaurant he’d mentioned. But the bartender didn’t seem like a stranger. He’d kindly posed as her boyfriend when she wanted to establish a wall between herself and Rollie. He’d offered to pay for her lobster roll. And also…

  The song.

  “I need to know your name,” she said, hesitating before she unlocked her car.

  His smile was warm. Not quite safe, but safe enough. “Will Naukonen,” he said. “I grew up in Brogan’s Point. Ask anyone here in town. They’ll vouch for me.”

  “Okay, then.” As if his word were enough. She decided to believe it w
as.

  He directed her east through town, toward the waterfront. Other than his telling her to turn left, or go straight at the light, they didn’t speak. Her car felt almost steamy with him in it, though. She didn’t need to put on her coat, which remained in the back seat.

  The Lobster Shack was a warehouse-like building on a wharf. It didn’t look like much outside, and it didn’t look much better inside. The restaurant’s décor amounted to some netting draped from the ceiling and a clock that resembled a ship’s steering wheel on one wall.

  A hostess sauntered over and waved at the scattered empty tables throughout the dining room. “Wherever you want,” she said.

  Will led the way to a table pushed up against one of the rough-hewn wooden walls. A chrome napkin dispenser stood next to salt and pepper shakers and a bottle of ketchup. Brianna doubted the place would be serving the best lobster rolls on the North Shore, but when she lifted one of the laminated menus the hostess had left on the table, she felt reassured that Will would not bankrupt himself if he treated her to a sandwich. He was a bartender, after all, probably dependent on tips to make ends meet. But the prices here were on the low end of reasonable.

  In fact, he shouldn’t be paying for her lobster roll. “You don’t have to treat me,” she said.

  “Treat you like what? Oh—you mean pick up the tab?” His smile was utterly delicious. “I want to. You should probably order some wine, too. Their selection is even worse than what we’ve got at the Faulk Street Tavern, but you never finished your glass there.”

  “I wanted to be sharp for my presentation at the town meeting,” she explained. She wouldn’t have him thinking there was anything wrong with the wine she’d been served at his bar.

  “The presentation is over now. I think they have…” he flipped the menu over and shrugged. “White and red. I’m going to order a beer. You can order whatever you want.”

  She couldn’t help returning his smile. “I guess I’ll have white. Seafood, right?”