Mistletoe Daddy
Deb Kastner
Countdown to a Christmas BabyAfter Vivian Grainger buys him at the town's charity bachelor auction, Nick McKenna feels obligated to provide his carpentry skills. He’ll help the bubbly blonde construct her dream spa and beauty shop in time for Christmas—but the burly cowboy won't be sticking around. When he realizes Vivian is pregnant, though, everything changes. Seeing the joy she brings to everyone around her despite the difficulties she's overcome, it's clear to Nick that Vivian—and her child—are what's missing from his life. As they build her dream shop together, Nick will do his best to build a path to Vivian's heart.
Countdown to a Christmas Baby
After Vivian Grainger buys him at the town’s charity bachelor auction, Nick McKenna feels obligated to provide his carpentry skills. He’ll help the bubbly blonde construct her dream spa and beauty shop in time for Christmas—but the burly cowboy won’t be sticking around. When he realizes Vivian is pregnant, though, everything changes. Seeing the joy she brings to everyone around her despite the difficulties she’s overcome, it’s clear to Nick that Vivian—and her child—are what’s missing from his life. As they build her dream shop together, Nick will do his best to build a path to Vivian’s heart.
“Call me crazy, but I’m actually feeling relieved now.”
“Relieved? How are you relieved? Because the prank wasn’t aimed at you?”
“No. Because you weren’t the one who was the instigator. For a while there I thought maybe you really disliked me, or at least that you didn’t want me opening the spa. I want to make sure you’re sticking around this time because you see the potential in what I’m doing and not because of some misplaced sense of obligation. That stupid auction means nothing. You know that, right?”
Nick glanced over at Vivian. She was such a striking woman, with her golden hair silhouetted against the moonlight in the dark cab, that his breath snagged in his throat. He wasn’t certain he was staying for all the right reasons…definitely not for the genuine motives Vivian was suggesting.
No—he was starting to think he was sticking around for the wrong reasons. He was feeling all muddled up inside his head. Confused. Part of him felt like bolting. And yet he couldn’t even consider walking away.
Dear Reader (#ud7f38b9f-219f-5494-89d0-ad6b2b9893b5),
I’m so excited to return once again to Serendipity, Texas, and the beautiful small-town community there. It’s been a special pleasure to write the story of Nick, the oldest of the McKenna brothers. I’ve enjoyed spending time with these three large, rugged cowboys, the spirited women with whom they fall in love and the babies who make their lives complete.
Though total opposites in every way, both Nick and Vivian struggle with their pasts creeping up on their futures, believing they are not good enough to embrace the love that is before them, both in their relationship with God and each other. I think that’s a common theme for most of us. What Nick and Viv discover is that in offering a loving sacrifice to each other, their own hearts are healed.
For Christmas this year, my grandchildren have each been given a handful of hay. Every time they perform an act of loving sacrifice, they are allowed to place one straw in the manger. By Christmas Eve, Jesus will have a soft, comfortable place to lay His precious head. Amidst the hustle and bustle of the season, I encourage you to spend time considering how you, too, can make the Savior’s nativity special this year.
I’m always delighted to hear from you, dear readers, and I love to connect socially. You can find my website at www.debkastnerbooks.com (http://www.debkastnerbooks.com/). Come join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/debkastnerbooks (http://www.facebook.com/debkastnerbooks), and you can catch me on Twitter @debkastner (https://twitter.com/debkastner).
Please know that I pray for each and every one of you daily.
Love Courageously,
Award-winning author DEB KASTNER writes stories of faith, family and community in a small-town Western setting. Deb’s books contain sigh-worthy heroes and strong heroines facing obstacles that draw them closer to each other and the Lord. She lives in Colorado with her husband and is blessed with three daughters and two grandchildren. She enjoys spoiling her grandkids, movies, music (The Texas Tenors!), singing in the church choir and exploring Colorado on horseback.
Mistletoe Daddy
Deb Kastner
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Through Him then, let us continually offer God
a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips
that confess His name. Do not neglect to
do good and to share what you have;
God is pleased with sacrifices of that kind.
—Hebrews 13:15–16
For Isabella and Anthony, who show by
your innocent faith what it really means
to make loving sacrifices to the Lord.
Contents
Cover (#u854231f5-635a-5074-8424-bdba9c852cf8)
Back Cover Text (#uab106991-d284-5ac9-ac0f-f2235e2496ef)
Introduction (#ud52d7c59-8d55-522b-97ef-45abf6b3b8f5)
Dear Reader (#u2b8e888e-60b1-5bb6-828e-30d848982301)
About the Author (#u38654d3d-a928-54f6-84ff-2b303166cc79)
Title Page (#uc70dde29-1a09-5394-842f-625b754501a7)
Bible Verse (#u6a7eef40-f2f9-5ac6-b1f8-1bddf67d185d)
Dedication (#uc09d92aa-3c7f-5fe4-93bd-c5b2f025beff)
Chapter One (#uf6c8b643-3fbb-50cc-8586-c58d0bf0cf7e)
Chapter Two (#u11b64c3a-ff8a-5a95-82d3-0ac50e23470e)
Chapter Three (#u3fa5f74e-2eb3-5214-ad53-18cddd0e71f4)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ud7f38b9f-219f-5494-89d0-ad6b2b9893b5)
“Texas men are built like bricks and so good lookin’, don’t you think? Especially these here McKenna boys,” elderly Jo Spencer crowed. The cheerful crowd gathered on the community green for the first annual Bachelors and Baskets auction clapped their agreement.
Jo swept her arm, gesturing from the top of Nick’s black cowboy hat down to the toes of his boots. “Just feast your eyes on this handsome guy.”
Vivian Grainger was definitely looking, though feasting wouldn’t have been the word she would have used.
Critically assessing would be more accurate. She was trying to decide if Nick McKenna was the right man for the construction contractor job she had to fill. After all, that’s what made this auction different from most of the ones she’d heard of before. The organizers weren’t auctioning off dates with the men who had volunteered. Even the married men were auctioning themselves off for charity. Instead, the men agreed to perform some task or chore for the women who “bought” them. One of Nick’s brothers, Slade, had been the first man auctioned off, and when his wife, Laney, won him, she’d announced that he’d be doing dishes and laundry for a month. In turn, the ladies offered a picnic lunch for their winning bid—hence the Bachelors and Baskets theme.
Vivian could handle her own dishes and laundry, but building construction was out of her skill set. Was Nick up for the job? She knew he was a rancher by trade, but from what she’d heard around town, he had major skills in carpentry and remodeling. Vivian needed to shave costs wherever she could but didn’t want to sacrifice on quality, since her shop would be her main career focus for the rest of her working life.
“You think his brothers Slade and Jax have muscles?” Jo asked with a delighted cackle. The auction had been Jo’s brainchild in the first place, a way to help raise funds for a new long-term care facility and senior center for Serendipity, so naturally she was emceeing the event. And she was clearly taking great delight in parading all these handsome men across her platform.
Jo prodded Nick’s biceps with an appreciative whistle that made a dash of color rise to the poor man’s face—or at least as much of his face as Vivian could see under his dark layer of scruffy whiskers. Viv’s fingers itched to grab a pair of shears and a straight razor and clean him up a bit, if nothing else so she could see what she was really buying. She smothered a chuckle.
“Nick here is the biggest, brawniest of the three McKennas, and let me tell you, that’s really saying something.”
Indeed, it was, Viv thought with a smirk. All three McKenna brothers stood head and shoulders over most of the other men in Serendipity, and with Nick’s deeply tanned, unshaven face and thick black hair long enough to brush the collar of his blue-checked Western shirt, he looked more like a mountain man than a rancher. What really made him stand out were his blue eyes, a pop of color against a background of darkness.
Not that she noticed.
Vivian flipped open her notepad and yanked out the pencil that was holding her bun together, causing a waterfall of straight bleached-blond hair to cascade down her shoulders. If a person looked close enough they might see the thinnest stripe of bright pink on a strand of hair on the right, Vivian’s little gift to herself to make her stand out from her identical twin sister, Alexis. Viv had always been the wilder of the two, and even now Alexis was settled down with a husband while Vivian...
Wasn’t. And she wasn’t going to acknowledge the twinge in her gut whenever she thought about it, either.
She threw her head to the side to brush her hair off of her face and eyed the list she’d made in anticipation of the auction. She immediately checked off several items, just as she’d known she would. She’d narrowed down the list of potential candidates from the list of eligible bachelors that had been posted at Cup O’ Jo’s Café a week before the auction. Nick was currently at the top of her inventory list.
Strong?
Yes, Nick McKenna was pure, lean, unadulterated muscle. There was not an inch of flab on his whole body. She scratched through that requirement. Nick didn’t even need to flex his powerful biceps for them to ripple underneath the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt. Tall and broad-shouldered, Vivian guessed that he stood around six foot four and weighed a good 220 pounds at least. Those beefy arms of his were practically bigger than her waist—or at least, her prepregnancy midsection. At three months along, her once-tiny tummy was now starting to swell with new life.
She laid a protective hand over her abdomen. She wouldn’t be able to hide her secret from the public much longer, which was exactly why she needed help to get her business up and running, and the sooner, the better. In this day and age a single mother didn’t stand out as much as she once would have, but even if no one else judged her, it made a difference to her. She had betrayed everything she had once believed in, even when she knew it was wrong. She was ashamed to return to her hometown unmarried and pregnant, but with no way to provide for her baby, she’d had no other choice.
Creating a successful business, proving she could make a good life for her and her child, would hopefully show the folks she knew and loved that she meant to make her life right with God. From this point forward, there was no way to go but up.
But was Nick the right one to help her?
She’d been told he was good with a hammer. His ability to remodel was the most important qualification she required and it was the reason Nick was at the top of her list. She’d asked around town and had discovered he’d not only overseen the remodeling of his mother’s house but had built from the ground up two adjacent cabins on his ranch land for himself and one of his brothers.
He knew construction and carpentry, which was just what she needed.
It was not one of her conditions that he be handsome...
Jo seemed to think that was the most important prerequisite in a man—any man. Vivian chuckled under her breath and tapped the eraser against her bottom lip thoughtfully as she evaluated the man standing square-shouldered on the auction block, his expression grim but confident.
No, Nick wasn’t handsome. Not in the classic sense of the word, anyway. Still, Vivian had to wonder why Serendipity’s single ladies weren’t bidding up a storm on him right now. He wasn’t Vivian’s type, by any means, but if a woman liked the rugged-cowboy look—and she knew that many in Serendipity did—he fit the bill perfectly.
Granted, he could do with a haircut and a shave, which was both amusing and ironic, given the project she had in mind for him to help her build.
A beauty salon and spa. She couldn’t help but smile to herself.
She knew that many of the single women in the crowd intended to bid on attractive, unattached bachelors not for help with projects, but for love’s sake, or at least the possibility of it. But dating and falling in love was the farthest thing from Vivian’s mind.
It didn’t matter to her at all that Nick wasn’t classically handsome. His attractiveness, or lack of, wasn’t even on her list, and with good reason.
She wanted nothing—nothing—to do with men, handsome or otherwise. She’d been burned to a crisp in her last relationship. Her ex-boyfriend, Derrick, wouldn’t even acknowledge that the baby she now carried was his, rejecting both her and their precious offspring.
It was no wonder she didn’t trust men as far as she could throw them. Hopefully Nick wasn’t looking for a relationship through participating in the auction, because if her bid won he would be sadly disappointed if he was. Viv’s thoughts were purely business oriented. That her money was going to fund a good cause—the town senior center—made her investment all the more worthwhile.
Her intention was to try and save a few dollars by not having to hire a professional contractor. Instead, she would use a skillful amateur who knew what he was doing and could get the job done as quickly and easily as possible.
“Which of you lovely young ladies out there is going to open their purses for this fine fellow?” Jo urged when no one jumped forward to bid on Nick. “Shame on you. What’s taking you so long?”
Viv paused and swallowed hard, wondering if she really wanted to do this. She only knew Nick in passing—but that was enough to know he had a reputation for being as surly as the grizzly bear he resembled if you caught him in a bad mood. And based on that scowl on his face, he was in a lousy mood right now. Did she really want to inflict that on herself?
She could turn around and walk away from this auction right now and hire a professional to do the work on her salon—someone from out of town who wouldn’t know or judge her—but with all the extra expenses of having a newborn, she needed to save money every way she could. She squeezed her eyes shut and raised her hand.
“Three hundred dollars.” She grimaced when her voice came out high and squeaky.
She’d planned to bid low to start, expecting there to be other ladies throwing their hats into the loop. She wasn’t sure what a bachelor like Nick would go for, but three hundred seemed a reasonable guess. She had five hundred dollars in her pocket and was prepared to bid higher, but she was still having second thoughts about bidding for Nick at all. Maybe she needed to rethink this and select someone less intimidating. There was something about Nick that unnerved her.
Deciding she wouldn’t bid any higher, she waited for another woman to raise the stakes and let her off the hook. Surely Nick was worth more than she’d offered. Someone truly interested in him would be sure to bid more. She held her breath.
And waited.
It was so silent she could have heard a barrette drop. She slowly counted to ten, but no one else spoke up.
Which meant she was stuck with Nick, whether she wanted to be or not.
Vivian briefly considered backing out of her bid, but she didn’t want to make a big production out of this. The last thing she wanted was to call extra attention to herself, and she didn’t want to embarrass Nick. It wasn’t his fault she was feeling wishy-washy.
She’d made her choice and, for better or for worse, she was going to stick with it. She shouldn’t second-guess herself. This was a better option than hiring a professional. And while there were other men on the docket she could have bid for instead, Nick had the best credentials for what she needed, so Nick it would be.
“Are you serious?” Nick asked the crowd when no one piped up with a higher amount. He gestured with his fingers, encouraging further bids. “Somebody? Anybody?”
Clearly he expected the women in the crowd to be clamoring for his time and attention. How conceited was that? And what was so wrong with her that he wanted to get bids from anybody else? Viv didn’t know whether or not she should be offended, but frankly, the way he was acting hurt her feelings. He was practically begging for anyone else besides her to bid on him.
Was she really that bad?
Then again, it could be that he was just trying to make more money for the senior center. She considered that notion for a moment and then tossed it aside, going back to her conclusion that he had a big ego to go along with that big head of his. He probably thought the ladies ought to be crawling all over themselves with the opportunity to win him in an auction.
Vivian scoffed. If that was what he was waiting for, it looked as if it was going to be a long time in coming. She almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
“Do I hear three-fifty?” Jo asked. This time she didn’t wait long for someone else to chime in, not that it seemed like anyone would. “No? Your loss, ladies, and a big win for Miss Vivian Grainger. Welcome back to town, Viv, by the way.”
Vivian smiled and waved her thanks. For the welcome. Not for the win.
Jo raised her gavel.
Nick frowned.
“Going once. Going twice.” The gavel swept down and landed solidly on the podium. “Sold to Vivian Grainger for three hundred dollars.”
The crowd clapped politely but Vivian noticed they were more subdued than they had been with previous entries, especially when it came to the single ladies in town who Vivian had expected to be her biggest competition. Either she hadn’t bid high enough or Nick had ticked off a lot of women. Another thought occurred to her. Could the lack of enthusiasm be because of him? Her bid wasn’t any less than others had made, but she hadn’t overextended, either. She could have easily been outbid, if Nick were the trophy he seemed to think he was.
She’d been in middle school when he’d attended high school. He was five years older than her, so it wasn’t as if they ran in the same circles. She remembered him being popular, especially with the girls, but he’d never put much effort into his social relationships. He’d always appeared more interested in working his ranch and spending time with his family than in participating in school and community activities.
Apparently some things hadn’t changed.
Viv met the gaze of her twin sister, one of the few who knew of Viv’s pregnancy. Alexis twirled her hand in the air as if holding a lasso, reminding Vivian that her part in this crazy town event wasn’t going to be finished when she handed over her money. Alexis, seated in front of the platform with a fishing tackle box for a cash register, was collecting the money from the winning bids, so Viv inched her way forward through the thick crowd to reach her sister.
Vivian wasn’t thrilled about what was expected of her next. Jo Spencer and her crazy ideas. Roping the cowboy was a silly gesture concocted to amuse the crowd. Alexis handed her a rope with which she was supposed to lasso her “win.”
Nick did nothing to encourage her, standing stock-still, his hands jammed into the front pockets of his blue jeans and his square, dimpled chin jaunting upward. His expression was frozen into a frown, his dark brow lowered over icy blue eyes that Vivian refused to meet.
If he was trying to intimidate her, it wasn’t working, because she wasn’t about to let him get under her skin. If, however, he was trying to be as immobile as a fence post to make it easier for her to lasso him, he was doing a very good job of it.
The problem was, Vivian didn’t know how to lasso a post—or anything else, for that matter. Other than playing with a toy nylon rope with Alexis when they were children, she’d never even thrown a lasso.
The fact that Nick wasn’t moving might be considerate on his part—although she had serious doubts about that, since he was practically glowering at her—but for all the good it did her, he might as well have been tearing around the stage, trying to dodge her every effort.
She glanced down at the rope in her fist and then back at Nick. The cheering crowd was getting impatient, throwing friendly taunts and barbs about pretty ladies and stubborn cowboys as they waited for her to act.
Well, there was more than one way to skin a fish. Based on what she’d observed so far, there weren’t really any ground rules on the roping-the-cowboy part of the equation. She figured she could do it any way she wanted.
Intent on her actions, Viv loosened the loop on the rope and marched up to Nick with a nervous smile. He seemed even bigger up close, his blue-checked Western shirt rippling in the breeze against the black T-shirt that covered his expansive chest. His poor mother, raising three boys this size. She would hate to have seen the grocery bill when they were all under the same roof. It was a good thing he was a rancher. The man must eat an entire cow every week.
With two hands on the lasso, she reached up to ring it over his head, but even on tiptoe she couldn’t quite reach high enough to flip the coil over, and his stupid hat was getting in the way.
Their eyes met and she gasped softly. Eyes the color of dark-wash blue jeans completely captured her awareness. She was so taken by his gaze that for several blinks of an eye she forgot what she was doing, forgot the clamoring crowd watching them, forgot even to breathe.
“Get along, little doggy,” someone called from the anxiously waiting audience.
Laughter jolted Vivian back to life and she huffed in exasperation. Was Nick ever going to help her here?
Stubborn man. He just stood there hulking over her, unmoving, his massive chest and broad shoulders like a brick wall in front of her and no less giving.
“Give me a break,” she muttered loud enough for his ears only. “Can you not just—” She gestured for him to bow his head. A little effort on his part would be nice.
He lifted a brow and one corner of his mouth, and after a long pause, removed his black cowboy hat and crouched low enough for her to reach over the top of him.
“Moo,” he said, and grinned wholeheartedly.
The crowd erupted into laughter.
He waved his hat and acknowledged the townspeople as if he hadn’t just spent the last who-knows-how-long thwarting her efforts to rope him.
“Don’t push it, buster.” She sniffed, indignant, and arranged the lasso around his shoulders, tightening it so she could finally lead him off the platform. The delighted assembly whistled and applauded.
Two could play at that game. She turned to the crowd and curtsied, letting the enormous sway of her emotions go with the cool Texas breeze. It wasn’t in her nature to take herself too seriously or hold a grudge for more than a moment.
Nick, on the other hand, grunted and practically jerked the rope from her hand so he could pull the lasso off himself as they exited the stage. Whatever smile he’d put on had apparently only been for the benefit of the assembly.
“Come on, Cinderella. The ball’s over and the clock is about to strike midnight.”
“Oh, loosen up a little bit, why don’t you?” she retorted. She’d been about to end her statement by calling him Prince Charming, but the guy was as far from charming at that moment as anyone could get. He was more like the clock tower, ticking away the minutes in anticipation of ruining the fun. Or maybe one of those carriage attendants who turned back into a mouse at the end of the night.
A big, plump gray mouse with a cowboy hat, enormous pink ears too large for his head and a big black wiggly nose. She chuckled at the thought.
“What’s so funny?” he demanded, tossing the rope back to Alexis as he took the steps off the platform two at a time. He threaded his fingers through his thick black hair before replacing his Stetson.
She followed him down the stairs. She imagined he wouldn’t appreciate being compared to a mouse, even one in a cowboy hat, so she made a different observation out loud.
“You could use a haircut. Did you know I’m a certified cosmetologist?”
“A cosmo-what?” His gaze widened on her, looking as appalled as if she’d just threatened to shave his head. He yanked the rim of his hat down lower over his eyes. “No, ma’am. Not gonna happen. I don’t care how much money you paid out for me back there. I’m drawing the line.”
Something in the way he said it stirred a challenge in Viv’s chest. He had no idea how nice he’d look if he’d give her the opportunity, and she was certain he would.
If he wanted a challenge, she would give him a challenge. She had her ways.
But she pushed the thought away. Cleaning him up wasn’t her goal, now that she’d won him. He could look like a bear all he wanted as long as he helped her build her salon. But she doubted that would be any comfort to him. Based on his reaction to even the suggestion of a haircut, she had a feeling he wasn’t much of a fan of beauty salons. And that meant he wasn’t going to like the project she was about to lay out for him one bit.
* * *
If Vivian Grainger thought for one second she was getting anywhere near him with a pair of shears, she was sadly mistaken. Nick liked his hair just the way it was, thank you very much. And even if he did decide to get a trim, he’d see a male barber, not a ditzy, beautiful blonde with a sharp pair of scissors.
Of course the old barbershop in town had closed two years ago when Old Man Baranski kicked the bucket. No one had stepped in to take his place, and the building had eventually been used by Emerson’s Hardware for their overstock. Now he had to drive for an hour just to get his hair cut—which is why he didn’t bother.
One of the reasons, anyway. If he had a special lady in his life, he might care more about how he looked. But that wasn’t the case right now—and it looked like it wouldn’t be for a good long while.
He supposed he ought to be grateful to Vivian for bidding on him. After his last—and very public—painful breakup, most of the town’s single ladies were avoiding him like the plague, as evidenced by the auction today. He supposed he wasn’t really all that surprised no one else bid on him.
Vivian hadn’t been back in Serendipity long enough to hear the latest rumors. She’d spent the last few years in Houston and wore Big City like a neon sign around her neck. He wasn’t sure getting picked up by a woman like her was going to do his reputation any good, but it couldn’t get any worse.
He’d really hoped to be bid on by some little old lady who needed help with a few odd jobs. He’d also been more than a little concerned that an ex-girlfriend with a grudge might see this as an opportunity to repay him for real or imagined wrongs.
He was the first to admit that his record with long-term relationships was less than stellar, and he knew it was his fault. He was just really, really not good at making things work in the dating department.
But circumstances being what they were, he might as well see what Vivian wanted and be done with it—as long as it didn’t involve cutting his hair. Who knew? Maybe he could mend some of those torn fences with his reputation if folks in town saw that he treated Vivian right.
Nick turned his attention to her, but he stood for a good five minutes while Vivian talked to her sister.
And talked. And talked.
His stomach growled, but he couldn’t do anything about it. This was a Bachelors and Baskets auction, with the winning bidders providing a picnic lunch for the men they’d won. Lunch wasn’t going to happen until Vivian led him to wherever she’d stashed her basket. He had to wait until she decided to grace him with her attention, which he guessed wasn’t going to happen soon, since her mind seemed to be on Alexis, the auction and anyone in speaking distance of her.
Except for him.
Vivian gave a new meaning to the words social butterfly, and she definitely had the gift of gab. With the possible exception of Jo Spencer, who owned Cup O’ Jo’s Café and was therefore the Queen of the Gossip Hive, Nick had never seen anybody flitter around as much as Vivian. Her high, tinkling giggle reminded Nick of a fairy in a cartoon.
It was downright grating on his nerves and was practically curling the hair on his chest. Nick crossed his arms and grumbled under his breath, berating the entire chain of events that had led him to this particularly annoying set of circumstances.
She was supposed to be feeding him. That was the deal. She had the picnic basket.
Somewhere.
If she ever got around to acknowledging him again, he might ask where it was. He didn’t mind eating alone and leaving her to her myriad conversations.
“Hey, Viv,” Alexis called, nudging her sister’s shoulder. When Vivian turned, Alexis gestured toward Nick. “You need to feed your man. He looks ravenous over there.”
Nick bristled. While he appreciated Alexis’s thoughtfulness, he was not Vivian’s man. Not in any way, shape or form.
Except, unfortunately, that in a way he was. She’d bought him. With money. For a purpose as yet unknown to him. Unfortunately, she was very possibly expecting a date out of this. He knew perfectly well that many of the single ladies in the crowd were bidding on men for just such a reason. It was enough to make a single man shudder.
“Oh, Nick, I am so sorry,” Viv apologized, laying a familiar hand on his forearm. “I completely forgot about you.”
“Yeah. No kidding.” His arm trembled as he fought the urge to jerk it out of her reach.
She’d forgotten about him? Ouch. He didn’t want to admit it, but her words stung his ego. Even if it was Vivian Grainger. Even if he shouldn’t really care whether she was thinking about him or not.
She ignored his attitude, if she even noticed it, apparently choosing to take the high road and stay cheerful instead of descending into bickering. Typical of what he knew of Vivian Grainger—her glass was always, annoyingly, half-full.
“I packed my basket with all kinds of goodies,” she informed him. “Turkey and Swiss sandwiches and BLTs. Potato chips, a couple of deli salads and one of Phoebe’s delicious cherry pies for dessert. I hope you like cherry.”
Cherry happened to be his favorite. But as hungry as he was, he would have eaten it even if he didn’t care for it.
“And I packed a special surprise.”
In general, he didn’t like surprises—but this one sounded like it was something to eat. His mouth watered at the possibilities.
“You’ll be happy to know that everything I’ve packed today is legitimately store-bought,” she continued, without letting him get a word in edgewise, were he inclined to do so.
Which he wasn’t.
“I know the whole point of this was to serve the best of Serendipity’s down-home country cooking, but trust me when I say you would definitely not want to eat my cooking. I can’t even boil soup.”
“Water,” he corrected absently, wondering when, if ever, they were going to get around to actually eating the food she was yammering about.
“What?” she asked, confused. She folded her arms over her stomach and swayed slightly, as if she was unsteady on her feet. Instinctively, he pressed a palm to the small of her back to support her.
“Water,” he clarified. “The saying is, ‘You can’t boil water.’”
“Oh.” She straightened her shoulders and waved him off, seeming to recover from the dizziness that had come over her moments before. “Whatever. But I do have bottled water.” She paused, giggling. “To drink. Not to boil.”
He was having trouble following her train of thought, if there was one. Once again he thought of a butterfly, flittering from flower to flower.
Only this particular flying insect was revved up on caffeine or something.
“And your basket is—where?” he finally asked, hoping for a straight answer but not really expecting one.
To his astonishment, she grabbed his hand and tugged him across the green.
“We’re right in the middle.”
Smack in the middle of the chaos. Now, why was he not surprised?
“It’s not that I’ve never cooked before,” she said earnestly, as if she thought he really wanted to know, while spreading a fuzzy purple blanket on the plush green lawn and flopping down on it. She reached into her ribbon-and-plume-decorated picnic basket, which Nick thought resembled an exotic bird, and withdrew two sandwiches. Her gaze turned distant and her lips bowed into a frown. “It’s just that I’m not very good at it. Let’s just say the whole experiment was a failure.”
She paused and her voice made a distressed hiccupping sound. In one blink of an eye her expression filled with deep sadness. Nick’s gut clenched and his natural protective male instinct started blaring five alarms.
Her response seemed a bit of an overreaction for a burned roast or whatever she’d had. What could have possibly happened to make her that upset? Had someone yelled at her? Hurt her feelings? If so, that hardly seemed fair. Cooking wasn’t everyone’s forte.
His instinct was to probe further, but then, just as quickly as the pain in her eyes had appeared, it was gone. She shook her head and cheerfully went on as if she’d never faltered.
“Would you like turkey and Swiss or BLT?” She punctuated the question with a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh.
She held out both sandwiches to him and he gratefully accepted a turkey and Swiss, which was tightly wrapped in cellophane and marked Sam’s Grocery. She unwrapped her own sandwich, shook two packets of mayonnaise and globbed it onto her BLT.
“A little sandwich with your mayo?” he teased between bites of his own meal.
She grinned. There was a lot of sunshine in that smile, so much so that it occurred to Nick that he ought to be wearing aviator shades.
“How sad the world would be without mayonnaise.” The black clouds of her past had definitely lifted and her disposition could easily have rivaled Mary Poppins and her spoonful of sugar.
It was hard to keep up with her.
Her eyes glowed with excitement as she reached back into the basket. “Ready to see your surprise?”
He nodded in anticipation, hoping it was food and not tickets to the opera.
He nearly cheered when she pulled out a bucket of hot wings. He was sure he was gaping. How could she possibly have known they were his favorite? What kind of a coincidence was that? The deli counter in Sam’s Grocery only carried hot wings on special occasions and they sold out fast. She would have had to put her order in early to get this batch.
“How—how did you guess?” he stammered.
She wriggled her fingers at him and spoke in a Dracula voice. “I r-r-read your mind.”
“You sure did,” he agreed, reaching for a hot wing. “Or my belly.”
“If you want the truth, after I decided you were the guy I was going to bid on, I called your mother.”
“You did what?” He choked on the hot wing and nearly spit it out. He didn’t know if he was more shocked that she’d planned in advance to bid on him or that she’d been in contact with his mom.
“To find out what your favorite food was. I figured that was the least I could do. Alice was very helpful.”
He groaned and swallowed. He could only imagine just how helpful his mother had been. Next thing he knew, his mom would be inviting Vivian over for dessert and toting out the baby pictures.
He felt a slight guilty twinge for thinking like that. Ever since his dad had died, it had been a struggle to get their mom to show enthusiasm about much of anything. He should be glad that Vivian’s call seemed to have sparked some of that old matchmaking excitement in her. Yet that didn’t make the thought of anyone pushing him and Vivian together any less off-putting. He decided to put aside his worries for now and focus on the food. Buffalo wings were too delicious to be spoiled by aggravation or dread.
“Mmm,” he groaned. “Best Buffalo wings I’ve ever had. Bar none.”
“I’ve never really understood that part,” Vivian admitted. She’d taken a piece of chicken for herself, but took little more than a nibble before putting it back on her plate. “Buffalo don’t have wings. And anyways, I don’t think I’d like to eat a buffalo.”
Nick barked out a laugh. Somehow taking a detour through Viv’s head and picturing buffalo with wings lightened his heart more than anything else in—well, ages.
He reached for another chicken wing. While he polished off several hot wings, two sandwiches and the deli salads, Viv talked. Apparently she didn’t need much feedback other than the occasional grunt or nod from him, which was a good thing, since his mouth was always full of food.
Vivian, on the other hand, hardly touched the food on her plate. She’d nibble here and there on her mayonnaise-laden sandwich and then her expression would turn a little green in the gills and she’d put it down again. He wondered if maybe she wasn’t feeling well.
He was just about to ask when he stopped himself short, deciding it was none of his business. Maybe it was just his imagination and she always ate like a rabbit. She certainly had the figure for it. It would be rude of him to ask. Besides, whatever was bothering her, it wasn’t affecting her soliloquy.
She told him about attending cosmetology school in Houston, how much she loved her work and the city and how her brother-in-law, Alexis’s husband, Griff, had helped her finance her first salon and spa. Apparently it had been quite successful, to hear her tell it, at least until the economy tanked. Then everyone’s business had taken a big hit.
“So what brought you back to Serendipity?” he asked, wiping his hands on a paper towel. Clearly she liked living in the city well enough and it sounded as if the business world was finally recovering from the economic downturn. “Or are you just visiting?”
Nick was positive he saw her blanch, and then her cheeks turned as red as the cherries in the slice of pie he was about to wolf down.
“I’m here for the long tow,” she said with a sigh.
He knew what she meant.
Her blond eyebrows lowered. “I sold my spa in Houston and bought a little shop here in town.” She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I guess you could say that I’m downsizing.”
“Why?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about it.”
Nick tried to catch her gaze but she wouldn’t quite look at him. Here was a woman who normally couldn’t stop talking. He’d clearly hit on a nerve. And she sounded so sad. It hit him right in the gut.
He rapidly backtracked out of the territory that made her uncomfortable. Anyway, he didn’t want to know the specifics. It wasn’t as if they were going to start hanging out together. Since he was stuck with her until he finished whatever task she had for him, he’d rather deal with the happy social butterfly, if given the choice, for as long as he had to be around her, even if her perky personality drove him half-crazy. These bipolar emotions of hers were creeping him out.
What he needed to do was focus on whatever she required of him. Clearly she had a reason for buying him, or she wouldn’t have approached his mother. And he suddenly realized that whatever it was she wanted from him hadn’t been addressed at all. It was the only thing she hadn’t talked about.
It probably had something to do with the shop she’d just bought. Hopefully she was just looking for a little remodeling help or something.
He hoped. That would be safe territory. And happily, nothing to do with dating. Even if his poor mother hoped otherwise.
Sorry, Mom.
“Where is the building located where you plan to build your new spa?”
For some reason he had trouble with the word spa leaving his lips. One little syllable and his tongue was tripping all over it. He supposed it was because he was picturing snowy white bathrobes and massages and people laying out in the sunshine with cucumbers over their eyes.
A spa in Serendipity?
The town had one grocery store. One café. What would it do with a spa?
“Two doors east of Emerson’s Hardware,” she answered, excitement seeping into her voice. “The red building. It used to be a barbershop, but it’s been vacant for a while, I think. I imagine it’s going to take a little work to get it back into usable condition.”
“A little work?” he asked, unable to smother an amused grin. Had she even seen the building since she’d bought it? “Lady, Emerson’s has been using the building as extra storage space for their feed. I doubt very much they worried about keeping up with internal appearances. And you’re looking to make it into some kind of fancy spa?”
“A beauty salon and spa isn’t that big of a stretch from a barbershop.”
Only night and day.
He snorted. It might have the plumbing and wiring setup she needed, but the interior was going to need a complete redesign—and that was after she cleaned out the mess that came from two years of being used as a storage facility. “It’s not going to take some work. We’re talking about a pretty major overhaul here. You’re going to have to gut the whole thing out and start from scratch.”
She tilted her chin up and smiled at him with a twinkle in her eye. His throat tightened. They might be as different as a tomcat and a spaniel, but he was a guy and she was an extraordinarily pretty woman, whether or not a man preferred blondes. And he’d always been partial to blondes.
“You mean you’re going to have to gut it,” she corrected, a giggle escaping from between her lips. Her impossibly blue eyes were alight with mischief. “That’s why I bought you. So I guess now my spa is your...challenge.” She reached over and playfully tipped his hat down over his eyes.
“And mine,” she continued, as usual not letting him get a word in edgewise, “is going to be trying to work with you every day without coming after you with a pair of scissors in order to trim that thick dark bird’s nest of yours.”
He pushed his hat back up and grinned.
“You can try, lady. You can try.”
Chapter Two (#ud7f38b9f-219f-5494-89d0-ad6b2b9893b5)
From the first second Jo had pounded the gavel and declared that Nick was sold to Viv, she’d been wondering if she had made an enormous mistake in bidding on him.
Now she was sure of it.
For one thing, Nick had stopped eating when she’d told him her plans, a chicken wing halfway to his lips. He’d actually had the nerve to gape at her like she was crazy—and then he’d practically laughed her off the community green for making the choice to buy the little barbershop. He hadn’t even bothered to ask if she had good reasons for it.
Which she did.
“We can start work as soon as you’re ready,” she told him, hoping for sooner rather than later. “I don’t know how much time you’re willing to give me on this project, but I’ll take whatever you offer. I’m anticipating maybe together we can do it in—what? A week? Two weeks?”
The expression that crossed his face was indescribable. The closest thing she could come up with was that he looked like he’d just swallowed a toad. His mouth moved but no words came out.
“What?” she asked, her guard rising. “Did I grow an extra eyeball on my chin?”
His lips twitched. “The expression is ‘forehead.’”
She ignored him. “Do you have a problem with my—our—new endeavor?”
He groaned and polished off the chicken wing he’d been holding, tossing it into the bucket of empty bones. He’d eaten half the bucket when she’d first offered it to him and was now finishing it off, and that was after having eaten a full lunch and an enormous slice of pie. Hot wings as an after-dessert snack was just plain weird, as was the fact that he’d polished off almost the entire bucket of chicken literally on his own.
And he thought she was crazy? Whatever.
In contrast to Nick, she hadn’t eaten much at all. Her morning sickness was catching up with her. She’d thought she was over the worst of it, but she suspected her nerves weren’t helping.
“Do I—er, we—have problems? Where do I begin?” he asked sardonically.
“Is this too big of a challenge for you? Because if it is, tell me now. There are a few men left on the auction docket I can bid on if you think this project is more than you can handle.”
He snorted. “I can handle it.”
She narrowed her gaze. She’d pricked at his ego on purpose to see what he’d do. But it wasn’t an idle threat. As far as she was concerned, if he was going to be a jerk to her, she’d follow through with her words and toss him out on his elbow.
She’d had just about enough of dealing with thickheaded men, and she definitely didn’t need his guff. She was resourceful and could always figure out another way to renovate her spa. With or without Nick McKenna. Worst-case scenario, she would hire a general contractor. Better than putting up with Nick’s less-than-stellar attitude. Talk about a glass-half-empty kind of guy.
“If you can handle the job, then what’s the problem?” she jabbed.
He wiped his sleeve across his chin.
Neanderthal.
“I’m not the one with the problem, lady, because I’m not the one who picked up a piece of property that’s bound to be more trouble than it’s worth. Remodel it in a week? Yeah, not so much.”
“You don’t know that for sure.” Though she had a sinking feeling that he knew more about it than she did. Was one week a totally crazy estimate? She honestly had no idea how long these things usually took.
Heat rose to her face. He must think she was a complete idiot. She wasn’t—more like a wishful thinker. Her tendency toward always believing in the best-case scenario had gotten her into trouble more times than she could count, but Nick didn’t need to know that.
“No. I don’t.” He shook his head, his brow lowering. “But I can make an educated guess. Did you buy the shop at below market price?”
Now, how had he guessed that? Alexis and Griff were the only ones who knew the details of her own private financial affairs.
“I might have,” she hedged.
He chuckled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“So it’s not in as good a shape as it could be. What does that matter? When it’s finished, it’ll be amazing. You’ll see. I have an exciting vision for it.”
She’d made her decision the moment she’d seen the cute little red storefront standing empty in the middle of Main Street, especially when she’d noticed that it used to be a barbershop, no less, right down to the now-cracked twirling peppermint sign. It was locked so she hadn’t gone in, and the windows had been too dusty to see much more than shadows inside, but she was sure she could make it into something amazing. She didn’t care that it needed work. She’d made the right decision, and now she would stand by it.
Yes, the once-red exterior paint was peeling and the sign hanging from the outside eaves was dangling by a mere thread, but that would have had to have been replaced anyway, with a bright yellow sign declaring her new spa was open for business. When she was finished remodeling, it would be the most sparkling, eye-catching property in all of Serendipity. She’d have customers lined out the door, all excited to take advantage of her many services.
For the ladies of Serendipity, the blessing of being able to pamper themselves without the hassle of a long drive to the nearest city would finally have come. Full hair services and mani/pedi’s. Eventually she hoped to be able to hire a licensed masseuse so she could add massage to her list of services.
And it was her special blessing as well, her opportunity to prove herself, to turn her life around and make her world right again.
Her life—and her precious baby’s. She needed to be able to provide for her child, but it was more than that. She wanted her son or daughter to have a mother he or she could be proud of.
“Does your vision for this building include having to gut the whole interior before you can rebuild? I’ll have to take a closer look at it, but I’m guessing that’s what we’re going to be looking at.”
Her dreams hadn’t been overly realistic, she realized, but she wasn’t going to admit that. Not to Nick. It was just a slight hiccup in the big scheme of things. She wasn’t going to let that stop her.
“I’m not afraid of a little hard work.”
He leaned back on his hands and raised an eyebrow. “You know anything about carpentry?”
She shook her head. “Well, no. Not really. But I’m sure I can measure wood and hammer a nail as well as the next woman. And I’m a fast learner. Besides, that’s why I brought you in. Or bought you in.” She giggled at her own joke.
He snorted and rolled his eyes.
“I asked around town who might know a little bit about carpentry and your name came up once or twice. That’s why you were on my short list.”
“Well, that explains it, then,” he remarked cryptically.
“Explains what?”
He shrugged. “I was just wondering why you bid on me. Now I know. And you’re right. I know how to help you out. After my dad got sick, I remodeled my mom’s ranch house, where all three of us boys were raised. It gave me something positive to do with my anxiety and grief. And once I was done with that, I built cabins for Jax and me from the ground up.”
“See, I was right about you. An amateur expert. Or is that an expert amateur?” Vivian smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. With the way Nick had been hedging, for a moment there she thought maybe his skills had been overrated. She really did need someone who knew what he was doing, and Nick was that man.
He didn’t look convinced.
Why didn’t he look convinced?
He’d just told her he’d made a bunch of stuff, some buildings from the ground up. Remodeling her shop would be a piece of pie next to that. Surely he wasn’t second-guessing himself?
She stared at him a moment longer and then he shifted his gaze away from her and went foraging into the picnic basket as if it were a bottomless well of food.
He couldn’t possibly still be hungry. He’d eaten—
Oh.
The lightbulb in her brain flipped on at the very same moment she took a sucker punch to her gut. He was avoiding eye contact while he tried to think of how to phrase the bad news.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t build stuff. He just didn’t want to build stuff for her.
He might as well have taken a baseball bat to her fragile self-esteem. With the help of a therapist she was slowly crawling out of the tortuous abyss of being engaged to a verbally and emotionally abusive man. Derrick had fooled a lot of people with his public persona. His former best friend, Griff. Alexis.
And Viv most of all.
With Derrick, she’d always believed she wasn’t good enough for him. She’d tried to change to please him, to be what he wanted her to be, until she didn’t even recognize the woman in the mirror. But no matter what she did or didn’t do, it was never good enough for him. And when she’d discovered she was pregnant—
No. She wasn’t going to go there. Not right now. Derrick wasn’t the man she had to deal with right now—Nick was. He may not be the kindest or most tactful man, but she knew he was a good, decent person. He wouldn’t attack her deliberately. If anything, he probably thought he was helping her by pointing out the flaws in her plan. He didn’t know how much it hurt her to hear her ideas—her dreams, her hopes for the future—put down again. But no matter. If Nick didn’t want to help her, he just had to say so. If he was having second thoughts about doing the work, she’d even give him the out he needed, since he hadn’t made the most of the first one she’d offered.
“Just forget about it.”
His head jerked up. “What did you say?”
“I said forget about it. You don’t have to give me a hand with my remodel if you don’t want to. I’ll find someone else. Worst-case scenario I’ll have to hire a contractor. No big deal.”
“But the money for the auction—”
“—went to a good cause. No hard feelings.”
She didn’t want to be here at the auction anymore, hanging out on the community green with most of the rest of the population of Serendipity. She didn’t want to sit across from Nick acting like everything was okay when it wasn’t. She was tired of pretending.
She reached for the empty sandwich wrappers, stuffed them into the picnic basket and then slammed the lid closed. As closed as her heart felt right then.
She wasn’t lying when she said she would make it. Somehow, some way, she would. With or without Nick McKenna’s help. She shoved her hand forward, ready to shake his and be done with all of this.
Be done with him.
He frowned and stared at her palm as if it were an overgrown thornbush.
“Now, wait a minute,” he said in a gentler tone of voice. Instead of shaking her hand, he laid his large palm over hers and held it. “Don’t jump to conclusions. I never said I wasn’t going to help you.”
She sighed. “You didn’t have to say it out loud. It’s written all over your face, not to mention in your attitude. I know you think I’m a dumb blonde who couldn’t find her way out of a plastic bag, but even I can take a hint.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Paper sack.”
“What?”
He just smiled and shook his head. “I’m thick as a tree trunk sometimes. And I know exactly what my mama would say about that kind of stubbornness.”
“Yeah? And what’s that?” She couldn’t help it. She was intrigued.
He twisted his free arm behind his back as if someone in authority were holding it there.
“She’d say,” he responded with a grin, “that I need an attitude adjustment.” He paused and flashed her a truly genuine smile. “And you know what, Viv?”
“What?” Despite everything, his smile lightened her mood. Maybe because he only smiled when he meant it.
“My mom would be right.”
He snorted and shook his head. “And, Viv? I don’t like to hear you beat yourself up. I don’t think you’re dumb—and you shouldn’t let anyone else tell you that, either. Besides, I don’t let anyone talk about me that way, and we’re in this project together now.” This time, he held out his hand, and she couldn’t help grinning back as she gave it a shake.
* * *
Two weeks following the Saturday of the auction found Nick standing next to Vivian in front of her property. He had tied up all the loose ends that would keep him from his commitment and wanted to get started on this project as soon as possible. Construction was already beginning on the senior center and he planned to volunteer as many hours to that as he could, especially since his uncle James would soon be a resident.
Just thinking of his uncle, an eighty-eight-year-old man with late-stage dementia, was an added weight on Nick’s already burdened heart.
His plate was full to overflowing, but he wouldn’t allow himself to complain. Ranch work kept him plenty busy on its own, and he couldn’t count on his brother Jax to lend a hand as much anymore, since Jax’s miserable harpy of an ex-wife had come to town the day of the auction and abandoned month-old twin babies on his doorstep. The baby girls were adorable and an absolute blessing through and through—but that didn’t stop them from being a lot of work. With the hours they kept Jax up every night, it was a struggle for him to get through his own horse training work every day, much less help with the ranching responsibilities. Slade had his family and his work at the sheriff’s department to keep him busy. So that meant it all fell to Nick.
With everything going on, his stress level was off the scale. The sooner he remodeled Viv’s quaint little beauty parlor, the sooner he could get out from under his obligation to her and go back to his primary concerns—his family, the ranch and the senior center.
He and Viv were both gazing up at the weathered wooden sign hanging directly over them from the eaves over the sidewalk. It was barely dangling by a thread. The thing was downright dangerous. He was surprised a good Texas wind hadn’t blown it off by now.
He pulled out the pencil he’d tucked behind his ear to scribble a few notes on his clipboard. The hazardous sign was the first item on what he imagined was going to be a very long list of things to do to get this place in working order. He couldn’t even imagine what the interior of the building held in store for him.
“I didn’t bring a ladder,” he said, his free hand resting on his tool belt. He’d known he’d eventually have to bring a truck full of heavy-duty tools to remodel this joint—from a planer to a circular saw and everything in between, but he figured evaluating the work and making a plan of action came first. “We’ve got to get that sign down. Today, if possible.”
He still had no idea what he was getting into, but he figured he ought to at least give Vivian her money’s worth in knowledge and labor. The outside of the place only needed a fresh coat of paint and it would be good to go, but he suspected that wouldn’t be true of the interior.
“I noticed the sign the first day I was here. I know it’s a potential hazard to people walking underneath. I can’t imagine why it hasn’t been removed before now.”
“Nor I,” Nick agreed. “You’d think the town council would be on top of something like that. They probably just overlooked it. No matter. You’ll need to hang a new sign anyway. What are you going to call the place?”
Vivian propped her fists on her hips and screwed up her mouth, chewing on her bottom lip. She stared at the old sign as if it was going to give her guidance.
“To be honest, I don’t know. I’m sure something will come to me once I get more of a feel for the place. It has to be exactly right.”
“What did you call your spa in Houston?”
“Viv’s Vitality.”
“That’s clever. You could use that.”
She blanched and shook her head.
“No,” she stated emphatically. “No. I absolutely couldn’t do that. The salon in Houston is part of my old life. This has to be completely different, in every way.”
He lifted his hand as if toasting her with a glass of bubbly. “Here’s to new beginnings, then.”
Her breath came out in an audible sigh. “Right. To new beginnings.”
“Let’s take a look inside and then I’ll run over to Emerson’s and see if they’ll let me borrow a ladder.”
That was one of the many benefits of small-town living. Nick had gone to school with Eddie Emerson, who would one day inherit his father’s hardware shop. Since he’d known Eddie and his father all his life, he was sure it would be no problem to use one of their ladders to take down that sign.
Vivian shoved her hand into an enormously oversize pink-polka-dot handbag that sported a bow nearly as large as the bag itself. At least a good minute of fruitless searching went by before she smiled and shrugged apologetically before returning to digging. He was certain she’d forgotten the keys, but she determinedly continued to fish for them. “They’re in here somewhere.”
He smothered a grin. What could she possibly need to carry around with her that warranted such a big handbag?
“Ah! Here we are,” she announced triumphantly, waving her keys in the air like a flag. She sorted through a large mess of keys until she came upon the one she wanted, and then approached the door.
Nick stepped around her and reached for the key.
“Here. Let me,” he said, sliding it into the lock and stepping back, gesturing for her to enter first. “Welcome to your new home away from home.”
He blinked hard.
His new home away from home? More like his new nightmare.
He’d imagined the interior would take some work—okay, a lot of work—but this was even worse than he’d anticipated. There was nothing salvageable that he could see. At best the paint was peeling off the walls, and that didn’t count the numerous scratches and holes. Repainting wouldn’t be nearly good enough. They’d need all new drywall.
The ground was covered with rotting floorboards scattered with a huge amount of old junk. Besides ancient piles of feed, there was a rusty tricycle, an old end table that appeared to be cracked through the middle, random bricks and an ugly garden gnome that stared back at him as if he were the intruder.
It would take them a week working full-time just to clear the debris, never mind prepare the inside for remodeling. He hadn’t committed to this kind of labor.
But he was all-in now. And maybe that was for the best—at least for his social standing. Vivian knew nothing of his recent dating history, so she didn’t know that he was practically a pariah thanks to his vicious ex poisoning everyone against him. But Vivian had always been well liked. If he spent time with her, helping her, making sure he was seen with her, it was bound to give his reputation an upswing. It would show the rest of the town that he could be near a woman without having her run screaming in the other direction.
Or even worse, be screaming at him.
In public.
It wasn’t that he had any romantic intentions toward Viv, but he had to start somewhere in polishing up his public image if he ever wanted to get a date again. Besides, this project wouldn’t last forever. It would be a race to see whether he could finish the project before Vivian discovered the truth about him. His most recent pathetic excuse for a relationship wasn’t exactly a state secret, and he was sure Viv had plenty of friends who would be anxious to tell her the whole story.
Anyway, who else would help Vivian with this disaster of a shop if not he? She wouldn’t have bid on him if she had anywhere else to go, or anyone else to lean on. He suspected she hadn’t had enough money to hire a proper contractor, although she hadn’t said as much.
He didn’t blame her for her pride. In fact, he admired her for it.
Yes, he had a cattle ranch to run, but he’d figure out some way to be there for Vivian. She was probably only now realizing how long it would take to remodel, but he’d get it done for her.
And run the ranch. And help Jax. And volunteer to help build the senior center.
First, though, he’d have to dig through all this trash.
“Oh, my,” Vivian breathed from behind his left shoulder. “This is truly awful.”
“You haven’t been inside before today?”
Her face colored, staining her cheeks an alluring soft pink. “Honestly? No. The entire real estate transaction was done over the phone and on the internet. I haven’t been back in town for more than a couple of days, and I’ve been busy moving myself into a cabin on Redemption Ranch. Before I knew it, the day of the auction crept up on me, and at that point, I figured we may as well take a look at it together, so we could start making plans.”
“So you bought it sight unseen.”
“Well, I saw the exterior, and I remembered the location from when I lived here before. The pictures the real estate agent gave me must have been from when the property was still a working barbershop. I had at least some idea of what I was getting into.”
Nick personally thought she had no idea what she was getting into. The real estate agent who talked her into buying this property should be shot, taking advantage of Vivian that way. And the worst part was she didn’t have the slightest idea that she’d been taken.
Whatever she’d paid for it, it was too much.
Vivian shook her head. “I apologize. This is all my fault. I should have come down and inspected the place before I got you involved.”
Nick heard the trip in her voice and realized she must have read the expression on his face. She looked as if she were about to cry. She pressed her lips tightly together as if trying to stem the tide of her emotions, which ebbed and flowed faster than Nick could keep up with.
But he could relate to her discouragement. On the work front, he’d recently lost several head of cattle to disease. Then there was his public breakup with Brittany.
Life threw everyone curves. It was how a man—or a woman—responded to those setbacks that showed what kind of person they were.
“Well, I suppose I should call for a Dumpster to be brought in so I can start cleaning,” Viv said, wiping her palms across the denim of her blue jeans. “I’ll put all the trash in one corner until I can remove it. Do you want to go see about that ladder?”
Nick’s gaze widened. He had to admit he’d fully expected her to turn tail and run. But she was just buckling down and pushing forward. Which either made her very brave or completely nuts. At this point he wasn’t sure which.
At least there was one problem that would be quick and easy to fix. As Nick suspected, Eddie was only too happy to loan him a ladder—on behalf of Emerson’s pretty new neighbor, of course. Eddie obviously saw it as an opportunity to ingratiate himself with the lady. Nick didn’t know how he felt about that, but he appreciated Eddie lending him a hand when it came to removing the signage—even if it was for ulterior motives.
By the time Nick brought the ladder back to Emerson’s and returned to the shop, Vivian had managed to create quite a large pile of debris in one corner.
“Did you see this?” she exclaimed, pointing to a bent-up red tricycle with missing spokes and flat tires. “Who would leave a tricycle in an abandoned shop?” she asked, folding her arms as if she were suddenly cold. “It kind of makes me sad to think about.”
“Are you making up stories in your mind about the poor little child who lost his bike?” he guessed.
Count on Vivian to be nostalgic over a rusty piece of metal.
Her eyes widened on him and then she laughed. “Yes, I suppose I am. You must think I’m a real airhead.”
“No, I don’t,” he immediately countered, then cleared his throat.
Heat filled his chest and rose into his neck. That was exactly what he’d been thinking, and honestly, she’d done little to prove otherwise. Still, it seemed to him that she cut herself down a lot, and it gave him cause to wonder why she was so hard on herself.
“Yes, you do,” Vivian scoffed. “And I suspect it’s going to take some real work on my part to change your opinion of me. You have the Mr. Darcy Syndrome.”
He tilted his head at her in confusion. He knew he’d heard the name somewhere, but he hadn’t a clue as to where. “The what?”
“Oh, you are so busted. He’s the hero of Pride and Prejudice, which you absolutely should already know. That book was required reading for every tenth-grader at Serendipity High School since the day the school opened.”
He grinned. “Are you going to tell Mrs. Keller on me? She still teaches tenth grade English, you know. I may have used CliffsNotes to get through. I’ve never been much of a reader, especially not gushy romance.” He didn’t mention why he didn’t care for reading. His dyslexia was a well-kept secret. Only his teachers and family knew about it.
“There’s a movie,” Vivian suggested with a laugh. “Several of them, in fact.”
“Eww. That would be worse than reading the book.” Nick cringed. “You’d have to tie me down to the chair to force me to watch that frilly, girly kind of stuff.”
“You have such a closed mind.”
“Opinionated,” he countered.
“Stubborn.”
“Okay, we can agree on that.”
“So you’re stubborn and I’m a complete ditz.”
Nick’s gaze narrowed on her. “You keep saying stuff like that. Sweeping generalizations and insults that don’t really apply to you. I don’t get it. Why do you do that?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. And do you really think the term ditz doesn’t apply to me? I bought this property sight unseen and then dragged you into the mess.”
Nick suspected it wasn’t just moving back to Serendipity from Houston that had kept Vivian’s mind busy. It sounded like she was getting over some big emotional hurdles, too. But there was no way he was bringing her past or her hurt feelings into the conversation.
“Like you said, it’s Main Street. It was a reasonable assumption to make that the property would be in workable condition when you bought it.”
“Yes, but I thought I was only going to have to modify it from a barbershop to a salon and spa. I knew I’d have to paint and wallpaper but I didn’t expect that I would have to fix a bunch of holes in the walls. Maybe I could just stuff bouquets of fake flowers in the holes and call it art.”
She frowned but her eyes were bright and it was clear from her tone that she was making light of the circumstances.
It was more than he would have done under the same conditions. It was more than he was doing. He felt frustrated, angry and discouraged for her and her crazy spa idea.
But somehow, he’d fix the problem. Because he was a man, and that’s what men did. His family had so many issues he was helpless to resolve: his father’s death, his uncle’s dementia, Jax’s single parenthood. It was almost a relief to face a problem—no matter how large—that he could actually do something to fix.
Chapter Three (#ud7f38b9f-219f-5494-89d0-ad6b2b9893b5)
It took two weeks putting in every extra hour he had to get the shop cleared of clutter. Finally, Nick was able to start tearing out the old drywall. He wasn’t surprised when Vivian showed up to help. Right on time, even though technically she had nothing to do at the shop until the construction was farther along.
Just what he needed—Viv underfoot again.
He had—wrongly, apparently—assumed that flighty Viv would quickly lose interest in the day-to-day construction part of the renovation and leave him in peace to finish off the terms of his obligation to her.
That wasn’t happening. Instead, she was always hovering over his shoulder like a bumblebee, asking billions of questions about every little thing and making annoying, if innocent, suggestions on how they—meaning he—might be able to move things along a little faster.
She was determined to have her spa open the week before Thanksgiving. Four months was plenty of time for him to get the remodeling done, even with Viv hovering around, and even if he was only working the odd weekend. But Vivian took it all so seriously, as if the world would end if the shop didn’t open as scheduled.
He wouldn’t have admitted it aloud, but Vivian amused him. She was so certain all the ladies in Serendipity would be anxious to avail themselves of her services for family get-togethers and holiday parties. He didn’t bother telling her that he thought if the ladies in town had managed up until now without the use of a beauty parlor, they’d probably continue to be fine without one.
Today Viv wasn’t hovering quite as much as she was staring at him—or rather, inspecting him, assessing him. Every time his gaze met Viv’s, pinpricks of premonition skittered over his skin, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that she was watching him with more than just an eye toward the carpentry work he was doing.
For some inexplicable reason, she was examining him—and he didn’t like it one bit. Whenever their gazes met, her impossibly blue eyes would sparkle and her pug little nose would twitch like a kitten’s. And she had the oddest expression on her face. He couldn’t help but wonder if her twin sister, Alexis, had filled her in on his very public breakup with Brittany.
He waited for her to ask, but she remained silent, which in itself was off the mark for Viv.
He turned his back, making it a point to ignore her as he focused on ripping out large chunks of the wall with a mallet and a crowbar. It felt good to be able to physically take a little bit of his anxiety out on the drywall. And while it was aggravating to have Viv hovering behind his shoulder, there was something pleasant in being around a woman, other than his mother, who didn’t treat him like he had the plague.
No single woman in Serendipity wanted anything to do with him. He couldn’t entirely blame them for thinking he wasn’t much of a boyfriend. He’d owned up to his mistakes, both to Brittany and to God. That hadn’t stopped him from getting publically humiliated at last year’s New Year’s Eve party.
Nick cringed as shame and humiliation burned through him. New Year’s Eve the prior year had been the night that changed everything for him, not only socially, but emotionally and spiritually, as well.
He had been working overtime at the ranch all week, nursing sick cattle. The night before New Year’s Eve, he’d barely turned in for the night when his mother called. His father had only been gone for a few months and she was having a rough time emotionally. She asked if he could come and sit with her for a while.
He’d ended up staying with her long into the night, keeping her company as she grieved through her first set of holidays without her husband, Jenson. She’d talked for a long time, sharing her memories of Christmases past.
Nick had quietly held her, but it was tough for him to listen to her stories, an extra proverbial punch in the gut, because he hadn’t been there when his father passed away. He’d been too busy caring for the ranch, resenting Slade and Jax for leaving him with all the work while they took extra trips to San Antonio to be with their ailing dad.
It was a regret he carried in his heart always, so the opportunity to be available to care for his mother when she needed him seemed the very least he could do to try to make things right.
When he’d woken on the morning of New Year’s Eve, he’d been bone weary, but ranch work stopped for no man and Nick had worked from before dawn until well after the sun went down.
He was supposed to be slicking up to take Brittany to Serendipity’s annual New Year’s Eve bash in town. He’d only slouched onto his couch for a second to take a load off his feet and catch his breath. He hadn’t even been aware of closing his eyes until three hours later, when he’d awoken with a start from a deep, dreamless sleep. Somehow he’d gone from sitting up to stretched out full-length, facedown on the couch, with one long leg dangling off the end.
He remembered with alarming clarity the full moon streaming through the front window of his small cabin. It had taken him a few seconds just to figure out where he was, and another beat more before the jolt of realization hit him.
He was late to the party.
Way late.
Like missed-the-kiss-at-midnight kind of late.
He’d dressed in his Sunday go-to-meeting clothes as quick as he could and hightailed it to the party, but he knew even then he was too late to make things right. He felt terrible about letting Brittany down—again—but not nearly as bad as he felt when she verbally tanned his hide right in front of the entire town.
Part of the problem was that her tongue-lashing tested his pride and ego—she might have been angry with him, and rightly so, but she didn’t have to air their dirty laundry in public for everyone to see. Still, once he’d simmered down, the harder blow came when he’d realized she was right.
He had let her down. Had neglected her. Had broken trust with her. Enough that the single women in Serendipity as a whole tended to avoid him, and every woman he’d asked for a date since that time had turned him down flat.
A man could get a complex. How was he supposed to prove that he’d learned his lesson and that he could do better if no one would give him a chance?
And that was the real reason he was committed to seeing Vivian’s project through to completion, however silly he thought the idea of a salon and spa was on a personal level. To prove to the ladies in town—and, perhaps equally important, to himself—that folks could depend on him. That he was trustworthy, and not a total flake.
“How can I help?” Vivian asked, snapping him from his reverie.
“Bring me the push broom, please,” he answered without turning to look at her. “It’s in the back corner.”
The next moment he heard a thunk, and then a crumble and then a crash.
What—?
He whirled to find Vivian sprawled in an inglorious heap in the middle of a pile of old drywall, shrapnel from a damaged ceiling panel snowing down on top of her. Apparently, she’d caught her foot on one of the boards, lost her balance and knocked the broom handle into the ceiling, all in the space of a few seconds.
He tethered his hammer and strode across the room, his pulse rushing through him. Why on earth had she been standing on top of the drywall? Did she not see the danger there? Couldn’t she have taken a less precarious path?
He breathed a sigh of relief when he realized she was fine, though probably a little embarrassed about her trip and fall. She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes on him, daring him to say something.
Or worse, to laugh, which he was very close to doing, if only because she made an oddly adorable picture all sprawled out on the floor with her legs sticking out like a toddler having a tantrum. When she puckered her lips and blew dust and her bangs off of her forehead, he nearly lost it. Mirth bubbled in his chest.
He reached out both arms in a silent offer to assist her to her feet. He didn’t trust himself to speak yet, afraid a chuckle would emerge.
She made an indistinguishable squeak and ignored his outstretched hands, choosing instead to roll to her knees and push to a standing position by herself, only using her palms for support.
Not such a great idea on broken drywall, which immediately cracked through.
She was vertical for about one second before she yelped and nearly crashed back to the floor.
Nick leaped forward, wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his embrace, her head tucked under his chin and her feet dangling well off the ground as he swung her far away from the hazard. It was a good thing his reflexes had been honed by years of working with horses and cattle, or else Vivian would have landed straight onto her cute little nose.
“Put. Me. Down.” Her words were muffled in the cotton of his shirt, but even so, he could tell she was irritated.
With him, apparently.
And here he’d just rescued her. He would have thought she would be grateful.
Women.
She wriggled against him and he opened his arms, relaxing his grip so suddenly that she didn’t have time to respond—which served her right for her ingratitude.
He didn’t set her down that hard, so he expected her to waver slightly and then right herself, but instead it appeared she was going down again. Her arms flailed in large circles and she squeaked in pain.
This time Nick ignored her protests and scooped her full up into his arms, cushioning her by cradling her against his chest. He stalked to the other side of the room, where he’d set up a metal folding chair he used for snack breaks. He pushed his lunch cooler off the seat with the side of his boot, not caring when it tipped upside down and the lid popped open. His water bottle rolled over his sandwiches, squishing them, but he had other, more important things to worry about.
Like what was really wrong with Vivian. There was more to this than just clumsiness.
He plunked her down into the chair as gently as he could, given the circumstances. She stiffened and glared at him.
Stubborn woman. Would she rather he just tossed her around like a sack of potatoes? He could have thrown her over his shoulder into a fireman’s carry and have been done with it. But no. He was trying to be a gentleman here, and she wasn’t helping.
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