by Kait Nolan
All her fault.
She didn’t know when the tears started. No one stopped to comment or comfort. They were too busy frantically trying to turn back the clock. Evidently, she was the only one to recognize the futility of their actions. But she went through the motions of trying to help because she couldn’t do anything else. Facing the reality of what came next was beyond her capabilities at the moment. Facing Wyatt felt nigh on impossible. What could be worse than seeing the disappointment and outrage he had to be feeling?
“Oh my God!”
“Deanna, what the hell happened?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, curling her hands into fists. Why? Why did I tempt the universe by asking what could be worse?
On a bracing breath, she turned. “Mom. Dad. We had a little problem.”
“I think we’ve got up all the standing water,” Simon reported.
“Good, that’s good.” The response was automatic because Wyatt recognized that his little brother needed some reassurance that they’d done everything that could be done to salvage the situation. “Why don’t you help Mateo load all those wet towels up to haul back to the gym?”
“Sure thing.” Simon paused to squeeze his shoulder before continuing on through the house to find the others.
The moment he was out of sight, Wyatt released the careful hold on his expression, letting the frustration and the fury free for just a little while.
This shit was beyond bad. Even with all the people who’d answered his call for help, it was weeks of labor undone and so many thousands of dollars of materials wasted because he ignored his instincts and didn’t put his foot down on the order things should be done.
He knew he should have dealt with all the plumbing before tackling any of the prettifying. He knew he should have checked it all, made certain it was up to code and would hold up under the additional pressure on the system from the new fixtures and appliances being installed. Experience dictated that if there could be surprises, there would be. Usually of the negative variety. But he let himself believe the plumbing would hold, that it would be fine. That the chance to impress the network was worth the risk of putting it off.
They wouldn’t be impressed now.
And it was all his fault. He was the expert. It was on him to say no. To be the voice of reason. There was a lesson about hubris in all of this, but he didn’t have the time to consider it. He just had to keep doing the next right thing. That meant renting some equipment and getting down on his knees to pray like he’d never prayed before.
As he began another pass to check the progress, he realized that Deanna’s parents had arrived. Just fucking perfect. The icing on this shit cake. He could hear the tones of anger, even over the drone of all the fans and shop vacs. Veering in their direction, Wyatt braced himself for a rescue.
“How the hell could you quit your job for this… this… travesty?” Phillip demanded.
Even from well down the hall, Wyatt could see Deanna’s shoulders hitch, as if her father had struck her. He couldn’t hear her reply, but it prompted her mom to lay in next.
“—told you this would happen. With these old houses, it’s always going to be something. And now where are you? In the middle of all this drama, just to make more ratings for his show?”
What the hell?
“Excuse me?” Deanna gasped.
“He’s just using you. Exactly like Blake. You’re pouring all this time and energy into somebody else’s career. Somebody else’s dream. You’re losing yourself again. When are you going to learn?” Her father sounded disgusted.
Wyatt waited for Deanna to defend him. To explain how he was nothing like that asshole. How he was bankrolling this renovation. How this was their home, and he’d never sink so low as to put it at risk for ratings. How the show was their dream now. But she said nothing. She simply stood there, head bowed, as if waiting for another kick. Something about that defeated posture stung. As if she were just accepting their judgement as law, writing everything off without lifting a finger to protest.
Looked like he was going to have to take care of this himself, too.
Barging right into the middle of their little cluster, he fixed her parents with a glare. “Listen, you can feel however you feel, but right now, we have work to do. So you can either pitch in or get out of the way.”
Rude? Absolutely. But they’d insulted him in his own home, and if they weren’t part of the solution, they were contributing to the problem.
Phillip’s nostrils flared, but he took Valerie’s elbow and steered her out of the house. As soon as the door shut behind them, Wyatt turned to Deanna. Her face was ravaged by tears. The sight of them made his gut twist, but he couldn’t deal with that right now, either. There’d be time for comfort on the other side of this nightmare.
The next right thing.
“We need to rent industrial fans and dehumidifiers. As many as we can get, as fast as we can.” The floors were bad, but if they could dry them out properly, some might be salvageable. The warp might settle down. He’d seen it happen.
She lifted her head, exhaustion written in every line of her body. “We’re going to have to cancel the party.”
Her announcement interrupted the list in his head like a record scratch. “What?”
“I’m just being the voice of reason here. We don’t have the time and resources to pull this off. The network will need to make other arrangements, and that takes time. We can’t afford to destroy whatever goodwill we have by canceling at the very last second or—worse—have them show up to a disaster.”
He was breaking his back to fix this, pulling out all the stops, and this was her response? This hurt so much worse than her lack of defense against her parents’ accusations. She was giving up. On the dream. On him. “After all this, you don’t have faith in me?”
She shook her head. “This has nothing to do with you. I’m just being realistic. The whole thing was a big mistake.”
The temper already at a simmer hit a rolling boil. “Oh, of course. The old standby of parroting your parents. God forbid you stick to what you actually believe. No matter what I’ve done to build you up, you always go back to their opinions, their messages.”
Her brows drew together. “Wait, build me up? I’m not one of your projects, Wyatt.”
He took a step closer, going toe to toe with her. “Aren’t you?”
“No!” And finally he saw something other than defeat in her eyes. Insult and anger warred, making the gray flecks in her hazel eyes stand out in stark relief. It was better than the dejection, better than the nothing of her reaction. Even if it was too little, too late.
“Well, I’m not one of your mistakes.”
Without another word, he spun on his heel and stalked out. He had phone calls to make.
Chapter 16
“Have you slept at all?”
With profound gratitude, Deanna accepted the steaming cup of coffee Bennet held out and sank back into one of the cushy chairs in her friend’s apartment. Casper stretched out beside her with a sigh that encompassed all her weariness. “Not really. Wyatt didn’t come home last night.”
She’d spent all night wondering, worrying, paranoid he’d pack up all his things and go in a fit of temper, even though she knew deep down he’d never abandon the job unfinished. But she had no such confidence about him not abandoning her. Not when she’d inadvertently hurt him in his most tender wound.
Bennet curled up with her own mug. “Did y’all have a fight?”
Did a conversation so short even count as a fight? Did it matter? She jerked her shoulders and admitted the truth she’d wrestled with all night. “I think he’s done with me. And I don’t blame him. I made him a promise there’s no way I can deliver now. I failed him. More than that, I failed myself. I swore I wasn’t going to make another huge mistake, and what do I do? It’s just like my parents warned me. Except this time, it’s not just me who has to deal with the consequences of my foolishness.”
Benne
t frowned. “I feel like you’re leaving out a lot of the middle of this story. Start from the beginning.”
So she did. Deanna took her through the whole thing, from getting home to find the flood, all the way through the fight and Wyatt walking out. “I thought he’d come back after we’d both cooled off and we’d talk about it. But he never did.”
“As first fights go, this one’s kind of a doozy. A lot’s on the line that matters to you both. How did Patrick take the news when you canceled?”
“I haven’t called him.”
“Why not?”
Deanna gripped the mug, soaking up every last scrap of warmth from the ceramic into her palms. “Because I can’t stop seeing the look on Wyatt’s face when I gave up. And because, foolish though it may be, I don’t really want to give up.”
Bennet’s shrewd gaze pinned her in place. “On the show? The party? Or Wyatt?”
“All the above. But mostly him. I don’t want to let him down. He’s had so much of that in his life, and I don’t want to be another person he can’t count on. Does that make me crazy?”
“Why would that make you crazy, honey?”
“My parents think he’s using me like Blake.”
“What?” Her shriek had Casper leaping to his feet, looking for threats.
Deanna stroked a hand along his back until he settled again. “They all but flat out said that he’d set this whole thing up himself to create more drama for the show.”
“Wyatt would never do that.”
“I know. But just… all of it. They think I’m giving up everything I want for a guy, like I did with Blake. And, I mean, I’ve made a lot of changes since Wyatt came into my life. I don’t think it’s the same, but I didn’t think what I did with Blake was wrong when I was in it, either. I told myself I was being supportive because I loved him. Am I wrong?”
Bennet considered. “You disappeared in your marriage. I don’t see you doing that with Wyatt. But let’s question the premise: Do you want what he’s offering? Do you want the show? The career in design? The whole thing? Or is that just something you’ve gotten into in the name of supporting his thing?”
“I wanted all of it before him. Well, not the show. But the rest of it. He just built me up enough to go after it.”
“I think that’s your answer. Blake never built you up. He never did anything to support you. It was only ever about him. Wyatt’s gone out of his way to make you visible, to make sure you’re seen and that your talents are appreciated. He’s been as much into helping you come to shine as in his own success. That doesn’t sound like a man who’s using you.”
She’d been so insulted by the idea that she was one of his projects, as if he thought she was something broken. But he put so much love and care into the things he tended and restored. Would it be such a bad thing? It was just reflective of his support. Not a put down. At least, not when he wasn’t pissed off and upset himself. That wasn’t the kind of man he was.
“I want to do this for him because I’m a supportive partner. Because I think that’s what a partner is. My problem with Blake wasn’t that I supported him to the extreme, but because he didn’t support me back. I didn’t have a partner with him. I do with Wyatt. Or, at least, I did.” She swallowed down the lump in her throat at the idea that she’d screwed that up. “I don’t want to lose him, Bennet. And I’m afraid the things I said in the moment will be a deal breaker for him.”
“You’re in love with him.”
Miserable, Deanna nodded. “I didn’t ask to be.”
Laughing, Bennet bent forward and laid a hand over hers. “We’ve known each other a lot of years, so I feel like I’m in a good position to say this. You are usually great at taking most things as they come. You handle emergencies all the time. But when things get really huge and overwhelming, you have a tendency to retreat. You have to shut the door on the noise so you can sift through all that information and make a plan. That’s all you were doing. What you’re still doing. That’s not giving up, and it’s not screwing up. Wyatt just hasn’t known you long enough to know that about you.”
Deanna realized it was true. She’d done it when she suspected Blake of cheating, taking longer to pull the trigger on the divorce than others might have. She’d done it with work regularly, holing up to get her thoughts straight when she had to pivot without enough time. Hell, she’d tried to do it when she bought Blackborne Hall. Her parents had just found out about it before she’d figured out the right move. And yeah, amid all her worry, she’d been thinking about how to salvage this situation.
“I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to find a way to make it work. We can replace the damaged drywall and get the painting done, but the floors still need to be replaced. They’re almost a total loss. We don’t have the budget or the manpower to do that in time for the party.”
“Y’all have been thinking outside the box on materials from the get go. Surely there’s a source somewhere.”
Something began to percolate in the back of Deanna’s mind. “Maybe… But even if we managed to get the damaged floors ripped out and new ones installed, there’s no way they can be finished in time for the party. It takes days for the stain and poly to cure.”
“Set the acquisition of them aside for a minute. Does finished for the party have to mean perfect and ready to sell? Is it possible to do something unconventional that would make it beautiful for the party and the let y’all finish for real later?”
Her mind immediately spit out possibilities for how it could be done. “I mean… it would take an army.”
Bennet reached for her laptop and typed something in before turning the screen. Deanna stared at the subscriber count for the DIWyatt YouTube channel for a long moment as her mind finally began to formulate a plan. The whole thing was a Hail Mary of epic proportions, but maybe that go big or go home attitude was merited right now.
“Do you have a camera here?”
“Of course.”
“Set it up. I need to make a call.”
By the time she’d finished, Bennet had gone brows up. “You do need an army.”
“Then let’s use what we’ve built to get me one.”
Deanna positioned herself in front of one of the few blank walls in Bennet’s living room. She didn’t check her hair or makeup. This was all about raw and real.
When Bennet gave the signal, she began to speak.
“Hey DlWyatt fans, we need your help.”
Despite the early hour, the gym was hopping. Wyatt recognized a couple of regulars working on the heavy bags as he stepped inside. He considered taking the time to whale on one himself, but he hadn’t bothered to pack a bag before his precipitous exit last night, and somehow, over the past few months at Blackborne Hall, he’d actually moved in, so there wasn’t a bag of spare anything in his truck.
From behind the front desk, Mateo looked up, a deep groove dug between his brows, the phone pressed to his ear. “Not cool, Odette. Very not cool. You’re leaving me up shit creek here.”
Apparently, his morning wasn’t going great either.
He grunted at whatever his office manager said in reply, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “Yeah. Yeah. I gotta go.” Without another word, he hung up the phone with the slow, deliberate motion that told Wyatt he wanted to hit something.
“What’s going on with Odette?”
“She quit. With no notice. Apparently, it became of paramount importance that she follow her bliss across country to train with some hippy dippy health guru in Sedona.”
Wyatt winced. “Ouch.”
Mateo pinched the bridge of his nose and blew out a breath, finally focusing fully on Wyatt. “I’d ask if you slept okay, but you look like shit.”
He felt it, too. He’d spent more time than not staring at the ceiling, and the very idea of all the work he needed to do had all his limbs dragging. “Thanks for letting me crash last night.”
“No problem.” If he had an opinion about the fact that Wyatt hadn’t wanted to go home
, he kept it to himself. “What’s next?
“Gotta pick up dehumidifiers and industrial fans as soon as the rental place opens. Beyond that, I have no idea. I know all the necessary steps to fix it, but I don’t know if there’s a point. Deanna wants to cancel everything.”
Mateo folded his arms across his chest. “Does she want to, or does she just think that’s the only choice?’
There was no erasing the picture of her resignation from his brain. There’d been no effort at problem solving, no brainstorming, no nothing. Just calling it quits and cutting their losses. Wyatt was working hard not to think about that quite yet. “She thinks it’s done. There’s not enough money or people or time.”
“What about you? Do you see a way?”
To fix the damage? That was his jam. To get it all done right and in time for the party to impress the suits? Well, he hadn’t bothered putting much brain time to that since she’d already said they were canceling. “Man, I don’t know. I just feel like the only way through is forward. Whether the party happens or not, the shit’s gotta be fixed. I’m just putting one foot in front of the other.”
“You aren’t the only contractor in the family. Maybe Porter and some of his crew could shake loose to lend a hand. Call Pru. Activate the full Misfit Inn phone tree.”
If anybody could pinpoint who was in a position to help, it was Pru. In the absence of their mother, she was the one who’d led the charge on keeping the broader family ties alive for all the fosters who’d gone through Joan’s care over the years. They were legion.
The idea of having more skilled labor was appealing. And yet. “It doesn’t feel reasonable to ask them to drive four hours from Eden’s Ridge.” Even now, he was so programmed not to be a bother to anyone. Be helpful. Don’t need help. That was part of why he’d always preferred working alone.
Mateo jerked his shoulders. “If they can’t come, they won’t. Doesn’t hurt to ask. Joan would be pissed if she thought you were operating from that place of feeling like you’re a burden. You know how she felt about that.”