Blueprints

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Think about it,” Caroline said.

  “About?”

  “Commitment.”

  “Mom,” Jamie said with audible frustration, “I do commitment better than anyone I know.”

  “Commitment to Brad,” Caroline specified.

  “I love Brad,” Jamie vowed.

  “Then there you go. That’s it. You’ll get through the rest.” Caroline couldn’t fight love.

  But Jamie seemed upset at that, like she wanted more reassurance, like she wanted Caroline to tell her that Brad was the best thing to walk into her life. Lord knew, Roy said it enough. Well, Caroline couldn’t gush over something she didn’t feel. Besides, her focus was always on Jamie. If Jamie wanted to marry Brad, she was for it.

  With a jingle of chains, Jamie shifted the cat so that she could shimmy herself out and push up from the swing. “Brad and I should elope.”

  “Your father would never forgive you.”

  “Would you?”

  Caroline caught her hand and gave it a jiggle. “Absolutely, if it’s what you want. I want you happy. Oh, baby,” she said in alarm when Jamie teared up. “You’ll get through this.” She held out her arm and, when Jamie bent down, folded her in. “There’s a reason why planning a wedding is so stressful. It separates the wheat from the chaff. Do you know how many couples don’t make it?”

  “No,” Jamie whispered against her ear. “How many?”

  “I have no clue, but there must be lots. It stands to reason, doesn’t it?”

  There was a soft snort. “You just made that up, then?”

  “No. The Bible talks about separating the wheat from the chaff.”

  “I mean, the part about wedding stress.”

  “I’m sure I read it somewhere,” Caroline said and gave Jamie a final hug before holding her at arm’s length and thumbing away an unshed tear.

  Jamie took a deep breath and smiled. “You’re the best, Mom, know that?”

  I’m only as good as you, Caroline thought. She hated that Jamie was upset, but loved that she was willing to share worries with her mother.

  “It’s weird seeing you doing nothing,” Jamie remarked.

  Caroline gave a facetious ha. “Enjoy it while it lasts. I’m not sure how much more idleness I can take. When I close my eyes, I’m in the garage working on that oak railing for the Millers’ house.”

  “Don’t even think it,” her daughter warned and glanced at the books on the porch table. “You can read.”

  “Yes. I can read.”

  “Got something sexy and hot?” When Caroline shot her a look, she sang, “Your loss.” But she was suddenly earnest. “Can I get you anything before I leave? Eggs? Cereal?”

  “No thanks, baby. I’m good.”

  “Remember,” she said as she edged toward the stairs, “I’m bringing dinner tonight. Lobster lazy-man style in honor of a one-handed birthday girl. Can I bring you more Tylenol?”

  Caroline laughed. “It’s only my wrist. I can walk.” To prove the point, she stood and, taking Jamie’s arm, escorted her down the steps, but they were barely at the bottom when they wobbled as a pair. “Maybe not.”

  “Oh please,” Jamie muttered. “That’s me.” Reaching down, she freed her heel from the tiny crack between step and stone where it had caught, the front access being one more thing Jamie would have fixed had Caroline allowed it. “You’re steady as a rock. Not that I wouldn’t love to cancel everything else and stay here today.”

  “Don’t you dare. You’re behind already. Go. Really. I’m calling Annie back. She’ll be here by ten. Then Theo’s administrative assistant Allison’s coming, then the LaValles, Rob and Diana, then Dean. I’m good.”

  * * *

  Jamie started the car only when Caroline was back on the swing. Once on the street, she crawled forward to blow her mother a handful of kisses before giving the car gas. Seconds after the mint-on-teal Victorian was out of sight, though, she pulled over, picked up her phone, and tried Claire. When the call went to voice mail again, she tried Brian. Same thing.

  This time, she redialed Claire and left a message. Call when you can, and please, please, please, don’t call Caroline yet. And don’t mention the hosting issue to anyone else, please?

  Wondering how many other people already knew and, if the list went beyond three or four or five, whether it would be possible to put a lid on the secret at all, she headed for MacAfee Homes.

  * * *

  The MacAfee Building was several blocks from the center of town. A regal brick structure, it was designed to honor the Georgian Colonial style of the earliest homes built by the company. Its front door, which was oversized and paneled, had the requisite crown and columns, and its windows had multiple panes, but its six-story height had called for creativity. Though side gables and chimneys still rose at the top, its facade was a pastiche of those tall multipaned windows, with cornices, moldings, and pillared balconies strategically placed for visual appeal.

  Jamie worked on the top floor, though not at the front of the building. That front, with its sunny southern exposure, housed executive offices that were spacious, one large desk per office and an assistant outside each door. At the other end, facing north, was the design team. Here, skylights allowed for available light, but none hit the computer screens so crucial to an architect’s work. The floor space was open, broken by large L-shaped desks that were arranged in three-person pods to maximize the sharing of ideas and advice.

  Jamie shared a pod with her about-to-retire mentor and an architect-intern. The latter was already at her desk, struggling with an egress issue as she moved tracing paper over one of Jamie’s plans. Normally, Jamie would have leaned over her shoulder to see where she was headed and perhaps move the translucent paper around herself, but she didn’t have time now for that. Waking up her computer, she checked for e-mail from Brian or Claire. Finding nothing, she set off to see Brad.

  His office was on the floor below. The central area here held desks for a receptionist and secretaries, as well as comfortable chairs for guests. Glassed-in offices ran along either side, housing Brad, his paralegal, a one-person billing department, the MacAfee in-house real estate agent, and a resident computer nerd. Dean and two other general contractors, who were in the field more often than not but loyal enough to MacAfee Homes to merit dedicated desks, shared a large office at the end of the hall, as well as a conference room nearby for meetings with subcontractors, suppliers, and clients.

  “Hey, Miranda,” Jamie said, nearly beside the receptionist before the woman’s eyes flew up.

  Startled, she pushed the book she was reading out of sight. “Jamie,” she said, blushing. “Hi. I didn’t hear the elevator.”

  “I took the stairs,” Jamie explained, but kept on walking to minimize the woman’s embarrassment at having been caught reading on the job, much less reading a book with as recognizable a cover as that one. Miranda was as good a receptionist as MacAfee Homes had. She was attractive, personable, and efficient. She was also happily married and had three children in various stages of daycare and school.

  Jamie might have wondered why she was reading erotica, if her mind hadn’t been on Brad. She knew his schedule and had hoped to find him alone, but his clients had arrived early and were seated in leather club chairs while Brad reviewed their agreement with MacAfee Homes.

  Her steps slowed. He was leaning against the front of his desk, his wire-rims on his nose, and he was a calming sight. Tall and rangy, he had short, side-parted brown hair. His blazer, slacks, and loafers were sedate and well tailored; they were nowhere near as expensive as Roy’s clothes, but Brad wasn’t about money or show. He was about competence. As he turned from one page to the next, he had his clients’ undivided attention.

  Then he spotted her, and she felt a moment’s doubt. This wasn’t the time to talk through the argument they’d had, certainly not to discuss Caroline. But his face lit with pleasure seconds before he waved her in. Yes, pleasure. Hard feelings from earlier? Gone, at least
for now. She was barely through the door when he held out an arm, inviting her over in a gesture that might have been inappropriate in another place of business, but MacAfee Homes was about family. Family Builds. The words were on every piece of stationery, every contract, every bit of marketing the company used. It was hokey, perhaps, but Theo MacAfee couldn’t say it enough.

  Brad had become family. When he took her hand and drew her close, she felt safe. Not that clients intimidated her; she was with them all the time. Brad was particularly good with them, though. Content to socialize in ways she was not, he was the glove that fit her MacAfee life.

  It had taken her a while to see that. He had already been with the company for several years when she joined it fresh from RISD—the Rhode Island School of Design—and there were no instant sparks. Jamie wasn’t looking for a lover, much less a husband. She was focused on work. They became friends joking about everyone who wanted them to be more, only in time discovering that they shared other things as well. Once they started to date, sly smiles were rife, and when they became engaged, the celebration was office-wide.

  The sense of safety was mutual. Jamie was Brad’s security, too. She felt it in the way he held her to his side as he returned to his clients and said, “You remember my fiancée, Jamie MacAfee. Jamie, the Abbotts, David and John.”

  The two rose to shake her hand and were still on their feet when Brad said, “Would you excuse us for a minute?” and led her out of the office. In the hall, he whispered, “How did it go?”

  Her meeting with Roy. “Awful,” she whispered back. “They want me to take over as host of the show.”

  Behind his glasses, his eyes came alive. “He told you?”

  “You knew?”

  “I don’t negotiate the contracts, since I’m not an entertainment lawyer, but Roy told me they wanted the change. This is so good, Jamie. You’ll make an amazing host.”

  Jamie was startled because (A) he had known and hadn’t told her and because (B) he thought it was a good idea. “I can’t be the host. Not if it means kicking Mom out.” Brad should have known that. He should have argued with Roy when the issue first came up. “Oh God. Dad asked you to side with him.”

  “He didn’t have to. I think it’s a good decision.”

  “You think Mom’s not doing the best job?”

  “She’s done a great job, but so will you.”

  Jamie let out a discouraged breath. “I can’t do it, Brad. This is my mother. And I have a wedding to plan.” She squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry about this morning. My mind’s been on too many other things.”

  He shrugged and, in the next breath, asked, “How’s Caroline’s wrist?”

  “Better today.”

  “Did you wish her Happy Birthday for me?”

  “I was barely able to wish her Happy Birthday from me. Thanks to Dad, we didn’t have much time together. Can you and I talk later?” If Roy could enlist Brad to convince Jamie, Jamie could enlist Brad to unconvince Roy. Brad could also advise her on handling Brian and Claire. “What’s your schedule?”

  “Lighter than yours. You tell me. What time is good?”

  She had clients coming at eleven for a second-round consult on the design of their home, a budget discussion over lunch concerning renovation of a public library, and, when that was done, an on-site check of the construction of one of her banks. Between it all, she had to review her Revit schematic and send it to the plotter so that she would have two full sets to take with her to Atlanta tomorrow.

  “Three?” She had a short break then. “Out back, maybe?” There was a large patio behind the office, created to showcase MacAfee landscape designers. Client meetings were sometimes held there, though more often it was where employees went for coffee or lunch. It would be hot today, but there was shade. More important, there was privacy.

  “Three, out back,” he whispered. He kissed her lightly, raised a brow and grinned with a touch of mischief that said she was his, and returned to his office.

  Jamie should have been reassured by his kiss, his grin, his conviction that she would make a great host. As she headed for the stairwell, though, she was uneasy. She wanted him to side with her from the get-go. He knew what her life was like, and he knew what she felt for her mother. He should have considered all that.

  Shouldn’t he have?

  four

  Caroline hadn’t moved from the porch swing. Granted, it was her favorite spot, but she had never spent the whole morning here. She’d never spent the whole morning off her feet, period—or hadn’t since she’d had the flu, what, four years ago? She was the healthiest person around, and she wasn’t exactly sick now. Her wrist ached, but had it not been her right one, she would have been in the garage working. Gut It! might be done for the season, but other work went on. Most of it involved intricate carving, which was better done here. She had her best tools in the garage, plus ideal lighting and her own music. The guys she worked with liked hard rock. Her sound was more mellow.

  Mellow was an apt description for what she felt now, she decided, eyes still closed through a stretch. She had fallen asleep sprawled on the swing after Annie had left, and though she felt sweaty, she didn’t rush to sit up. The birds were quieter, either tired of socializing or silenced by the midday heat. Not so the MacAfee crew that was framing the new addition to a house two streets over. As muted as the hammering was, it was a tapping she knew well.

  Then came a closer sound, a human one, and her eyes flew open.

  Dean. He was leaning against the front rail, hands braced on either side, ankles crossed as long, bare legs settled in with a brush of hair on skin.

  Eye candy, Jamie called him, no small compliment since he was close to Caroline’s age, but her daughter was right. Everything about Dean worked: the dark hair that spiked over his forehead, the silver tips of his sideburns, the just-there scruff on his jaw, the muscled shoulders, the lean waist. Had he come from work, he’d have been wearing jeans and boots, but with the taping of Gut It! done, he was taking off for a week. He still wore black from the waist up, always black, but today in the form of a button-down rather than a T-shirt. His sleeves were rolled, his khaki shorts pressed, his eyes amused.

  She tried to muster anger but was too logy. Besides, he was so much like a brother—why waste the energy? The best she could do was to chide, “That isn’t very polite, Dean.”

  “What?” he asked innocently.

  “Watching someone sleep without her knowing. How long have you been here?”

  “Not long. How do you feel?”

  “Great.”

  “Which is why you were sleeping just now.”

  “I was just sleeping off the last of the anesthesia. They called it a local block, but there was enough sedation in that IV to last a week.” She eyed the mass of gauze and tape on her wrist, rolled it one way, then the other. It felt heavier in the rising heat. “This is just a gimmick to keep me from working. The incision is tiny.” She eyed his knee. “Much neater than that.” The scar there ran a jagged eight inches, the upshot of a hand saw misused by an apprentice carpenter several years before. It was usually hidden by jeans. “That still looks mean.”

  “It adds to my appeal, don’t you think?”

  “Absolutely,” she mocked, though there was some truth to it. The scar fit the image of the rugged outdoorsman, and it wasn’t alone. He had a white line over one eyebrow, a pinkie that didn’t quite work, and numerous scars in other places habitually exposed to his work. Most people wouldn’t notice; a man’s skin wasn’t smooth to begin with. But he and Caroline had a running competition. He showed her his; she showed him hers.

  “I’m still ahead,” he said.

  “Only because you’re reckless. I get credit for caution.”

  “Reckless has nothing to do with it. I learned the trade through trial and error. You learned it from a father who was not only a master at carpentry but totally protective of you.”

  She had been fortunate in that, and not only when it
came to learning. Much as she loved both of her parents, she and her father had shared something special.

  “Thinking of them?” Dean asked kindly.

  Her parents, on her birthday? Of course. She had been a late-in-life child, “our little miracle,” her mother always claimed. As though to prove themselves worthy of that, both had lived well into their eighties.

  “They were proud of you. They loved watching the show.”

  “On some level,” Caroline said with a sad smile, remembering the phone calls during the early Gut It! years. “Mom thought it was an ad, and Dad, well, Dad recognized me the first year or two, but after that he was too far gone. His mind just…” She flicked her hand toward nothingness and then, needing a regrounding, ran her eyes down Dean from head to foot. He was wearing flip-flops. Her eyes shot to the street. From where she lay, only the top of his truck rose over the porch rail. “No bike?” His passion was a Harley. He rarely skipped work without it.

  “It’s too hot.”

  Too hot. Definitely. Pushing up, she lowered her legs to the floor and stretched her back, then wiped sweat from her forehead with her good arm. She wasn’t the only one sweating. Dean’s tanned skin held a sheen. Naturally, it looked fine on him, which wasn’t fair at all.

  “I nearly brought you flowers. Good thing I didn’t,” he said with a glance at the porch table. “That is funereal.”

  Four arrangements had come, two from people who shouldn’t have known about Caroline’s hand. “My daughter has loose lips. But her intentions are good. Same with yours, though I told you not to cancel your trip.” He was going fly-fishing in Montana, or so he claimed.

  “I didn’t cancel it. I just put it off a day.”

  “So who are you really going out there to see?” she teased as she always did, and as he always did, he smirked.