“We love your show,” said the man, to which his wife added, “We watch it every week, even reruns now. Can’t wait for the new season.”
Much as Jamie resented the interruption, she couldn’t alienate a viewer. Managing a polite smile, she said, “We just finished taping it. They’re in the process of editing.”
That led, when the couple moved on, to Chip wanting to know everything about Gut It! and Jamie telling him how the show had begun and what it meant to MacAfee Homes, but also about Claire’s decree on switching hosts and Jamie’s resulting rift with Caroline.
“Is hosting something you want?” Chip was careful to ask first.
“I thought it was. Assumed it was. But under these circumstances?” She shook her head. “Maybe someday, but not now. Especially not now,” she added, reinforcing the especially with a meaningful look.
“I feel for your mom,” he admitted. “Mine lost her job when the hospital where she worked was bought by a for-profit corporation. They said the cuts were part of the takeover, but it was mostly older women who were let go. Mom liked her job. Suddenly it was gone, and she was too old to find another.”
“So she retired?”
“If you can call it that. She’s a professional volunteer, her current passion being the library in the Vermont town where they summer. She’s busier than ever.”
They continued to talk over grilled snapper and rack of lamb, and when Chip ordered a side of sour-cream-and-chive fries, Jamie was in heaven. They lingered over cappuccino until thoughts of getting back for the sitter intruded, but they hadn’t made it out the door when it was his turn to be stopped.
“Buffalo blew it when they sent you to Pittsburgh,” said a man who was clearly a hockey fan. “You were the best right wing they had.”
Less indulgent than Jamie, Chip thanked him, no conversation, and guided her to the car. “I always hate that,” he muttered as soon as he slid behind the wheel.
“Why?”
“Buffalo traded me because I was a problem.”
“You were a great player.”
“Yeah, when I was on.”
“You think of the bad behavior, Chip. People like him are thinking of the good stuff.”
Taking a deep breath, he grabbed her hand and held it tightly as he drove off. “Keep reminding me, please?”
* * *
By mutual, unspoken consent, they avoided PDA at the restaurant. The fact that both of them were recognized validated that decision. The last thing either of them wanted was to find a cell phone shot posted somewhere online.
After the restraint, though, they touched constantly during the drive home. When Chip wasn’t holding her hand, it was on the back of his neck or his thigh. He kissed her with promise when they pulled into his driveway, and made good on the promise after taking the babysitter home. She fell asleep in his arms, well and fully satisfied.
* * *
Jamie had trouble thinking about designing when she was with Chip, but she had fallen behind after Roy’s death and was nowhere near catching up. She had always been focused on work, always. So it was near-compulsion that had the wheels in her mind spinning when she woke at five on Saturday morning. Naked beside him, she lay for a time just taking in the sounds and smells of the house. Her condo had few. Well built and new, it smelled nondescript, it didn’t creak underfoot, and its systems were silent. This house was different. She smelled Chip, of course, all clean male, on her skin and his as he slept beside her. She also smelled wax on aged wood floors and heard the rattling of cool air through heating vents that had been adapted for AC only four years before.
Absurdly, she thought about flying. She was always more comfortable when the plane was hitting a steady stretch of gentle bumps. They gave her the illusion of being on the ground.
Likewise, the sounds in this house were grounding. Or maybe what gave the house roots were silent echoes from Chip’s parents’ time. They had raised a family here and had been happy. Jamie could feel that, as if the house had a character that lived beyond its inhabitants. It wasn’t unlike Caroline’s house in that sense. For the first time, she understood why her mother loved the Victorian so. Especially at a time when one’s life was new, roots helped.
The AC cycled off, and Chip’s rhythmic breathing was more noticeable. Turning her head on the pillow, she studied him—dark hair, shadowed jaw, broad shoulders, and good heart—and felt such a swell inside that she was beside herself. His body warmth was welcome in the air-conditioned chill he liked, but he wasn’t physically holding her down. Rather, he had a hand tucked to her hip, as if the reassurance of her presence was all he needed.
But those wheels in her mind continued to whir, now joined by a little voice that cried, Work! That voice had been silent, not a peep since she had broken her engagement with Brad. And it wasn’t snide now, just insistent.
With care, she gently slid away from Chip, but as soon as she sat up on the edge of the bed, he mumbled, “Where are you going?”
Miming writing, she whispered, “Work thoughts.” She returned to kiss his cheek, then reached for a robe and crept down to the breakfast nook, where she sat with a paper and pencil making a list, by client, of work to be done. When the list grew daunting, she began shifting tasks to a second list, this for her assistant, and when that one grew daunting as well, she sat back.
Caroline was right. They needed to hire another architect. Jamie could still do everything herself, but did she want to? No. She loved designing homes, offices, and stores. But she had to learn to delegate, and some parts of her work couldn’t be done by an intern. Oh yes, she might have trouble finding a licensed architect willing to take her runoff. Or not.
This would be a lifestyle change for Jamie. She had always been narrowly focused on one thing, first tennis, then architecture. She didn’t go out with friends, didn’t cook, and, other than yoga classes and the occasional tennis game with a local pro, didn’t have any hobbies. But life wasn’t all work. For the first time now, she wanted a mix.
Oh, and one more thing? She was absolutely, definitely, bottom-line not hosting Gut It! in the fall—didn’t have the time, interest, or energy. She was thinking how best to break this to Claire and what the consequences might be when Chip slid into the booth snug beside her.
“The boys are up,” came his deep, early morning voice. “I want a kiss before I go in there.”
She kissed him—so natural, so sweet—then said, “I’ll get them.”
“No. You’re working.” He glanced at her lists. “Productively?”
She shrugged. “It helps when I organize things, but I need to hire another architect.” Suddenly, though, she wasn’t thinking about work. Laying her head on his shoulder with an ease that should have been years in the making, she said, “How can something so new feel so right? I keep waiting for a hitch.”
“I like my house cool.”
She smiled against his warm skin. “I noticed.”
“And I leave the toilet seat up. Do you hate that?”
Still smiling, she raised her head to meet his gaze. “I might in the middle of the night, but hey, I like my bottles of hand soap, body lotion, and cologne lined up just so.”
His blue eyes grew mischievous. “I noticed. I knocked them out of line last night when I was shaving, I think.”
“It’s probably good for me. I’m not exactly OCD, just organized. And clumsy? That’s plain embarrassing.”
“It’s plain adorable. Like your freckles.”
She spread a hand on her face. “I hate them.”
He removed the hand, threading his fingers between hers, just as a call came from upstairs. “I need another kiss.”
The second one was as sweet and satisfying as the first. It held comfort and ease and promise and love—yes, love. So bizarre, the speed of that.
“Can I make breakfast?” Jamie asked as he slid out of the booth.
He trailed his thumb along the line of her jaw. “I like cooking, you don’t. I’ll do bre
akfast, you do laundry.”
* * *
Breakfast and laundry. They were mundane things to begin a day of mundane things that kept Jamie busy enough not to think once about work. When they hit the supermarket, she learned that Chip hated Brussels sprouts, liked his peanut butter chunky rather than smooth, and bought only organic milk. When they hit the drugstore for Buddy’s allergy medicine, she learned that he refused to wear sunscreen himself but wanted 70 SPF on the boys. And when they hit the children’s room at the library, she learned that he preferred nonfiction and read his books on an iPad.
Wherever they went, they were physically close. He seemed to need it as much as she did, which stunned her when she stopped to think. As touchy as she and Caroline were, she had never been this way with Brad. She hadn’t thought it was in her nature to want to crawl all over a man.
That said, they were discreet. Seeing people they knew went with the territory in as small a town as Williston. Each time it happened, Jamie thought of Caroline. By rights, Caroline should be the first one to see her with Chip.
But how to see Caroline and not mention marriage? Because that was where they were heading. Once the boys were down for a nap, Jamie perched beside Chip on the arm of his living room chair. While one of his own arms steadied her, the other worked his laptop, which was open and searching. They found an inn in New Hampshire whose proprietor would issue a marriage license, officiate at a short ceremony, and provide music, flowers, and food for a wedding celebration, all on a Sunday.
“A gazebo,” Jamie breathed in delight when the picture appeared on the screen. “I want it there.”
“Then we’re doing this?” Chip asked softly.
Sliding an arm around his neck, she searched his eyes. On level with hers, they held the same bits of terror, excitement, and determination that she felt. “I want to,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t. It’s insane. But I want to. You?”
“More than anything. I love you.”
She returned the words in a kiss, lingering with it until she couldn’t any longer put off the only other major decision. “What do we do about our parents?”
Chip frowned, clearly struggling with that, too. “I’m not sure. They’ll put a damper on this.”
“The voice of reason,” she remarked. By all standards, what they were planning was rash.
“They’ll say we’re rushing into this without thinking it through. They’ll say it’s infatuation, not love.”
“They’ll say I’m on the rebound from Brad.”
“Or that I’m after your money,” which he wasn’t. He had shown her an investment statement in Friday’s mail. He had way more money—and growing—in his name than she had in hers at the moment. That would clearly change once her inheritance came through, and Tad’s inheritance would cover him for life.
“They’ll worry that I’m desperate for a co-parent,” she said.
“Or me a live-in maid.”
“Or that I’m reacting to my dad’s death and not thinking clearly. But I am. I feel like I’m thinking more clearly than I ever have, like I understand more what I want because of everything that’s happened. We’re not eighteen, Chip. We’re fully grown, sensible, down-to-earth people.”
He smiled. It was a sweet smile that matched the adoration in his eyes. “We are,” he said, but his smile faded. “They’ll still tell us to wait. They’ll say we should take the time to plan a traditional wedding.”
“Do you want a traditional wedding?” Jamie asked and caught the tiny shake of his head. “Me, neither.”
“But if we elope, they’ll be hurt.”
She exhaled. “Yes.” If there was any reason to wait, this was it. She had never met Chip’s parents, but everything he said pointed to solid, loving people. He was as close to his family as Jamie was to Caroline, and then there was Theo. They would all be hurt.
Taking her hand, Chip pressed it to his mouth. His breath was warm against her skin, his eyes earnest. “All I know is that I’ve been happier in the last week, even when we were just talking on the phone, than I’ve been since I can remember. I love my son, but it isn’t the same. I know what I want in a life partner, and it’s you. We can rationalize this nine ways to Sunday, and it won’t change how I feel.” He kissed her knuckles, brushed them with his thumb. “We could wait.”
“We could.”
“We could get married in a month or two and have them there. It wouldn’t be so awful.”
“No,” Jamie supposed, though everything in her objected to the idea. “On the afternoon he died, my father called me selfish and shortsighted. He may have been right about selfish, but our eloping wouldn’t be shortsighted. It would give Tad a stable home with an amazing dad and brother, but even aside from that, this is our life. There would be something poetic about getting married so fast, given how we first got together. And the boys would be involved in the secret. They’ll love knowing that.”
“We’re already living together,” Chip added. “Done deal there. Do you have any doubts that we’re meant for each other?”
Jamie did not. She had led a studied life, but not once in the shockingly brief time since she’d met Chip at the playground, not once since they’d become lovers, started living together, and talking marriage, had she had a second’s doubt that he was her future. She had never been overly romantic, but if there was such a thing as a soul mate, Chip was hers.
Doubts, he had asked? “None,” she replied and then, knowing that (A) she loved her mother and (B) she might be jeopardizing their already tenuous relationship but that (C) she was finally an adult and had to do her very own thing, on her own initiative, for the first time, she gave a definitive nod. “Let’s book it.”
Chip exhaled. “Consider it done,” he said gallantly and clicked through for the phone number of the inn.
twenty-two
Caroline breezed through an hour with Zoe Michaels. She had done many other interviews, and while none of those media outlets had the prestige of the Globe, other reporters had been tougher. Perhaps the newness of Roy’s death weighed on this reporter, or perhaps her age kept her intimidated. Perhaps Caroline was simply adept at answering questions she liked, sidestepping ones she did not, and religiously staying on message—message, in this case, being that while the MacAfee family deeply mourned Roy, he had set them up to succeed, which they would do. Though Caroline confirmed, when asked, that Roy had been one of the founding voices of Gut It!, she said that the show would continue on, starting with the fall season, in the manner viewers had come to love.
The interview was held in the courtyard behind the MacAfee Building, otherwise deserted early on a Saturday morning, and as soon as it was done, Caroline met Dean at his country place, where, in work clothes, goggles, and gloves, she sawed, hammered, and shaped wood for the bench that would curve in a corner of his fast-forming sundeck.
At least, she started out doing that, but there was something about Dean in motion that caught her eye and stilled her hand. Too often of late, he managed schedules and crews rather than doing physical work. But he was a skilled builder, not to mention an impressive sight in the midday sun with his shirt off and his skin moist. As always during hands-on moments, he poured himself into the work. This was nothing new to her. His intensity attacking personal projects was what had initially invited her questions, which was how she had first learned of his struggling marriage. Later, in the darkest days of negotiating his divorce and dealing with his increasingly distanced son, he had been most able to articulate his feelings to her when he was pounding nails into wood.
There was something different about him today, though. She saw intensity without darkness, simply a man enjoying his work. Wanting to believe that their relationship was behind his lightened mood, she watched for a while.
He caught her at it, looking up absently, then doing a double take and sliding her a self-conscious smile. “Am I doing it right?”
“Absolutely,” Caroline said and waved a hand. “Go back to it.�
��
She did the same herself, but before long, she took another break. This one was for a cold drink, which she carried back outside in a single large travel mug. She had thought to bring lemonade but not insulated cups, and since she found only one of those in what could still barely be called a kitchen, they passed it back and forth.
They didn’t have to talk. The companionship was just fine without sound—so fine, in fact, that when Dean returned to hammer and saw, Caroline grabbed her e-reader and sat on the grass nearby.
“Not a real book?” Dean called over at one point.
She held up the device. “A gift from Jamie last Christmas.”
“Ahhh.” His hammering resumed.
At some point it stopped again, which she realized only when his voice came from close by her ear. Hunkered down behind her, he read over her shoulder in a voice that was naughty and low.
“‘I am naked and hot, nearly orgasmic, and he hasn’t even touched me yet.’ Jesus, Caro. What book is this?”
It was the same one the woman on the sidewalk had been reading that day after lunch. Caroline was embarrassed for all of five seconds before realizing how ridiculous that was. Recovering, she said, “If you’re not wearing glasses, how can you see the words?”
“They’re pretty big.” His voice lowered, intimate and teasing. “I take it you don’t want to miss a one?”
“I set the font bigger so that I could read in the sun.”
“I’ll bet.”
“I did,” she insisted, struggling not to smile.
It grew harder when his stubble brushed her cheek. “But you don’t want anyone knowing what you’re reading.”
“Of course not. That would compromise you.”
“Really.”
“Really. I’m only reading this now to find out what the appeal is of these books.”
“You didn’t want to know before.”
“No. I didn’t.” She hadn’t quite analyzed the why of that, only knew that the woman she was back then hadn’t been the least bit curious, while this one was.
Blueprints Page 29