Blueprints

by Barbara Delinsky

  He moved a bare shoulder against her back. “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Is the book as hot as we are?”

  “Hotter,” she said, unable to resist, and, laughing, caught the hand that slipped inside her shirt. “I’m just kidding, Dean. It’s a pale imitation—oh no,” she cried when he flattened her to the ground and came over on top, “I am not doing this here, not in broad daylight where anyone can see, not with rocks digging into my back and that air compressor going on and off, and both of us sweaty as hell.”

  He slid his bottom half to the side but left his bare chest hovering. “Can we read the book together tonight?”

  She made a show of considering before saying, “Only if we finish this deck first. Think we can?”

  By way of answer, he quickly pushed himself up and went back to his tools. Joining him, she finished her part first and then lent a hand with his. As midday moved into afternoon, though, she wasn’t thinking about sex with Dean. Increasingly, she felt a nagging unease. She hadn’t talked with Jamie again, and yesterday’s call had been too breathy.

  No cause for concern, she told herself. She’s having fun. This is good.

  She kept thinking up reasons why the silence might not be good, though—notably, that Chip wasn’t the great guy Jamie had thought but that she was too embarrassed to tell Caroline that, after the buildup she had given him. Caroline didn’t want her daughter hurt. So she worried.

  Dean wanted to cook out for dinner, but she wanted something more distracting, like milling crowds at a sidewalk café in Boston. They compromised on a suburban restaurant overlooking the Charles River that was popular enough to be packed without requiring a trek through city traffic. The last meant that Dean could take the Harley, which he claimed he badly needed, given the workweek that had been.

  Caroline knew about that week. Cell constantly dinging, he had juggled crises ranging from the mundane to the not so, including a shipment of cracked marble, a surprise raccoon den with kits, and a framer suffering a major heart attack on-site. For Dean, working at the country place, where the sounds of their tools were solitary and he was in control, was therapeutic, too, but the Harley was his joy. She couldn’t begrudge him this.

  First, though, she was having a pedicure. The nail shop had started to empty when she arrived. Preferring it that way, she and Annie always took the last appointments of the day, customarily on Saturdays to enjoy their toes without work on Sunday. Linda Marshall often joined them, though there was no sign of her today.

  For a time, they talked about nothing—a new varietal of peony, a summer salad at Fiona’s—while they sat side by side in pedicure chairs, backs vibrating, feet soaking. Only when the whirlpools went off and their feet were taken over by practicians who spoke little English, ensuring privacy, did Caroline ask about Jordan.

  Annie shrugged. “I finished the job Tuesday, so I haven’t seen him much.”

  Her voice was predictably high, but something about the way she kept her eyes on her toes made Caroline ask, “You opted for prudence?”

  A soft snort. “You could say that.”

  “Oh dear. What happened?”

  Annie sank deeper in the chair, moving her silver hair against the headrest to stretch her neck. “I think my imagination got the best of me.”

  “How so?”

  She shot Caroline a look of chagrin before refocusing on the pedicurist’s work. “The last time I was there, I went inside to let him know I was leaving. A crew was installing draperies, so I knew he wasn’t alone, but that made it safe to talk—you know, maybe arrange another time to see each other. I called his name and went looking, and there he was, testing the new Roman shade in the itty-bitty little first-floor powder room with the only female member of the crew. They weren’t doing anything improper, and he wasn’t embarrassed or awkward seeing me. He didn’t take his hand off her arm, just gestured me in with his head. He touched my shoulder when he introduced me to her, and he touched her hair when he introduced her to me. He thumbed my chin when he talked about his shrubs and tapped her cheek when he praised her shade. Apparently, he’s just a toucher.”

  “All touch, no action?”

  Annie looked wounded. “It isn’t funny, Caroline. I felt desired when he touched me, and I thought it meant something.” She took a self-deprecating breath. “I thought it meant something—because I wanted it to, because I miss being touched.”

  Caroline twitched as the pedicurist hit a ticklish spot near the dry skin on her heels. She hadn’t wanted Annie fooling around with Jordan in the first place, but her friend’s disappointment was real.

  “I’m sorry,” she soothed.

  “I told Byron.”

  “About Jordan?”

  “Yes, because nothing happened, but it made me realize what I need and how badly I need it. If it isn’t Jordan, it’ll be someone else.”

  “You told him that?”

  “I did,” Annie said in a voice devoid of regret. “Byron needs to know I’m not just blowing off steam when I tell him I’m lonely.”

  Okay, Caroline realized. Annie wasn’t giving up on her marriage yet. That was good. “Did he hear you?”

  “He heard. Whether he can do anything about it is something else.”

  “I’m sure he can.”

  “I’m not, but we have to try. We’re going on a ‘date’ this weekend. Overnight.”

  “Good move. I know a really romantic place if you want one.” She snickered. “Dean’s country house.”

  Annie eyed her curiously. “The house you say you hate but seem to be working on a lot?” She paused, frowned. “Romantic?”

  “Well, aside from the ghosts, but if a man can’t protect you from those, what good is he?”

  “Romantic,” Annie repeated, clearly suspicious now. “Am I missing something?”

  Caroline wouldn’t have chosen this particular time to tell Annie this particular bit of news, but something subconscious must have been at work, a tiny little imp of excitement craving expression. Denying it now would be lying.

  Romantic? “Oh yeah.”

  “Dean?”

  She nodded.

  Seeming not in the least jealous or disturbed, Annie angled into the seat to face her more fully. “Oh. My. God. Tell me all.”

  “No one else knows.”

  “Or will.” Annie’s fingers locked her lips. “Tell me all.”

  Caroline wasn’t about to do that. Much as she treasured the honesty between her and Annie, some details were too personal to be shared. What she had with Dean was special. She didn’t want to dilute that. “One thing led to another,” she said simply. “It’s been nice.”

  “Nice,” Annie echoed.

  “Fun.”

  “Fun? I can’t believe you are talking so calmly about being in bed with Dean Brannick.”

  Caroline shushed her with a glance toward the women who were now rubbing cream into their skin. For all she knew, despite assumptions to the contrary, they understood every last word. First names were one thing, but first and last could incriminate.

  Annie’s only concession was to lower her voice. “Do you know how many women daydream about that? How many see him on TV and take him to heart? How many women think of him while they’re making love with someone else?”

  “You don’t know that,” Caroline chided, though the possibility of it gave her a little thrill. Dean was hers. She still had doubts about her body, but it seemed to please him. He had said it enough—touched it enough—that she was starting to believe.

  “Is he good?”

  “Very good,” Caroline said softly. He deserved that credit.

  “And it worked? Everything you were worried wouldn’t?”

  Caroline blushed. She remembered their discussion—so hard to believe it had been only one week before, given all that had happened since. “He makes it work,” she said now.

  “Wow. Atta girl. Does Jamie know?”

  “No, that’s what I’m saying,”
Caroline replied with hushed urgency. “You’re the only one. I don’t know what Jamie’ll say. She has so much else going on in her life right now, what with Tad and all.” She couldn’t mention Chip to Annie without mentioning Brad, and it wasn’t her place to do that. No one at MacAfee Homes even knew the engagement was off. “I worry about her. I can’t help it, Annie. I get nervous when I don’t hear from her.”

  “When was the last time you talked?”

  “Yesterday morning.” At Annie’s dry look, she added, “I know. Not so long ago, but we used to talk all the time.” That was, of course, before the Gut It! crisis, but Annie didn’t know about that either. “Most women have nine months to get ready for a baby, plus whatever time they spend thinking about getting pregnant. Even those who adopt think about it beforehand. Jamie had no warning. Overnight, she became a mother. She must have constant questions about dealing with Tad. I want her to call me with those.”

  “Her generation goes to the Web.”

  “I don’t want Jamie doing that. I want her getting answers from someone who sees the world the way she does.”

  “Meaning you, but parenting has changed since we had kids. When my assistant talks about equipment or food or discipline, it’s like another language to me. Jamie speaks that language. She needs current sources.”

  Caroline grunted. “That’s what Dean says.” Strong hands worked at the tension in her calves, her heels, her soles, her toes. “I’m trying to give her space, Annie, really I am, but it’s hard. When she was playing tennis, I had to be involved, because Roy wasn’t about to do the driving to practices and all. I was her on-call therapist when she was in college, and we see each other now at work and even more during Gut It! tapings. She’s my daughter. I love her.”

  “This has nothing to do with love. She needs space to grow.”

  The sensible, down-to-earth, intuitive part of Caroline knew that was true. The part that worried continued to worry.

  “Sometimes,” Annie went on, “out of sight, out of mind is better.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You have sons. It’s different with boys. Jamie isn’t only my daughter, she’s my friend. And right now, she’s going through the biggest change of her life.”

  “If she needs you, she’ll call. In the meantime, she may be wanting to do things her way.”

  Caroline thought about Jamie’s broken engagement and now her infatuation with Chip, and sighed. “Dean says that, too. He reasons it all out, and then gets me doing something distracting.”

  There were more subtle things going on, too. Being with Dean made her feel good about herself. Not that she had been aware of feeling bad, though Claire had given her moments of late. But being with Dean, being sexual for the first time in years, was adding a glow to her life. Claire might have told her she was old, but what she did with Dean proved she wasn’t dead yet. It said there was more to come.

  Which didn’t mean sex was the be-all and end-all of life.

  It absolutely was not.

  But it was nice.

  “I’m glad you’re with him,” Annie said. “It means you’re finally making a life for yourself beyond Jamie.”

  “What if she makes a mistake?” Caroline asked. This was her greatest fear. There were so many potential pitfalls in Jamie’s current path.

  “Then she makes a mistake. We all do.”

  “What if it’s a big one?”

  Gently, confidently, Annie said, “Then you’ll be there to help her pick up the pieces. That’s what mothers do.”

  “Dean said that, too. Did you talk with him?”

  “I did not, but if he said it, he’s both sexy and smart. Speaking of smart—” Her eyes went to the door just as Linda breezed in.

  “Oh, good,” the Realtor said with visible relief. “You’re still here. I was hoping to catch you before you left.”

  Caroline surveyed the back of the shop. “I think Van is gone.” Van was Linda’s usual pedicurist.

  “I’m not here for toes.” Perching sideways on the next pedicure chair, she bent toward Caroline with her elbows on her knees. “This may be nothing, but I just overheard talk at Timmy’s lacrosse game. Two guys were discussing the market, one telling the other that if he wanted a really good house he should wait until the Barths start building on Weymouth land. When I asked him about it, he said he had just met a local Barth and was talking with him. Their kids are playing summer soccer together. On my way here, I called friends from two different brokerages. They hadn’t heard about any deal, but they’ve both been approached in the last week by the Barths asking about available property.”

  Caroline felt a twinge of anger. What else to think but that the Barths were taking advantage of Roy’s death to move while the MacAfees were down? She had no trouble losing a few houses to them, but losing the Weymouth acreage was unacceptable. Even beyond what it would say about MacAfee Homes without Roy, it would be a blow to Theo, who had worked hard and long to own Williston and the surrounding MetroWest suburbs, and a blow to Jamie, who had already sketched out dream designs for that land. And Gut It!—hadn’t Claire told Jamie she was considering a Barth season? The Barths buying the Weymouth property would ensure that.

  Caroline had never been anywhere near as competitive as Roy and Jamie, but she felt a personal drive now.

  “Well then,” she told Linda with new determination, “we need to shop aggressively ourselves, and if that means playing dirty, so be it. We can start with the local connection. Weymouth roots run deep in Williston soil. So do MacAfee roots. Barth roots do not.”

  “My understanding is that only one of Mildred Weymouth’s three sons is still in Massachusetts.”

  “John,” Caroline confirmed, “in Boston. I never knew him personally.” She turned. “Annie? You grew up with them, didn’t you?”

  “That was years ago, and we weren’t exactly close.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was beneath them,” Annie said, and while another person would have heard upset in that high voice of hers, Caroline knew better. Annie was fiercely proud of her roots. “My dad cut grass for a living,” she said with her chin up. “He didn’t speak English well, just drove around town with a cigar in his mouth and a mower in the bed of his truck. Needless to say, he never cut Weymouth grass, though, in fairness, neither did any other locals. The Weymouths had a full-time gardener on staff. Clearly, those days are gone. From what I hear, most of the trust money has been spent, hence their need to sell the estate. That land is their only remaining asset.”

  “So they’ll want top dollar,” Linda warned, “which is why we can’t risk driving the price even higher by getting into a bidding war with the Barths.”

  “What’s their idea of top dollar?” Caroline asked.

  The Realtor speculated. “Thirty acres of prime wooded land, with twenty-six of those acres able to support a new build to sell at a million, plus or minus? That’s allowing two acres for a rec area and two for the manor house, which needs work but has good bones. The manor could be fixed up and sold as a single for two million, or broken into four condos selling for five hundred each. You do the math. The Weymouths will.”

  “And the Barths,” Caroline murmured. “Bottom line for us to buy?”

  “I’d guess a million for the house and three for the remaining land.”

  Four million to buy, with turnaround potential approaching twenty-eight million? Granted, building costs would be high on high-end houses, which these would be. Still, Caroline had lived long enough in the right circles to know a good profit margin when she heard it. She would have to talk with MacAfee Homes’ banker and with Theo, of course, but, totally aside from the political advantage of developing the Weymouth property, she couldn’t see them ignoring the money.

  “That’s assuming the Barths don’t bid,” Linda warned. “Right now, I don’t see any other competition, but that could change once word gets out that the property is on the market. Inventory is low in all of MetroWest. Interested parti
es may appear out of the blue.”

  “Then we’ll act quickly,” Caroline vowed. “That means making the Weymouths an offer they can’t refuse. How high do we have to go for that?”

  “I’m not sure. Let me do a comp study. The key will be getting the brothers in a room with you and making a presentation. Do you have plans you can show them?”

  Caroline thought of Jamie, who was off doing whatever she was doing with Chip Kobik and certainly not home designing for a project that had been hypothetical until now. What sketches she had were rough. That said, Caroline knew Jamie could embellish them. She would pull all-nighters if necessary. She wanted the project as much as Caroline did.

  “We’ll have plans,” Caroline assured Linda and turned to Annie. “Do we assume we’ll be dealing with John, since he’s the one who’s here?”

  “I wouldn’t. The three of them don’t get along. One won’t trust the other to make the final decision.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “The oldest, Ralph, is a turnaround specialist in San Francisco. He buys companies, builds them, sells them. He keeps insisting that one of his companies will develop the land, though he’s strictly West Coast and hasn’t been able to get an operation going anywhere near here. The middle brother is Grant. He’s an impoverished artist.”

  “Needs money.”

  “Big-time. And our local yokel, John, is a hotshot plastic surgeon.”

  Caroline knew that. His name consistently appeared on the Best of Boston lists, more often associated with Botox than with surgery.

  “He rakes it in,” Annie went on, “but spends it as soon as he makes it. He keeps telling the brothers that he wants the estate for himself. I heard something about his wanting to run a clinic out of the house, which the town would never zone for, but John hasn’t given up on the idea. My guess is that Herschel Oakes is key. He’s the family lawyer, more likely the family referee. I’d start with him.”

  Caroline agreed, though reluctantly. She knew Herschel Oakes, had actually dated him once after her divorce. Once was enough. The man had been thoroughly self-absorbed. There was zero chemistry then and would be zero now, but if she could play on the local connection to make an inroad to that land, she would.