Home Matters (A Ripple Effect Romance Novella, Book 1)

by Julie N. Ford

  Rejection pricked Olivia’s pride all over again. “Marty decided my brilliance was nothing more than a fluke,” she explained. “‘Beginner’s luck,’ I believe were his exact words,” she added, tears sneaking into the corners of her eyes. Even though Marty’s decision had ultimately been for the best, his dismissal of her talent had devastated her. A wound that had yet to heal under the bandage of her new resolve. “So, that was it. Eleanor was back to designing, and I was expected to go back to pretending… to be the designer. And I couldn’t do it. After all I’d accomplished, I refused to go backward.”

  Pete sent her a conspiratorial look. “Creativity.” He winked. “The most addictive drug of all.”

  The warmth of camaraderie chased the tears from Olivia’s eyes. “Don’t I know it,” she agreed with a chuckle. “Plus, I’d only been famous for about thirty days and it turned out to be the worst, most confusing month of my life.” Her smile fell, a frown taking its place as she thought about William and how her vain ambitions had had her eating out of his traitorous hands.

  Once she’d decided not to board the plane bound for the show’s next location, she’d confronted the network’s executives regarding all that William had revealed that day in his hotel room. Turned out, none of them had a clue regarding his plan—not the pictures and not Nicole’s dramatic return. He’d lied. Under threat of dismissal from the show, he’d turned all the evidence of Olivia kissing Pete over to the network for immediate destruction. Even still, rumors suggesting that Olivia’s unexpected departure from the show was motivated by her love for another man had been leaked to the tabloids. “Poor, heartbroken William Blaine,” his fans cried. “How could Olivia be so cruel?” And just like that, William had wormed his way back into the hearts of American women. Shortly after, Nicole Henshaw had resumed her role as his cohost/pretend designer. With Sean sliding into Pete’s place as lead contractor, all had returned to normal on the set of Home Matters—more or less.

  Conversely, Olivia had been fined for breaking her contract and docked the cost of the furnishings purchased for Eleanor’s design she hadn’t chosen to incorporate. In other words, Olivia was broke—again. Plus, due to an immeasurable array of colorfully threatening posts and messages, she’d had to cancel all of her social media accounts. She’d become infamous after all. And then in less than a blink, she’d been forgotten, back to being a nobody again. Good thing she no longer cared about fame. Her family and her close friends knew the truth, which was all that mattered to her now. That is, now that she’d taken her revenge. No, she hadn’t released the video she’d recorded that day in William’s suite to the media. But had Ethan Henshaw’s attorney found an email from an anonymous sender waiting in his inbox this very morning? You betcha!

  Olivia sighed. “But at the same time, being famous was the best and most enlightening time in my life,” she went on. “Turns out my momma was wrong. I wasn’t born for stardom after all.”

  A pleased look darted across Pete’s face. He took up his hammer again. “Join the club,” he said and added another nail to the board. “What are you going to do now?” he asked when the hammering stopped.

  Olivia’s heartbeat kicked up a notch with excitement. “I’ve applied to one of the design schools down in Savannah,” she said. “If all goes according to plan, I’ll start next fall.”

  Pete pointed the hammer at her. “Good for you,” he said, then bent down for another nail. He positioned it as he spoke. “Maybe I’ll see you around town. I’ve rented some office space for Hearts and Hammers over by Oglethorpe Square, hired your ex-assistant, Tristi, as a matter of fact.” This was something Olivia already knew. How else would she have known where to find him? “Along with a bookkeeper, and recruited some prominent business owners from the community to sit on my board of directors. I still have a way to go, but it’s a start.” He brought the hammer down for a couple of strikes. “I like Savannah. It feels alive somehow, or maybe it’s just the ghostly presence.” He shivered with a fabricated chill. “I don’t know why, but it felt right.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I’m happy for you.” He looked to her then, a pensive smile in his eyes. “I really am.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Olivia agreed. “And I suppose I have you to thank for that as well. You sacrificed your job in order to help me realize my potential.”

  Pete frowned away her acknowledgment. Turning back to his work, he lifted his hammer and brought it down as he spoke. “First,” thwack, “I appreciate,” thwack, “the sentiment,” thwack, “but I feel I’m the one,” thwack, thwack, “who should be thanking you.” Irony sullied his words as he brought the hammer down one more time. “Watching you chasing all the wrong dreams, pretending to be—to want—all the wrong things, made me question what I was doing. Working on a reality show that’s based on nothing but sensationalized half-truths and pretense. Suddenly it felt like sawdust and paint wasn’t the only grime I needed to wash off at the end of the day. So, substituting your design for Eleanor’s provided me with a way out and allowed me to make a statement in the process,” he explained, sounding uncharacteristically sincere. “And second,” he continued, that tricky smile of his returning. “What you said just now almost sounded like an apology—and a thank you—all wrapped into one nasty helping of crow.”

  Olivia took courage in his teasing banter, hoping it meant he still held an ounce of affinity for her, and launched into the primary reason she was here. “Well then, I guess it’s a good thing I’ve stopped dieting ’cause I’m about to gulp down another heaping bite of that crow,” she said, garnishing her words with a touch of coyness. “Since I have a good six months ’til school starts, and my agent refuses to take any of my calls, I’m sort of in need of a job.”

  Pete cocked his brow in a dubious fashion. “Is that a fact?” he said, like he hadn’t a clue where she was going with this. As if…

  “I know I don’t have any formal training,” she plowed ahead. “But that also means I have no choice but to work for cheap. I mean, you can pay me minimum wage. Whatever. I’ve clipped coupons before. I can do it again.” She took a much-needed breath. “I just want to help, to do something with my life that matters.”

  Pete crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m listening.”

  Olivia’s hands balled into fists and found her waist. He had to know how hard it was for her to come here, to beg for a job, and yet he continued to taunt her. “Well, that’s it,” she hissed. She probably shouldn’t provoke the one and only person capable of granting her most desired wish, but evidently her temper disagreed. “Unless I’m mistaken, I seem to remember you offering me this very position as your designer before,” she reminded him, barely tightening the reins on her exasperation. “That night we painted, and well, we, um…” she got all tongue-tied at the image of his lips against hers, her feet lifting from the floor.

  Pete looked to the sky in thought. “Yes, I think I remember,” he said drawing out the words like the memory was scarcely worth recalling. “You were wearing a disguise, I bought you supper. We painted and talked. I offered you a job.” He pointed at her accusingly. “Which you promptly turned down. And then, if I’m not mistaken, you kissed me.”

  Knotting her hands tighter, Olivia fought the provocation boiling up inside her. “You. Are. The most infuriating—”

  Only just as her angry words began to lash over her tongue, Pete tossed his hammer aside, closed the space between them, and took her into his arms.

  His lips took hers, the passion of his kiss drawing out her fury along with what was left of her breath. And for a space of time she couldn’t possibly calculate, she lost herself in him all over again. In the feel of his heart beating against hers, the strength of his arms supporting her wilting body. No, she hadn’t misremembered the way he’d made her feel the times they’d kissed before. It was as if the Fourth of July and Chinese New Year combined had erupted inside her.

  But then it happened. She’d barely had the time to rekindle her belief in a happily-ever-after
when the photo of Teresa plummeted before her eyes again, a curtain dividing her from her dreams.

  She pulled away. “I’m not her,” she gasped. “I’m not the one you want.”

  Pete’s head popped back, his eyes heady, confused. “You’re not the what?”

  Olivia squirmed out of his grasp. “Don’t play dumb with me, Pete.” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “You know exactly who I’m talking about.”

  Confusion clung to his expression, a parasite refusing to relent, to admit he was well aware whom Olivia was talking about. “Fine.” He took a step back. “But believe me, I know better than anyone, you’re not Teresa,” he said, a mixture of sorrow, and then something else—amusement, maybe?—shining through his gaze. “She was much sweeter than you.”

  That hurt. Had he really twisted her trepidation over the passionate moments they’d shared into a joke? Either she’d misjudged him, which meant he was a class-A jerk, or he was hiding something. Not ready to accept the first without definitive evidence, she went with the second. “Do you really expect me to believe that my resemblance to your late fiancée had nothing to do with the reason you kissed me that day at the Calhouns?” she persisted. “Why you kissed me just now?”

  Her frankness appeared to unsettle him as he reached out and touched two fingers to the sawhorse for support. Then, for an eternal minute, he consulted the dormant grass. “Look,” he started, his gaze lifting to find Olivia’s with a degree of seriousness she’d not thought him capable of. “I’m not saying my initial attraction to you didn’t, in large part, have something to do with a false hope that somehow you could replace her. And yes, the first time I kissed you, I was thinking about my fiancée.” He stopped, rubbing his scruffy cheeks with his hands. “But then after, when you took off with William, I realized that you could never replace her, that no one ever would—”

  The small part of Olivia’s heart that had managed to remain intact through all this began to weaken, crumbling piece-by-piece to the abyss in her soul. “Then why did you kiss me again the night we painted and again just now?” She had to know. “And don’t even try saying it was because I kissed you first and you were only kissing me back out of politeness, or some other such nonsense. You might think I’m self-obsessed, but I know when a man is kissing me just because and when he’s doing it because he feels something too.” Stepping right up to him, she locked her gaze to his. “And why did you ask me for a reason to stay the morning you drove off and left me to fend for myself? You made me think you wanted us to be together.”

  Pete dragged in a long breath. “Let me finish. As I was saying,” he began again. “Kissing you was nothing like what I’d felt with Teresa. That’s the honest truth,” he said, his eyes filling with tears. And behind those tears, Olivia could see that a war of competing emotions raged. “I… don’t… I can’t…” he fumbled, going on like this, his sentences beginning, then ending as he struggled against whatever else he needed to say, but couldn’t.

  “Pete?”

  Pete held up his hands. “Wait, let me try and get this out.” He turned away and looked to the sky, his lips mouthing the words, I’m sorry, after which tears broke free, rolling over his suntanned cheeks. “I never would have thought it possible. But kissing you was intense, so, so much more intense than anything I’ve experienced before.” He looked to Olivia again, his voice measured, precise. “Even with Teresa.”

  Olivia’s breath tangled on the pieces of her heart that came racing back, scrambling to reform a new whole. “Really?” she breathed.

  Pete’s head began to bob up and down, a smile, ripe with affection, and touched by a hint of wantonness, spread the width of his face.

  “Oh, yeah.” He opened his arms to her.

  Without hesitation, Olivia threw herself into his waiting embrace. He closed his strong arms around her. She was finally right where she belonged. She was home. When her lips found his again, tiny bubbles filled every inch of her body, her feet lifting, floating from the ground—metaphorically this time. As their kiss deepened, her heart became light as well, full, and whole, until she couldn’t hold back her feelings any longer.

  “Pete,” she said, her voice husky. “I know we hardly know each other and all, but I’ve never met a man who was willing to see me, the real me, the way you have. And even though you say you wanted to be fired from the show, you risked so much for me.” She pressed her palms to his chest, studied the back of her hands for how best to express what was consuming her heart. “And despite the fact you can be smug and obnoxious at times, and you’re not half as clever as you think you are”—she grinned into the affronted look on his face—“I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say…” She took a breath and looked up into his gaze. “I think I’m in love with you.”

  Pete’s eyebrows pinched together. “You ‘think’?” he asked, a smirk playing with his lips. “Afraid of heights are you? Of falling?”

  He was teasing her again. “Unbelievable!” She pushed with all her might against his chest. “I say that I’m in… I mean, what I did, and you’re teasing me?”

  Crossing her arms with a humph, she turned away. “Typical.”

  “Now hold on there, fireball. Don’t go all supernova on me.” Pete chuckled. “I get that you climbed the proverbial tree or whatever. But out on a limb?” He shook his head and tsked. “Not so much.”

  “Why are you making this so difficult?”

  Tenderness found Pete’s voice again. “How ’bout I make it easier then?”

  “That would certainly be a first.”

  “What if I climbed up there with you,” he offered. “Be the first to fall? That way I’ll be there to catch you when you fall too?”

  “I’m listening.”

  Taking Olivia gently by the shoulders, Pete steered her around to face him again. “Olivia Pembroke,” he said, drawing out her name as if cherishing every syllable. “I love you. I have from the first moment I saw you leaning over the men’s room sink at Baron Broadcasting.” He brushed a gentle kiss across her lips. “You can be vain and self-absorbed, but there’s a depth to you, a fight I just can’t seem to get enough of.” He shook his head. Smiled. “What can I say? Guess I’m a man who craves a challenge. And I’m about ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure that you’re the woman who’ll do me the honor of rising to that challenge.” Releasing her shoulders, he wrapped both arms around her waist. “And there’s nothing I would love more than to spend the rest of my life working with you, arguing with you… loving you,” he finished. And like the floor of a canyon rising up to bridge the divide, his words filled the emptiness in Olivia’s soul. Painful, but at the same time, oh, so wonderful.

  A smile blossomed from deep inside, spreading all the way to her head, her toes. But she held it to just beneath the surface. “Only ninety-nine point nine percent sure?” she questioned, though her arms had already traveled up his chest, her fingers in the process of linking behind his neck. “That’s not quite as good as one-hundred percent, now is it?” She lifted an inquiring brow. “You sure you’re not the one who’s scared of heights?”

  A burst of love erupted from his gaze. “I’ll go to one-hundred if you will,” he proposed.

  Olivia pretended to think this over. After all, she’d spent the better part of her life training to become an actor, which meant she knew better than most the importance of the dramatic pause.

  When his smile began to falter, she decided she’d tortured him long enough.

  “One-hundred it is,” she agreed. “That way we can catch each other.”

  Read on for a sneak peak of Book 2 (Drew’s story) in the Ripple Effect Series

  Dear Reader,

  Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy day to read Home Matters. If you enjoyed the book and can spare the time, I’d appreciate a review on Amazon, Goodreads, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, or wherever else you feel inclined to leave one. Word of mouth is the best kind of advertising, and I could really use your help getting the word out
.

  I love to hear from readers. You can visit me at JulieNFord.com, on Facebook, and Twitter.

  Happy reading!

  Julie

  This should be the easiest part of writing a novel, but as usual I’m having a hard time finding the words needed to express my gratitude for those of you who helped me bring this novella to fruition. So, I suppose I should simply start at the beginning by thanking Kaylee, Rachael, and Karey for believing in my writing abilities enough to include me in this project. To Kaylee and Karey specifically for their editing genius. And to Rachael for her technical expertise, of which I have no idea about, but know was vital to putting the end result together. And then to Jennifer and Donna—it was super fun getting to know you both. A special thanks to my beta readers, Loree and Breeann, for helping me find the holes in my plot.

  As always, I need to thank my husband and daughters for their undying support and patience while I was lost somewhere between the real world, where they needed me to be, and the world of my own making where they couldn’t reach me. And for putting up with all the HGTV shows I made them watch. I’m sure the family rehab we must now endure in order to combat our collective DIY addiction will only serve to bring us closer. And to those readers who have supported me through my short writing career, I’m eternally grateful to each and every one of you.

  Julie is a forty-something, dangerously close to becoming a fifty-something, graduate from San Diego State University with a BA in Political Science. In addition, she has a Masters in Social Work from the University of Alabama, which has only made her better able to recognize the unhealthy, codependent relationship she has with writing. Professionally, she has worked in teaching and as a marriage and family counselor. She is the author of four women’s fiction novels, including Count Down to Love, a 2011 Whitney Award finalist. When she’s not writing, she entertains delusions of being a master gardener, that is, when she’s not killing the unsuspecting plants in her yard with her good intentions. She lives outside of Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband, two daughters, a Betta named Bob, and a Scottish fold kitten, Ardweal.