by JoAnn Ross
Her brothers.
Which not only meant he was outnumbered, but if he had a sister, and there was a boy even thinking about what he was thinking about Bri, he’d probably have no choice but to take the dirty-minded kid out into that icy bay and toss him overboard for fish bait.
But then they’d gone back to school after the Christmas break and suddenly a new girl from Astoria had shown up in class. Just looking at Zoe Harper was like gazing at the northern lights. He’d fallen right then and there and neither his heart nor his body had ever wavered.
Until last night. When, during that brief time he had managed to sleep, he’d had an X-rated dream about Brianna with a red spritz can of whipped cream and chocolate sauce, neither of which involved anything to do with an ice-cream sundae.
And now, after about a gallon of coffee and three glazed doughnuts, all he’d done was make himself as jittery as an alcoholic coming off a bender, and listening to Ethel’s nonstop chatter on the other side of the door was about enough to have him slam his head into the wall.
And then he’d walked into the outer office, and the bane of his long, restless night was standing there, backlit by the sun, which seemed to be casting a halo around her blond head.
“Hey. Good to see you.” Smooth, Harper. Real smooth.
She blinked. A small frown etched its way between her brows, as if wondering why he sounded surprised that she’d come to the office. “I brought lunch.” She held up a cooler. “Because we were going to talk about Herons Landing?”
“Yeah. We were. Sorry, my mind was somewhere else.” No way was he going to share what he’d been doing with that whipped cream.
“I know the feeling,” she said, bending down to pat Bandit, who, having probably gotten a sniff of the contents of that cooler with his superpower canine sense of smell, had followed him into the reception room.
“Don’t worry,” she told the dog, who was literally prancing back on his hind legs into the office/client conference room. “I brought enough for everyone. Including you.”
The dog dropped down to all fours, drooling on the wooden floor as he followed her over to the wall, where Seth had hung colored pencil drawings next to a matching photo of jobs Harper Construction had completed over the years. Which only had him noticing how those leggings clung like a second skin. And had him remembering how, in his dream, her legs had been wrapped around his waist while he’d taken her against the wall beneath the Whistler mural. “These are wonderful,” she said.
“I only took the photos. Mom did the drawings.”
“But you turned those drawings into reality. Creating homes and businesses, like Quinn’s brewery and pub. That’s so special. My work was ephemeral. A situation would arise, I’d take care of it, then move on to the next one. Guests would come and go, and it was just a constant stream of people and situations. But this—” she stopped in front of the library that had earned him the award “—is permanent. Your work is something people will enjoy for generations. Something your children and grandchildren will be proud of.”
When he didn’t respond to that comment, which he knew was well-meaning, she suddenly flushed. “Damn. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He slammed the mental door to the nursery that was still sitting there, with the crib, rocker and orcas mobile. “I get your meaning and thanks.” Because she looked so distressed, he walked to stand beside her and, he couldn’t lie, did experience a sense of pride in the work he’d done. “There have been times over the years, when I’ve taken classes or attended seminars on historical reconstruction, that I’ve thought maybe I should have gone to architectural school.”
“You’d have gone crazy stuck inside at a drawing board all day,” she said.
“You know me well.” Maybe too well. “Anyway, Mom’s the artistic one in the family. She’s always done these illustrations from the architect’s renderings. But now that she’s been taking classes from your uncle, she’s apparently moved on to watercolors.” He pointed to the painting of the forest she’d given him at the dinner at Leaf. Fortunately, his dad didn’t come into the office often enough to have seen it yet.
“That’s lovely.” She paused. “Uncle Mike came to dinner last night.”
“Did he bring a guest?” Seth asked with careful casualness.
“Your mother wasn’t there,” she assured him. “He did insist on providing some original paintings for the house.”
“That would be cool. And make it even more of a personal experience for your guests.”
“That was my thinking. I’m sorry if our families’ situation is complicating your life.”
“All three people involved are adults. They’ll work things out.” He hoped. “And speaking of work, I got out the original blueprints and the plans, so why don’t we sit down and see what you think?”
“Great idea.” She went over to the long conference table at the far end of the room and began taking plates, glasses, forks and knives from the cooler. “Though I’m apologizing in advance if I get distracted. It’s been a very long time since I had a working lunch with a lighthouse view.”
She laid out the blue-, yellow-and white-striped cloth napkins. “This is quite a step up from my usual sub from Mike’s on the Bay,” he said. Rather than being recycled brown paper, cloth napkins matched the yellow plates and deep cobalt blue glasses.
“Mom’s taking a design class these days.” She dished up the food, cutting up a chicken thigh and putting it on a plate, which she then set on the floor. Unsurprisingly, Bandit finished it off in a gulp and turned his big brown begging eyes on her. But having grown up with dogs herself, she managed to ignore him. For now. “She’s designing a color palette for Herons Landing for her end-of-semester project.”
“You’re definitely keeping it in the family.”
“Which is what I came home for.”
“Lucky you for the paintings and the palette. Lucky me for the lunch.”
Over Sarah Mannion’s award-winning chicken and Quinn’s wings, with sides as good as anything he’d ever had anywhere in Honeymoon Harbor, or even Seattle, topped off with a thick slab of rhubarb pie that could make the angels sing, they went over every square foot of the house. Unlike the last owners, Brianna was on board with every one of his ideas. More than on board. Her genuine excitement stirred cold, dead ashes of his own enthusiasm, which he hadn’t felt for a very long time.
After the initial devastation of losing Zoe had worn off, he’d fallen into his pattern of work, dinner at Mannion’s, some TV that he’d watch without paying all that much attention to, and what had come to pass as sleep, but was in no way restful. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel good about Kylee and Mai’s house, because he did. If he hadn’t been able to give them his very best work, he would’ve passed on the project. But satisfaction at the end of the day wasn’t the same thing as pleasure. Or even, as he’d once occasionally felt, joy.
“As you can see from the original blueprints, the kitchen was really small and tucked away in the back of the house.” He tapped on the space, which must have been difficult for a staff to move around in. “Like I said, the owners before you wanted a full open concept so we tore it out.”
“I like opening up from the small individual rooms,” Brianna said. “And one of the best things about a B and B is having a kitchen large enough to have guests in with you while you cook.”
Although he’d been moving things around on the computer screen, she picked up a blown glass paperweight shaped like an orca and placed it on the blueprint. “What if we keep the kitchen here? Then,” she continued, positioning his letter opener, “we can put a dining room over here, for guests who want a quieter space.”
Her brow furrowed again as he took her suggestions and moved the templates to where she’d put them up on the screen. “I also want to maintain the cozy feel of guests being able to go do
wnstairs in the night to get a snack, like they would in their own homes. Or, if they’re going out hiking early in the morning, be able to heat up some oatmeal and coffee. The rooms will have coffee makers, a microwave and minifridge, but that’s not enough.”
“How about a butler’s pantry?” He moved his mouse over to a space near the bottom of the stairs. “This used to be a ladies’ sitting room. If you put in a fridge, a counter, microwave and one of those do-it-yourself coffee/espresso machines, along with either some cupboards or a small pantry, they could get the basics themselves whenever they wanted. And maybe a place to eat so they don’t have to carry it back to their room.” He moved in a template of a round table and chairs near the small kitchenette, then a love seat, coffee table and two armchairs on the other side of the small room.
“I love it.” She crossed her hands over her heart. Which, dammit, drew his attention to those breasts he’d dreamed of having in his mouth last night. What are you? Thirteen? No. Just horny.
“I interned at a small hotel in Spokane during the semester between my junior and senior years,” she said. “It didn’t have a restaurant, but it did have a desk in the lobby with fresh-baked cookies for guests. And there was also another little room on each floor near the soft drink machines, where people could get those same cookies, and in the morning, a local baker would deliver fresh-baked muffins and pastries. It added a homey touch to something that could have, under other management, felt like just another chain motel.”
“If you don’t want to do all the muffins and pastries yourself, you can probably contract out to Ovenly. It’s a new place where Fran’s Bakery used to be. Mom and Caroline bought pastries for a brunch out at the farm to raise money for new runs at the animal shelter.”
“I’ll check that out, thanks.” Rather than make a note on her phone, she wrote it in an old-fashioned paper day planner a lot like the one his mother used. But his mother had decorated hers with all sorts of colored ink and stickers that tended to make it look as if every month was filled with holidays.
“I’ll also want to make breakfast available in the garden in the summer. And before you point it out, I do realize that the gardens are currently overgrown with weeds, trash trees and Scotch broom. But I have plans for that.”
“Actual plans? Or just a vague plan to somehow restore them?”
“The latter,” she admitted. “That’s why landscapers were invented.”
“That’s why I asked. You might want to try Amanda Barrow. She’s a landscape architect who still occasionally consults from San Francisco to Seattle, but moved to town and opened up a garden place not far from here. She can do it all—design, plants, hardscape, water features, whatever you want. Kylee and Mai are having her do their garden for the wedding.”
“Sounds good.” She took the card he handed her. “Wheel and Barrow?”
“With her name, what would you choose?”
“Good point. I think I like her already.”
“I know you will. So, we’re good? For now?”
“For now.” Her smile reminded him of an auditorium of lighters flicking during a rock concert. Not that anyone used lighters anymore, but still. “Of course, I’ll undoubtedly come up with changes down the road.”
“Everyone always does.” Though he doubted she could top Kylee. “The sooner you start looking at finishes and appliances, the sooner I can nail down a bid price.”
“Super. I’m eager to get started so I’ll shop today for things that aren’t dependent on color while Mom works on the design palette. Can you give me a list of suppliers you’ve worked with who are dependable and won’t jack up the price because I’m a woman?”
“Sure. And you’ll get the contractor discount. But again, none of this is going to be cheap.”
She shook her head and this time her smile was indulgent. “It’s only because you’ve been left holding the bag twice before that I’m going to tell you that I have more money than I’ll need.”
“Either you hit the jackpot in Vegas or you’ve taken to robbing banks.”
“No. I inherited a bundle.”
He knew his surprise showed on his face when she laughed. “Not from my family.” Who, while being comfortable, could in no way be considered wealthy. “There was this couple who I’d often work for during my vacations. Despite being rich enough to buy this entire town, they were lovely people and because of them, I was able to travel to places I’d never have seen otherwise. They weren’t young when I met them, and although they quit wandering the globe, they continued to hire me to do special events like charity dinners, family reunions and a big party in the Caribbean when their grandson graduated from Georgetown Law. Sadly, the husband died recently. There was no way I was going to miss his funeral, because he’d become, in a way, sort of another grandfather. But I’d never expected that he was going to leave me anything.”
“I’m not going to ask how much.” But he wouldn’t deny that he was curious.
She shrugged. “If anyone has the right to know, I suppose you do. And I trust you’ll keep it confidential. Only my family knows.”
“My lips are sealed.” Which was a moot point, since he didn’t talk to all that many people anyway.
“A bit shy of a million.”
“Wow. The guy must’ve been megarich.”
“Obviously I knew they had a great deal of money. But I didn’t realize how many billions he had until I read his obituary,” she admitted. “His wife assured me that my inheritance wasn’t that much in the grand scheme of things, so I should accept it in the spirit in which it was given.”
“Nice folks.”
“They were.” Her lips curved at what he assumed were fond memories. “And, truthfully, most of the people I worked with were lovely. It’s the others who tend to stick in my mind.”
“Tell me about it.” It didn’t help that his dad wouldn’t let him forget.
“I donated some of it to a Las Vegas food bank, a refugee resettlement program and Doctors Without Borders. But in addition, I’ve also saved a lot of my salary because I wore an uniform at work and either lived in the hotels where I worked or received a housing allowance as part of my employment package. So you needn’t worry about me going broke on you.”
“Unless you decide to go with gold fixtures.”
“Believe me, having just escaped a place called Midas, I’ve been surrounded by more gold than anyone should have to live with in a lifetime,” Brianna said with a laugh that got the attention of Bandit, who’d given up his begging stare and settled back down on the rug. A whine that Seth had come to know well got him the leftovers on a plastic plate.
“Okay. So I’ll put in for the permits. By now the county’s used to me coming in with paperwork for that property, so it shouldn’t take long. I’ll start calling subs while you go shopping.”
He opened a folder and took out a list of subcontractors and suppliers he kept on hand for clients. “You can get some stuff, like the paint, locally at other towns on the peninsula. For the bigger, more pricey items, you’ll probably have to go over to Seattle.”
“As much as I believe in supporting local businesses, I’d already figured that out.”
“Since you’re determined to go through with this, let me give you a key so you and your mom can walk through the place while we’re waiting for the permits.”
“Is that allowed? I haven’t even been to the Realtor yet and have put my years of breaking and entering behind me.”
“It is if the owner allows it.”
She paused in the act of putting away the picnic dishes. “Are you saying you’re the owner?”
“I bought it at a short sale, which made it affordable. The bank mostly just wanted to get rid of it and there weren’t a lot of prospective buyers. Like none.”
She frowned. “I can’t take your house.”
“You’re not t
aking it. I have it up for sale. You’re buying it.”
“Don’t you want to live there?”
“It’s got eight bedrooms,” he pointed out. “When it’s done, it’ll have ten bathrooms. What’s a single guy like me going to do with all that? Besides, I have a house.”
“So you bought it to flip it?” He could tell she was somewhat disappointed by that.
“No. I bought it to keep anyone else from screwing it up.” He paused, then decided what the hell. She wasn’t like one of her brothers, who’d rag him for his sentimentality. “Besides, you weren’t the only one who developed a strong emotional connection for it back when we were breaking into the place.”
Her troubled eyes cleared. The smile returned like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “This is going to work,” she said.
“We’ll make it work,” Seth agreed.
Ignoring Ethel’s knowing look, he walked Brianna to the outer door, watching as she headed to her car parked out in front. How had he forgotten those legs?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BECAUSE HER MOTHER was still in school doing her principal thing, Brianna decided to enjoy her first day off in years and stroll around the town, checking out both the familiar and the new.
Olympic Mountain Paints was still there, next to Dinah’s Diner, which looked like a frozen photo from the 1950s. Around the corner was the Big Dipper, making Brianna wonder if kids still hung out there after movies at the art deco style Olympic theater. Though these days they’d probably be drinking frozen lattes instead of chocolate shakes.