“We know.” Jaycee held up her hands. “But we’ve thought about this long and hard. The truth is, there’s no one like you, Caleb. With your dedication and determination to make things right. Derek’s name is going to go on the shows, and he wants someone in there he can trust. That’s you.”
“But I’m here,” Caleb said, folding his arms and glancing at Rachel again. Then he thought better of that and reached over to put his arms around her. “We’re here. I don’t want to go to California or Connecticut or Kansas. This is home for me now.”
“No, I know that,” Derek said quickly. “And we’ve talked about that too. I think we could do the show locally, here, or at least around here. There are lots of old houses to fix up, and Rachel, we want you to help him.”
“Me?” Somehow it seemed that she had decided they had forgotten about her. When they hadn’t, her eyes bugged out and her pitch went up through soprano and off the charts.
Derek took a breath. “I know. I get it. You never saw this coming, but…”
“The two of you, on screen.” Jaycee swooned and then laughed. “You’re the perfect complement to each other, and I’m not just saying that because you’re about to tie the knot.”
Rachel was still trying to swim out of the disbelief. “I don’t understand. They want me? Why?”
“We want you,” Derek corrected her. “The way I see this working is that Caleb does the big stuff, the structural, the dry wall, and you help him with the finishing touches—picking out the cabinets and refinishing the vanities, stuff like that.”
Rachel looked positively horrified. “But I don’t know how to be on TV.”
“You just were,” Jaycee said with a laugh, “and you were awesome. The two of you are a great team, and it shows.”
A second and Caleb straightened, taking his arms from around her and waving his hands in the air. “Okay, hang on, hang on. Wait. Stop. Whoa. Back the train up.” He took a breath. “You’re telling me that Brent Socroft after I specifically turned him down agreed that you could hire me for a different show?”
“I believe his exact words were, ‘I hope you have better luck with him than I did.’” Derek grinned.
“He did not say that,” Rachel said incredulously.
“He did so,” Jaycee said. “He absolutely did. I heard him.”
“Okay, but I’ve already got… stuff,” Caleb said, now trying to talk them out of this craziness. “I’ve got a bathroom and finishing this place and the Attabury. That is, if I even decide to do that one.”
“Well, there are a couple things on that list we need to talk about too,” Derek said, and with that, he reached over and gathered Jaycee into his embrace so that she was in front of him facing them with his arms draped over her and her hands up on his arms. “The truth is, if you take this gig, we’re going to need to be coming out here a lot to supervise things. So, we’re going to need something of a base of operations.”
Caleb’s thought train derailed. “What? Like a television station? I thought that was all done with satellites.”
Derek laughed. “The video part is. No, I’m talking about a place to be when we’re here. I don’t think renting a hotel room in Greely sounds overly wonderful, and we don’t want to out-stay our welcome with Luke and Sage either.”
Somehow Caleb couldn’t get his thoughts going in a logical direction again. “You could always stay in Raleigh or Wilmington. Those are only a couple hours away.”
“No. We were thinking somewhere closer. Like here in Ridgemount.”
“Ridgemount?” Rachel asked. “There aren’t many places to rent around here, and what’s here is pretty much taken.”
“We weren’t thinking about renting,” Jaycee said. “We were actually thinking about buying a place.”
“Buying?” Rachel asked even more stymied than before. “Wow. Yeah, not a lot of inventory for houses around here.”
“Oh, really?” Derek said. “That’s weird because I heard there’s one house that’s for sale. Of course, it hasn’t been put on the market yet, but I hear it’s supposed to be put on sale pretty soon.”
Rachel and Caleb looked at each other in utter confusion, and then, what Derek might be saying crossed both faces at the same time. A conversation passed between them at the speed of light.
It was Caleb who looked at them first. “We don’t… You guys don’t… We couldn’t ask you to do that.”
“Who’s asking?” Jaycee laughed and hugged Derek’s arms around her tighter as her gaze swept up and around the space. “We love it out here. It’s perfect for now and maybe even for later when we’re tired of being in Kansas too.”
That was too much for Caleb. He straightened all the way up and put his hands in the air, waving them again. “Hold up. Wait just a second here. Let me get this straight. You want me.” He stopped and looked at Rachel. “You want us to anchor a new show for H&H, produced by Derek, and you want to buy this house?”
“Yep,” Derek said. “Oh. And we think you should start the show with the Attabury place.” He looked down at Jaycee, grinned and nodded. “Yep. That’s pretty much what we’re saying right there.”
“You don’t have to give us an answer right now,” Jaycee said quickly.
Rachel’s gaze came over to Caleb. “It’s not even our house. It’s Mom’s.”
“I don’t know if there are enough places around here to fix up to make a whole show,” Caleb said.
“And there’s still so much work to do on it,” Rachel said. “The bathroom is in shambles, and the bedrooms are worse.”
Derek laughed. “You know, you guys don’t make very good salesmen.”
Jaycee patted his arm. “It’s a learned skill. Give them time.”
Chapter 15
Eric & Dani
By 2:15 on Monday afternoon, Dani’s whole body was on overload and tilting toward complete collapse. She hadn’t even had lunch yet, and after skipping breakfast to get Carly to the house since her parents couldn’t bring her, Dani’s stomach and head were complaining rather loudly. Blinking slowly as she worked on the company’s Scotland plans, she blew out a breath to keep herself going. “Ten more minutes.”
Her cell phone beeped in her desk, but she had vowed not to look at any more texts until she got this done. She’d been putting it off since before Christmas, and she knew that was long enough. The cell phone’s text beep went off again, but she pushed that from her consciousness. Why couldn’t everyone just leave her alone to work?
“You have lunch yet?” Tiffany Chavez asked, ducking into Dani’s tiny office.
“Lunch. What’s that?” Dani asked without looking up.
“Important. That’s what it is. Come on. I’m buying.”
“You’re buying sandwiches at Blue’s?” Dani pushed away from her desk, knowing she shouldn’t let herself get talked into this.
“And margaritas,” Tiffany said.
“Now you’re speaking my language.”
Eric texted her again, wondering where she was and why she hadn’t answered. Busy. As usual. He didn’t dare call her in the middle of the day, so he sent one more text and took the detour from Greensboro. It had been too long since he’d made this trip, and with yesterday having been Christmas, he couldn’t hardly justify being this close and not going.
He flipped the cell phone into the holder and put his hand to his mouth. The whole thing with Dani and her family had jangled deep into his spirit and refused to let go. He had known practically from their first meeting that they were a handful, but he had judged that Dani more than made up for the craziness of her parents.
Dani. Eric smiled ruefully at the thought of her that very first day outside his apartment, looking for her own in the complex that lived up to its name. Winding hallways and lights that only sometimes worked, elegant it was not. Maybe that’s why he had let his guard down with her. Had he known she came from money, he surely never would have, but in her oversized sweats, crazy kinked out hair and camo headband, she lo
oked like every other college coed on the Wake Forest campus.
“You lost?” he had asked, seeing her once again pass by the little alcove he was using to study. It was a window and featured no roommates.
“No,” she said with a snap as if she thought he might chop her head off with his engineering textbook. “Just looking around.”
He nodded, knowing better but also knowing from experience when a lady has no intentions of letting you try to help her. Five minutes later, she was back, map in hand, still looking imminently confused. Trying not to rile her, he bent over his textbook and pretended to read even as his treacherous heart checked her out. He judged her to be a little more than 20, probably a junior or a senior. Graduate school was already kicking his tail by that time, and really he didn’t have time for a relationship much less partying or girl hunting.
With a scowl on her face she passed by yet again, and he made the mistake of glancing up.
“Okay,” she said with razors around the word, “first of all, stop looking at me like that, and second of all, I am not lost.”
Eric put both hands in the air without ever saying anything; however, instead of proceeding on her search, she stopped and looked at her map. She turned it one way and then the other and then back the first way. Finally she dropped it to her knees, clutched in her hand, and let out a growl that would have frightened wolves.
It took everything he had not to look up as his gaze slid back and forth over formulas he never saw. Second semester was already started, and the last thing he wanted to do was get behind. He made another mark on the paper even as she just stood there.
Her frustration seemed to fill the air around them so that he could hardly breathe.
“You know what?” she finally said as if to no one in particular. “I can just sleep in my car. Yeah. There’s a plan. What do I need an apartment for anyway, right?”
Because of the confidence in her voice, Eric thought she had to be talking to someone, but when he looked up, no one was there. He hesitated before deciding she had to be talking to him, and it was rude not to answer. “Uh, you know, it could be worse. You could be in the dorms.”
That, surprisingly, made her laugh. “Too late for that.” Looking genuinely tired, she came over and sat down on the little ledge next to where he was. She lifted her chin at his work. “What’s that? Calc?”
“Engineering.”
With a nod, she put her head down. “Close enough.” A second and like none of the previous time had happened, she put out her hand. “I’m Danisha.”
Again, he couldn’t be rude, so he put out his hand and shook hers. “Eric.” And he went back to his studies.
It was a minute or two before she chose to speak again. “Must be nice.”
“What’s that?”
“Knowing what you’re doing.”
That yanked his gaze up to her and stuck it there; however, the moment was so strange, he still didn’t know what to say to her.
With a half-a-smile that looked remarkably like she was about to cry, she shook her head. “It always sounded so good.”
“What?”
“Being on my own. Taking on the world. Being independent. Beating your way through the jungle and all of that.”
“That what you’re doing?”
This smile had more heart to it. “Always.” With a breath she put her head all the way back onto the window. “Just wish they gave A’s for faking it, you know?” A small jerk of her head and she lifted it again. “And then I realize I can’t even read a simple map. How am I ever going to get through this and then law school?”
That piqued his interest. “Law school?”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “Gonna go out there and make something of myself. Gonna prove to everyone I’m somebody. At least that was the plan.”
Closing the book on his arm, Eric tipped his head. “So what’s the story, Somebody? You lost or what?”
The smile became almost a grin. “If I said yes, would you think I’m an idiot?”
“No. If you said yes, I would think you were lost, and whether you want to admit it or not, we all get a little lost sometimes.”
“I don’t know,” Dani said over the salad and sparkling water at the little restaurant. They had decided to forego the margaritas in favor of keeping their jobs. “It sounded like such a good idea at the time. Buy the place, fix it up, own it, you know? But now…”
“Now?” Tiffany forked into her own salad with a crunch.
“Now it just feels hard, like why am I even doing this? What’s the point?” Tears stung the backs of her eyes like pokers in a smelting pot, but she would not let them fall. Tears were for weak people, people who were struggling. That wasn’t her. She couldn’t let it be.
“What does Eric think about all of this?”
Dani sighed dramatically. “He thinks it’s a waste of money, but that’s Eric. He thinks buying the good bread is a waste of money.”
“So, what’re you going to do?”
This sigh nearly took her down. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”
“Well, look who it is!” Coming out of the cute little pink-orange brick house and right into the narrow one-car driveway, his mother put out her arms for Eric. “I did not expect to see you today.”
He hugged her to him. “Thought I’d come by and say Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas to you too. Come on in. Come on in.” She led him up the little sloping drive and to the side instead of the front door. So many memories bound up in this house, and every time he came, it was like he remembered them all at the same time. “How’s everybody?”
“Oh, good as usual.” She went over and sat in her green chair that was a standing miracle since it should have fallen apart years before. “Grandkids are all growing up. How’s Jaden?”
A stab went through his heart when he realized he’d taken off to come here, but he would never have considered taking off to pick his daughter up early. “Good. We missed you at the program.”
“I sure wish I could have come. Too many fun things to do right before Christmas.”
Eric nodded and smiled. His gaze traced up to the little shelf where his father’s picture still sat. “Hard to believe it’s been 22 years today.”
His mother smiled and ducked her head. “Funny, I say that every, single year, and every year it’s as hard to believe as it was the one before.” Reaching over, she touched the picture and then kissed her fingers and laid them on it.
“Sure wish I remembered him better.”
“Me too,” she said softly.
His gaze stayed on the picture of his father in his dress blues. Strange how all those years ago had ways of being intertwined with his soul so he couldn’t tell what was memory and what was merely feelings. With a shake of his head, he dragged his thoughts back to his mother. “So, how are you?”
“Oh, fine. Fine. Played for Beverly in church last weekend. She went to see her grandkids.”
“You played for Christmas?” Eric asked in surprise, and his mother laughed.
“Now, come on, you know me better than that. No. Week before last. I went to Yvonne’s for Christmas service.”
“Ah.” He grinned at her. Never the outgoing type, his mother had nonetheless raised four kids nearly by herself. Her husband, his father, had been killed when Eric was only ten. Yvonne, the oldest of the four, picked up the slack for her mom the best she could, but with three younger brothers, that wasn’t always easy.
“How’s Yvonne?”
“Oh, same as always. Everything was right as rain down to the red and green napkins. That’s one thing about my kids, not a one of them didn’t grow up to do life bigger and better than I ever thought it could be lived all those years ago.”
The truth was, he was proud of that, proud of making his mother proud.
“And how about you?” she asked. “What difference are you making in this old world?”
Eric smiled as the age-old question brushed his heart
. “Building bridges over in Greensboro. We’re about half-finished with the first one, and we’ll start the demo on the second probably the end of this month.”
The pride shone in her eyes. “That’s my boy. Your daddy would be so proud.”
Ducking so the emotion wouldn’t show, he closed his eyes for a second. He felt her concern even before she voiced it.
“How was Christmas?”
“It was good,” he said without lifting his head, which he knew he should but couldn’t.
His mother thought that through. “You have Dani’s family over?”
“Yeah.” The word was a breath.
“Things haven’t gotten no better on that front I take it.”
“It’s tough, you know?” He picked up his gaze and then himself as he went over to the window and looked out onto the street he had memorized years before. “With her dad with Celeste now, her mom’s pretty much itching for a fight all the time.” He dropped the curtain, knowing the outside would never really be all he had hoped it would, and he leaned there.
“And how’s Dani?”
The laugh really wasn’t. “Chopping down jungles as usual.”
It was how he had first described his new girlfriend the first time he’d told his mother about her. At the time, he thought Dani brave and exciting. Now, he wasn’t so sure what he felt. “She bought the house. That one in Ridgemount.”
His mother nodded very slowly, assessing him more than the purchase.
“I just keep thinking the last thing we need is one more thing to do, you know?” He shook his head. “What do we even need a vacation house for? We hardly use the house we’ve got.”
“Have you talked to her about it?”
“She won’t listen to me. She’s hell-bent on getting that place and fixing it up. Not that that’s even possible. You should see it. Nobody should pay good money for that place.”
“Maybe it’s not about the money.”
“I know. You’re right. Dani’s always got this thing about proving herself. Drives me nuts sometimes. I don’t know why we can’t just live.”
A Moment Like This: A Contemporary Christian Romance Prequel Novella (The Grace Series Book 4) Page 8