“He’s not here,” Victoria said. “And he doesn’t know that you’re here.”
“He doesn’t know?” Amy trailed off, the skin beneath her freckles growing even paler. “Then how did you find me? How did you know about me being an architect?”
Ruby raised her hand.
“Of course.” Amy sagged. “I sent you my graduation announcement. I had totally forgotten about that.”
“I left it in the barn for Eli to see,” Ruby said. “But he never said anything.”
“No. I don’t suppose he did.”
Amy turned slightly, staring off in the direction of Eli’s house. “I thought …” She stopped, then shook her head once, a rueful smile on her thin lips. It was painfully obvious that she’d thought Eli was behind her invitation to Crooked Creek.
As a mother deeply and profoundly in love with her own son, Celeste felt her heart twitch in sympathy.
“So why did you ask me here?” Amy looked like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, rusted and unable to move.
“Because … you’re a woman,” Victoria said. “And you’re a smart woman. And I think probably very good at your job.”
“I am. But … he didn’t tell you about me?”
“He hasn’t said anything about you. Ever.”
“Of course not,” she whispered, revealing a bone-deep ache and a surprising anger.
“We’ll understand if you want to leave,” Victoria said.
“I already did that once, didn’t I?” Amy said. Her eyes were razor sharp when she turned back to look at them. Committed.
Celeste liked that. Respected that. Perhaps Amy was here to make things right, a sentiment she understood.
She glanced quickly at Victoria, the girl she’d treated so poorly.
A car door slammed shut and Celeste turned back to Amy’s truck in time to watch a tall man, wiry and lean, dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt, hitch up his pants. A simple gesture, men getting out of trucks did it all the time, but for some reason her mouth went dry at the flash of a muscled stomach and thick, veiny wrists.
He slipped a pair of sunglasses off his tousled blond hair and put them over his blue eyes, which was a crime, because those eyes were staggering. Light blue like the heart of a glacier or a flame.
And then he smiled, a heartbreaker’s smile.
Her heart, spellbound by his beauty, by the earthiness of his allure, missed a beat and then scrambled to catch up.
“This is Gavin Svenson, my contractor,” Amy said, and Celeste, feeling like a dirty old woman, was grateful for her sunglasses, because her cheeks were aflame.
“Hello,” he said, and his voice slipped through her clothes, stroked her skin, ruffled her feathers. “Nice to meet you.”
More handshakes. She tried not to look directly at him, using her sunglasses and her natural aloofness to keep her distance. But her skin registered the rough calluses at the base of all his fingers, the warmth of his palm, and her body shook itself awake like a dog from a decade-long nap.
There was an awkward pause, the kind of quiet knit together from secrets and unsaid truths and awkward denials.
What, she wondered briefly, as they all seemed to take one another’s measure, are we getting ourselves into?
“Let’s see what you’ve got,” Amy said, and Victoria clapped her hands, breaking the strange mood.
“I feel really bad about liking her,” Victoria whispered, looking through the door into the dining room where Gavin and Amy had their heads bent over their own notes and a calculator.
“Why?” Celeste asked. “She didn’t leave you.”
“I know, but still …”
“Do you think Amy is good for the job?” Ruby asked.
Victoria was sick with nerves. On the one hand, she hadn’t felt this since Jacob was born, this unbearable rightness. As if God had come down and stacked the cards in her favor for once.
“I think she’s perfect,” Victoria answered. “But what about Eli?”
“You fired him, remember?” Celeste said.
“I know, but hiring his mom? I feel so guilty.”
“You feel guilty about everything,” Celeste said. “I just hope we like their quote.” Celeste drank her tea and very pointedly did not look at Amy or Gavin. She’d been cool for the past two hours while they walked around the property.
But Victoria had learned a little something about Celeste in the last month: the cooler she got, the more excited she was. A survival mechanism, for sure.
“She doesn’t look much like Eli, does she?” Victoria asked.
“Not one bit.” Celeste flipped through one of Ruby’s cookbooks.
“She totally thought Eli was the one to suggest her. She probably thought she was going to come up here and have some kind of mother-and-son reunion. It about broke my heart when she found out it was Ruby.”
“What are you going to tell Eli if she takes this job?” Ruby asked from the sink.
Victoria chewed on her lip and then upgraded to her thumbnail. Celeste pulled her hand away. Victoria put it back.
“Why do I have to tell him anything? He doesn’t work here.”
Ruby hummed slightly.
“You think that’s awful?”
Celeste and Ruby nodded.
“Okay. It is awful. But what do I say? Hey, Eli, sorry I fired you. Oh, and by the way, I’ve hired your mom to change the ranch you love into a spa?”
“Something like that,” Ruby said.
“I can’t.” Victoria put her head in her hands. “I can’t. Hiring her is a total mistake.”
Ruby pressed a hand to her arm. “Not for Amy,” she said. “She’s here for her son, you can tell. And it’s about damn time she tried to make what she did right.”
That brought Victoria’s head up. “You think that makes it okay?”
Ruby nodded. Celeste shrugged. Good Lord, the woman was no help at all!
At the dining room table, Gavin lifted his head. Victoria felt her face catch fire, embarrassed that he’d heard her gossiping. But then he smiled and she blushed all over again, because the man was too gorgeous for words. A civilized Viking.
Gavin looked down and Victoria sighed, her stomach in knots. “Gavin’s eyes are amazing, aren’t they?”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Celeste said.
“Are you blind?”
“No.” She turned past a picture of salmon on spinach. Ruby had made it last night with mixed results. “I just make a point of not ogling the help.”
“You are such a snob.”
But considering her chill factor, a snob with the ooh-la-la’s for the handsome contractor. Very interesting.
Victoria turned away from the two at the table and leaned against the breakfast counter, looking out the window at the rolling hills past the house.
The truth was, Amy was perfect for this job and Victoria was ready to get started. The longer they waited, the more ridiculous this dream of hers felt. She needed action. And what if hiring Amy was a win/win for both of them? She got her spa and resort, and Amy and Eli got to make amends.
“If Amy takes the job, I’ll tell Eli,” she said.
“Good girl,” Celeste murmured.
A chair squeaked over the hardwood in the dining room and Victoria spun back around, trying hard not to seem too eager. But this fit seemed right. Amy had been no-nonsense but imaginative. Her ideas blended with Victoria and Celeste’s and when she disagreed, she made a point of explaining why. The two hours that had passed by while they looked over the house and property had felt like time spent with friends—that had to be worth something, didn’t it?
“We’re going to need to go over the numbers a little more,” Amy said, flipping her long red braid over her shoulder as she stepped into the kitchen. “But we have a preliminary figure.”
Victoria took a deep breath, bracing herself. “I can take it.”
Amy and Gavin shared a smile. “Your initial budget is three quarters of a million, right?”
&n
bsp; “Eight hundred and fifty thousand,” Celeste corrected. “With a rolling monthly income of two thousand.”
“Well, that will handle the demo, plumbing, electrical, and much of the new framing, but for the kind of finish that the two of you want for the spa—”
“Need,” Victoria pointed out and then glanced over at Celeste, who nodded. “The finish is a pretty key part of the equation and we don’t want to scrimp. We know our budget is short, but we don’t know how much.”
“That’s what I gathered,” Amy said. “And I agree, wholeheartedly. But you’re going to need another half a million.”
“Dollars?” Ruby gasped.
“At least,” Gavin added.
Victoria was doing her best dying fish imitation and luckily Celeste stepped in.
“Thank you very much for coming out,” she said while standing.
“That would mean me taking a huge cut on my end,” Amy said quickly, as if sensing she was getting herded out the door. “You’re not going to find someone who will do this job any cheaper.”
“Or better,” Gavin added.
“Why?” Victoria asked. “Why did you take a cut?”
Amy glanced around the kitchen, her freckles bright orange against her pale skin.
“I think … I think you probably know the answer to that.”
Amy’s eyes, green like her son’s, watched Victoria with a look of defiance. And shame.
“Frankly, the situation with Eli is one of the drawbacks to hiring you,” Victoria said. “It complicates everything.”
“I want this job and you wouldn’t have called me out here if you weren’t interested in me,” Amy said. “As for my relationship with Eli … well, if you hire us, I’ll be the one to tell him. Not you. He deserves to hear it from me. And after that, if it’s a problem, we’ll discuss it.”
“That …” Victoria glanced over at Celeste and Ruby. “That sounds reasonable.”
“Of course it does.” Amy slipped her glasses back into her shirt pocket. “I’ll fax you my official quote tonight.”
Amy left and, after an apologetic smile, Gavin followed.
“A half million?” Ruby asked in the stillness they’d left behind. “You’re going to need my boob money.”
Victoria shook her head. “You’re doing enough, Ruby. I’m not taking your savings.”
“I knew we didn’t have enough,” Celeste said. “I mean, I was shocked by the cold numbers, but we want top-of-the-line fixtures. We want granite and oak and glass. And that’s where the money starts to add up.”
Ruby sighed. “How are we going to get that money?”
“Luc.” Victoria shrugged. “We have to ask him.”
“Not unless it’s a last resort,” Celeste said.
“Well, like you said, there’s not a bank in the world that will lend me money.”
“What about what’s left of the cattle?” Celeste asked.
“I have no idea how much they’re worth.”
“And the six horses left in the barn?”
Victoria shrugged, totally clueless. They could have a fortune out there for all she knew.
“Sounds like you need to go talk to Eli and find out what he left us with.”
chapter
11
The five o’clock sun was an oven, and the cotton of Eli’s shirt stuck to the skin of his chest and back as if a bucket of water had been poured over his head. He untucked the hem and a hot breeze flew up over his body.
Soda snoozed in the shade of the barn, smart dog.
Eli had finished the last section of the fence on the far paddock and, rolling out the sore muscles of his shoulders, he opened the gate to the smaller paddock closer to the barn.
“Heeyah!” he yelled, waving his hat, inspiring Darling and Patience to kick up dust on the way into their new home. They gave the space a good run, and he was glad he’d added a few extra feet. The horses would appreciate it, and when it came time to break some ponies, this paddock would be the best place to do it.
Satisfied, starving, and dirtier than ten men, he ducked back into the barn and opened the tiny beat-up fridge he had set up there. He was planning on turning the barn into an office, but at the moment it only looked like a hardware store, filled with boxes of shingles, roofing hammers, and nails.
For a moment his shoulders, already tired and sore, dipped under the weight of all the work he still had to do, but he wanted to celebrate finishing the paddock, so he ignored the wood and nails and unfinished stall doors and grabbed a beer.
Back outside, he hooked his boot heel up on the fence he’d spent the better part of the day building and raised his bottle to Patience and Darling, who were drinking from the trough in the corner.
The beer was icy cold down his throat.
“Eli?”
He choked, snorting beer up through his nose, where it burned and made his eyes water.
“Victoria,” he gasped, turning to face the last person in the world he’d expected to show up on his land. But there she was in the glittering end of daylight. Her pretty hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she wore jeans and a white T-shirt.
It seemed like a costume, as if she was trying on a new look, and for a moment he wanted to tell her how cute she was. “I didn’t hear you drive up.”
“I walked over.”
He glanced down at her feet, expecting to see bloody stumps in those silly red shoes, but instead she wore a pair of beat-up tennis shoes.
“That’s quite a walk,” he muttered, taking in the sweat running down her neck, vanishing into the loose collar of her shirt. He imagined it traveling down the curve of her breast, vanishing into the lacy edge of a bra.
“Yeah. I had some things to think about. You … ah … got another one of those?” She pointed to the beer.
Am I suffering from heat stroke? he wondered. A one-swallow-of-beer-induced hallucination? Because there was no way Victoria Schulman was here in tennis shoes and a sweaty T-shirt asking for a beer.
“Eli?”
“Sure,” he muttered. “Just a second.”
The cool of the barn felt good on his hot body, and he pressed the cold bottle against his forehead before twisting off the cap and heading back out to face this strange incarnation of his nemesis.
“Thanks,” she murmured. She took the beer from his hand and then rolled it across the bare skin of her neck and chest that was revealed by the deep V of her shirt.
Embarrassed by the sudden turn of his thoughts, he looked away when her nipples got hard and she closed her eyes with a sigh.
What the hell was going on?
“I haven’t been here in years,” she finally said, looking around. “I’d forgotten how pretty it was.”
“Yeah, well, my family saved the best property.” He shot her a sideways glance before taking another drink. “You can’t have it.”
“Are you … joking with me?” She blinked, wide-eyed, as if channeling a very strange Mae West.
“I’m drinking. Don’t get used to it.”
“You’ve done a lot of work.”
“A lot of work needed to be done. Still does. But the horses have a place to run and sleep, so we’re halfway there.”
She turned and looked over his shoulder at the house, sitting squat and square. “The house looks great. So different from what I remember.”
He nodded and took another sip.
“Remember the last time I was here?” Her eyes were bright, the memory clearly a good one in her books, which was surprising considering how beat up she got. “That day you were trying to teach me to jump. God, I was fifteen.”
He pulled his hat down farther over his eyes, reluctant to waltz down memory lane. This was his first fine mood in a long time, and there was nothing like the past to put an end to it.
“It was a long time ago,” she whispered, slowly picking at the gold foil edge of the beer bottle’s label.
The woman practically bled feelings. She was an open wound of emotion. An
d usually he could ignore that shit better than horse manure, but that T-shirt, those sweaty bits of hair against the elegant length of her neck—they did him in.
“You were a fast learner,” he muttered.
Her laugh was throaty. A different woman’s laugh. And his blood responded, running thick through his veins. “That’s not true. I was a good faller, maybe. An excellent fraidy-cat.”
“You were game.”
Those big blue eyes of hers blinked at him and then she straightened, preening under his faint praise. “Game,” she repeated. “I’ll take it.”
Her throat bobbed as she drank, taking big swallows of the beer. He should have given her water; that beer would hit her hard.
“You out here all by yourself?” she asked.
He nodded.
“You don’t … you don’t get lonely?”
“Nope.” He stared at her, his meaning more than clear, and she blushed and looked away. That would teach her to ask questions.
“What are you doing here?” he asked and she jerked, beer spilling over her lips.
“A girl can’t be neighborly?” She wiped her lips with the sleeve of her shirt. It was like watching the queen pick her nose.
“Not when she fired that neighbor.”
“Eli … I’m sorry things ended that way.”
“You did the right thing. Don’t ruin it by apologizing.”
The sun dipped below the leafy tops of the cottonwoods and a breeze kicked up from the west, bringing some relief. He finished his beer, balancing the empty bottle on the fence, trying not to look at her.
“I asked around, and I’ll sell you that equipment for ten thousand dollars.”
“What?”
“That’s fair.”
“Yeah, if it wasn’t at least five years old. I’ll give you eight.”
“You stuck your tongue down my throat, Eli.”
He laughed at the balls on her, trying to blackmail him with that kiss. “You liked it, Tori.” Her neck went red, her eyes wide, and he decided he liked that nickname. Tori. “We both know it. That horse is dead.”
She looked as though she wanted to be offended, opened her mouth as if to give him the gears, but he arched an eyebrow at her.
“Fine, but you can have it tomorrow, if you want it. That has to count for something.”
Can't Hurry Love Page 11