She scooted a foot to the left.
For several more minutes she read, jobs and descriptions trailing down page after page, head lifting sporadically to move her position left or right out of the dog’s line of sight, her eyes glancing on occasion to Chip. Just to see how the fence was coming along.
Had it started to rain?
She squinted. Yes, it was raining now, and the raindrops made Chip’s hair slick up and out like he was in a boy band. Which was ridiculous in a way, but also . . .
The raindrops dripped down his face, following the vein on the side of his neck before melting into his long-sleeved shirt.
No.
Ab-so-lute-ly not.
She stood to refill her mug as he started yanking out the orange wire.
She was not interested in that man.
She’d be out of her mind if she was interested in that man.
For that matter, it wasn’t even allowed to be interested in that irritating, infuriating, unavailable man.
And yet every few minutes for the next hour, she felt her body turning toward the front door.
At every indistinct noise she lifted her head, waiting for the knock on the door. Which was a tough row to hoe, as the house was a hundred years old and creaked every five seconds. But the world out the window had become a curtain of black, and the way he had moved earlier had suggested the project should be done in a matter of minutes, not hours . . .
Yes, any minute he’d be at her door, telling her he’d finished.
She looked back to the bottom of page 7 of The List, her eyes adjusting to the brightness of the screen in the dim lighting of the living room. Kennel assistant (just one word: rabies), nanny (just one word: kids), cookie-dough scooper (the job sounded incredible, but she gained ten pounds in two weeks and started getting tendonitis in her left wrist), part-time bookkeeper, zip-line instructor—
A rap at the door jolted her. She stood.
Bree was at the door before realizing she was approximately five seconds too quick in getting there. After all, he was the one with the deadline. For that matter, she could get herself another cup of coffee and do a few pushups before answering. Heat up a frozen dinner in the microwave. Go wash her hair. He was at her mercy.
At her mercy. She liked the ring of that.
She lingered, her hand on the doorknob, then dropped it. Slowly, careful to avoid the creaking floorboards, Bree moved back to her seat. She looked at her screen.
Where was she? Ah, yes. Zip-line instructor. Had it not been for that little matter of mis-locking that man’s carabiner after he had tried to feel her up on that two-foot-wide platform, she probably would still be managing the place.
But honestly, who doesn’t check their own harness clips before jumping off a thirty-foot pole?
Besides, a safety net had caught him—no harm, no foul.
Another rap came on the door and she tapped a few words on the keyboard, loudly, then pushed her long braid over her shoulder. She felt the bumpy locks on the top of her head and raked her fingers through them as she stood up and walked to the door.
With a slight breath she paused, swung the door open, and crossed her arms across her chest, ready for fire.
Only it wasn’t her surly neighbor in a wet, beat-up shirt wielding a shovel, but Theodore. In a crisp suit. Holding a bouquet of flowers.
Her arms fell. “Theodore?”
“I was passing by Misty’s Floral and saw these.”
“Oh really?”
His tentative smile started to fall.
“I mean, oh really!” She took the array of yellow flowers in her hand. “Wow! You shouldn’t have.”
“And then . . . these.” He held up a bag of pickle potato chips.
“Nice!” She snatched them, then realized how barbaric her grab had been.
“I mean . . . oh, how nice. What a nice, supplementary thing to bring when the focus is these delightful flowers.”
His cautious smile broke into an authentic one. “I thought this might be your reaction.”
She smiled back, giving Theodore a sly once-over. In her two-week stint as a bridal store attendant, she had learned a bit about textiles—and she could tell the suit he was wearing, virgin wool and cashmere, was not of the JCPenney variety.
Bree, on the other hand, was barefoot, with toenails about three weeks past needing a trim, in the same leggings she wore the night before.
She tucked her toes beneath her. “Thank you, Theodore. This was so thoughtful.”
A flash of light out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. Chip stood a few feet from the mailbox, wearing a headlamp as he pushed the soil back in place with his shovel.
She looked down at the bouquet.
It felt heavy in her arms. She didn’t know anything about flowers. Except that these felt heavy. Ergo, expensive.
“These”—she paused, trying to find a label for the yellow things—“these are just terrific. So yellow. So happy.”
“Yes, yellow. That’s what I was thinking too.” There was a tilt in Theodore’s smile. “So, I probably ought to also admit that I’m not just here to deliver flowers, happy and yellow as they may be. I have a favor to ask.”
She felt the sudden urge to smooth her hair again. “Yeah?”
“A college chum of mine is chairing the Plein Air Festival on Tuesday the ninth, and my family’s tree farm is one of the sponsors, so, seeing as I’m expected to be the supportive friend and good family representative and all, I’ll be going.” He smiled good-naturedly. “You might not be interested in something like that,” he ventured, searching her eyes, “but if you wanted to go, I can guarantee it would be a lot more fun for me. And if you don’t, well, just in case you have a savior complex or something, just know it’d be a perfect opportunity to save me from an afternoon of loneliness and social desperation. But of course, no pressure.”
Bree’s smile grew. “My, my. For the perfect gentleman you do lay it on pretty thick, don’t you? Well, as it just so happens, I do have a terrible savior complex, and”—Bree paused, blinking furiously against Chip’s blinding headlamp. This time it wasn’t moving. “I’d love to go—” she continued, but the light was distracting her from the rest of her sentence.
Holding a forearm over her eyes, she squinted and barely made out Chip’s form. He was spotlighting the two of them.
She glared.
Nothing.
“Hey!” she called out. “The ground’s that way.”
After several seconds, the light moved.
Bree whipped a smile back into place as she fixed her eyes again on Theodore. Only now, with spots dancing across her vision, she could only guess she was looking at his eyes. “What time?”
“Around four?”
Tuesday the ninth. Four. She could do Tuesday the ninth at four.
“I’d love to.”
A grating sound pierced her ears, and both Bree and Theodore swiveled to see Chip’s shadowy body dragging his shovel across the dirt. Even from her inexperienced standpoint she could tell he wasn’t actually trying to level the ground.
Well, that explained what kind of general contractor he was.
Bree spoke under her breath. “He’s new.”
Theodore nodded. Opened his mouth. Hesitated. “And it’s dinnertime. I don’t suppose you’ve eaten already?”
Bree paused. But of course it was insane to say she couldn’t go because she had to watch the crazy neighbor shovel. And besides, she hadn’t eaten. Two cups of coffee hardly counted as dinner.
Theodore’s expression and tone dimmed as the seconds ticked by. “Unless, of course, you have other plans.”
“No,” Bree said swiftly. “That’d be great. I just need to change.”
“You look terrific,” Theo said, smiling as if he hadn’t noticed she was practically in her pajamas.
Oh, but he really was a good man.
Her voice softened. “Just give me ten minutes.”
It wasn’t much longer before Bree had dro
pped the flowers on the kitchen counter, changed, and settled in Theodore’s whisper-silent Tesla as it turned out of her driveway. Two pleasant hours of conversation and three courses later, she returned home to walk straight into a lecture from Evie about flowers as she clipped the limp bundle and arranged them in a mason jar. There wasn’t even time to ruminate on the almost-kiss beneath the porch light before Bree found her hand—of its own stupid, stupid volition—reaching for the doorknob and breaking the moment.
Why had it reached for the doorknob?
This was the question that hounded her as she pulled the covers up to her chin in the darkness of her bedroom. Well, that and the sound of the alarm system beeping on downstairs. It reminded her of her very good point she’d been meaning to raise.
“Hey, Evie,” Bree called from her bed.
Evie grunted from the other bedroom.
“You do realize you’re going to have a problem when you cut the internet in your quest for off-the-grid domination.”
“The internet is a black cloud blocking the light of stillness,” Evie called back. “If you have a problem with me cutting the internet I pay for because of your obsession with the desensitizing clutter of your screen—”
“I wasn’t talking about my computer. Cut the internet all you want. You know I don’t use it.” She heard Evie turn over on the creaky bed. “I was talking about your security system. Good night, dear.”
She could practically see Evie in her oval-shaped bed staring at the ceiling, registering the fact that her beloved security system ran on wireless. And if there was one thing that could trump her obsession with simple living, it was her obsession with security. The woman had four locks on the front door alone to prove it.
A smile lingered on Bree’s lips as she drifted to sleep, the thoughts and objects of the day floating through her dreams.
Evie drifting on an ocean in her oval-shaped bed.
Yellow flowers.
Mason jars.
Pajamas.
Shovels.
An earthquake rumbled the ground beneath her feet, the pounding growing louder and louder, jars, pajamas, shovels all falling into the growing cracks in the earth.
Quaking.
Shaking.
Knocking her head against the—
Bree’s eyes popped open while she jerked up to sitting. Evie had a death grip on Bree’s arm and was shaking her like a rag doll.
“I’m up! Stop!” Bree hissed.
Bree pushed Evie, who currently looked like a frightened owl in her horn-rimmed glasses. Bree pointed to the bed and whispered, “Sit,” then reached behind the bed and pulled out her baseball bat.
Evie sat.
She hated when Evie did this.
At least twice a month Evie’s Apple Watch started vibrating, alerting her that some intruder had set off the motion detector above the front door. Some leaf, or squirrel, or sturdy gust of wind. The first time it happened, Bree realized exactly why Evie had lived with Nana for so long. She loved Nana, sure. Who didn’t? But Bree could guarantee it was also because Evie didn’t want to live alone.
Bree knew Evie would morph from her night-terrified self back into her grumpy self as soon as she gave the all-clear. Bree strode through the living room, not bothering to tiptoe or avoid creaking floorboards. She disarmed the security system, then started at the top door lock and worked her way down, undoing the chain and turning the two deadbolts. She turned the lock on the handle and then twisted it open, ready to be met with nothing but the black, quiet evening.
What Bree did not expect was the black figure hovering six inches from her nose, a weapon over his shoulder.
“Whaaaa—” She yelped and in one motion raised the bat and swung.
The figure hollered and stumbled backward. He went down on the porch step, and after a couple attempts to catch himself, tumbled on his backside and knocked a pot sideways with his head.
The shovel clattered beside him.
Bree lifted her hand to her lips, trying to suppress the twitch as the shock, then realization, relief, and finally hysterical chuckles gave way. “I’m sorry. I just—”
Chip looked up at her and shook the dirt off his hair.
She watched the particles drift from his head, then laughed again.
“Like the view?”
“You know, I’ll admit. It’s pretty funny from this angle.”
His frown deepened. His voice held little humor. “Line’s moved. Now tell me your secret.”
She extended a hand to help him up, but he ignored the gesture and pulled himself to standing.
She glanced in the direction of the median between their cars, where the streetlamp showed the line of freshly turned dirt and, of course, the dog.
By the stroke of midnight, she had said after all. A deal was a deal.
“Fine. Here it is. Mr. Richardson won’t hire any contractor who can’t demonstrate he’s as talented with a paintbrush as he is a hammer. If you want that Barter job, you’d better brush up on your art skills.” She raised a brow toward the job that should’ve taken far less time. “And maybe line-moving skills.”
“He wants a contractor who is also an artist?” he repeated, rubbing his head thoughtfully as he took in this new information.
She turned on her heels.
“Good night, Chip.”
Bree smiled to herself as she shut the door, turned the three hundred locks, got Evie her warm milk—like the toddler she was—and coerced her back into bed.
It was only as she was settling into her own bed, blinking wearily as she checked the clock, that she saw the time: 3:13 a.m.
Chapter 8
Chip
It wasn’t supposed to be this fun. But honestly, the woman asked for it.
“Midnight. Not one millisecond past.”
He could still hear her condescending tone as she whipped her braid over her shoulder and slammed the screen door. As if he were that desperate for whatever she had to say. As if all of his career hopes and dreams rested in her slender hands. As if the sprightly little Barter fairy could have anything that valuable to tell him.
Fact was, he woke up, got out of bed, and snatched up his shovel at three in the morning for the pure joy of ruffling her feathers.
Over an hour he wasted pulling out that old phone line and dragging it through the yard as if the fence were moved. Sure, the second she was out of the driveway he dropped his shovel to do actual work—the demolished upstairs bathroom being proof, along with the Pepto Bismol–pink tub in the bed of his truck weighing down old plumbing lines, crushed Sheetrock, and shattered tile.
The reality was, he could already tell annoying her was going to become one of his fondest hobbies. He was starting to love it with every fiber of his being.
The way those pink circles rose in her cheeks. The way her nose scrunched up in disgust.
It was flippin’ fantastic.
He had been annoyed, however, when he hadn’t received so much as a “thank you” for spending hundreds of dollars on the electric fence. The water line was mandatory reparation, but the fence wasn’t, and he had tried to make things right. Why? Because he was a good neighbor. To quote Mrs. Lewis herself, he was “a nice chap.”
But did Bree seem to care? No.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me! It’s three o’clock in the morning!” Bree’s roar had traveled loud and clear through her wall, past the easement between their houses, and right into his bedroom. He chuckled to himself a few times in the darkness, staring at the ceiling, his hands resting behind his head.
She’d swung at him with a bat, but this reaction was so worth it.
He had to be up in three hours, and still, it was so worth it.
His head hurt a bit from that pot, and yes, it was so worth it.
But what was with that man? The guy who had stepped out of his Tesla as if his feet had never touched gravel. The way he took deliberate, slow steps to make sure his perfectly polished shoes didn’t end up touching the g
rass. He lifted the hems of his Armani trousers like a prom girl lifting her ball gown to avoid grass stains.
So that was the kind of man Bree Leake dated?
You know? It suited her.
It oddly did.
He could imagine the two of them now, looking through the sunroom window of some McMansion, talking in low tones as they watched a neighbor’s hired men mow the twenty-acre lawn horizontally instead of on the diagonal. How they’d tsk as they sipped their espressos from tiny porcelain cups, saying they really should get out of the neighborhood before it went completely to pot.
Chip pulled his sleeping bag higher over his shoulders and turned over on the otherwise bare mattress. Russell stood at the window, per usual, his breath frosting the glass as he stared at Bree’s bedroom. The thoughts rolled through his mind.
Mr. Richardson wanted a contractor who was also artistic. In this town, he’d be hard-pressed to find a contractor with a hobby like art, that was certain. But then, if anyone could demand fine art in the CV and actually succeed in hiring such a jack-of-all-trades, it was Mr. Richardson. Wouldn’t be long before he’d conduct a nationwide search, and the Barter would have a line stretching all the way to the Martha of men in tailored suits carrying drills in one hand and easels in the other. Well, he knew a thing or two about tailored suits. And he may not be selling oil paintings at Laurel Springs Studios, but—
Chip’s thoughts stalled as he caught sight of a curious item hanging in Bree’s window. He propped up on his elbow and squinted.
Sure enough, he could see a piece of paper taped to the glass.
A simple piece of printer paper with bold, black, handwritten letters:
THIS ISN’T OVER
He grinned and lay back down, putting his hands back behind his head.
This isn’t over.
Well, well, wasn’t that just icing on the cake?
He closed his eyes.
And slept like a baby.
* * *
Chip’s brother Will set his glass on their parents’ dining room table. “So I told the investors, ‘Guys, we can get granular about this, but just from a thirty-second look here on the Google street view I can tell you this isn’t going to work. I can see overfilled garbage bins, dogs in the middle of a fight in the driveway next to what is clearly a gambling ring, asbestos siding, and a deer stand poking out from the second-story window. This isn’t going to be the deal of the century.’”
The Cul-de-Sac War Page 9