Tools of Engagement

by Tessa Bailey

  A woman who made everything look effortless.

  Ten minutes later, two dozen women were settled in, some on the couch, others sitting cross-legged on the floor or even standing. Bethany took her place in front of the whiteboard and picked up her marker, twirling it between her fingers and giving the room a sly look.

  “Shall we open with our song?”

  A cheer lifted the already-joyful atmosphere. Their theme song was totally ridiculous, had been cobbled together after way too many drinks, and was sung to the tune of “Jingle Bells,” but it was theirs. This club was theirs. It was hard to believe they’d grown from three members who’d had the misfortune of being early to Zumba class . . . into this.

  That night, she’d been good and fed up with the male population, having been cheated on by a community theater director. She’d noticed her friends were in similar situations and decided to bolster her journey to a man-free lifestyle with a club where women supported women. Now they were a veritable faction of ass kickers who met weekly to discuss their goals and support one another in that journey. She’d watched the meek grow mighty in this very room, witnessed her own sister and best friend reach for their professional dreams.

  Each week, Bethany stood at the whiteboard and listed accomplishments so they could be seen in black and white. Or gold metallic, as it were.

  If she continued to razzle-dazzle them with proof of their own amazingness, maybe they wouldn’t realize she was long overdue to add her own triumph to the board. Oh, she’d made a lot of noise about branching out from the family business on her own.

  I want to swing a sledgehammer.

  At the time, she’d meant it. Even now, she meant it. The actual swinging was yet to happen.

  Bethany clicked her heels together, holding the marker like a mic. “I’ll start.” She made a show of clearing her throat, garnering a few chuckles from the room. “Lady balls, lady balls, we’re not on short supply . . .”

  Everyone picked up where she left off. “If a challenge seems too tough, just poke it in the eye!”

  “Olé!” Georgie finished.

  With the notes still hanging in the air, Bethany tapped her fingernails on the whiteboard. “Who would like to go first?” She squinted at Cheryl, who’d been struggling with her new job hunt. “How did the interview go this week?”

  “Well.” Cheryl pressed her lips together. “Very well, actually. The firm made me an offer and I used it to leverage a raise from my current employer. So . . . I booked a trip to Barbados.” She slapped her hands to her cheeks. “Is that crazy? I haven’t had a vacation in four years.”

  “Not crazy!” Georgie called on her trip back from the fridge, a fresh bottle of chilled champagne in her hand. “You’ve definitely earned the right to lounge on the beach and drink rum out of a coconut. Or a scuba instructor’s navel. Dealer’s choice! Three cheers for Cheryl.”

  Clapping and whistling filled the room.

  Bethany wrote “leverage/Barbados/navel drinking” on the board and turned back to the room. “Who is nex—”

  “What about you, Bethany?” Cheryl asked, still flushed from the applause. “You were so excited to try and flip a house by yourself, without your family breathing down your neck. You applied for those construction permits months ago, right? Have they come through?”

  Bethany retained her wide smile, but a screw seemed to loosen in her belly button, dropping her stomach to the carpet. In her mind’s eye, she could see the thick envelope where she’d stashed it inside her suitcase and shoved it to the back of her closet. It had been there for weeks, taunting her.

  What were you thinking, striking off on your own?

  Since graduating college, Bethany had been staging houses for Brick & Morty, but there was a part of her that had grown restless with paint swatches and shiplap and tasteful greenery, while having no say on layout.

  She’d been so sure she wanted that to change.

  “No, I haven’t received the permits yet,” she breathed, her thumb biting into the dry-erase marker when her voice didn’t sound quite natural enough. “But you better believe I’ll hear back soon. I didn’t want to resort to calling in favors, but desperate times . . .”

  A bead of perspiration slid down her spine.

  “Would someone else like to—”

  “It’s a little odd, isn’t it? Stephen seems to get his permits so fast,” Cheryl continued, referring to Bethany’s older brother. Also known as the CEO of Brick & Morty, who wanted to keep everything—including Bethany—in her place. Cheryl gestured toward the front window. “The house across the street only went on sale last month. I heard they’re already starting demo on Monday! He must be bribing someone at the permit office.”

  A buzzing started in Bethany’s skull. “I’m sorry. Did you say Brick and Morty is starting a flip on Monday across the street from my house?”

  “Mom might have mentioned during my final dress fitting,” Georgie said from her lean against the wall, wincing. “Sorry, Beth. I thought Stephen told you.”

  “He did not, but it’s fine. I mean”—Bethany let out a casual laugh, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear—“with a construction crew across the street, I guess I’ll have to start wearing pants to the mailbox. A little annoying, but I’ll cope.”

  Laughter spilled out around the room and Bethany used the moment to divert focus from herself. Carrying on the rest of the meeting was not easy, however, because her mind kept returning to two very alarming facts.

  One: she couldn’t stall any longer. Either she started her own flip or she backed out—and the latter wasn’t an option if she wanted to retain her pride.

  Two: Wes Daniels, the man who drove her insane with his Texas twang and eyes that scrutinized her far too closely, would be working across the street for the foreseeable future. She saw him on job sites during the final stages, when measuring for furniture or instructing painters. But across the street from her home, Wes would be impossible to avoid.

  A twist in Bethany’s belly told her World War III was on the horizon.

  Bring it on.

  Chapter Two

  Bethany stared down at the paperwork spread across her bed.

  Every time she started to gather up the construction permits, she dropped them again and paced instead.

  It was now or never. Put up or shut up. Shit or get off the pot.

  If she waited any longer to commence her solo flip, people were going to grow suspicious. They might not peg Bethany as a coward, but they were going to keep asking questions. A couple of months ago, she’d announced to the family that she would be striking out on her own, since Stephen refused to let her run a solo flip.

  They’d been aghast. And she would be lying if she said that hadn’t shaken her already shaky confidence.

  Bethany understood their desire to maintain the status quo. After all, she kept everything, from her thoughts to her sports bras, in neat little categorized compartments. It was a family trait and she’d been given the biggest dose of control freakitude.

  So why was flipping a house alone so important to her?

  Why had she made such a massive issue of the whole thing?

  Why not stick to staging, a practice in which she was actually skilled?

  Bethany sat down on the floor and arranged herself in a meditative position. She rested the backs of her hands on her knees and breathed in deeply, desperately trying to exhale the stress of what she needed to do this morning.

  Visualize.

  See yourself walking across the street where Brick & Morty have already banged the company’s signature sign into the front lawn and started demo.

  See it happening and then do it.

  Wes Daniels’s smirk appeared in her head and she fell backward onto a cloud of fluffy white carpet with a groan. The younger man always seemed to make it his mission to needle her until her cool, calm, and collected demeanor faltered. His presence was going to make this already-terrifying morning worse.

  �
��Why?” She scratched at the spot on her neck. “Why am I doing this to myself?”

  She knew the answer, but her moment of courage had been buried by the passage of time. Making her forget the tingling sensation in her belly, the scary excitement of deciding to test herself. Yes, she was a great stager. Yes, it was still something she enjoyed, but . . . did she have to remain in one lane forever?

  Staying low to the ground, Bethany got on her hands and knees and crawled to her bedroom window, peeking over the sill at the house across the street. In the short amount of time since the crew arrived, there were already tools strewn across the lawn, a sawhorse in the driveway, noise. So much noise.

  Construction was not neat.

  She’d been an idiot to visualize herself with a perfect ponytail and high-waisted jeans, sashaying her way into a fixer-upper and demolishing walls in style. Real life was not HGTV. There was no thirty-second take of the host burying an ax in a wall before the director yelled “Cut!” and the real crew took over again. When she headed her own flip, she would be making all the decisions, doing all the work.

  And it might turn out less than perfect.

  It might turn out terrible.

  Bethany turned away from the window and leaned back against the wall, pressing her fingers tightly to the center of her forehead and breathing, in and out. In and out. Maybe it was time to talk to a therapist. Knowing one’s worst faults didn’t mean one could fix them alone.

  Bethany was a prime example of that.

  When she was thirteen, she’d bought a pair of uncomfortable Mary Janes with a wedge heel. Her mother had warned her not to wear them to school without breaking them in first. Had she listened? No. But she’d come home with a smile on her face, danced up the stairs, and closed herself inside her bedroom—before falling to the floor with a gasp of pain and prying off the shoes to reveal twin, bleeding blisters. Then she’d bandaged them up and worn the shoes again the following day.

  She was one stubborn bitch. And the thing she was most stubborn about was always, without fail, getting everything just right.

  If this flip ended up less than amazing, she wouldn’t be able to slap a Band-Aid on it. She’d have to face everyone’s inevitable disappointment. She’d have to watch the dawning realization on their faces that she wasn’t perfect.

  It took Bethany a few more bracing breaths to climb to her feet. She stood in the center of her room for a moment, the crisp, white décor and tasteful Tiffany picture frames making her feel slightly more in control.

  Well.

  If she was going to make a statement this morning, she’d better look good doing it. With a resolve she didn’t necessarily feel, Bethany threw back her shoulders and marched into her walk-in closet, silk robe fluttering in her wake.

  Wes paused with the water bottle halfway to his lips, eyebrows lifting at the sight of Bethany crossing the street. With a runway walk like that, the woman was on some kind of mission. He couldn’t help but take a moment to appreciate being in the presence of a living, breathing goddess, because soon enough, she was sure to rain down holy hell on somebody’s head. Probably mine.

  To Wes, the nonstop contention between him and Bethany was foreplay. Plain and simple. But the more time that passed, the more he was starting to think that Bethany was on a different wavelength. One that didn’t include them sweating it out between the sheets. Which, Lord, he’d been fantasizing about daily and nightly since jump street.

  Based on the information he’d been able to glean via Travis, who took pride in having the gossip through his fiancée, Bethany wasn’t the kind of woman who took part in a fling. Until recently, she’d been interested in the whole relationship thing, but with the inception of the Just Us League, she’d gone on a man hiatus. So even if Wes was in Port Jefferson for the long haul, his chances were slim.

  His slim chances might also be due to the addictive vitriol they’d developed, but stopping was easier said than done. At this point, he couldn’t very well show up on her doorstep with a dozen long-stemmed roses and tell her she was the most breathtaking woman he’d ever met.

  She’d roundhouse him in the nuts.

  They were halfway through October, but nobody would guess it based on the way Bethany was dressed. She was wearing a white strapless tube top tucked into a long, flowing skirt with some kind of girly flower pattern on it. Her hair was down, curled a little, and blowing in the wind, showing off her pretty neck.

  “Hell,” he muttered, shaking his head. The woman’s brother was no more than ten feet away, but even that wasn’t enough to stop Wes from appreciating the shake of her tits, the way her skirt’s thin material outlined her swaying hips.

  There was nothing, nothing, more beautiful than what he was looking at right now. His palms started to perspire inside his work gloves, a fireball of lust lighting up and starting to spin in his belly. He’d been the one to wake up early this morning, instead of Laura, anticipating the extra chances to see Bethany. Be in her environment. Maybe even speak with her, get a rise out of her with a joke about their age difference, make her blush or her blue eyes flash. It got his blood moving like nothing else. Not even the danger of a sold-out Saturday-night rodeo.

  Bethany Castle. The ultimate thrill ride.

  It shouldn’t excite him to see her so determined to shake up their orderly construction zone, but hell, did it ever. Come on then, darlin’. Don’t hold back.

  When she reached the door’s threshold, Wes leaned a hip against the wall and did his best to look bored, when in reality, his senses were sharpened like the tip of a number-two pencil before a test.

  Bethany breezed through the opening left by the missing front door, and the cacophony of male voices and Sheetrock mutilation ceased. Her scent, an expensive mixture of tea and flowers, reached him through the cloud of sawdust, sending a rippling tightness through his abdomen. She was holding a manila envelope in her right hand and he caught the slightest tremor pass through her fingers before she crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Hey, Beth,” Stephen called from the back of the house, his voice growing closer as he progressed to where they were standing, swiping a wrist across his sweaty forehead. “You need something? It’s a little early for measurements, isn’t it? We’ve barely finished gutting the place.” Bethany’s brother gestured to the carnage surrounding his work boots. “Won’t need couches for a while.”

  Wes heard her long intake of breath. Did it . . . hitch there in the middle?

  He narrowed his eyes.

  There had been some tension between Bethany and Stephen since Wes had arrived in Port Jefferson. Without appearing too interested, he’d managed to gather a little intel from Travis and knew Bethany was looking to forsake the family business and strike out on her own, leading to the siblings being at odds. But it didn’t get in the way of their jobs and they still shared a wisecrack on occasion, so he’d let the whole notion of a rift fall by the wayside.

  That said, he definitely caught the flash in Bethany’s eyes when Stephen reduced her job to couches.

  Not that he would ever let on that he paid such close attention, but he’d seen one of the finished houses put up for sale by Brick & Morty. The men might be responsible for the heavy lifting, but Bethany’s staging sold the damn place. She worked a certain magic that turned a place from four empty walls to a . . . lifestyle. God, that sounded uppity as shit, but it was true. She created a better version of whatever life buyers were leading and made them envision themselves within it, almost like a challenge. Even Wes had been compelled to up his decorating game, so he’d brought Laura to Target and came home with an area rug, two new lamps, and a pumpkin pie–scented candle.

  He’d lie about that under oath.

  Bottom line, he didn’t appreciate the way Bethany’s big brother had whittled it all down to couches. More like couches, paint color, shelving, storage, character. He bit down hard on his bottom lip to stop himself from speaking up. The inner workings of the Castle family was none of his bus
iness. He was an extra in a movie that would continue long after he’d gone back to Texas.

  Trying to ignore the sweep of disquiet in his chest, Wes focused on Bethany. There was something off about her today and it was making him extra reckless. Her usual composure was there, but it was on the blink. Coming and going, as if she could only hang on to it for a moment, before it slipped away.

  There. She found her confidence, firming her shoulders and pinning Stephen with a look. “I’m not going to need measurements for this flip.” She pried the paperwork from where she’d stuffed it beneath her arm, then promptly shoved it back into place. “My permits arrived for the project across town, so . . . that’s it. I’m going to begin work on it next week.”

  Stephen cocked an eyebrow. “You can’t do both?”

  “No.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because I want to give this job my whole focus.” She shrugged a shoulder. “And if you think it’s just a matter of picking out couches, get Kristin to do it.”

  The oldest Castle paled a little. Not surprising. Stephen’s wife was slightly unbalanced and even she knew it. If Kristin was put in charge of staging, she would probably do a horrific job on purpose, just so Stephen would have to hurt her feelings, giving her an opportunity to milk his guilt afterward.

  Men and women and their mind games. Hell, he despised that shit, and yet, look at him and Bethany. They danced around each other with insults, making a big show of being incompatible when Christ knew that was the furthest thing from the truth.

  Wes knew what incompatible looked like. Hell, he grew up in foster care. He could probably write a book about the way people could make each other unhappy. In the epilogue, he’d let everyone know he’d never be one of them.

  Yes, sir. He would be shackle-free forever.

  But Stephen almost seemed to enjoy those shackles and the mind games his wife inflicted. A damned confusing anomaly, to be sure.

  “Bethany.” Stephen sighed. “Be reasonable about this.”