The Home They Built Page 8

  Do you know Christine Smith?

  It would be such an easy question to ask. It was the most common surname in the country, as she’d discovered the few times she’d succumbed to the temptation to search for her birth mother’s name.

  When she reached the Cedar Street Café, she stepped inside and looked around for a good place to sit. It would probably make sense to take a seat at the counter, but if somebody sat next to her, she’d lose the privacy she wanted for making her list.

  Then a diner sitting alone at a booth by the window lifted his head and Anna found herself staring directly into Finn Weaver’s eyes.

  Her breath caught and the split second when she might have been able to look away and pretend she hadn’t seen him passed. When he smiled and gestured to the spot across from him, she told herself to mouth the words thanks, but no and take a seat at the counter. But what she did was return his smile and start walking toward his table.

  He closed the laptop that had been sitting open in front of him and then capped the pen that was on a notebook next to the computer. By the time she reached him, he was stowing the work away, but as she sat down, Anna noticed a couple of things.

  That was a very expensive laptop he was sliding into a leather case. Even more interestingly, the man used a very nice, heavy-looking enamel pen. She still wasn’t sure exactly what Finn did when he wasn’t pretending to do odd jobs around his grandmother’s house, but she was willing to bet he wore a suit and tie.

  She’d really like to see that.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” he said, setting the laptop case on the bench beside him before clipping the pen onto the notebook cover and setting them on top.

  “Since I’m running late today anyway, I thought I’d have some breakfast on the way.” She’d have to save her list for later, since she certainly couldn’t make notes about her mother in front of Finn.

  She wanted to ask about the laptop—it felt weird to ignore its presence—but she didn’t want to go poking at his secrets. That would only invite him to start poking at hers, and it was in everybody’s best interests for her to keep her motives for being in Blackberry Bay to herself.

  “I just finished, but I’m always up for more coffee if you don’t mind company while you eat.”

  “If I didn’t want company, I would have sat at the counter. It would be rude to sit at your table and then throw you out.”

  He chuckled, and then looked up as the server approached. “Hey, Rissa. Have you met Anna yet?”

  “I haven’t. First time here?”

  “Yes. I’m in town with Relic Rehab, doing the renovation on the Bayview Inn.”

  “Right.” The corners of Rissa’s mouth twitched, but Anna had to admire the way she kept her composure. It was a testament to Tess’s standing in the community that everybody in Blackberry Bay was just going along with her story. “What can I get for you this morning?”

  Since she’d had a doughnut already, she decided a little protein would be nice, so she ordered scrambled eggs with cheddar and a side of bacon. With coffee, of course.

  “So be honest with me,” Finn said when they were alone again, and Anna’s stomach tightened. “On a scale of amusing to making you question your career choice, how is my family to work with?”

  Relief made her short laugh sound a little breathier than she intended. “I think your family’s great. We all do, actually. We’re having a lot of fun on this project.”

  Skepticism made his eyebrow arch in an adorable way. “Fun?”

  “Yes, fun. Renovating is stressful for people and you’d be surprised how often the bickering goes from lighthearted and affectionate, like your family’s, to being really unpleasant to watch. That’s why some episodes have more of me in them. The more Anna you see, the less usable footage of the property owners there was.”

  “I don’t think more of you could be a bad thing.” He shifted as he spoke, and his calf brushed hers. Neither of them pulled away.

  Conscious of the warmth of his leg against hers, she smiled. “They might not even have room for me in the Bayview Inn’s episodes. I’ll probably do more voiceover work than actual filming.”

  “Feel free to leave me on the cutting room floor,” he replied, obviously only half-jokingly.

  Heat flooded her cheeks as she thought of the footage she’d made Cody delete last night, and she lifted her coffee cup to her mouth in an effort to hide it from him. Judging by the sparkle in his eyes, it didn’t work.

  “You and Tess together are my favorite part, though your parents together run a very close second,” she said, trying to stay on topic. “As we start doing some of the more fun stuff like painting and fixtures—and by fun, I mean sometimes it’s more fun for the viewer than the homeowner—we’ll probably mix you together more. And you know when it comes to putting the kitchen back together, I’m going to pair up Alice and Tess.”

  He groaned and shook his head. “Remind me to call in sick for those days. And you make sure you have your hard hat on.”

  “It must be fun living with them both right now.” She tilted her head, deciding to poke just a little. “Because I got the impression you’re all staying in your parents’ house together. Do you live with them all the time?”

  When he got very still for a few seconds, she knew she’d pushed a button she shouldn’t have. But while it was important not to blow up any lies Tess was telling, Anna wanted to know more about Finn. More true things.

  “I have my own place,” he said. “It’s...outside of town. I guess it’s easier just to stay with them while we’re working on Gram’s house—the inn.”

  Anna recognized the way he answered the question without offering any actual information. She’d already guessed he lived outside of Blackberry Bay because he struck her as the kind of guy who would have seen to some of the repairs his grandmother’s house needed if he was around. The question was how far outside of town he lived.

  Rissa brought her breakfast, and the interruption gave Anna a chance to check the time. She winced, realizing Eryn was probably already wondering where she was, and she hadn’t even eaten yet. Explaining that she was hanging out in a café with Finn wasn’t something Anna wanted to do.

  It was hard to eat with his leg pressed against hers, but she couldn’t bring herself to move her foot. Maybe it wasn’t as much contact as she’d like to have, but it was enough to keep her body practically humming with anticipation. Her body was doomed to disappointment, of course, but she decided to enjoy it while it lasted.

  “Since the Bayview Inn has been passed down generationally, I assume you and your parents have always lived in Blackberry Bay?” she asked in between bites.

  “Born and raised.”

  “So you know everybody in town, then?” She was on thin ice, and she knew she had to tread carefully.

  “Most people, I guess. There are always people moving away and new people moving in, of course.”

  She nodded, trying to think of a way she could ask about any Smith families without being too obvious, but she couldn’t. There was no way to casually ask if he knew of a woman named Christine Smith.

  When he asked her how she liked the RV life, the moment was gone, so she relaxed and ate her breakfast while they talked about life filming Relic Rehab. He was easy to talk to, and even though she knew he was probably trying to keep her from asking too many questions, he seemed genuinely interested in her answers.

  When Rissa dropped off the bill, Anna noticed she’d combined their meals and reached for the paper, but Finn was faster. “I invited you to join me.”

  “But I have an expense account,” she countered.

  Maybe it was just wishful thinking on her part, but it felt as though his leg pressed a little more firmly against hers. “But it wasn’t really a business breakfast, was it?”

  “No,” she said, because if she was being honest wi
th herself, the last thing she wanted to do with Finn was talk about the show.

  The first thing she wanted to do with him was...not allowed.

  “Thank you for breakfast, then.” She surrendered graciously, and managed to stifle her sigh of disappointment when he moved his leg and broke off the contact between them. Her watch buzzed and she looked at the notification. “And there’s Eryn, wondering if I got lost.”

  “You can go if you need to. I’ll settle up with Rissa and I have a couple of things I want to finish up before I join you all in Gram’s fun house.”

  Laughing, Anna slid out of the booth and picked up her bag. “Don’t be too long or there’s no telling what colors Tess will pick for the walls.”

  “Last night she told Mom she should let her paint the guest room salmon pink so she can see if it does weird things to the lighting. I’m pretty sure Mom called the hardware store and told them to ban Gram unless she’s accompanied by a member of the family.” Rissa appeared at that moment, so he gave Anna a small wave. “I’ll see you there. And I promise I’ll show up. At some point.”

  “Thanks again for breakfast. Nice to meet you, Rissa.”

  The path back to her car was in the opposite direction of the café’s windows, but she couldn’t stop herself from looking back over her shoulder. And when she saw Finn’s face in the window as he watched her walking away, she almost tripped over her own feet.

  Why couldn’t she have crossed paths with this man in any other place at any other time? Instead, she’d finally met a guy who fascinated her on every level, and he was firmly off-limits. She was lying to him. He was lying to her. Everybody was lying, and a physical relationship with Finn would add a massive knot to the already snarled situation.

  Not for the first time, she wondered if he felt bad in any way about lying to her. She thought he probably did, because the more she observed him—especially when he was with Tess—the clearer it became none of this was his idea. And he couldn’t confess the truth to Anna. Not at his grandmother’s expense.

  And she couldn’t confess her part in it to him, either. They were stuck in this tangled web that Tess had woven, and there was no way out for either of them.

  She needed to focus her attention on the Bayview Inn and on Christine Smith. No more thinking about Finn’s abs or how his leg felt against hers or how his eyes crinkled when he smiled.

  And she definitely had to stop thinking about kissing him.

  * * *

  “Are you twitting instead of working?”

  Finn looked up at Gram, who had her hands on her hips and was scowling down at him. He’d sat on a bucket of joint compound for maybe two minutes to respond to an important client email, and of course she had to show up during those two minutes.

  “It’s tweeting, Gram, and no, I’m not on Twitter. Just dealing with some email.” He arched an eyebrow. “You know, my actual work.”

  “I think you’re supposed to be in the new bathroom.”

  He nodded. “Probably. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  One of the design changes Anna had suggested was a master suite upstairs. Turning the old den downstairs into a bedroom with a small bathroom for Tess meant she wouldn’t have to climb the stairs as often. Taking Tess’s room upstairs, along with the other bedroom on the back of the house, and combining them meant there was room for a small bathroom and walk-in closet, but a small sitting area. It meant three guest rooms instead of four, but even Finn understood how much more they’d be able to charge for a suite that didn’t require a shared bathroom and offered some private relaxation space.

  Not that it mattered, Finn knew, since Gram had about as much chance of working in hospitality as she did of winning the Boston Marathon. Maybe less. He still wasn’t sure if she was actually serious about wanting the house to become the Bayview Inn, but he didn’t want to get into it with her right now. They had enough problems in their lives.

  Regardless of the house’s future use, he liked the idea of Gram’s bedroom being downstairs, since that was something he and his parents had been worrying about for a while. They’d even talked to Gram about it a few times, to no avail. He wasn’t sure if she just put more stock in Anna’s opinion, since she was a professional, or if she’d been worried about the expense of it, especially since behind the fake limps and caftans she was currently showing off, she was pretty hardy for her age and the stairs hadn’t been an issue.

  Either way, Anna had made it happen, and now Finn was supposed to be installing the new showerhead or something. Or running the pipe for it and then capping it off so they could pressurize the system and check for leaks before moving on to the next project. He wasn’t a plumber and he certainly shouldn’t be playing one on TV, but he was the only member of the family tall enough to do the work without needing a ladder.

  An hour later, he was frustrated, sweating and had a renewed appreciation for the nonfictional version of his life. Sure, he missed living in Blackberry Bay, but right now he missed his desk, business lunches and the solitary crunching of numbers more.

  The shower was large, but the bathroom wasn’t, and having Cody and his camera in there, plus Tess “helping,” heated the small space in a hurry.

  “All I have to do,” he muttered under his breath, “is get this cap on here so it doesn’t gush out when we turn the water on to test for leaks.”

  He couldn’t get the stupid cap to thread onto the end of the pipe that would eventually join with the showerhead, no matter how much he tried, and his frustration level was steadily rising. It was going to be break time pretty soon, whether the Relic Rehab crew liked it or not.

  Realistically, they had enough footage of him wrestling with the little metal cap and he was getting ready to tap out and let Frankie or Jim finish the job when he heard a hissing sound that made him freeze.

  “Where did Gram go?” he asked just as a flood burst out of the uncapped pipe and doused him in extremely cold water.

  He gasped from the shock, then cursed as he tried to find the cap he’d dropped on the shower floor.

  “Turn the water off,” he shouted, and then he gave up on the cap. If he hadn’t been able to tighten it under ideal conditions, he certainly wasn’t going to install it while taking an involuntary cold shower.

  Alternating between cursing and yelling for somebody to please turn the damn water off, he tried to cover the end of the pipe with his palm and only managed to deflect the water into a spray that went in every direction. Finally, he managed to block the flow with the heel of his hand.

  Stuck standing with his arm over his head and water dripping down his face, he yelled to shut off the water one more time, with as much volume as he could muster. Finally he felt the pressure stop and, as his father and Anna pushed into the room, he cautiously moved his hand. The water that had been backed up against it dumped out onto him, but that was the end of it.

  He stood in the shower surrounded, sopping wet and not very happy about it, while everybody else in the room laughed.

  “Who turned the water on?” he growled.

  “Tess said you told her to turn the water on so you could check for leaks,” Anna said.

  “I was talking to myself, about when we turned the water on to check for leaks.”

  “Oh.” Anna looked like the picture of innocence, except for the amusement dancing in her eyes. “That was a miscommunication.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to be able to use any of that footage,” Cody said.

  Finn glared at him and tried, with little success, to keep the growl out of his voice. “I’m not reenacting that.”

  “Can’t you just beep out the bad words?” Joel asked, his face still red from the exertion of laughing so hard at his son’s predicament.

  “Sometimes if there’s only one, you can’t read the person’s lips, and the footage is worth it, we’ll beep out one word, but our net
work is really focused on being family friendly. And to be honest, that would probably all blend into one really long beep.”

  “Trust me, there is nothing about me that’s family friendly right now,” Finn told him.

  “Okay, Cody,” Anna said, all business again. “I think we’re done in here for now. You can go dry your equipment off if it got wet. Luckily the drain caught most of it—what Finn’s clothes didn’t, anyway—but I’ll have to dry this up.”

  “I’ll run to the house and get you a change of clothes,” his dad said, and he was gone before Finn could tell him his current plan was to get out of here—get on his bike and drive until the wind had dried him out and maybe improved his mood at the same time.

  For a room that had been crammed full of people, it sure emptied out fast, and Finn found himself alone with Anna.

  They hadn’t been alone since breakfast, when he’d gotten her all to himself. Remembering the way she hadn’t pulled back from the heat of his leg against hers and looking at her now changed his mood entirely.

  “I think you did this deliberately,” he said, fighting to keep from grinning at her.

  “Me? I’m not the one who said to turn the water on.”

  “Maybe your guys gave me a cap that doesn’t fit on that piping.”

  She laughed. “We did not sabotage you, although now that I’ve seen you, I might have if I’d thought of it. But I had nothing to do with this, which is obvious from the fact I’m still dry.”

  He took a step toward her, challenging her with a grin that gave her plenty of warning that he was up to no good. “Are you being smug right now because you’re dry?”

  She didn’t back up. “Just pointing out that only one of us got himself doused by a cold shower.”

  “I can fix that, you know.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.” She still hadn’t backed away, and there was a challenging gleam in her eye that really turned him on.

  “Wouldn’t I?” He reached out and pulled her into a big bear hug.