have to take a closer look at it, but I’m guessing that’s what we’re going to be looking at.”
Her dreams hadn’t been overly realistic, she realized, but she wasn’t going to admit that. Not to Nick. It was just a slight hiccup in the big scheme of things. She wasn’t going to let that stop her.
“I’m not afraid of a little hard work.”
He leaned back on his hands and raised an eyebrow. “You know anything about carpentry?”
She shook her head. “Well, no. Not really. But I’m sure I can measure wood and hammer a nail as well as the next woman. And I’m a fast learner. Besides, that’s why I brought you in. Or bought you in.” She giggled at her own joke.
He snorted and rolled his eyes.
“I asked around town who might know a little bit about carpentry and your name came up once or twice. That’s why you were on my short list.”
“Well, that explains it, then,” he remarked cryptically.
“Explains what?”
He shrugged. “I was just wondering why you bid on me. Now I know. And you’re right. I know how to help you out. After my dad got sick, I remodeled my mom’s ranch house, where all three of us boys were raised. It gave me something positive to do with my anxiety and grief. And once I was done with that, I built cabins for Jax and me from the ground up.”
“See, I was right about you. An amateur expert. Or is that an expert amateur?” Vivian smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. With the way Nick had been hedging, for a moment there she thought maybe his skills had been overrated. She really did need someone who knew what he was doing, and Nick was that man.
He didn’t look convinced.
Why didn’t he look convinced?
He’d just told her he’d made a bunch of stuff, some buildings from the ground up. Remodeling her shop would be a piece of pie next to that. Surely he wasn’t second-guessing himself?
She stared at him a moment longer and then he shifted his gaze away from her and went foraging into the picnic basket as if it were a bottomless well of food.
He couldn’t possibly still be hungry. He’d eaten—
Oh.
The lightbulb in her brain flipped on at the very same moment she took a sucker punch to her gut. He was avoiding eye contact while he tried to think of how to phrase the bad news.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t build stuff. He just didn’t want to build stuff for her.
He might as well have taken a baseball bat to her fragile self-esteem. With the help of a therapist she was slowly crawling out of the tortuous abyss of being engaged to a verbally and emotionally abusive man. Derrick had fooled a lot of people with his public persona. His former best friend, Griff. Alexis.
And Viv most of all.
With Derrick, she’d always believed she wasn’t good enough for him. She’d tried to change to please him, to be what he wanted her to be, until she didn’t even recognize the woman in the mirror. But no matter what she did or didn’t do, it was never good enough for him. And when she’d discovered she was pregnant—
No. She wasn’t going to go there. Not right now. Derrick wasn’t the man she had to deal with right now—Nick was. He may not be the kindest or most tactful man, but she knew he was a good, decent person. He wouldn’t attack her deliberately. If anything, he probably thought he was helping her by pointing out the flaws in her plan. He didn’t know how much it hurt her to hear her ideas—her dreams, her hopes for the future—put down again. But no matter. If Nick didn’t want to help her, he just had to say so. If he was having second thoughts about doing the work, she’d even give him the out he needed, since he hadn’t made the most of the first one she’d offered.
“Just forget about it.”
His head jerked up. “What did you say?”
“I said forget about it. You don’t have to give me a hand with my remodel if you don’t want to. I’ll find someone else. Worst-case scenario I’ll have to hire a contractor. No big deal.”
“But the money for the auction—”
“—went to a good cause. No hard feelings.”
She didn’t want to be here at the auction anymore, hanging out on the community green with most of the rest of the population of Serendipity. She didn’t want to sit across from Nick acting like everything was okay when it wasn’t. She was tired of pretending.
She reached for the empty sandwich wrappers, stuffed them into the picnic basket and then slammed the lid closed. As closed as her heart felt right then.
She wasn’t lying when she said she would make it. Somehow, some way, she would. With or without Nick McKenna’s help. She shoved her hand forward, ready to shake his and be done with all of this.
Be done with him.
He frowned and stared at her palm as if it were an overgrown thornbush.
“Now, wait a minute,” he said in a gentler tone of voice. Instead of shaking her hand, he laid his large palm over hers and held it. “Don’t jump to conclusions. I never said I wasn’t going to help you.”
She sighed. “You didn’t have to say it out loud. It’s written all over your face, not to mention in your attitude. I know you think I’m a dumb blonde who couldn’t find her way out of a plastic bag, but even I can take a hint.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Paper sack.”
“What?”
He just smiled and shook his head. “I’m thick as a tree trunk sometimes. And I know exactly what my mama would say about that kind of stubbornness.”
“Yeah? And what’s that?” She couldn’t help it. She was intrigued.
He twisted his free arm behind his back as if someone in authority were holding it there.
“She’d say,” he responded with a grin, “that I need an attitude adjustment.” He paused and flashed her a truly genuine smile. “And you know what, Viv?”
“What?” Despite everything, his smile lightened her mood. Maybe because he only smiled when he meant it.
“My mom would be right.”
He snorted and shook his head. “And, Viv? I don’t like to hear you beat yourself up. I don’t think you’re dumb—and you shouldn’t let anyone else tell you that, either. Besides, I don’t let anyone talk about me that way, and we’re in this project together now.” This time, he held out his hand, and she couldn’t help grinning back as she gave it a shake.
* * *
Two weeks following the Saturday of the auction found Nick standing next to Vivian in front of her property. He had tied up all the loose ends that would keep him from his commitment and wanted to get started on this project as soon as possible. Construction
