for Dan. Not for four more years. He’d told her he’d reconsider the four-year limitation if she came up with a solution that didn’t compromise the design. Her mind was a blank slate.
She wasn’t qualified for any other job that could support her former lifestyle. She’d moved out of her high-rise condo. She’d sold her Lexus SUV. She’d let go of dreams of greatness in the clouds.
And she couldn’t tell anyone why. There was a nondisclosure clause, too.
Clause-clause-clause. Harley wanted to go back to a time when the only clause she knew was Santa. For the girl most likely to change the world, it was humiliating.
Her parents told their neighbors Harley was discovering herself. Privately, they’d counseled her to find a lawyer, not that she or her parents could afford one. Harley’s friends thought she’d finally cracked under the pressure of perfectionism. They’d offered platitudes and shoulders to cry on. Harley had rejected them all. Taylor, Harley’s older brother, had just shaken his head and told her she should have known buildings always came back to straight lines and right angles. That’s how he and their parents approached tile work and life—eyes on the task in front of them—unlike Harley, who was always dreaming.
Without any professional avenues open, Harley had taken a job as a tile installer, a trade her father had taught her growing up. She’d rented a small studio apartment in an almost up-and-coming neighborhood. She kept her head down, away from the clouds. But her eye occasionally drifted toward the architectural elegance of the Houston skyline. And she wondered what she’d do in four years when her non-compete restriction expired. Straightforward lines or curvature that challenged?
In the meantime she lived day-to-day, job-to-job, paycheck-to-paycheck. But the only way she could do that was to have a functioning tile saw.
She stopped at the tool repair shop Vince had mentioned. It was open late because it catered to construction companies. She carried the saw inside.
“Were you in a traffic accident?” Bart, the owner, looked like he’d forsaken years of trips to the barber and opened a running tab at the tattoo parlor next door. He had long brown hair, a haystack beard and line upon line of ink on his arms. “You need to secure your equipment when you drive.”
Harley didn’t care about Bart’s body art, his hair style or his sad attempts at humor. She cared that his hands were nicked and greasy. It meant he was busy making tools go again. “This happened at a job site. Some idiot trashed it.” Because some idiot couldn’t figure out how to make balconies float like clouds. “Can you fix it?”
“Give me two weeks.” Bart stood back, possibly because he’d given customers bad news like this before. Possibly because construction workers could be as volatile as stiffed loan sharks.
Harley fought shoulders that wanted to hunch in defeat and reminded herself that nothing was ever set in stone. There was always another card to play. “How about two days?”
“It’ll cost ya.” Bart’s mouth rolled around before he admitted, “And I might not be able to fix it.”
Harley felt sick. Her hand drifted to her waist. “And when would I know that?”
“When I’m done.” Bart curled his scarred fingers around the handle of her saw, as if preparing to claim it. “No matter what happens, you’d owe me a hundred dollars just for taking it apart. Fixin’ costs extra.”
One hundred dollars and days of uncertainty. Her eye caught on a used tile saw in the corner with a six-hundred-dollar price tag. “What if I sold it to you for parts?”
“I’d give you sixty bucks.”
That’s all? He must have sensed she was desperate.
Harley tried to look like she wasn’t. “How about a hundred?”
Bart shook his head. “I can come up as high as seventy. And even then, I don’t think I’m gonna get seventy dollars’ worth of parts out of it.”
A good, new tile saw would cost around a thousand dollars. Seventy wasn’t going to get her close. And she hated the idea of taking out more credit. What would she do if the truck broke down again?
Harley thanked Bart for his time and lugged the saw back outside.
Her head was pounding. All she wanted was a cold shower and someone to make her dinner.
She thought of Vince and his talent at the grill, of his invitation to his brother’s wedding, of the tenderness of his kiss.
That cold shower. Sadly, it was the only one of her fantasies going to come true tonight.
Tomorrow, however, she might have one more card to play.
* * *
VINCE SAT ON a corner of the deck he’d built yesterday and wondered if he could parlay Harley being unable to go to the wedding into him not going to the wedding, too.
It wasn’t as if he was a beloved favorite son in Harmony Valley. His return might make it hard on his younger brother Joe, the bridegroom, who’d only just begun to earn acceptance in town. He and his brothers had been hellions as teenagers—cutting class, speeding through streets on deafening motorcycles, wearing black leather jackets instead of the school colors. Vince could use his misspent youth and consideration toward Joe’s tentative standing in town as a excuses not to go. But they would only be excuses.
His real motivation for not wanting to go to the wedding? There were things he hadn’t told his brothers. Secrets he’d kept for years about their mother leaving. Those secrets. They sat on his chest when he couldn’t sleep at night, clambering to be free.
Sleep-deprived, Vince blinked at the blazing sun. He had the case of Jerry’s auger motor open and was cleaning the spark plug because the hunk of junk wouldn’t start. Pretty soon, Jerry was going to be wondering why Vince wasn’t setting fence posts. Soon after that, Vince might lose his patience and tell him his equipment sucked. If Jerry took offense to that Vince might admit why he’d applied for a job with Jerry in the first place. After that revelation, it was a toss-up as to whether he’d quit or be fired.
Secrets. They were dangerous to his family’s happiness. Nothing had turned out the way he’d once hoped it would.
He’d left Harmony Valley sixteen years ago, fresh out of high school, determined to find his mother. She’d had a three-year head start, but he recalled she had family somewhere in Texas. He’d needed to know if she was okay and if the decisions he’d made the day she’d left had been the right ones. He’d located her in Sugar Land, Texas, outside of Houston. He’d located her, but he’d never contacted her. Not directly. Though he kept tabs on her all the same...thanks in part to Jerry.
Out front, a truck door creaked and slammed. Harley.
She was trouble. She still saw stars when she gazed at the night sky. She’d earned a degree in architecture, only to give up after what she’d called a colossal failure.
She’d failed once? Boohoo. She needed to learn that life required a strong backbone and the ability to pick yourself up after you got knocked down, no matter how many times it happened.
And yet, looking back, he’d enjoyed his time with her. They’d clicked. After a few weeks of dating, he’d asked her to go to Waco for
