Friends & Fortune Cookies: A Sudden Falls Romance (22 page)

“You really don’t have to edit it.”

“Hey, this is really good. You should be a writer or something.”

“Ha. Thanks. I’ll consider that.”

“So who are you sending it to?”

I gave him the names of the literary agents I had at the top of my list.

He recommended several additional names, and I bent over the corner of my desk and quickly scribbled them down on a sticky note.

“I’ll leave you to it.” Dave stood up. “I’ll be back in a few. Don’t leave.”

“Okay. Thanks for your help.”

I looked up the contact information for each of Dave’s recommendations then carefully crafted a query letter to go to each agent. I attached the proposal, which consisted of the first three chapters plus an outline of the rest of the book to each email.

My heart pounded as I took a deep breath, sent a prayer up, and clicked the mouse.

“Done!”

“Congratulations!” Dave was back at my doorway.

“Thanks.”

Dave sighed. “I have some news, but I wanted you to send that out before I gave it to you.”

My stomach sank. Based on the expression on his face, the brief improvement in my day was clearly over.

“What is it?” I didn’t think I wanted to know.

“The syndication deal went to Stephanie Bowman.”

If the fight with Joe hadn’t already taken the wind out of my sails, that would have done it. Tears burned the back of my eyes, and I blinked rapidly to clear them. I was not going to cry again, especially not at work.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Why didn’t you tell me right away?”

“Because I thought it was important that you got your book off first so that you could have something to look forward to.”

Heartache flowed through my whole body. And then I realized the pain I was feeling wasn’t just heartache. It was cramping.

I’d started my period.

Chapter 36 — Joe

Laying carpet and tile was a bitch under the best of circumstances. Having a broken ankle and crawling around on the floor in a boot wasn’t any easier. And while my ribs had healed significantly in the last two weeks, six hours on my hands and knees had definitely taken a toll there, as well.

I heard Alex holler from another part of the house. “Joe. Come into the dining room.”

I used a window ledge to pry myself up off the floor of the family room and moved slowly around the corner.

It was worth the trip.

This morning, the dining room had been a rough construction zone with mudded plasterboard walls and ceilings, floors covered only in subflooring, and fresh wiring hanging out of the walls and ceiling.

Now, a delicate crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling in the middle of the room. The lower third of the walls were decorated in wainscoting painted white and trimmed with a matching chair rail. Ornate crown molding marched along the ceiling, matching the molding along the floor where Flea and Ken had removed, refinished, and re-installed the oak flooring in a perfect herringbone pattern. The upper portions of the walls sported a color that I would have called light green, or maybe even sage green running a bit to the yellow if I were feeling especially metro-sexual, but was actually called
Parakeet
.

“Fuck me, that’s gorgeous.”

Alex laughed.

Flea puffed up.

Ken nodded in appreciation.

“Seriously, guys. I can’t believe this is the same room.” At that moment, I remembered why I really enjoyed this work and what had made me look forward to coming home after the army to join Alex. And why I’d risked coming home to a town in which Gracie was here but married to someone else.

Thank God that hadn’t been the case. I could no longer imagine a world where she wasn’t part of my life. I pulled my phone out of the protective holster at my waist to check again to see if she’d called. She hadn’t. I’d called a couple of times, and still she hadn’t picked up. I’d left her a series of text messages, but still nothing.

I hoped that was because her phone was still at her apartment.
Should I call her at work?
I started to panic. What if she’d taken our argument so seriously that she was going to call it off? Or maybe thought it was already off?

What if she’d left her apartment upset and driven off the road?

What if she decided I wasn’t worth the wait?

Or what if she’d convinced herself that I didn’t think
she
was worth the wait? Which frankly, was a lot more likely.

“The family room is nearly done as well,” I informed them. “Still need to lay the trim, but the walls are painted and the carpet is installed.” The assembled group marched through the living room, which looked much like the dining room had this morning, and across the hall to the small, informal family room.

The walls were a medium-tan, or
Mainland Mocha
, and the carpet was a shade darker. Two brown-and-gold Tiffany glass ceiling light fixtures lit the room in warm tones and complimented the colors well. Pride filled me as one of the guys whistled.

“Nice…” Flea said.

“Impressive,” Alex agreed. “Especially considering the broken foot and bruised ribs.”

I checked my phone again.

Alex, who stood to my right, elbowed me. “She’ll call.”

I sighed. “Hope you’re right.” I checked the time before putting my phone back in the case. “You mind sticking around? Cherri Rogers from the bank should be here any minute.”

“Sure. While we’re waiting, I’m going to clean up some stuff upstairs.”

To the rest of the guys he said, “Thanks for all your hard work today. I’m calling it early. Get the heck out of here, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Not willing to stick around in case he changed his mind, the guys disappeared as if by magic, and Alex trekked up the stairs. I dropped my dead-tired ass into a camp chair someone had left sitting around, put my phone on my lap in case it rang, and rested my head against the back of the chair, unwilling to move until either my phone rang or Cherri to showed up.

Fortunately, my wait was short.

“This is quite a sight.”

Unfortunately, it had taken about three seconds for me to half-nod-off. I bolted to my feet. “Cherri. Hi. You’ll have to excuse me. It’s been a long day.”

“Nothing to excuse. You look so cute, asleep there.” She stood at the open door.

“Come on in. Watch your footing with those shoes.”
Who wore four-inch heels to a construction site?

“Hey, Alex,” I yelled up the stairs. “Cherri Rogers from the bank is here!” It wasn’t that I was
afraid
to be alone with her, but I thought I’d feel safer if she had a chaperone, just the same.

“Come this way.” I directed her toward the kitchen, which was still my favorite room in the house. “Let me show you what we’ve done.”

Keeping with the traditional theme of the time period as well as the rich colors in the rest of the house, we’d painted the walls
“Sun-Kissed Gold
” with white trim. The appliances were stainless, and the stove/oven combo at the left side of the kitchen had six separate gas burners and two separate ovens, with a giant stainless hood and backsplash. The cabinets were a rich red oak with simple glass handles and black granite countertops. A butcher-block island offered extra counter space in the center of the room, and recessed lighting lit the room evenly.

“This is lovely.”

“Thanks. I think this house really showcases what Baker Restoration is capable of. And we’re really excited to expand the company in order to bring our services to an even bigger market.”
Or, you know, get me out of hock so I can have a future with Gracie.

Throughout her tour of the kitchen, she’d managed to find a way to get closer and closer. It was all I could do not to turn tail and run. Where the hell was Alex?

She drew her hand down my arm. “I don’t suppose you’d like to get drinks and go over the numbers?” She practically purred the word ‘numbers’, which wasn’t sexy in any connotation.

“Look, Cherri, I’m flattered. Really. But…” I didn’t want to fuck up this loan but also didn’t want Cherri to get the wrong idea. And clearly she had the
very wrong idea.
“But I’m in love with someone else. So this isn’t going to happen.”

“Oh.” She sighed. “Well, neither is the loan, unfortunately,” she said, stepping back.

A voice thundered behind me. “What the hell is this?!”

Oh, God. Mike Mendoza.

Chapter 37 — Grace

“I have found chocolate and vodka to be helpful for coping with my life when it falls entirely apart. Or chocolate vodka, when efficiency is as important as efficacy.”
~ Luddite in Love: A Cautionary Tale of Dating in the Modern Age,
Grace Mendoza

“Thanks for letting me know, Dave.”

I felt like I’d been completely beaten up.

My desk phone rang, and I picked it up.

“Hey, Grace. It’s Annie Tremont. Are we still on for happy hour?”

She’d called to set up the get-together after I’d bumped into her at speed-dating. I’d almost forgotten. I looked over at the clock. Almost five. “Hey, Annie. I can make it by five-thirty, if that works?”

“Perfect. Where would you like to meet?”

“The Crooked Nail?” A pub off Main Street.

“Sounds great!”

I set my desk phone back in its cradle.

“Cheer up,” Dave said as he backed out of my office. “Tomorrow will be better.”

I didn’t hold any such hope. On the off chance Joe had called, I dialed my cell phone, pressed the # sign to get into my voice mail, and listened to three seconds of dead air followed by a hang-up and a voice-mail spam message telling me I’d won a very special cruise. I deleted both and hung up.

So much for that.

My email chimed as I got ready to shut down my computer. I pulled it up and…
OhMyGod!

A message from my first-choice agent.

Dear Ms. Mendoza,

I took the opportunity to read the first chapter of your manuscript,
Luddite in Love: A Cautionary Tale of Dating in the Modern Age
, and I have to say, I already love it! Do you have the rest finished? Even if it’s not fully polished, would you mind sending it?

It didn’t even take a second thought for me to attach the rest of the manuscript to a reply and send it off.

As I left the paper, my step was slightly lighter. After losing the syndication deal and my giant fight with Joe, I needed some good news.

Chapter 38 — Joe

“This isn’t what you think,” I said, stepping even farther away from Cherri.

“What I think is that she turned you down for a loan because you wouldn’t get chummy,” Mike said.

She sucked in a breath, and I bit the inside of my lip so as not to laugh. “Oh. Well, then I guess it’s exactly what you think.”

“Actually, I’m not turning you down because you wouldn’t get ‘
chummy’
. We’re simply not doing any short-term loans right now.”

My annoyance at not having secured a loan was eclipsed by the knowledge that I could have been off trying to find and apologize to Gracie instead of waiting around for Cherri.

“I think it’s time you leave,” I said.

She looked a little taken aback but hitched her purse higher on her shoulder then click-clacked her four-inch heels out of my house. The door thwacked shut behind her, and I was left alone with Poppa Magnificent, who looked like he might want to break a baseball bat over my head. But I wasn’t sure.

“Sir…” I started.

“Is there a good reason that my daughter showed up at my house today in tears?”

“We had a misunderstanding.” I leaned up against the island. “It was mostly my fault.”

“Of that, I have no doubt.” He cleared his throat. “Would I be jumping to conclusions to assume that it was Grace you were confessing to be in love with?”

I shook my head slowly, still half-waiting for him to pull out the baseball bat. “No, sir. Though I wasn’t really able to admit it to myself until very recently, I think I’ve loved her since high school. Or hell, maybe since the day I met her, which was sometime around first grade, I think.”

“Well, she clearly thinks you hung the moon. So what’s the problem?”

“Don’t you think it would be more appropriate to ask Gracie about that?”

He narrowed his eyes, and I put up my hands in surrender. “I have to go back to Denver.” I briefly explained that I’d be coughing up a lot of dough to break my contract and it was money I just didn’t have. “And I’ve put every cent I have and quite a few I don’t trying to get Baker Restoration shored up. If—no
when
—I come back, I need this business to be here. And Alex needs it to be here. I feel like I owe my Uncle Tommy that much, and I owe Alex that much for leaving him to run it himself for the last couple of years.”

“You don’t
owe
me anything, cuz. If anything, I owe
you.
” Mike’s gaze swung to the doorway where Alex stood. “I all but ran you out of town last year. I really resented that Dad didn’t think I could handle this company on my own. And even then, I knew he was right, but I was so pissed off. I see how much you love the work. And how much good you can do—and I don’t just mean your checkbook—and I feel like an ass. You came in with no judgment to my…
issues
and just fixed stuff. You work as hard or harder than any guy on my crew, myself included.”

He nodded in Mike’s direction. “Sorry, Dr. Mendoza. Didn’t mean to interrupt, but it needed to be said.” Alex turned to me. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep this thing afloat until you get back. And I look forward to us being real partners.”

For Alex, that was a pretty touchy-feely admission. He stammered a goodbye to the both of us and tromped his way across the floor toward the front of the house.

“I’d like to offer you a loan,” Mike said. “For whatever you put into the house and whatever you think you’ll need to keep your uncle’s company afloat until you sell this place or until you can finish out your contract and return.”

“I appreciate that offer so much, sir, but I can’t let you do that.”