Build Me Up (7 page)

“I spend my days on construction sites. I don’t see a lot of women, period.”

“Hm. Well, what about Hallie at the Sea Shack? She seems like she would be interested in letting you measure her?”

He laughed. “Wow. Where’d you pick that up?”

“Oh, come on. It’s pretty obvious.”

“Hallie’s my friend’s little sister, not to mention about 15 years younger than I am. Not happening.”

“Okay. But…”

“Enough with the third degree,” he cut her off. “My turn. Tell me about your family.”

“Well, there’s Dad, the business man, and Mom, his former trophy wife. No siblings.”

“They’re divorced?”

“Yeah. Mom’s on husband number three now. Dad’s on wife number four.”

“How old were you when they got divorced?”

“I was in college. So, in my early 20s, I guess. They were separated first, so I can’t remember the exact day.”

“Were you upset?”

Kristen pondered that. She hadn’t really grown up with her parents being lovey-dovey with each other, so she didn’t really see the difference once they separated. If they had an ugly divorce, she only saw the glossy parts – the parties, the trips, the clothes. She got everything she wanted and more.

“I guess I didn’t care too much either way.”

“Are you close with them now?”

“Closer than before, I think. But no, we’re not a close-knit family, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“What made you accept the job with Bankhead?”

“Prestige. The challenge of it. Adventure.”

“Adventure? Spending a year in Greenport?”

“You said it yourself – a California girl stranded in a small East Coast town for a year. Now what part of that isn’t a challenge and an adventure?”

“How are you finding this adventure so far?”

“Well, every day I wake up I don’t know if that’s the day that Frank Sinatra or Charlie Chaplin – or Humphrey Bogart, for that matter – is going to get me.”

“Huh?”

“I’m pretty sure those cats are plotting to kill me in my sleep. They’re just waiting for the right time – until they’ve lulled me into a false sense of security. I’ll accidently leave the door open one night, and they’ll sneak in and pounce on me.”

“That’s… disturbing.”

“Tell me about it.”

“How’s it working out with Mrs. Breezer otherwise?”

“Well, I don’t see much of her. I think she has a bunch of rooms where she spends her days, and only come out when I’m gone. Maybe Humphrey Bogart’s in there with her.”

“Are you looking to move out?”

“I’ve been asking around, but people seem to be fed up with tourists and want their private time. No-one’s renting out rooms or cottages.”

“Yeah, I guess a lot of people that leave Greenport during the summer and rent out their places have returned now. I can ask around, too, if you like.”

“Yeah, that’d be great, actually. Thank you.”

They walked in silence the rest of the short way to the
Breeze Inn
.

“Thanks for walking me,” Kristen said and reached for the zipper on the leather jacket.

“Keep it. I mean, until you get a proper coat or something. It’s only going to get colder from here on out.”

“I’ll go shopping tomorrow morning,” she said and unzipped the jacket, sliding it off and handing it over. “It’s way too big. But thanks.”

“Okay, then. Have a good night, Kristen.”

“You too, Ford.”

She watched him walk away, his hands stuffed deep in his pockets and the leather jacket tucked under one arm. All in all, this had been a good day.

Ford had a lot of thinking time as he walked all the way back to his house. Finding out that Kristen’s parents were divorced, and how that had affected her relationship with them – well, he couldn’t help but grill her about it, could he? Not when he had the chance to get an insight into his future relationship with Annabelle.

He tried to keep his thoughts strictly on his daughter, but his mind kept nudging him elsewhere. More specifically, to Kristen Barnes. From the second she’d showed up at his door, it had felt like he was on a rollercoaster ride. He couldn’t figure her out.

She was feisty and stubborn, but there was a vulnerability to her, as well. He could see the hurt in her eyes when he suggested she didn’t get the job for Bankhead on merits alone. If her relationship with her father was strained, he could imagine she’d be touchy about his influence on her career advancement.

As for her troubles of finding a new place to stay, he could imagine why. The people around town that had spare rooms to let out were all couples who either didn’t have children yet or whose children had grown up and gone off to find a place of their own. No woman in her right mind would let someone who looked like Kristen within ten feet of her husband.

There was, of course, the nagging voice that reminded him that
he
had a spare room – Annabelle’s. But there was no way he could offer it to Kristen. Just spending a few hours with her when they weren’t arguing was a trial by fire. There was no denying she was a very attractive woman, and like he’d told her – he didn’t meet many like her.

But none of that was supposed to matter. They would inevitably have to work together, and the only thing he should be thinking of was how to make their business relationship run as smoothly as possible.

SIX

Kristen looked up from under her bright yellow hardhat. It was threatening to swallow her whole, but Ford had insisted she wear it on the construction site. Well, his exact words had been ‘wear it at all times or you’re out of here’.

Over the past couple of months, they’d made a lot of progress. The old lighthouse keeper’s cottage remained untouched for now, but Kristen still held hopes the historical society and building committee would come around. They’d better, or Quinlan Bankhead would have her head on a platter. A silver one.

The building site was teeming with activity. She’d learned that Ford worked with a number of sub-contractors and that he also had short-term employees to handle the work load. He made an excellent team leader, and she’d caught herself admiring his intensity and, yes, his strong, stubbled jaw, on more than one occasion.

She wasn’t strictly needed on the site, but Mr. Bankhead wanted her to oversee the entire project, and that’s what she was determined to do.

It was late October now, and the weather was bleak and chilly. She was happy for the office trailer that Ford kept heated and stocked with coffee, and spent more time than necessary in there, supposedly studying her designs and working on the interior plans.

Right now, though, she was overseeing the replacement of the old staircase in the lighthouse. She couldn’t help making comments and offering helpful suggestions to the workers, but they didn’t seem to pay her much attention.

“Stop bugging my men,” a rich voice grumbled in her ear and Kristen flinched.

“I’m not
bugging
anyone,” she huffed and straightened. “This is my job, Ford.”

“No offense, but you don’t know a thing about this kind of work.”

“Gee, how could I not be offended by that?” she said drily.

“It’s just plain facts, Kristen. You’re distracting the guys by hovering here. Don’t you have designs to work on, deals to hammer out, that sort of thing?”

“They don’t seem that distracted to me,” Kristen shrugged. How could she be distracting anyone when they were ignoring her?

Ford looked at something over her shoulder, but before she could turn to look, his hands were on her coat – the finest fall/winter coat she could find at the Spend n’ Save – and his fingers were buttoning her up.

“What are you doing?” she frowned and pulled away.

“Eliminating part of the distraction. If you insist on standing around here, at least don’t tempt the guys to fall to their deaths trying to look down your top. My insurance doesn’t cover those kinds of accidents.”

She should be furious with him for being a chauvinistic jerk, but his lips were twitching and they coaxed her to mirror his expression.

“Fine. I’m due for a coffee, anyway,” she said, lifting her chin and walking away, bumping his shoulder in the process. It was a strong shoulder, but he let her push past him as if he was a cardboard cut-out.

Ford watched Kristen walk over to the trailer, allowing his grin to widen. He enjoyed yanking her chain, enjoyed watching the sparks fly, starting in her eyes and trickling down to her fingertips. She was positively electric.

Every night as they wrapped up the work for the day, he would grab his things from the trailer and catch her scent lingering there. He couldn’t describe it, nor would he want to – he wasn’t one for waxing poetically – but it didn’t make him want to air out his little office, that’s for sure.

Kristen may be oblivious to the attention she was getting just by being on the site, but he sure noticed it. He’d had to have a stern talk with a couple of the guys and remind them they were hired to do a job, not ogle the pretty designer lady.

Maybe he should give himself the same speech.

Kristen sat down at the small table in the mobile office while her coffee was heating in the microwave. As there was not much to feast her eyes on in the cramped space except for blueprints and schematics and alike, she picked up yesterday’s paper, which was sprawled on top of a pile of flyers and brochures advertising everything from skin care to boil removal. She figured some of the guys could probably use both.

Flipping through the
Greenport Gazette
, yet another flyer slid onto the table, freed from the crevices of the paper.  It was brightly colored and piqued her interest, so she set the
Gazette
down and picked up the advertisement instead.

Autumn Fest in Greenport!
It read in bold letters. Splashed across the image of a brightly colored tree and a pile of pumpkins were the words ‘hayride’, ‘cider’ and ‘pie eating contest’. There were smaller pictures to illustrate each event, as well. Someone clearly had gotten their hands on Photoshop or Publisher and just gone wild.

She had to admit it looked fun, though. It looked… rural. Like something you only saw on television, the romanticized view of small-town USA. She’d never come close to anything like it.

Sure, she’d been to
Oktoberfest
in Munich,
Fête des Vendanges
in Montmartre, Spring Break in… never mind. But every event she’d gone to had been packed with people from all over the world – not a couple of hundred townspeople crammed into one place just to spend time together. Kristen put the flyer back down. Now look who was romanticizing…

She could hear boots on gravel just outside and a light rattle told her someone was about to step through the door. She folded up the paper and checked on her coffee.

“We’re winding down for the day,” Ford’s voice sounded close by – not a lot of space in the trailer.

“Already? It’s like five o’clock,” Kristen frowned, turning around.

“Most office people leave around this time,” he said and took off his hardhat, putting it on the table next to hers.

“Only the lazy ones,” she mumbled and focused on her coffee.

“It’s called having a life outside of work,” he said and was suddenly beside her, reaching into a cupboard over her head. “You should try it some time.”

“Funny.”

“I’m serious. You work twelve hours a day and what do you get? Not gratitude, that’s for sure.”

“You get a steady paycheck and a lot of benefits. Like insurance, and a pension plan.”

“Great. But when your body decides it can’t take the stress anymore and develops a terminal illness, what good is your pension plan, then? Are your last words going to be ‘damn, I wish I’d worked harder at my job’?”

“Why are you all bleak and contemplative all of a sudden?” Kristen frowned.

He shrugged, the motion disturbing the very air around her. Not to mention it made the coffee in her mug tremble like the water in
Jurassic Park
. “Sometimes I think you people over there miss out on a lot of the good things in life, that’s all. Not a lot of time to stop and smell the roses in all the smog, right?”

“Us people?” Kristen raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. “We’re a different species now, are we?”

“Oh, come on. California people are different than East Coast people, you have to agree with that.”

“Yeah. We’re way more tanned.”

“Look who’s being funny now,” he grinned and bumped her hip. Kristen almost lost her marbles. Or, at least her balance. And maybe her mind was blown just a little bit. Like with a fire cracker.

“I was actually looking at this flyer before you came in,” Kristen said and reached for the colorful paper. “I was thinking I should go. You know, to experience small-town life.”

“To study us Greenportians in our natural habitat?” Ford said and poured himself a cup of coffee.

“Exactly. I figured I could write up a report and send back to the mothership.”

“Excellent idea. Not that I think you’ll get much of a chance to report anything.” He walked around to sit down at the table while his coffee mug took a spin in the microwave.

“Why’s that?”

“Because Marnie’s cider has more punch in it than… well, punch.”

“Marnie?”

“Marnie Fellman. She and her husband own the hardware store.”

“Ah.” Kristen sipped her merely warm coffee, deciding she needed the caffeine more than the heat.

“You’ll meet a lot of locals if you come to
Autumn Fest
. I think old lady Breezer enters her cats in the beauty pageant.”

Kristen splattered coffee all over the table before she could cover her mouth with her hand. “What?” she managed to croak out after the initial shock.

Ford calmly rose from his seat and walked over to the sink to grab a washcloth. “The
Pets and Poultry Pageant
, it’s called. No pigs or cows allowed, which if you ask me is kind of elitist. Don’t you think?”

“Sorry, still processing… so you’re saying people dress up their pets and have a panel of judges decide who’s prettiest?”

“No, of course not. That’s typical Californian behavior right there. The judges decide which animal has the healthiest fur or feathers, which animal has the best voice, and which animal is most affectionate toward its owner. What they do is line them up and the owners call their pets – or poultry – and the animal that makes contact with their owner first wins.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“Not in the least. You should come – see for yourself.”

“Are you going?”

“It’s a town event. There’s no escaping it.”

“Are you going to enter any pets in the pageant?” she teased.

“Sadly, no pigs allowed. Perry is very disappointed. Don’t tell him about the pageant.”

Kristen couldn’t determine if he was pulling her leg or not. “Perry the Pig? You… talk to him much?”

“Not for a while now.”

“Doesn’t that hurt his feelings?” Kristen said carefully. Maybe he was a little bit loopy, after all. He
seemed
to have himself together, but then again, Mrs. Breezer operated a business and talked to her cats. You could just never tell about a person.

“He’s a stuffed animal, Kristen. Do I look like the kind of man who keeps a pet pig?”

“I don’t know,” Kristen said, tilting her head and giving him a searching look. “What would a man like that look like?”

Ford shrugged and drank his coffee. Clearly, when he didn’t have a snappy comeback, he just ignored whatever was just said. Kristen let him act the cool guy and changed the subject. Well, almost.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a guy who kept a stuffed animal – of any kind.”

“It’s not mine, he just lives with me.”

“Uh… so it’s like a temporary arrangement?”

“He’s my daughter’s.”

“Oh.” Whoa! Ford had a daughter? How come this was the first time she’d heard of it? “How old is she?”

“Older than I’d like,” he sighed. “I’m gonna get going. You need a ride?”

“Um. Yeah, actually, that’d be great.”

“Let’s go, then.”

Kristen couldn’t help wondering about Ford and his daughter. She’d asked him about his family and he’d said his parents were dead. Why wouldn’t he mention that he had a living, breathing daughter? Unless she wasn’t living… No, he’d said she was older than he’d liked, so she must be living somewhere else. With her mother, then. Did that mean Ford was divorced? Or he’d just never married the mother? He didn’t have a tan line on his finger, so if he
had
been married, they must have split up at least a year ago.

“What?” Ford’s question snapped her out of her silent study of his features and her attempt to glean his mind for information without asking questions.

“Sorry,” Kristen blinked. “Just… thinking.”

“About?”

“Aren’t you going to offer me a penny?”

“With inflation, that should be a nickel, at least.”

“Hey, offer me a million dollars and I’ll spill,” Kristen winked.

“You’ve already told me your age and your clothes size – what else could you possibly divulge that’d be worth a million dollars?”

“My bra size?”

Kristen had the pleasure of seeing Ford’s jaw tense and his knuckles turn a beige shade of white.

“Sorry, I’m fresh out of cash at the moment,” he said after a few moments, when his grip on the steering wheel had relaxed.

“Your loss,” Kristen said easily and turned to glance out the window. “So, where do they get all the pies?” she asked after a few minutes of silence had passed.

“Sorry?”

“The pies. For the pie eating contest. Who bakes them all? Or do they have a pie
baking
contest first?”

“Mary Crenshaw and her group,” he answered. “They’re about six or seven women who meet twice a month for cooking and baking sessions.”

“Sounds… quaint.”

“Not your scene, huh?”