Chapter 45

Winnie

T he superpower of any great reality show producer is getting the cast to cry, but Goldie hasn’t even asked me a single question yet, and my eyes are leaky faucets.

“Happy tears,” I tell Golds. “They’re all happy tears.”

“Off the record,” she whispers. “Are you going to be able to pull this off? Pretending you’re strictly platonic with all the guys except Leo for an entire week?”

During the day, when the cameras and crew are around, I’ll sure as hell try. At night, when they’re gone and we’re back in the Hammer house, just the 11 of us? I wouldn’t bet on it.

“Hey, love,” Leo comes into the partitioned off confessional area and squeezes my shoulder. “Are you two ready for me?”

“I’m always ready for you, stud,” I say, saucily, even though there are no cameras on yet .

“Ooh, redo that and I’ll catch it,” Goldie says, reaching over to her camera and the red light starts blinking.

Once Leo is sitting next to me, holding my hand, Goldie transforms from Bestie!Goldie to Producer!Goldie and doesn’t pull any punches. She knows all about what we need to accomplish here and why.

“So, Winnie, tell me where you were, mentally, when this journey began and where you are now,” she says.

I take a deep breath. Leo gives my hand a squeeze.

“This is the house I grew up in. When we first arrived to start the reno…” I swallow hard, thinking about that night with Gavin, when I gave him the grand tour of the disaster this place was, and told him about the disaster I felt like. “My grandmother and father’s voices tormented me. They were both cruel. Mostly about my weight, but they were very skilled at making me feel worthless, period.”

I glance at Leo and he gives me a nod of encouragement.

“By the time I got out of here, when I was eighteen, my self-esteem was nil. And Grams’ and Dad’s voices weren’t the only ones I let tear me down. I’m sure most of the people watching this saw the picture of me with Leo and Theo out dancing. That was mortifying. People can be cruel. So that’s where I was at the beginning. I wanted to take a wrecking ball to this place, the way all those voices took a wrecking ball to my confidence, to my soul.”

Goldie nods. “You need a break?”

I shake my head. I’m tearing up, but am surprisingly okay. Leo hands me a tissue and I dab at my eyes with it .

“Awww, honey, it looks like you need a tissue too,” I say to him. His eyes are wet.

“The thought of anyone making her feel that way,” he swipes at his eyes with his fingertips, “breaks my heart. And really, really fucking pisses me off.”

“Beautiful sentiment, but since you seem to have forgotten, the network doesn’t like the shows littered with bleeps so anything with an f-bomb in it is likely to end up on the cutting room floor.”

“Well,” he says. “I definitely want that to end up on the air. So let me say it again in a more family-friendly way.”

“And where are you now, Win?” Goldie asks, once she’s gotten a take she can use from Leo.

“Well, I’m ridiculously in love for starters,” I beam. “But that’s nothing new. I’ve been in love for a very long time. I just wasn’t in a place where I could accept that a Hammer brother could love me in return.”

“And you can now?”

I nod. “Oh, yeah. This reno didn’t just transform this house. It transformed me. Every day, little by little, the voices that tormented me grew quieter. And every day, I learned that those aren’t the voices that matter.”

“Great,” Goldie turns off the camera. “That’s almost all I need for now. Just one more thing and this is off the record… who’s the best cunning linguist , if you know what I mean?”

“Me, obviously,” Leo says, then he laughs. “We gotta find you ten men of your own, Golds.”

“I wish!” she laughs. “Can one of you send Jack in next? ”

Though Leo and my relationship is a major storyline in the show, obviously it’s about the reno, too, and the fans are going to want plenty of the boys, so that’s what they’re going to get.

“Lordy, Winnie, you are flushed! ” Sam, here to make sure we’re always camera-ready, is coming at me with her powder puff of doom.

I’m flushed because Diesel’s at the staircase, caressing the banister in a fairly obscene way, going on about how they were his favorite part of the house. “You can really get a workout on these stairs,” he says into the camera with a matter-of-fact nod.

“Oh, how I’ve missed you, Sammie,” I say and I realize that I have. I’ve missed this. I’m glad we’re doing this.

As she de-flushes me, I give a little squeal when I catch sight of Jonesy, the cameraman who overheard and filmed me lamenting to Goldie that I wanted to lose my virginity to a Hammer brother but they would never see me as more than a friend. And that didn’t happen that long ago at all. Yikes. He could totally blow our cover and confirm that Leo and I have not, in fact, been together for awhile a la the story Jack sold to Lexie.

Dammit.

I’m about to rush over to him and… do what? I have no idea when I’m summoned upstairs.

Axel and Diesel are flanking the outside of the door to the room that used to be my dad’s. I haven’t been allowed inside it almost since the very beginning of the reno, but the padlock is gone now. I notice cameras at either end of the hall, so I know that whatever is happening here, it’s important. They don’t want to chance missing my reaction from any angle.

“As I was saying,” Axel says. “This is a room we’ve already completely finished but Winnie hasn’t seen it since demo day.”

“This used to be her father’s room so we wanted to turn it into something really special,” Diesel takes over, with that natural charisma that all the boys have and all the fans adore.

“Damn,” Axel snaps his fingers, “We should’ve brought a blindfold for this.”

And all the work Sam did on my cheeks is completely undone. They grow hot at his words, the insinuation in his eyes as he glances at me, and I hope to God the camera doesn’t catch it.

“I’ll close my eyes,” I say, doing so.

I don’t hear the door open–it no longer creaks–but Axel, no, it’s Diesel, guides me into the room.

“You can open those baby blues, love,” Leo says. So he’s here too.

I open my eyes and draw in a breath. “This is so…”

I can’t find words. Not even one. The room where my dad spent his nights doing God only knows what after days making me miserable is completely transformed. It’s not even a bedroom anymore. There are floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookshelves on the two side walls, complete with a ladder. On the back wall, surrounding the huge window, are built-ins, with what look like endless drawers. In the center of the room is a large round table.

“It’s a library-slash-gameroom,” Cruz, who is also present now, tells me, although the library part is pretty evident. “ The built-ins are storage for games so that the room won’t get cluttered. It’s unfinished because we wanted to let you pick out the chairs for the table and the furniture for the reading nook, which will go in that corner.”

“I lobbied for a pool table, but these fools, apparently, don’t know how much fun a pool table can be,” Mason says, with no innuendo in his voice. But there’s definitely a secret just the two of us share in the smile he gives me.

“What do you think, darlin’? I mean, Winnie. I mean…”

Bring on that powder puff, Sam, my Cruzie is flushed.

Leo laughs, good-naturedly, “You’ve always called her darlin’, Cruz. It’s fine.”

“It’s… amazing. You all are amazing.” I glance around at each of my guys, who are all present and accounted for. I give them each a big, friendly hug. But I want to give them each a big, sexy kiss, of course.

I walk around, skimming my fingertips over the woodwork, taking it all in. I glance up. “I love the chandelier. It looks familiar…? Have I seen it before?”

“We used an identical one on the Tanner reno,” Cruz says. “Season five. You loved it then, too.”

I grin. “Right, we used it in their dining room.”

“Yep,” he grins.

“Okay,” Jack says. “Everybody back to it. This reno ain’t gonna finish itself. Everyone not in the kitchen needs to head out to the backyard and help Axel so we can stay on schedule.”

“Winnie’s not allowed in the backyard,” Axel says .

“Another surprise?” My cheeks ache from grinning already.

“Jack,” says Marcus, our director, who mostly just makes sure we’ve got all the footage we need and the right confessionals to turn it into a cohesive story but has always given us plenty of leeway. “Do you think I can steal our happy couple to get some B-roll of them being a happy couple?”

“No problem,” Jack says.

So I spend the morning sitting on the porch with Leo, walking up the street with Leo, holding hands, kissing Leo in my childhood bedroom…

“Thankfully you had the forethought to take the before-and-after pictures,” Marcus says. “We can use inserts of those before we show the afters. By the way… Don’t want to be nosy, but… this is meant to be a young girl’s room, right? Are we thinking about little Hammers pitter-pattering around?”

“When we designed this room, we hadn’t decided we would be living here yet,” Leo says, smoothly. “My girl was going to give the house away to a family who needed it. But now that we’ve decided to stay here… Well. We’ll just use this as a guest room for now.”

“Okay,” Marcus says. “I think that’ll do for now. Since craft services won’t be here ‘til tomorrow, what’s good to eat in this town? Let’s break a couple hours for lunch.”

“Tino’s Bistro is Win’s favorite,” Leo says. “But I love the Sub Emporium.”

Once Marcus calls it, everyone clears out fast.

Jonesy was the one who was filming the B-roll so I ask him to wait a minute. Leo shoots me a questioning look but when I tell him it’s okay, he says he’ll be out in the backyard seeing if Axel needs anything.

“Jonesy, I need to ask you a favor…” I begin.

“You don’t need to ask me anything, Winnie. Your private business is your private business.”

Huh. I guess I’m not the only one who has been transformed recently.

“Oh. Okay. Thanks. I mean it.”

He gives me a nod and says, “That Tino’s got good lasagna?”

“The best lasagna.”

I go downstairs and try to find Goldie but she doesn’t seem to be around. So I head across the street, planning to lie down for a few minutes and rest my eyes. I’d forgotten how exhausting shoot days were.

I’ve barely gotten into my room when the door opens again and Jack slips in.

“We don’t knock anymore?” I tease.

“This isn’t a visit, it’s an ambush,” he says.

I laugh and raise my eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

And then my mouth goes dry when I see he’s holding bungee cords.