1. First Impressions

Chapter 1

First Impressions

Charlie Hunnicutt had neither the time nor the patience for the woman standing before him in her cherry-red stilettos. Attitude—with a capital A —radiated off her in waves. She might be his new client, but that didn't give her license to look down her aristocratic nose at him as if he were no better than the crusted dirt in the treads of his steel-toed boots.

Her name was a complete misnomer—Joy Holiday—because nothing about her telegraphed joy or the holidays.

Dressed in a sleeveless, flowing white top and matching pants, the long, cool woman whose sunglasses perched at the end of her aquiline nose perused Crystal Harmony Haven, her late mother's storefront. Charlie's gaze remained fixed on the sour expression etched on her face, and it struck him how she and her mother, Helene, didn't share a single physical similarity. A fleeting thought that Joy was beautiful in a classic way bobbed in his brain. Long, dark hair—almost black—waved around her toned, tanned shoulders. Wide eyes the color of Jameson 18 Year were perfectly balanced atop sharp cheekbones. She was stunning, though one had to see past the hard set of her mouth to find the delicacy in her smooth olive features. With those looks and her high-risk, high-reward vibe, she no doubt got what she wanted ninety-nine percent of the time. Charlie would soon be part of the one percent that landed in her loss column.

His tone was measured when he doled out a dose of reality. "You can't tear it down."

Those tawny eyes darted to his and flared. "Exactly why can't I tear it down?"

"Because it's a historical building."

"Is that supposed to mean something?"

Hell yeah, it is! "Fall River is invested in an entire town restoration, which means we have strict restrictions in place for anything built before 1945. You can't just slap on a coat of paint and call it good, and you certainly can't demolish it." He knew those restrictions backward and forward—he'd been on the committee that had drafted them.

"I can sell it, though, right? Or is the town going to tie my hands there too?"

"You're the owner, so you can sell it—"

"The estate's the owner. I'm the executor."

Whatever . "In order to sell it, it's got to be brought up to code. That's one of those restrictions I was talking about." And he was pretty damn sure nothing had been updated in the last fifty years.

"Restrictions for historical buildings," she repeated.

"Yes, ma'am."

She turned her attention back to the dilapidated structure and scoffed. "It's historical all right. The siding looks like it's made up of boards from a covered wagon that sat on the prairie for the last century."

For a split second, he'd been willing to give her some leeway because most people weren't as familiar with—or enamored of—these old places as he was. But now she was just being an asshole. Did he really want to work with this woman?

Yes. Well, he didn't want to work with her, but she'd be flying back to Chicago and he'd be flying solo on the project; he'd had this all worked out since Helene's death a few months ago. He desperately wanted to renovate this particular building, and it had nothing to do with any loyalty he harbored for Joy's mother. On her best days, Helene had been an oddity—and that was saying something in a tiny mountain town filled with oddballs. At her worst, the woman had been downright abusive. No, his allegiance was to the structure, to its bones. He'd dreamed of bringing it back to its nineteenth-century glory days since he'd been a kid and witnessed its transformation from his favorite penny candy store into Crystal Harmony Haven's neglected space, overcrowded with dusty crystals, carved Buddhas, and trinkets.

He loved the facades in Fall River and had no trouble seeing past their peeling exteriors and sagging frames to picture the gems they'd once been. They were living, breathing things that carried the secrets of the past, and this one especially spoke to him. Save me , it pleaded, as if it too knew he was the only one capable of restoring it the right way, who would devote the care to every detail, no matter how tiny, and make it gleam. This fact left him with no choice but to fight for the building's survival, despite its new owner's intentions to the contrary.

Few people shared his passion—he got that. Most weren't as visual as he was, but if he could make her catch a mere glimpse of his vision …

Probably a lost cause.

If he was going to work on Crystal Harmony Haven, he needed to bridge the gulf between Joy and himself, and that was looking like a tall order. He knew little about her, but already he didn't like her—which was unusual for a guy who gave strangers the benefit of the doubt until he got to know them and they showed him a reason not to. With her holier-than-thou attitude, she was showing him plenty of reason to dislike her.

He tilted his head toward the front door. "Let's take a look inside so we can get a better feel for the scope of work."

Gusting out an exasperated sigh, she depressed her fob, making her glossy black BMW M-whatever chirp. Tourist. He didn't bother telling her she didn't need to lock her fancy ride around here. Instead, he watched her stride to the front door in her ridiculous red high heels, muttering something about "getting this over with." Producing a key from a pocket, she jammed it into the lock—or tried to.

"Here, let me," he offered. These antique mechanisms were touchy and needed a deft touch she obviously didn't have.

"I've got it," she barked.

Or maybe she did have the touch, and her impatience ran the hell over it. He stepped back and watched as she wrangled with the doorknob. Serves you right , sister . When she whipped her head toward him, he quickly schooled the satisfaction percolating inside him.

"Would you like me to try?" In vain, he fought the smile at the corners of his mouth.

"Yes," she huffed.

As he stepped into her space, she barely moved, and a soft floral scent drifted up his nose. Not the fragrance he would have expected, if he'd given it half a thought before this moment. He would have pegged her for sharp—like her angles and her demeanor—with an overabundance of spice. Not the good kind of spice either, but the kind that jabs your olfactory senses like turpentine.

With a few manipulations, the key turned in the rusty lock, and a little bell jingled merrily as he pushed open the door. He relished the triumph as he stood back and motioned her in. "After you."

Her heels clicked on the worn floorboards, coming to an abrupt stop when one of them got stuck in a groove and she stumbled. Pure instinct had him shooting out a hand to keep her from toppling over, but he released her arm a little too quickly and she tripped anyway, catching herself and avoiding a complete face-plant.

"Sorry about that. Are you all right?" She looked all right, but civility—and his mother's voice inside his head—forced him to ask anyway.

She straightened and jerked the hem of her shirt, smoothing it into place. "Yes, thank you." Her face reflected her fluster, and he glimpsed vulnerability through a crack in her crusty layer.

"If you have some more, uh, practical footwear in your car," he offered, "this might be a good time to get it. I'll wait."

"I'll be fine," she tossed over her shoulder as she pivoted toward a glass display case. Her ankles wobbled, and he cringed inside as he envisioned another fall that would send her crashing through the thing. Seriously? If the woman was going to wear deadly weapons, she should know how to control them.

Bracing herself against the case, she peered inside. "Oh. My. God. What am I supposed to do with all this stuff?" Before he could answer, she lifted her head and took in the rest of the clutter crowding the shop. "It's everywhere!"

He dipped an eyebrow. "You didn't know? On the phone, you said you'd been here before. "

"That was ten years ago, when I was ninet—never mind."

"So you haven't been to Fall River in the past decade?"

"My mother and I weren't exactly close." She continued scanning the contents. "This case full of woo-woo junk is a perfect example of why we weren't bosom buddies. I'm a minimalist, and she was beyond extreme. I don't see an inch of spare space in here."

A picture of Joy seated on a white couch that matched her flowing pants and sleeveless blouse popped into his brain. Her surroundings were black and white, the only touches of color in gray tones. In other words, colorless and cold.

He was compelled to defend her dead mother. "It's not all junk. Look around, and you'll see some consignment pieces by local artists. Your mom was good about letting them display their work in her shop."

Joy brought herself upright, and her face fell. "Oh no. I'll have to figure out who they are so they can get their things back before I empty the place out." As she spun toward him, Charlie's eyes snagged on a band of dust dirtying her silky top—something she'd apparently picked up when she'd bent over the case. Unfortunately, it lay across her bustline.

While her clothes suited the hot July day, they, like her shoes, didn't fit in this store or anywhere else in Fall River. As another thought about appropriate attire streaked across his brain, he sensed her gaze narrowing on him. He snapped his eyes up and pointed at the brown stripe right before she crossed her arms over her chest. "You've got dirt there. Be careful what you lean against, or you'll ruin your outfit."

She glanced down and let out a little cry. Leaving her to brush herself off, he ambled toward the back of the building that led to an apartment he was intimately familiar with. He'd stopped by countless times over the years to fix this or that for Helene, though he didn't recall it looking as shabby as it did right now. Even so, the potential lit a fire of exhilaration inside him.

He was taking pictures of the crown molding with his phone when Joy caught up to him. "Unbelievable," she whispered.

He couldn't contain his grin. "I know, right? Just look at the scrollwork! You hardly ever see that quality of craftsmanship anymore. It's nearly extinct. "

The pleats between her perfectly plucked dark eyebrows deepened. "Scrollwork? How can you see anything under the layers of peeling paint? Oh God. It's probably got lead in it."

"Every layer is a slice of history," he sighed. "And once the paint's removed, the beauty of the wood is exposed. You'll be able to see it through the eyes of the carpenter who crafted it and put it there a century and a half ago."

"And how are you going to take the paint off? With a sandblaster?"

He tried to mask his alarm. This woman obviously knew nothing about preservation. Then again, she probably lived in a sterile black-and-white penthouse on top of a blocky Chicago building with no artistic lines. Or at least that's how he pictured her back in the Windy City—which was exactly where he wanted her to go at this moment. "No, that would chew up the wood. You sand everything by hand."

He'd almost be willing to work on those details for free just to watch the wood spring back to life—never mind that his hours were already choked by too many projects and subcontractors he couldn't trust not to cut corners.

One side of Joy's mouth twitched with a smirk. "If you love this place so much, why don't you buy it?"

"I would if I could." Like his two older brothers, Charlie had inherited a tidy trust fund from his grandparents. Unlike his brother Noah, he had invested it, nurtured it, and was used to being solidly in the black. However, between investing a chunk of his cash in the town's effort to revitalize its antique railway, overcommitting to projects, and juggling them with the aforementioned untrustworthy subs, his finances were stretched as thin as his mental health. Renovating Crystal Harmony Haven would tax his bandwidth even more, but he simply couldn't turn down the opportunity. Besides, he needed the income to replenish what he'd spent on the rail project.

"And no one else can buy it as-is and fix it up?"

"Well, they can, but again, it has to be brought up to those minimum standards I mentioned."

"That's a silly rule."

"No, it really isn't. After the crash in '08, out-of-state speculators swooped in and bought up a ton of property at steep discounts. Then they sat on them and didn't do one thing to improve them, and the buildings sat and sat. They continued to deteriorate. Some turned into serious hazards. This new rule prevents that from happening again. Nowadays, if you plan to sell one of these old places that hasn't been touched, you better be prepared to re-wire and re-plumb it, convert it to town water and sewer, replace any broken windows, and make sure it's structurally sound. All with permits. You don't have to paint it or pretty it up, but it has to meet code."

"And knowing my mother, she didn't bother doing any of those things."

"No," he agreed, "and in her defense, she bought it before the new regs went into effect."

"Well, I guess that's good news for you. Now that I look at all that paint, I not only see years of god-awful color choices, but I see dollars lining your coffers. Maybe that's why you're so in love with this termite-infested wood."

Charlie prided himself on being upbeat, on letting shit roll off his back as if it were a slick shingle. His day had started out like every other—on the bright side—but the black storm clouds that had begun gathering from the moment he laid eyes on Joy Holiday were crowding out every beam of light.

He practically growled, "This isn't the Midwest. We don't get termites here."

His father had always taught him to follow his first impressions, and right now he was summing them up in his head and debating whether locking horns with Joy for the foreseeable future—even at a distance—would be detrimental to his health. He knew pretty much all he needed to know. One, she had no respect for his town or the people in it—she had proved that by racing up the street thirty miles over the speed limit in her uber-fancy car. Two, she was wound tighter than ratchet straps on a load of lumber. And three, she had a chip on her shoulder the size of the building she wanted to knock down.

Deep in his heart, though, the debate was already over. He wanted this project. Somehow, he had to make this work.

Raking his fingers through short strands he still wasn't used to, he pulled in a steadying breath. "I have a proposition for you."