2. Options

Chapter 2

Options

Am I being too harsh? It was times like these when Joy wished she could call her therapist and put her on speaker for a reality check. Or Estelle, her latest in a long line of personal assistants. It was possible Estelle had balls brassier than Joy's. The woman wouldn't hesitate to tell Joy if she'd overstepped the boundaries of courtesy—in fact, she'd probably relish the chance.

She could practically hear her assistant's lecture play out. "You're from Chicago, Joy. You're a big-city girl used to pushing against corporate hotshots high up the food chain. They're accustomed to that kind of behavior from you. They may not like it, but you speak their language, and they respect you for it.

"Right now you're in a small Colorado town, and the guy in front of you lives here. Works here. These are his people." Then she'd push her glasses up the bridge of her nose and add, "And in case you haven't noticed, this local boy is so hot he should have a warning label slapped on him. I volunteer to do the slapping. "

Joy shook her head. Get out of my brain, Estelle. The hot contractor—well, the one Estelle would definitely lust after—studied her with piercing gray-green eyes that flickered with an emotion she couldn't read. Contempt? She was used to that one. No, this was closer to incredulity.

She resolved to put on a cool facade as she wrangled her ping-ponging emotions into a semblance of order. After she'd been diagnosed with ADHD years ago, she'd learned how to manage it, and then she'd figured out how to harness it. A neurobehavioral condition that often stymied others had become her springboard to lofty career heights and the financial rewards that came with them. But at rare times—like right now—the beast escaped its leash and wreaked havoc with her higher brain functions, leaving her with no way to corral it.

And how had the beast escaped? It wasn't so much a jailbreak as an outside force dismantling its cage. That outside force was Fall River, and Joy was struggling to understand why the town wouldn't allow the annihilation of her mother's shop, along with its contents, which brought back a past so painful Joy could scarcely breathe. She thought she'd buried it, but it was clawing its way up from the grave.

I should have cremated it!

She needed the catharsis of destroying the building, damn it! Her mother had probably planned this very outcome just to give Joy one last parting blow.

And now she stood speechless in front of Charlie Hunnicutt, whom she'd hired sight unseen because she'd been told he was the best. She was seriously second-guessing her snap decision. In a moment of weakness, because she'd been too emotionally taxed to use the logical brain God had bestowed on her, had she made a huge mistake? He might be country-friendly, but he didn't show any signs of being a pushover, and she needed someone she could boss around, like most everyone else in her life … except, of course, Estelle.

"Who's in charge, Joy?" her therapist's voice soothed in her head.

I am, she silently answered, though she wasn't convinced. Even after all these years and all the time spent trying to get her head screwed on straight, the threads still didn't line up perfectly.

"No one in your family has control over you anymore. You're a strong, independent, successful woman in charge of her own destiny," the voice continued .

Joy added her own mantra, which she'd repeated many times before. You can do this. Except those two voices couldn't shout down the hysterical one wailing that she shouldn't have come here—not that she had a choice. That pitiful wail belonged to a helpless little girl who had long ago been devastated by her mother's indifference and terrified of the future that detachment foreshadowed.

Oh great. Not only was she having a meltdown in front of her new contractor, but she was hearing multiple voices in her head. Yep, she was careening into split-personality territory. Apparently, a luxury car, expensive clothing, and massively impractical high heels couldn't conceal the mess she was.

Charlie the contractor arched a manly eyebrow. "Is everything all right?" This was the second time he'd posed the question in the last ten minutes, and like before, his tone was cautious, as if he were afraid confetti might explode from the top of her head at any moment. And he wouldn't have been far off.

Joy tossed her hair back, lifted her chin, and stole a moment to gather herself. She needed to lasso these thoughts shooting out in all directions. ADHD was not on her side today. "Of course. Why wouldn't I be? Now what were you saying?"

Something about a proposition? Not that kind of proposition, not that she would have taken him up on it (unlike Estelle). Besides having a working relationship with him—rocky start aside—he was so not her type. He was blond, which was his first strike. Then there was his tattoo, an intricate mountain scene that spanned the entirety of his muscular arm before disappearing under the T-shirt sleeve straining around his bicep. On the other wrist, he wore a thick watch nestled between a leather bracelet and another made of wooden beads. The combination reminded her of a bad-boy biker crossed with a male model. Nod to Estelle, a ridiculously hot biker-slash-model. As appealing as his looks might be to her assistant, for Joy, they were strike number two. Silver rings on tanned fingers lent him a Renaissance man air to go with his almost poetic ode to historical buildings—and that was strike three, the biggest of them all. Who could love these dilapidated shacks in this ancient mining town? Charlie Hunnicutt admired them as though he had stardust stuck in his eyes. She didn't get it.

He offered a tentative smile. "I was going to propose a joint venture. "

She mentally toed her way out of boggy ground to more solid footing. Joint ventures were familiar lingo. "Define what you mean by joint venture."

"You own—I mean, you're in charge of getting rid of your mom's property, and I own a remodeling company that specializes in buildings exactly like this one. I'll fix it up so we can put it on the market for top dollar, and we'll split the profit once it sells."

She clamped her mouth shut to keep it from dropping open. "You're serious."

"Dead. One condition, though: I call the shots on the design and the fix-up."

This time her mouth did drop open; her jaw nearly hit the old floorboards. Talk about your balls of brass. This guy's might have been bigger than hers.

"This is a win-win for you," he pressed. "You can go back to Chicago, and I'll take care of everything so you don't have to. You pay the usual taxes, insurance, and utilities, then you sit back and pocket the cash when it sells."

"And I suppose you get paid for your contracting work?"

"You suppose right. I have to pay my crew, and I have to feed my dogs. But—" He paused to hold up his index finger. "I'll give you the friends and family discount. Naturally." His smile burst dazzlingly white.

"Naturally," she deadpanned. She wasn't falling for it. "No."

The smile slid from his face, and his dark brows knotted together. "Why not?"

"I want—no, I need to get rid of this place as quickly as possible. Being in business with you would not only be counter to my objective, but it would make a difficult situation unfathomably complicated."

"Being in business with me would take the load off your shoulders and put it on mine, which would actually un complicate your life," he argued, and not badly at that.

She gave him a vigorous headshake.

He parked a hand on a trim hip. "That's it? No negotiating? Just no?"

"Just no."

He stared at her for a beat or ten, then nodded and slipped a spiral notebook the size of a half-sheet of paper from where it was tucked under his arm. He laid it open on the display case, plucked a pencil from where it was nestled in the wire binding, and smoothed a blank white sheet. From his front pocket, he extracted a device that resembled a cell phone but was slightly smaller. He began writing on the clean paper with his left hand.

Huh. Joy was left-handed too.

She peered at his surprisingly meticulous handwriting but couldn't read it. "What are you doing?"

"Recording measurements," he replied cheerfully, not even glancing at her. "I need those if I'm going to get you estimates."

"Estimates? Plural?"

Standing back against one wall, he pointed the rectangular thingie at the opposite wall. A narrow beam of red light shot from it. "Uh-huh. I like to give my clients choices. You'll get three estimates. One will be bare-bones, the other will be a middle-of-the-road solution"—he jotted numbers in the notebook—"and the final bid will pull out all the stops for the max selling price."

She blinked at his back. "But I only want bare-bones."

He side-eyed her. "I know. But when someone's not sure which is the best way to go, I like for them to see all their options."

"I am sure which way to go, and it's bare-bones. You're wasting your time."

His mouth lazily curved into a sly grin. "It's my time to waste."

"But …" she spluttered, then fell in behind him as he traveled around the space, his movements as spare as they were sure. Use your words , she told her frustrated self, but she couldn't call up the right ones. Nothing seemed to be coming out the way she intended; everything was off-key, a tangled wad of thoughts she couldn't tease apart.

The man was infuriating … and so was her choice in footwear. Soon she couldn't dog him without risking an accident, so she lingered beside the display case and let her mind wander over the inventory occupying every minuscule inch of the store. The clutter seemed to grow and multiply like an alien creature in a B movie.

Besides the mounds of junk, every bad memory conjured by being here was fighting for space inside a brain overwhelmed by those bad memories. Being in her mother's shop was akin to having a five-hundred-pound gorilla straddling her chest, and she fought for breath. The air was so stale and dust-laden that what little she could pull in nearly made her choke .

An overwhelming need to clear her head took over, and she stepped outside and gulped in the clean mountain air.

You can do this. You can do this.

You. Can. Do. This.

Her ringing phone nearly shot her out of her shoes. Hesitating a few ticks of the clock before picking up, she plastered on a smile, hoping it would come through in her voice. "Already lost without me, Sterling?"

"Oh, you know I am," came her business partner's silky voice. "When are you coming home?"

"I just got here."

"I repeat: When are you coming home?"

"I don't know yet. I'm still sussing out the situation."

"Sussing out? Is that English?" He let out a laugh that was more of a single-note bray. It annoyed her—always had—because the sound itself was irritating and because he did it when he was pulling his superiority act. That arrogance was in play almost twenty-four-seven.

"Stop being such a snob," she muttered. She loved Sterling, she really did, but his name matched his personality—shiny and expensive—and sometimes he tilted his head so far back to look down his nose that she thought he might fall backward and land on his ass. His pedigree worked well for their wealthiest clients—they spoke the same blue-blood language and moved in the same social circles—but it wore thin at times. Then again, his first name was Sterling . It didn't lend itself to an approachable nickname like Mike or Tommy or Charlie. Wait. Was Charlie Hunnicutt a Charles? It so did not fit. At all.

Sterling's voice snapped her back to the conversation. "Joy? Did you hear what I just said, or did you wander off as per usual?"

"Um …"

Here came another laugh, a simple dry one this time. "As I suspected, you're plotting your world domination again. I said , if you're not coming home, then how about I come out there and keep you company?"

They'd already gone over this. "No. That leaves neither of us in the office to handle clients."

"For God's sake, how on earth are we ever going to go on vacation together if one of us has to be here? I absolutely draw the line at separate ‘his' and ‘her' honeymoons. "

There will be no honeymoon. "There you go assuming again, Sterling." Though she knew he was only joking, she wasn't in the mood for his games today—or any day lately. "You're like a dog with a bone, and the sooner you drop it, the happier we'll both be."

"I'm good for your ego, and you know you love it—even if you are hell on mine. Eventually, I will break you down and get you to say yes."

"We experimented with that once, and it didn't work. Or have you forgotten so soon?"

"I haven't forgotten, but I'm a hopeless romantic who knows you would be my perfect Mrs. Calloway, even if you haven't figured it out yet."

They'd been lovers—for four disastrous months—and a few times since the breakup when they had been desperate or drunk enough to acquire partial amnesia and indulge in a night of sweaty sex. For Joy, those few times hadn't been worth it, especially when morning had come and brought with it a boatload of regret.

"Is there a reason for this call? I need to get back to my meeting with the contractor."

"I just wanted to be sure my favorite girl got in all right and wasn't tearing her hair out in Mayberry West."

"Aw, how sweet. Now I really do have to go."

"Don't drink all the champagne in town, darling. It'll probably take them two months to drive the wagons over the mountains with replacement stock."

The quip she would have laughed at last week got on her nerves today, though she had little idea why. Maybe because they were already frayed. She ended the call and returned to Helene's fun house, once more overcome by the sheer volume of stuff .

She let out a gust of breath. "What am I going to do with all this crap?"

A blond head poked out of the apartment, and she jerked with surprise. "I've been thinking about that, and I have options for you. You could pay me and my crew to bring in a dumpster and get rid of it. You could order the dumpster yourself—I'll give you phone numbers for the reputable companies—and hire day laborers in Montrose to clear it out for you. You'll have to pay them cash, but that would be the cheaper alternative."

He emerged fully, filling the doorframe. What a contrast this tall, broad, healthy man was to Sterling. It wasn't that Sterling was short or scrawny, but he was lean, almost thin. He practically lived in his plush office, rarely getting outside, and his milky complexion stood out against his dark hair, at times lending him a wraith-like quality. But for her natural olive skin, people could say the same about her.

The vital man before her brought his hand to the back of his head and absently smoothed his nape, causing his well-defined bicep to bunch. "You could also box it up and store it until you decide what to do with it. Or you can have a company that specializes in estate sales sell it off. Again, I have a few companies I can recommend."

He paused to inspect something on the doorjamb, then flashed her that easy, white-toothed smile again. "Or, of course, you can always keep it yourself."

"Oh no. I want to get rid of as much of the stuff that reminds me of my mother as possible," she blurted out. Unfiltered Joy sounded supremely cold, even to her own ears. She didn't even know this man, and here she was speaking ill of the dead—even if it was her own mother. What he must think of her. Not that she cared.

He shrugged his square shoulders. "Dealing with Helene could be a challenge for anyone in this town." Why his simple words soothed her ruffled feathers, she had no idea. Was it validation?

He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. "I assume you're planning to stay here?"

"Absolutely not. I had the utilities turned off."

"Well, that would be a good reason." His expression shifted back into serious mode. "But you'll need to turn them back on as soon as possible."

"Because …?"

"Because I need electricity and running water so I can figure out what all goes into the scope of work." He said it slowly, enunciating every word, like she was a dummy who didn't understand plain English. Then he smiled again. The sunny smile was becoming downright grating. "I'll do what I can right now, and then I'll come back once everything's on. How soon can you take care of that?"

"I don't know," she snapped. "How soon were you planning to get to work?" Regret told her to dial back her animosity a notch or two the instant the words left her mouth.

To his credit, he didn't flinch. "Two days from now."

"As in the day after tomorrow?" she yelped .

"Yes. After you and I talked, I moved some projects around and cleared time in my schedule. I knew you were in a hurry."

Ha! Joy had way too much experience with the BSers of the world, and she could see right through this guy's schtick. If he truly had "projects" to "move around," what could they possibly be? Another visit to the tattoo parlor? A laser treatment to brighten those pearly whites? An eight-hour workout at the gym? Because this guy definitely spent at least eight hours a day in the gym, if his pecs were a testament.

Stop it!

"What if I'm not in that big of a hurry?" Of course, she had emphasized getting this done at supersonic speed when they'd spoken.

He didn't call her on it, instead wagging his head back and forth. "Then you'll have to wait at least three more months before I have another opening in the schedule. It'll be October, and getting supplies up here is a little dicey because the weather can be brutal that time of year. Completion times slip real easy. It's not unusual to have them double."

Was it possible he wasn't blowing smoke up her silk pants? She sure didn't want to be dealing with this in October and beyond.

He eyed her curiously. Yeah, he probably noticed the bizarre stream of consciousness currently running roughshod over her brain.

"Look," he offered, "why don't I work on the living quarters first so you at least have a place to stay? That way you don't have to shell out for a room at the Grand Majestic."

"But I like the Grand Majestic."

"Have you checked in yet?"

Her defensive shields rose higher, as did her snot-o-meter. "No, but I've seen it online. It's got Old World charm I find appealing." Opposite from my mother's . "Elegant but comfortable." She was so full of it! Why was she sparring with a man who wasn't sparring back anyway? She really needed to work with him. So why was she trying to antagonize him? Because it was in her nature to challenge absolutely everything and everyone.

His grin widened for some unfathomable reason that quickly became fathomable. "So you're already familiar with some of Past Perfect's work."

Oh, she'd walked right into that one, hadn't she? "You mean you—"

"Yep. Lobby and restaurant only, though."

"Um … "

"It was just an idea. If you prefer the hotel, I get it. I just thought I'd throw that out there to, you know, save you a few bucks."

"That was … thoughtful?"

"Don't worry. I got you. I'll get you fixed up."

If only someone could fix me.

Surprisingly, the velvety confidence in his words uncoiled her nerves a fraction. She reminded herself he was trying to charm her because he wanted something from her, and she steeled her resolve.

This was Saturday, which meant government offices weren't open. Mentally, she had just extended her stay because on Monday she was marching down to the building department and confirming that everything Charlie Hunnicutt had just fed her was bullshit.