“You’re kind of nosy, you know that?” I remarked, digging into my hash browns.
“Hell yes,” she affirmed, setting a bottle of hot sauce in front of me and waving a hello to a new group that had just come in the front door.
I finished up, got a coffee to go, and thanked Jessica in advance for putting the word out to get some help. I headed back to the house . . . where there was a cowboy waiting for me.
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, looking at the hunk who was on the porch. I noticed he’d avoided the broken floorboard. He stared at me, his eyes hard and unflinching. Recognition flared in them; did he remember me from the beach? Did he think I was still trespassing?
Unfolding my legs from the car, I put on my best strut as I closed the distance between us. My first words to him had to be something memorable, something intoxicating, something to make him think the dirty thoughts. His eyes strayed to my legs as I strode purposefully toward him, clad in short denim cutoffs and recently cleaned boots. And a bandage. Aw yeah.
Now standing at the bottom of the steps, I licked my lips as I appraised him. The seduction of Hank begins with the words . . .
“I see by your buckle your name’s Hunk. I mean, Hunk. I mean, fuck, Hank. Crap.”
He looked confused. Not amused.
Birds chirped. Wind blew. Hank stared. I? Sweat. Aw yeah.
Deciding to pretend I’d not spoken at all, I stared back at him, determined not to say anything.
“So, you’re Hank, right?”
Way to go, Viv.
He nodded.
Mmm. Nodding was the best. I wasn’t going to say anything else.
The pressure of his silence built.
“I’m Viv Franklin.” Sigh.
He just continued to stare, and I wondered if I had Hungry Man breakfast on my face. So much for the seduction of Hank.
“So anyway, I’m Maude’s great-niece. Did you even know I was coming out here?”
“Mm-hmm.”
He speaks! I mean, he hums!
“Great. Okay, so . . .” I trailed off. Nothing. “Yesterday, when we were on the beach? And you said, you know, get the hell off the beach?”
“That was you?”
Okay, I’m a pretty girl. A tough kind of pretty, with the tats and the piercings, but I have a great face and not smallish boobs. Not to mention I was dragging a shit piñata behind me through the sand when we met. So overall, pretty memorable.
But not to Cowboy Hank. This was going to be a tougher nut to crack than I thought. Good thing I liked a challenge.
“Yep, that was me. This is my place now. I mean, I don’t know if I’m keeping it for sure, lots of work to be done, and I haven’t really seriously considered the implications of actually moving here from Philadelphia, but I’m thinking about it. What is it you do here, exactly? I heard you oversee things, but what does that entail? Does it mean—”
“You sure talk a lot,” he mused, hooking his strong hands through his . . . gulp . . . belt buckle. Mmm, I did love a man who wasn’t afraid of a buckle.
“I don’t normally.” I moved to the side to get out of the sun, and now he was in silhouette. Christ, his outline made me want to lick things. “Anyway, you want to come in?”
“Nope. Just here to feed the horses. I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said with a frown, turning toward the barn.
As he passed me I caught a whiff of his cologne. Spicy and manly. I suddenly sneezed.
“And stay out of the barn, you’re making the animals nervous.”
I stood there, evaluating and assessing. This guy was turning me into an idiot! Like, a simpering girly girl who couldn’t handle herself around a mountain of man flesh, not at all how I normally was around men. But ooooohhhhh. Maybe this was supposed to be how it was? Like, in a good romance novel the heroine was always affected by the hero. Okay, so, reassess. Reevaluate. The cowboy wasn’t going to fall in line. That’s what happened, though, right? It couldn’t be too easy, or romance novels would just be little pamphlets. There’d be some conflict in this story. Challenges. But no more word vomit hopefully.
I slunk back into the house, avoiding the broken floorboard.
I also avoided the backyard, although I watched from the windows in one of the guest rooms upstairs. I watched Hank move across the yard, feeding the horses and watering the chickens, which squawked gratefully. As I worried the cameo around my neck, I observed the cowboy in his natural element. He liked to work with no shirt on, which seemed so perfectly right and not at all beefcake. I mean, it was warm this morning, almost seventy degrees . . .
Once he left in his truck, a great manly beast of a thing, clouds rolling in great waves of lusty dust in his wake, I went to work. I wasn’t quite sure how to tackle all the junk. It was a bit sad, actually.
Maude had grown up in this house, where she’d lived her entire life. The house had been in the family for more than a hundred years. When the first generation of my family to branch off the Philadelphia trunk had traveled here so many years ago, what would become the town of Mendocino was still a small settlement. It was composed mostly of families from New England, so the style of homes reflected what these pioneers brought with them: Cape Cod, Victorian, picket fences, and cottage rosebushes everywhere.
She’d lived here when her mother died, and had never left to create her own household. Families had visited over the years; aunts and uncles and cousins and their children had filled this house with laughter and tears, suppers and tea parties. But in her last years, Aunt Maude had withdrawn.
As I began to sort through the clutter in one of the spare bedrooms, I discovered a trove of Maude’s paintings. Mendocino had once been an artist colony, and she’d signed and dated every one, starting back in the fifties. I knew I’d get lost if I started looking through them with any kind of order at this point, so I tucked them back into the closet until I could spend more time examining them.
Maude had been an artist. Interesting. My fingers held a phantom brush, noticing the natural light pouring into the room and knowing instantly that this would be a great room to paint in. An inspection of the floor revealed an occasional paint splatter here and there, something I hadn’t noticed anywhere else in the house. So she’d also found the light in here irresistible. Feeling a sudden kinship with her, I smiled.
I spent the morning cleaning out the bedroom with the best view of the ocean. Wiping a thick layer of sea salt and grime from the windowpanes, I continued to hum the theme to Bad Boys as I worked. Once the blue of the Pacific sparkled through once more, I searched for more clean rags in the linen closet in the hallway and was thrilled to find a fairly new set of sheets. Buoyed by the thought of sleeping in an actual bed tonight, I headed for the basement to see if the washing machine still worked.
Opening the basement door for the first time, I realized two things. One, the lightbulb was burned out. Two, the motherfucking lightbulb was burned out. Sighing loudly, I threw back my shoulders and bravely tromped down the steps. Into the dark basement of a hundred-plus-year-old house, with nothing but old sheets to protect me.
So there’s stupid, and then there’s stupid. I’ve had picnics in cemeteries. I went on a tour of the underground catacombs when I lived in Paris. I was always the last one standing when we played Bloody Mary at slumber parties. But by the time I made it to the bottom of those basement stairs, I was shaking like a horrified leaf. Basement danger, the worst kind.
The sun shone dimly through one dirty window. If I remembered correctly, the washer was on the other side, by the furnace. Turning away from the light, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the washer . . . next to a pile of heads.
Sheets dropped, mouth opened in a silent scream, my entire body went on lockdown as my brain tried to catch up to what I was seeing. By the time I processed the Halloween label on the box and realized they were just masks, it wa
s too late. Forever in my head, they’d be heads.
You have never seen someone start a load of laundry as quickly as I did. Whistling a happy tune to distract myself, I covered the heads with a big trash bag. Between the dolls and the Halloween props, I was beginning to understand why people can go a little funny when left on their own too long.
I thought about all this afterward up in the kitchen, the basement door firmly latched behind me, and I shivered when I realized I’d have to go back down there to put the sheets into the dryer.
Then I heard a knock at the front door. Would it be Hank? Returning for another round of witty banter?
Wiping my face on the inside of my T-shirt, I realized that I was disgusting and badly needed a shower. Oh well. Resigning myself to it, I headed out into the foyer. Peering through the lace at the window I saw a man, but the profile was leaner than Hunky Hank’s. Soccer player vs. football player. Breathing a sigh of relief that I’d have more time to prepare myself for our next meeting, I opened the door.
Brown hair. Brown eyes behind dusty-looking eyeglasses. White button-down. Tweed jacket with . . . elbow patches? He was tall, carried a briefcase, and looked exactly like Tom, Dick, and Harry. I could handle this. Hell, I’d just defeated an entire legion of heads.
“Hiya,” I announced, surprising him. Pushing his glasses up onto his nose, he glanced down at me. I was dressed for cleaning in a tank top that I’d sweated through, denim cutoffs that showed most of my legs, and a headband, and he took me in with an appreciative glance. Amused, I let him look, and when he finally met my eyes again, I let him know with my look that I’d caught him peeking.
A blush colored his cheeks, and he pushed his glasses up once more.
“Vivian Franklin?” he asked, his voice deeper than I thought it’d be.
“It’s Viv. Who’s asking?”
“Vivian, my name is Clark Barrow. I heard you were looking to make some changes to Seaside Cottage?”
“Hell yes, probably starting with this porch. It’s a death trap, Clark,” I affirmed, thumping on the column, which wobbled. “You should see the cut I got on my leg yesterday when I went through the plank.” I propped my leg up on the railing just to the right of him, running my hand down to highlight the bandage.
His eyes followed my hand. “That looks like a doozy of a cut,” he agreed, his gaze on my skin.
I cleared my throat.
He still stared.
“So, Clark, you’re here to put in a bid?”
“A bid?” he asked, looking up.
“Yeah, you said you heard I was looking to get some work done, right? I don’t know for sure if I’m staying, but if I’m even going to consider it I’ll need to have an idea of what kind of money I’d be shelling out to make this house livable, know what I’m saying? I’m thinking we’ll start with the front porch; all these rotten boards are going to need to be torn off. The roof’s leaking, so that’s obviously the first thing we’ll need to start on, and when I was trying to get to sleep last night, before the rain started that is, I could have sworn I heard something scuffling around behind the walls. I’d hate to have to rip out that plaster, but I’m not going to have anything furry surprise me some night so—”
“Rip out the—wait, no. No, no, you can’t do that.”
“What the hell kind of a contractor are you, Clark?” I asked, my brow wrinkling.
“I’m not a contractor, I’m a librarian. I’m also the town archivist, and that’s really why I’m here,” he said, pushing up his glasses.
“I’m confused. If you’re a librarian, why are you here about ripping off my front porch?”
“No one is ripping off anything, Vivian, least of all this front porch.”
“What the hell kind of librarian is in charge of front porches?”
“Not just front porches, the entire house. Seaside Cottage is on the historical register, as is much of the town of Mendocino. So any repairs, small or large, have to be approved by the town—specifically, the director of the historical society,” he replied, straightening his lapel.
“And that would be?” I asked, dryly.
“Me,” he answered, puffing up a bit.
“I see.” I turned away, walking back and forth along the porch, ever mindful of the splintered floorboard. I fingered my cameo while I contemplated this wrinkle.
“So I can’t make any changes without consulting you first?”
“Correct.”
“Including the front porch.”
“Correct.”
“Or the wobbly bannister?”
“Good God, no! It was handcrafted by Jeremiah Wo—”
“Easy, Clark, easy,” I soothed. “So where does that leave us?”
He looked past me into the house, easily seeing the stacks of boxes. “I’m sure you’ve discovered that your aunt was a bit of a packrat, but many of the things she owned could easily be donated to the historical society. You know, to make more room for you?” he asked hopefully.
I thought of the paintings in the closet upstairs. I wasn’t ready to just let things go quite yet.
Channeling Aunt Maude? Yikes.
“Look, Clark, so here’s what I’m thinking. I just got here, haven’t even cleared off a bed yet. I slept on the floor last night, can you imagine?” I said, taking his arm just above the elbow patch and guiding him back down the steps.
“I can imagine. I mean, not about the bed of course but—” he stammered, blushing a deep red. I may have let my boobs brush his arm. Sweeten the pot when you can, right?
“So how about you let me get settled, carve out a bit of living space, as it were, and then we can talk some more?” I asked, walking him right back to his car. A Taurus, of course. Safe. Dependable.
“Well, that’s just fine, Vivian,” he answered.
“It’s Viv,” I said with a sweet smile. “And if I decide to rip off my front porch, I’ll make sure to call you first, huh?”
“I’m not too comfortable with that phrase. Restoration work has to be slow and methodical. Patient.”
I leaned one hand on the car behind him, bringing me a bit closer. It was fun making this guy blush.
“I don’t know. Sometimes fast and hard and furious has its place—know what I mean, Clark?”
Cue blush. Also cue eye sparkle. Although to be fair, they were more than sparkling. They were burning. Hmmm.
He thrust a pamphlet into my hand, got into his car, and drove away. It was a pamphlet from the Mendocino Historical Society. On the back, his name was listed.
Clark Barrow. Historian. Archivist. Librarian.
He forgot to list Elbow Patch Rocker.
I turned back to the house with a chuckle. And almost stepped on the bad plank again. Slapping the porch railing, which wiggled generously, I muttered, “Can’t make any repairs? We’ll just see about that.”
I worked my ass off all day, stopping only for leftover pizza and beer while standing in the kitchen, picking at contact paper on the pantry shelves. Was this historical contact paper? Was I allowed to pick this off? Or does the future of this town rest on the 1970s snail-and-grasshopper motif on this very contact paper?
After my standing lunch I ventured back to the basement, armed this time with three flashlights and a box of lightbulbs I’d found under the sink. Now fully lit, it wasn’t nearly as scary as before. I investigated the cold room, pleased to see that Aunt Maude’s jars of vegetables and preserves were still stacked neatly along the shelves, all dated from last season. Yum, blackberry jam. Heading back into the laundry room, I stalwartly ignored the box of heads as I put the sheets into the dryer. I brought the camp blankets upstairs and pinned them on the line out back, letting the winds blowing in from the west catch them on the breeze, snapping the ends. Then I trooped back upstairs, determined to restore order to the bedroom I’d be claiming for now. I scr
ubbed the floor, carrying bucket after bucket of dingy water out back to dump. I pulled down the old curtains, thick with dust, and contemplated throwing them out. But now that I was thinking about the frickin’ historical significance of every last item in the house . . .
Grumbling a little, I folded them neatly and set them aside. At some point, things were going to have to get thrown away. But apparently an archivist librarian had to be here for that.
I tackled the hall bathroom upstairs next, and with elbow grease and the grace of God, I got it spick-and-span. I’d found an old box of baking soda in the linen closet and with a bucket of warm water and a brush, I scrubbed the little octagonal floor tiles until they gleamed. The iron tub was still stained a bit despite all the bleach I’d used, but the old chrome faucets shone so I could practically see my face in them.
By the time dusk was setting in, I was tired and stinky, but I had a sparkling clean bedroom and bath. Too tired to even think about food, I stood under the shower and washed quickly, shampooing my hair as fast as I could in case the hot water ran out. Once the particulars were taken care of, I luxuriated under the warmth. Running my hands down my skin, I could feel every muscle that ached from the hard work.
I could also imagine feeling a very particular muscle, one that belonged to a cowboy named Hank. But as quickly as I was beginning to heat up, the water cooled down, shoving my daydreams out of the shower. I toweled off, listening to the house settling in for the night. I finger combed my curly hair as I dried it most of the way, literally too tired to even hold the hair dryer for too long. Clutching my copy of Loins of Endearment, I crawled into the most sinfully plush bed ever created, loving the scent of clean linens and line-dried sunny blankets.
I was asleep before even one loin was endeared.
chapter four
I dreamed of a man on horseback. Splashing through the surf, his very presence called to me. Walking across the sand packed firm by the waves, I stared at the beautiful man jumping down off his mighty steed and starting toward me. But at the same time, a man who looked curiously like Clark waded in from the sea with a briefcase full of clamshells, letting me know in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t to throw out any of the lobsters I might find in my shoes.