Chapter 9
9
Delaney adjusted her sweaty grip on the sledgehammer’s handle and swung another wide arc. The metal head plowed through old drywall, and white powder puffed into the air. She swung again. And again. And the remaining gypsum board broke away from the studs.
“Finally,” she muttered, dropping the hammer to the floor with a clunk. She dragged off her respirator and used her hands to pry the smaller pieces away from the opening. Over the last two years, she’d spent more time bossing other people around than actually working, and she wasn’t nearly as efficient as she used to be.
Before she’d taken a more managerial role at Pacific Coast’s Finest, she would have been able to tear through this wall in seconds and move on to the next. Her crew had dubbed her Demolition Delaney. They’d developed an amazing system where she tore shit down, and they got out of her way and cleaned up her mess.
Still panting, Delaney swiped the flashlight from the floor and poked her head through the new opening. She shone the light upward first, checking the condition of the timber at the corner of the room where the roof met the wall.
“Dammit.” The wood was shredded. If she tapped it with a stick, sawdust would rain down. Prepared for the worst, she turned her light down toward the floor and found the thick layer of rodent feces she’d expected, but she still groaned.
“That doesn’t sound good.”
The male voice behind her wasn’t the one she craved, but it still brought relief. She straightened and turned with a smile for Trace Hutton, the man she’d chosen to consult with on this possible job for a couple of reasons, one of the main ones being price. If she couldn’t afford to hire Trace as her right hand in this project, she couldn’t afford anyone.
She was pretty sure Trace was the contractor Ethan had considered recommending for demolition. But Delaney knew Trace was capable of so much more.
She worked up a smile for him. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
He didn’t look near as pleased, his expression pained as his gaze roamed up the wall, over the ceiling, and back down. “Why? Because misery loves company?”
“Oh my God, stop. You’re supposed to be in savior mode. Did I forget to mention that?” She set the flashlight on a table nearby, lifted her safety glasses to the top of her head, and walked into his arms, giving him a bear hug. “Good to see you.”
Trace was a throwback to Delaney’s wild-child years. Almost a decade older, he’d wandered in and out of the biker drug scene where Delaney had lived on the fringe. But he hadn’t been there by choice, and Delaney had felt a twisted kind of kinship with him, both of them seeking something they couldn’t find within normal societal boundaries.
He released her, still looking around the place with an expression of pain. “Delaney, Delaney, Delaney. Why do you always have to take the roughest roads in life?”
“You’re one to talk.” She planted her hands at her hips. “Keep it up, and you’re going to have a hysterical female on your hands.”
“You? Hysterical? That will be the day I can retire to a Tahitian beach with my harem.”
She smiled and took a good look at him—a six-foot wall of muscled, dark Irishman. That jet-black hair and those striking blue eyes had gotten him in a hell of a lot of trouble growing up—a dicey childhood spent jumping between a sick mom and a druggie dad, dumped with his grandmother in Wildwood when both his parents hit bottom at the same time.
She’d only discovered during a recent conversation with Phoebe that Trace had gone to prison on drug charges several years ago.
“Good God, look at you,” she said. “From what I’d heard, I expected a little more wear and tear. Hell, Trace, you look like you’ve been living at a damn spa.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” He laughed the words, but his voice was filled with you-have-no-idea seriousness. “Folsom State Prison ain’t no spa. And I’ve been out awhile.”
Delaney laughed. It was nice to have someone to chat with. Someone who wasn’t perfect. Someone who’d made a few wrong turns along the way and lived to tell about it. Someone who didn’t judge others quite as quickly or as harshly.
His expression shifted from wry to sheepish, and he glanced away, shifted on his feet, shoved his hands in his pockets. “About my conviction...I?—”
“Trace, we can talk about why and how you ended up there sometime if you want to, but, honestly, there are only a couple of things that matter to me here and now.”
His whole body relaxed, and the shame cleared from his eyes. “Okay, shoot.”
“One, you still have a contractor’s license in good standing.”
“Check.”
That told Delaney he hadn’t been convicted of a felony. “Two, you’ve left your past in the past, and you’re willing to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, no messing around, no bullshit, no excuses.”
He chuckled. “I like your take-no-prisoners attitude. Check.”
“Three, you’re going to give me a great deal in trade for a great reference.”
“Check.”
She lifted her hands and shrugged. “That’s it.”
“Then we’re good.” He crossed his arms, set his feet wide, and looked around again with a heavy sigh. “I’m ready. Throw it at me.”
Delaney had given Trace only the very barest of facts about the job over the phone, which had been easy since she didn’t know what it entailed yet. All that was left to do now was line out the details and see how Trace handled it.
She dusted off her hands and set the safety glasses on another table. “I’ve done a preliminary on everything—foundation, framing, electrical, plumbing. Of course everything in here needs something, right? Go figure—the place is a century old. But, believe it or not, I’ve seen worse, and I’ve renovated worse. Granted, I used someone else’s money, but still.
“I thought I’d walk you through, room by room, tell you what needs repair or replacement and what I had in mind for the space, and have you work up a bid for me. I’d also really appreciate any creative cost-cutting options that come to mind.”
Just getting that part of this mess square in her head made her feel better. Now she was on level ground. This mess she understood. The mess inside her, the way she couldn’t stop thinking about Ethan—that she didn’t understand. At all.
Delaney took a deep breath, planted her hands at her hips, and smiled at Trace. “Does that work for you?”
He was frowning, mouth propped open as if he was going to say something, but his mind didn’t seem to be cooperating. “Uuuuuuuh...” He got that pained look again. “We’re not talking about demolition?”
A split second of confusion ended with a cold streak straight through the center of her body. Then, like a divining rod, that streak turned red-hot.
She clenched her teeth, but that wasn’t enough to hold in her anger. “Thatfucker.” Delaney wrapped her hand around the top of the nearest chair and stared at the floor, shaking her head. “When could he have possibly?—”
“Okay, now this is getting interesting.” Trace wandered toward a table, dragged out a chair, and plopped down, then kicked his feet up on another. Trace and Ethan knew each other growing up through Ethan’s mother and Trace’s grandmother. Then as adults through their work, before and after Trace’s prison sentence. “What in the hell is going on here, girl?”
She growled in answer.
God damn him.
“What’s going on is I’m trying to make a decision on whether to risk renovating this place, hoping I don’t drown in a financial black hole or throw away every penny I’ve saved over the last decade by demolishing it. And it pisses...me...off”—she punctuated the words by stamping the chair against the hardwood—“that everyone is trying to make that decision for me.”
“Ooooo-wee,” Trace laughed. “You’ve still got a temper that matches your hair.”
Actually, she didn’t. Normally she was very level-headed. Normally she was flexible and easygoing and cooperative and nice. But there was nothing normal about this situation.
“Yeah,” he said, scratching his jaw. “Ethan gave me a totally different picture.”
Ethan’s casual little visit the other night had obviously been more about checking up on her and less about getting to know her. After all these years and all she’d been through, how could she have believed he sincerely cared? God, she was so stupid.
With no other outlet for her rage, she strangled the back of the chair while she tried to calm down enough to think.
“Are you going this alone?” Trace asked. “’Cause you’re talking at least two or three times the amount to renovate as it costs to tear it down.”
“Phoebe’s offered to help, but I’m not thrilled with the idea of using her money. It’s one thing to risk my own money, but it’s another to risk hers when she’s done nothing but give to us her whole life. And there’s a lot more than money churning up trouble in this place.”
“I’m sure there is. When Ethan called and talked demolition, I didn’t think anything of it, but this...” He gazed at the floor and rubbed his jaw, then shook his head. “He really ought to find a way to bow out of this. I don’t see how he could be objective.”
“Thank you.” A burst of gratification straightened her spine. “That’s exactly what I said.”
“What with everything he gave up after Ian died, he’s got to want to see this place plowed into the ground more than just about anyone.”
“I’m so glad someone else—” Delaney suddenly realized she and Trace weren’t talking about the same thing. “Wait. What? What did Ethan give up after Ian died?”
Trace’s distant gaze refocused on Delaney. “Oh, that’s right. You left town as soon as you were cleared by the cops. But Ethan didn’t. Ian’s death put Ellen into a tailspin. I mean, she was a little”—he made small air-circles at his temple—“to begin with, but she took a serious nosedive. And you know Beth and Ellen are so close. It hit Ethan’s mom pretty hard, too. She made herself sick with worry over Ellen. And when Ellen tried to commit suicide?—”
“What?” Horror swamped Delaney. She slapped a hand against a sudden pain in her chest. “Ellenwhat? When?”
“Gosh, must have been...” He clasped his hands behind his head. “I don’t remember exactly, but within the first few months after Ian died.”
Ian’s death changed everything. And not just for me.
“Oh my God.” Ethan’s angry words to her repeated in her head, and Delaney’s stomach dropped. She closed her eyes and combed her fingers into her hair. Collecting herself, she said, “Go on.”
“Well, Ethan—poor guy. I mean, Ian getting killed was tragic, but then his aunt trying to commit suicide? The guy was drowning in guilt. He dropped out of Berkeley and stayed home to piece his family back together. Guess he did a pretty good job—they seem tight. But who ever really knows what’s happening on the inside?”
Delaney wasn’t processing anything past the word guilt. Her mind was spinning and spinning but going nowhere, a hamster on a wheel. “Hold on. Back up. Why did Ethan feel guilty?”
Traced huffed a sound that didn’t quite reach a laugh. “In the big picture, it seems so...I don’t know, insignificant, but I guess if I were in his shoes, maybe I’d feel the same way.
“Wayne and Ellen asked Ethan—the straight-A, varsity-letterman-four-years-in-a-row, class-president, exemplary child to go out with Ian and his friends for Ian’s twenty-first party because, as we all know, Ian was everything Ethan wasn’t. Ethan, I guess, tried like hell to get out of it, but you know how those families are tied by blood and money, so Jack and Beth insisted Ethan go.
“And Ethan, being the stellar kid he was, went. And he kept them out of trouble. And, crap, that could not have been an easy job. I’d take a handful of Folsom inmates over Ian and his buddies any day.”
“Amen,” Delaney muttered, rubbing her eyes to clear the horrible memories flashing to the surface.
“Well, I guess by the time they reached this place, it was the only bar still open, so you have to know how smashed they were.”
“I was here. I had to dodge their goddamned hands and ignore their disgusting mouths.”
Trace nodded. “But somewhere in between the last bar they’d hit and here, the diamond-encrusted golden child and Ian had an argument about coming here. When Ian said he was going with or without Ethan, Ethan went home.”
And Ian was killed.
The unsaid words hung in the air.
And Delaney’s insides crumbled.
“Oh, Christ...” She breathed the words, barely able to sustain the burden, the pressure, the wicked guilt this information wrought.
Her mind jumbled the past and the present. Pain swelled from her belly to her chest. Her chest to her throat. Ian—dead. Ellen—suicidal. Ethan... Christ, his whole future had been ruined.
“How’d you end up here, doing this? Did you decide you hated science or get someone pregnant or something?”
She’d known something wasn’t right about him in the position of building inspector. And now she knew why.
“Hey. You okay?”
Trace’s words cut into her misery. She pulled in a deliberate lungful of air and lifted her head, but she didn’t try to cover the distress swimming inside her. “I can’t believe I didn’t know. I can’t believe Avery or Chloe or at least Phoebe didn’t tell me.”
“Well, it was a long time ago. Seems everyone wanted to put it behind them and forget it ever happened. Which is why I have to be honest, Delaney. It’s hard to imagine Jack Hayes or Wayne Ryan letting this renovation go through.
‘But if you can get the go-ahead, I’m two hundred percent on board. I need the money, and I need to show everyone that I’m still together and I’m still dependable. I need people to know they can hire me and get the same quality work they did before my life went to shit.”
Delaney’s shock settled into a dull ache, and she forced her mind away from the tragedy to make sure this place didn’t ruin her. With Trace on her side, she even had a shot at coming out on top for once.
“Let’s not worry about that until it’s a reality.” She crossed her arms and looked around the room. If she’d been unenthusiastic about renovating this place before, now the thought sickened her. “I just want to get an estimate and line up my finances and budget to see if it’s even feasible. Can’t get blood out of a turnip, right?”
Trace stood, pulled a palm-size notebook and a pinkie-size pencil from his back pocket, and flipped it open to a blank page. He grinned at Delaney. “I’m ready.”
She returned his grin, wishing she felt even a fraction as confident.
“The question is”—a deep, authoritarian male voice pulled both their gazes around to the bar’s main entrance—“ready for what?”
The man was a cop. He was about Trace’s height with closely cropped dark hair. With the sun behind him, Delaney couldn’t see his face well, but she still smiled for Trace’s brother, Zane.
“Coming around to check up on your big brother?” Delaney’s last word was barely out of her mouth when the light hit the newcomer’s face, and she realized she wasn’t talking to Zane. “Oh, sorry, I thought you were?—”
She stopped midsentence when she glanced at Trace. His expression had turned to stone. Flat, hard, granite. Delaney’s smile fell. Her chest chilled. “Tra?—”
“What do you want, Austin?”
Austin?
Her gaze swung back to the man approaching with an arrogant swagger and a superior grin. And the chill in her chest twisted before frosting over. Austin Hayes had his father’s dark eyes and plastic veneer. Like Ethan, Austin had matured into an incredibly handsome man. Unlike Ethan, Austin’s every breath screamed of compensation for some invisible shortcoming.
“No need to start off all hostile,” Austin told Trace. “Heard you were in town. Then I heard you were here with her.” He looked directly at Delaney, his smile nothing but a sneer now. “And I knew someone better check up on Wildwood’s two most notorious troublemakers. Now I’m glad I did, because this”—he wagged his index finger between them—“the druggie hanging out with the dealer—uh-uh. Not a good idea.”
Belligerence flared inside her like gas-fed flames. All the bad habits she’d wielded as a teen rushed forward and pushed to get out—the fight, the fury, the foul language, her love of confrontation.
Every muscle in her body tightened as she took one giant step toward Austin, mouth open, ready to tell him exactly what he could do with his accusations and his bullshit. But Trace stepped between them and halted her by the shoulder.
“Thanks for your opinion,” Trace told him without an ounce of gratitude. “Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re in the middle of a conversation.”
“I heard all about that, too.” Austin tucked his thumbs in his duty belt and never took his gaze off Delaney’s, but she caught sight of movement out front. “I’m just here to tell you not to waste your time planning anything other than a demolition, because nothing else will be happening here. Too many powerful people want to see this dump plowed under for you to think you’ll be seeing any Hail Mary resurrection?—”
“I don’t know about that.” Another new voice joined the conversation, and Delaney’s heart jumped. Her gaze skidded toward the front door and rested on another cop. What in the hell? “If you can manage to pull rabbits out of your ass every goddamned day to save yourself, why can’t Delaney?”
This time when the man came into view, she recognized him as Trace’s younger brother, and Delaney breathed a little easier.
Austin twisted just enough to shoot Zane a bored look. “Hutton, why are you always such a pain in my ass?”
“Because you’re always just one step away from crossing the line, and if I can help you out by giving you a push, well then...” Zane grinned. “I’m here to serve.”
Austin huffed a dry laugh as if Zane were a ridiculous waste of time.
A rough, monotone female voice came over their radios, and both men went silent. Delaney still didn’t catch much of the scratchy transmission.
When the radio crackled into silence, Zane told Austin, “They’re playing your tune, bro.”
Austin muttered something into the radio on his shoulder and walked backward toward the door, pointing at Delaney, then Trace. “Trouble’s around every corner. Watch yourselves.”
When Austin’s cruiser sped out of the lot, Delaney heaved a breath, but she couldn’t unclench her teeth or uncurl her fists.
“He’s an asshole. What are you gonna do?” Zane said with a shrug, then saluted Delaney. “Good to see you. Say hi to Avery and Chloe for me. I’ll keep an ear open for Hayes’s location when I’m on duty, but just call if he comes back.”
Delaney smiled. “Thanks, Zane.”
“Yeah,” Trace said. “Thanks.”
He nodded once more and headed out the door.
Trace shook his head and met Delaney’s eyes. “It’s like a fucking stain. No one ever looks at you like a normal person again, do they?”
“What? The reputation?” Delaney looked out the door to the parking lot, where only Trace’s truck and her Jeep sat now. “I don’t know, but it sure seems like the past sticks hard. Unfortunately, both the truth and the lies seem to stick equally well.”
“Amen.”
Delaney thought of Ethan. Of his blind faith in her. Of his compassion and attraction, despite her reputation. She added, “But the good people will see through it. Your real friends, the special people that wander into your life, they’ll be able to separate out the bullshit. They’re your therapy. The ones who help you believe in your self-worth again. They’re the ones you want to keep.”
A lopsided smile turned his mouth, but pain dulled his eyes. “Maybe I’ll find one of those someday. Until then, work is my therapy. Do you still want to tackle this today?”
She nodded even though her gut ached with the realization that Ethan was one of those special people, but that she’d never be able to keep him in her life. A Hayes and a Hart were never meant to be friends, let alone anything more.
“The sooner I tackle this,” she said, “the sooner I can get the hell out of town.”