Chapter 28 #2
Lauren Harrison’s reality real-estate show was one of HGTV’s biggest hits and had earned several spin-off shows.
“Oh, thanks.” Lauren smiled humbly.
Zion, who had already polished off his second French 75 and was eyeing Frankie’s for a refill, pivoted with the same flourish as a stage magician and bowed to Karina.
“You, my dear…we all knew you could sang, but that performance. You and Miss Ginny ate and left no crumbs.” He tapped his index fingers and thumb together in silent applause. “You ladies had everyone in tears.”
Frankie had felt Liam staring at her during the song. She’d glanced up at him, but he’d looked away. He’d done that a few times during the wedding.
“I was happy when Ginny called, and you know I’d do anything for you.
Anything.” She lifted up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek.
“I told you I would bury a body for you after you saved my face, and let’s be real, my dignity, on my first Vogue cover.
” Karina turned to Poppy, Frankie, and Lauren.
“I just got off an eighteen-hour flight from Milan, where I had an allergic reaction to ragweed pollen and was covered in hives. I also got food poisoning, so I hadn’t slept in three days, and my eyes were so bloodshot with discolored bags they could have been used as Rocky Balboa’s stand-ins after his fight with Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, and my jawline was so swollen it looked like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man—” she pantomimed swelling on her chin “—yet somehow, this man, this magician, worked his wizardry, and when the August issue came out, I appeared to be a celestial being. An all-natural celestial being. Still don’t know how you did it. ”
Frankie remembered that issue. Karina was depicted as an angel because her album was titled Fallen Angel.
“It’s easy to make you look good,” Zion replied. “Your beauty transcends under-eye bags and hives. I just…airbrushed out the mortal bits.”
Karina, Lauren, Poppy, and Frankie lifted their glasses in cheers to that. Zion, who had finished off his drink, pretended to.
“Where’s Ben and Ryan?” Poppy asked.
Ben Stevens was Lauren’s husband and co-star on Home Sweet Home, and Ryan Jackson Perkins was Karina’s husband, Sue Ann Perkins’ (of Sue Ann’s Café) grandson and also in the music industry. He wasn’t a pop star. He began his career after meeting Karina and was more in the singer/songwriter lane.
Lauren, who somehow had managed to go through the entire event without a single wrinkle in her dress, sighed. “Ben and Ryan are on a guys’ fishing trip. I fear if Ryan tries to teach Ben how to fillet a trout, they’ll be in urgent care by midnight.”
“Which is why Lauren is my date tonight.” Karina hooked her arm through Lauren’s. “I’m keeping her mind off of impending medical emergencies.”
“It’s giving power couple energy,” Zion said, raising Frankie’s glass in another toast.
Karina grinned as she and Lauren looked at each other, clearly sharing an inside joke. “Don’t let Ryan hear you. He’s convinced we’re gonna end up on a reality show together. Homewreckers: The Musical. I even wrote a theme song.”
“Wait, Lauren, do you still actually sell real estate, or is it for TV?” Poppy asked.
She nodded. “No, I’m an agent. In fact, I just sold a place to someone in the wedding party.” She turned around and scanned the crowd, then pointed to the corner. “Liam.”
“That’s my brother!” Poppy replied, clearly excited for the connection. “I just want to apologize on his behalf, I am so sorry. He’s an amazing guy, but I know how difficult he can be.”
Lauren turned back around, her face giving nothing away.
“No, actually. He wasn’t. Not really. He didn’t care about anything most people do.
Location, bathrooms, bedrooms, square footage, lot size.
He only had one specification. A sunroom.
It had to have north-facing floor-to-ceiling windows—so lots of natural light—sealed cement floors, at least one brick wall, and it had to be at least five hundred square feet.
” She chuckled. “At first, I thought he was building a meth lab, but apparently it’s for art. ”
Frankie’s ears began to ring in the way they did whenever she stood up too quickly or received sudden, world-altering news. The first time she remembered it happening was when she heard her dad died. A high-pitched ringing began, and everyone’s voices sounded far away.
She stared at Lauren, trying to process Liam’s house-hunting journey.
She was desperately trying to make sense of the information she was given, putting each puzzle piece together, trying to click it into its place.
She separated and categorized every new fact into the always-evolving, increasingly-confusing file labeled, What the Fuck is Liam Thinking?
Zion, for his part, had gone completely still, glass paused halfway to his lips.
Lauren seemed to sense she’d dropped a mini-bomb in the group.
Perhaps trying to smooth things over, she tacked on a quick, “He’s actually a dream client.
Never haggled once, never played games. Very direct.
It was honestly refreshing. I wish every client I work with was like him.
” She shrugged, as if that explained why a man with all the emotional range of a robotic tax accountant had demanded a solarium built to the exact specifications Frankie used to sketch on the backs of her math tests and list out on the pages in all her Mead spiral notebooks.
Poppy, who’d been basking in the glow of her celebrity girl-crushes, blinked as her brain caught up to the conversation. “Wait. I’m confused, are you saying my brother literally bought his house for a sunroom?”
Lauren nodded as she clarified, “It was his only non-negotiable requirement, and wish list item. He said—and this is a direct quote—‘This is the only thing I want. If it doesn’t have this exact sunroom, then it could never be my home.’”
Her eyes bounced between Frankie, Poppy, and Zion, as if sensing she’d unlocked some subtext she couldn’t quite grasp and lacked the context to figure out.
After taking another sip of her prosecco, the bubbles making her lips glisten, she launched into the story fully, hands animated.
“Honestly, I thought it was a prank at first. That someone had put him up to it. A sunroom that size, with a brick wall, cement floors, and all north-facing windows?” Her eyes widened.
“That’s so specific. Who has a room like that in a residential dwelling?
It would be like winning the lottery. Or like stumbling upon a unicorn. ”
“Well, damn girl, neigh,” Zee reared his head back as he made a horse sound. “You need to change the town slogan to Hope Falls, where magic is real and miracles happen.”
Lauren pointed at Zion. “A miracle, yes! That’s exactly what I told Ben.
‘If I find this, it is divine intervention!” She refocused with a deep inhale, then exhale.
“I checked every listing in the valley and even pulled property records for stuff off-market. Nada. There were a few sunrooms, but none that were five hundred square foot, facing north with concrete floors and one brick wall, and I knew not to present him with anything less. From the first time I met him, I could see he was not a man who compromised.” She shrugged.
“So I told him I’d keep I’d keep my eyes open and let him know if anything came up.
Honestly, I never thought I’d speak to him again. ”
Frankie listened, her ears still ringing.
Lauren continued, “Then, about six months ago, the Hollis house came up for sale. Catherine Hollis messaged me and said she was retiring to Arizona and asked if I would be the listing agent. I’d never seen the house, and when I walked in, I nearly had a heart attack.
” She shook her head back and forth as a slow smile spread on her lips.
“I took a video, showing him the wall of brick, heated concrete floors, floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the koi pond with a waterfall, and the whole thing tucked under a cantilevered roof, it was perfect. I texted it to Liam. He replied, asking if it faced north. I said yes. He told me to offer ten thousand over the asking price. I asked him if he wanted to know what the price was, he said no. That was it. We were under contract by close of business the following day.”
Frankie’s mind reeled. Growing up, Liam had been her everything, but she’d never thought she was anything more to him than someone he tolerated.
Sure, she knew he found her fearlessness and bravery amusing, but never once did she think their relationship was anything more than her being infatuated with him, him tolerating her waddling around after him like a duckling, and her feelings being unreciprocated.
Lauren went on, warming to her narrative.
“Cathy said the sunroom wasn’t original to the house.
Her granddad built it himself in the sixties after he retired.
He was a carpenter, kind of a local legend—Wayne “The Hammer” Hollis.
He built this place, Mountain Ridge, well his company did.
He started out using the studio as his home workshop, but then his wife, Nancy, got sick.
Cancer. She couldn’t get outside much. So he converted the workshop to a sunroom for her, so that way she could sit there and watch the ducks on the pond. ”
The group was quiet for a moment, the kind of silence that ripples out when someone brings up a soft tragedy.