Chapter Five
Looking for a recommendation for a local-to-you builder who can remove my parents’ front steps and put in a wheelchair ramp.
They estimate my dad will clear physical rehab in three weeks.
I’m in Vermont, but I can do Zoom meetings because my mom has her hands full.
I know it’s a tight timeline. Thanks in advance!
First comment: They might be too busy but you won’t get many recs besides Slater & Sons Construction if you want local to Wayward Harbor.
—Wayward Harbor Online Community Group
Four days later, Nick stopped by the cottage during his lunch break to grab a list he’d left on the nightstand.
He thought he’d typed it into his phone, but that particular list of measurements he’d written on a notepad.
He tended to bounce between the two, knowing his life would be easier if he just chose between digital and analog, but old habits were hard to break.
As soon as he stepped through the door, he spotted Lucy on the couch. She’d been stretched out—wrapped in a blanket, of course—and she sat up immediately. Judging by her confusion, she’d been asleep.
“Oh, I must have nodded off,” she said over the sound of the television.
He wasn’t sure what she was watching, but a lot of rich women appeared to be yelling at each other about something. There was an empty bowl on the table, along with two candy bar wrappers and an open bag of chips.
Lucy was wallowing again.
A day or two of wallowing was one thing. Everybody needed to wallow once in a while, especially after a long drive that ended in disappointment. But Helen wasn’t going to be back for weeks and, at the rate she was going, Lucy would be one with the couch by then.
“Oh good, you’re up,” he said with a pointed look at the antique clock on the wall. It was purely decorative, but he made his point. “I have to do some errands, and you’re going to help me.”
Lucy clawed her way out of the blanket and then ran a hand over her hair. It didn’t help. “I don’t know what kind of errands builders do, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be very good at them.”
“Think of it like this—while Helen’s away, she rented the cottage to me in exchange for labor. The way I see it, since I’m the one who let you stay—because I’m a glutton for chaos, apparently—you’re also bound by that contract. So it’s time to get to work.”
“I think you’re underestimating how bad I am at building things, or anything DIY, really.”
“I didn’t say I was giving you a nail gun or a power saw.” He might be a glutton for chaos, but he wasn’t reckless. “Five minutes.”
She laughed. “Has anybody ever told you you’re very bossy?”
“I’m not only the oldest of four boys, but I run the company we all work for.
Being bossy is pretty much my entire personality at this point.
” He went into the bedroom and grabbed the list he needed from the nightstand.
Lucy was carrying her dishes to the sink when he passed back through the living room.
“I’ll wait for you outside. Four minutes. ”
She was laughing when he closed the door behind him, which probably didn’t bode well for her appearing anytime soon. He didn’t mind, though, because he really enjoyed her laugh. If it wasn’t so warm inside, he would have been tempted to stand in the living room and count down the minutes.
But he was wearing one of the newer Slater & Sons Construction hoodies, and he didn’t care what Beck said, they weren’t the same fabric. The one he was wearing didn’t breathe as well, and he overheated too easily.
Fifteen minutes later, he had regrets. He’d left the jobsite intending to grab the list, hit the hardware store, and then go straight back to work.
Now he was waiting for Lucy. Again. And, unless he wanted to bring her to work with him—which he did not—he’d have to bring her back to the cottage after.
At the twenty minute mark, he was about to get in his truck and leave without her, but then she stepped out onto the front porch.
Wearing his sweatshirt.
Why did seeing this woman wearing his hoodie make him want to pull her into his arms? His fingers practically itched to slide up under the fabric and glide over her bare skin.
“I said five minutes,” he said gruffly, trying to muster irritation to douse the heat pounding through his veins. “Not five minutes times four.”
“I decided jeans were a better choice,” she said cheerfully, ignoring his scowl as she climbed into his truck. “And then I thought it might get warm enough so I want to take the sweatshirt off, so I had to put a shirt under it.”
He did not need to think about what she was or was not wearing under the hoodie. “Riding in the truck doesn’t require a wardrobe change.”
Lucy just laughed and turned away to watch the waves breaking over the rocks as he navigated along the shoreline.
It was worth losing time on the job to hear her laugh. It worried him when she hid away in the blankets because he hadn’t known her all that long, but he thought she was generally a positive, upbeat person.
Sure, she’d been let down by every single person who mattered to her, but she was here now. Even if she couldn’t get a hug yet, she had Helen.
And she had Nick. He hadn’t asked for Lucy to barge into his life, and he wasn’t sure exactly what to do with her, but he wasn’t the kind of guy who could sit back and do nothing while a person needed a hand up.
“So where are we going, anyway?” she asked when they reached the outskirts of town.
“The hardware store. Unfortunately, due to economic reality, we have to buy the bulk of our supplies from the box stores in the city, but we always end up needing random things, and we get those from Smith’s Hardware.”
“And is the owner a Smith?”
“Yes, but—” He paused while navigating a particularly tight turn.
It was so fun living in a quaint historic town with brick structures built while they were still designing roads for horses.
“He’s not from around here. Back in the sixties, I guess, the Smith who was the third generation to own the hardware store decided to sell.
Don Smith owned a small, struggling hardware store a little ways inland.
He decided to sell his, and when he bought our Smith’s, he didn’t have to change the sign. ”
“That was very practical of him. A good quality in a business owner.”
Nick parked and made sure he had the list before turning the engine off. “Are you going to wait here or go in?”
“I’m not going to sit in the truck while you do all the work.”
He was about to tell her going inside and grabbing a few things wasn’t exactly work, but she was already out of the truck.
Smith’s Hardware was a sprawling old building with multiple rooms and wooden floors that squeaked. It had almost anything a person could need, but good luck finding it. Don, though, knew where almost everything was in the layers of merchandise that was organized mainly by decade.
The fact it took so long to get to one of the big box stores—a time that could be doubled or even tripled by tourist traffic during the summer—and being able to dig up a fitting for a washing machine from the 1990s kept him in business.
“Oh wow,” Lucy breathed as she stepped into the dim, cool interior of the building. “There is literally everything here. Like, if you have a leaf blower, scented candles and a baking pan on your list, this is the place to go.”
“Feel free to look around while I take care of this.”
She actually looked offended. “I’m not shopping on company time. Lead the way.”
Nick clenched his jaw and headed for the counter, where Don was chatting with a couple of old-timers. He’d been joking when he told Lucy she was bound by his agreement with Helen, but maybe she’d missed that.
To be fair, he was probably frowning at the time. According to her, he did that a lot.
“Mornin’,” Don said as the other two guys wandered off to poke around the dusty back shelves. “Who’s this with you today?”
“I’m Lucy. I work for Nick.”
“You don’t work for me.” He looked at Don. “She doesn’t work for me.”
“You said—”
“Lucy’s Helen’s granddaughter. She’s visiting for a while and wanted to get out of the house.”
“Ah.” Don nodded slowly, but his expression when he looked at Lucy told Nick he’d heard all about it already. “Welcome back.”
“Thank you.”
Before Don could ask any not-so-subtle questions that might earn him some gossip currency, Nick slid the list across the counter. “I just need to grab a few things.”
* * *
It felt good to be out and about, Lucy admitted to herself while Nick dropped the tailgate and threw his purchases in the bed of the truck.
It was so easy to put on the TV or pick up a book and sink into the comforting pile of throw blankets. Being disconnected from social media left a lot of open space in her time, but she needed to find better ways to fill it than napping.
As she looked around, she could see the corner of the market down the block. “I know you have to get back, but would you mind if I walk over to the market really quick and grab a few things?”
He closed the tailgate with a thud that didn’t mask his exasperated sigh. “Be quicker to drive over.”
“True. But it’s not as windy today and it’s almost warm.”
“Fine. We’ll walk.”
“I can find my way, seeing as how I can literally see the building from here.”
He looked at her in a way that suggested he was considering how to phrase what he wanted to say. “It’ll be faster if we both go.”
Lucy laughed because it was very clear he thought she’d wander off to window-shop or take too long squeezing the produce.
Nick didn’t hurry her, though, as they walked down the sidewalk side by side. She noted the businesses they passed, but soon became distracted by a large ginger cat shadowing them on the other side of the street. Every time she stopped, the cat stopped.
“What are you doing?” Nick demanded the third time she stopped walking to test her theory.
“Playing with that cat over there. It’s stalking us, and every time I stop, it stops.”
When she pointed across the street, he nodded. “That’s Dolly. She’s the town cat.”