Chapter Two
Bethany stared down at the paperwork spread across her bed.
Every time she started to gather up the construction permits, she dropped them again and paced instead.
It was now or never. Put up or shut up. Shit or get off the pot.
If she waited any longer to commence her solo flip, people were going to grow suspicious. They might not peg Bethany as a coward, but they were going to keep asking questions. A couple of months ago, she’d announced to the family that she would be striking out on her own, since Stephen refused to let her run a solo flip.
They’d been aghast. And she would be lying if she said that hadn’t shaken her already shaky confidence.
Bethany understood their desire to maintain the status quo. After all, she kept everything, from her thoughts to her sports bras, in neat little categorized compartments. It was a family trait and she’d been given the biggest dose of control freakitude.
So why was flipping a house alone so important to her?
Why had she made such a massive issue of the whole thing?
Why not stick to staging, a practice in which she was actually skilled?
Bethany sat down on the floor and arranged herself in a meditative position. She rested the backs of her hands on her knees and breathed in deeply, desperately trying to exhale the stress of what she needed to do this morning.
Visualize.
See yourself walking across the street where Brick & Morty have already banged the company’s signature sign into the front lawn and started demo.
See it happening and then do it.
Wes Daniels’s smirk appeared in her head and she fell backward onto a cloud of fluffy white carpet with a groan. The younger man always seemed to make it his mission to needle her until her cool, calm, and collected demeanor faltered. His presence was going to make this already-terrifying morning worse.
“Why?” She scratched at the spot on her neck. “Why am I doing this to myself?”
She knew the answer, but her moment of courage had been buried by the passage of time. Making her forget the tingling sensation in her belly, the scary excitement of deciding to test herself. Yes, she was a great stager. Yes, it was still something she enjoyed, but . . . did she have to remain in one lane forever?
Staying low to the ground, Bethany got on her hands and knees and crawled to her bedroom window, peeking over the sill at the house across the street. In the short amount of time since the crew arrived, there were already tools strewn across the lawn, a sawhorse in the driveway, noise. So much noise.
Construction was not neat.
She’d been an idiot to visualize herself with a perfect ponytail and high-waisted jeans, sashaying her way into a fixer-upper and demolishing walls in style. Real life was not HGTV. There was no thirty-second take of the host burying an ax in a wall before the director yelled “Cut!” and the real crew took over again. When she headed her own flip, she would be making all the decisions, doing all the work.
And it might turn out less than perfect.
It might turn out terrible.
Bethany turned away from the window and leaned back against the wall, pressing her fingers tightly to the center of her forehead and breathing, in and out. In and out. Maybe it was time to talk to a therapist. Knowing one’s worst faults didn’t mean one could fix them alone.
Bethany was a prime example of that.
When she was thirteen, she’d bought a pair of uncomfortable Mary Janes with a wedge heel. Her mother had warned her not to wear them to school without breaking them in first. Had she listened? No. But she’d come home with a smile on her face, danced up the stairs, and closed herself inside her bedroom—before falling to the floor with a gasp of pain and prying off the shoes to reveal twin, bleeding blisters. Then she’d bandaged them up and worn the shoes again the following day.
She was one stubborn bitch. And the thing she was most stubborn about was always, without fail, getting everything just right.
If this flip ended up less than amazing, she wouldn’t be able to slap a Band-Aid on it. She’d have to face everyone’s inevitable disappointment. She’d have to watch the dawning realization on their faces that she wasn’t perfect.
It took Bethany a few more bracing breaths to climb to her feet. She stood in the center of her room for a moment, the crisp, white décor and tasteful Tiffany picture frames making her feel slightly more in control.
Well.
If she was going to make a statement this morning, she’d better look good doing it. With a resolve she didn’t necessarily feel, Bethany threw back her shoulders and marched into her walk-in closet, silk robe fluttering in her wake.
Wes paused with the water bottle halfway to his lips, eyebrows lifting at the sight of Bethany crossing the street. With a runway walk like that, the woman was on some kind of mission. He couldn’t help but take a moment to appreciate being in the presence of a living, breathing goddess, because soon enough, she was sure to rain down holy hell on somebody’s head. Probably mine.
To Wes, the nonstop contention between him and Bethany was foreplay. Plain and simple. But the more time that passed, the more he was starting to think that Bethany was on a different wavelength. One that didn’t include them sweating it out between the sheets. Which, Lord, he’d been fantasizing about daily and nightly since jump street.
Based on the information he’d been able to glean via Travis, who took pride in having the gossip through his fiancée, Bethany wasn’t the kind of woman who took part in a fling. Until recently, she’d been interested in the whole relationship thing, but with the inception of the Just Us League, she’d gone on a man hiatus. So even if Wes was in Port Jefferson for the long haul, his chances were slim.
His slim chances might also be due to the addictive vitriol they’d developed, but stopping was easier said than done. At this point, he couldn’t very well show up on her doorstep with a dozen long-stemmed roses and tell her she was the most breathtaking woman he’d ever met.
She’d roundhouse him in the nuts.
They were halfway through October, but nobody would guess it based on the way Bethany was dressed. She was wearing a white strapless tube top tucked into a long, flowing skirt with some kind of girly flower pattern on it. Her hair was down, curled a little, and blowing in the wind, showing off her pretty neck.
“Hell,” he muttered, shaking his head. The woman’s brother was no more than ten feet away, but even that wasn’t enough to stop Wes from appreciating the shake of her tits, the way her skirt’s thin material outlined her swaying hips.
There was nothing, nothing, more beautiful than what he was looking at right now. His palms started to perspire inside his work gloves, a fireball of lust lighting up and starting to spin in his belly. He’d been the one to wake up early this morning, instead of Laura, anticipating the extra chances to see Bethany. Be in her environment. Maybe even speak with her, get a rise out of her with a joke about their age difference, make her blush or her blue eyes flash. It got his blood moving like nothing else. Not even the danger of a sold-out Saturday-night rodeo.
Bethany Castle. The ultimate thrill ride.
It shouldn’t excite him to see her so determined to shake up their orderly construction zone, but hell, did it ever. Come on then, darlin’. Don’t hold back.
When she reached the door’s threshold, Wes leaned a hip against the wall and did his best to look bored, when in reality, his senses were sharpened like the tip of a number-two pencil before a test.
Bethany breezed through the opening left by the missing front door, and the cacophony of male voices and Sheetrock mutilation ceased. Her scent, an expensive mixture of tea and flowers, reached him through the cloud of sawdust, sending a rippling tightness through his abdomen. She was holding a manila envelope in her right hand and he caught the slightest tremor pass through her fingers before she crossed her arms over her chest.
“Hey, Beth,” Stephen called from the back of the house, his voice growing closer as he progressed to where they were standing, swiping a wrist across his sweaty forehead. “You need something? It’s a little early for measurements, isn’t it? We’ve barely finished gutting the place.” Bethany’s brother gestured to the carnage surrounding his work boots. “Won’t need couches for a while.”
Wes heard her long intake of breath. Did it . . . hitch there in the middle?
He narrowed his eyes.
There had been some tension between Bethany and Stephen since Wes had arrived in Port Jefferson. Without appearing too interested, he’d managed to gather a little intel from Travis and knew Bethany was looking to forsake the family business and strike out on her own, leading to the siblings being at odds. But it didn’t get in the way of their jobs and they still shared a wisecrack on occasion, so he’d let the whole notion of a rift fall by the wayside.
That said, he definitely caught the flash in Bethany’s eyes when Stephen reduced her job to couches.
Not that he would ever let on that he paid such close attention, but he’d seen one of the finished houses put up for sale by Brick & Morty. The men might be responsible for the heavy lifting, but Bethany’s staging sold the damn place. She worked a certain magic that turned a place from four empty walls to a . . . lifestyle. God, that sounded uppity as shit, but it was true. She created a better version of whatever life buyers were leading and made them envision themselves within it, almost like a challenge. Even Wes had been compelled to up his decorating game, so he’d brought Laura to Target and came home with an area rug, two new lamps, and a pumpkin pie–scented candle.
He’d lie about that under oath.
Bottom line, he didn’t appreciate the way Bethany’s big brother had whittled it all down to couches. More like couches, paint color, shelving, storage, character. He bit down hard on his bottom lip to stop himself from speaking up. The inner workings of the Castle family was none of his business. He was an extra in a movie that would continue long after he’d gone back to Texas.
Trying to ignore the sweep of disquiet in his chest, Wes focused on Bethany. There was something off about her today and it was making him extra reckless. Her usual composure was there, but it was on the blink. Coming and going, as if she could only hang on to it for a moment, before it slipped away.
There. She found her confidence, firming her shoulders and pinning Stephen with a look. “I’m not going to need measurements for this flip.” She pried the paperwork from where she’d stuffed it beneath her arm, then promptly shoved it back into place. “My permits arrived for the project across town, so . . . that’s it. I’m going to begin work on it next week.”
Stephen cocked an eyebrow. “You can’t do both?”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I want to give this job my whole focus.” She shrugged a shoulder. “And if you think it’s just a matter of picking out couches, get Kristin to do it.”
The oldest Castle paled a little. Not surprising. Stephen’s wife was slightly unbalanced and even she knew it. If Kristin was put in charge of staging, she would probably do a horrific job on purpose, just so Stephen would have to hurt her feelings, giving her an opportunity to milk his guilt afterward.
Men and women and their mind games. Hell, he despised that shit, and yet, look at him and Bethany. They danced around each other with insults, making a big show of being incompatible when Christ knew that was the furthest thing from the truth.
Wes knew what incompatible looked like. Hell, he grew up in foster care. He could probably write a book about the way people could make each other unhappy. In the epilogue, he’d let everyone know he’d never be one of them.
Yes, sir. He would be shackle-free forever.
But Stephen almost seemed to enjoy those shackles and the mind games his wife inflicted. A damned confusing anomaly, to be sure.
“Bethany.” Stephen sighed. “Be reasonable about this.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’ve known about this since the beginning of fall. I’m sorry if you didn’t take me seriously enough to plan accordingly.”
Stephen’s nostrils flared, his silence in the wake of Bethany’s barb making the crew shift nervously. “I would have taken you seriously if the permits hadn’t been issued weeks ago.”
Bethany jolted and dropped the envelope, sending paperwork spewing out onto the ground. She bent down to pick it up quickly, those tremors back in her fingers. “Go to hell, Stephen,” she muttered under her breath. “You shouldn’t have been checking up on me with your friends at the permit office.”
Wes noticed that Stephen looked regretful over what he’d said, but Wes was more concerned about Bethany. What the hell did Stephen mean, she’d gotten the permits weeks ago? Why would she wait this long to start the job? Or even say anything?
She straightened with red cheeks and Wes ground his back teeth together.
Whatever was going on here, he didn’t like it. Sure, he got a rise out of her once in a while, but she always hit back. Bethany didn’t get shaken up like this.
“Come on, Beth.” Stephen sighed again. “Where are you going to get a crew by next week? Let me finish here and I’ll reschedule my next job so I can help you out.”
Her laugh was short. “By help out, you mean take over.”
Stephen didn’t bother denying it. “We’re heading into winter in a few months. You’re not going to find anyone good who’s looking for a gig that short. Trust me. Everyone worth a damn is already in this room.” He gestured to his sister. “Including you.”
“Oh, come on, jackass,” she returned. “Don’t backpedal now. You were doing so well at being condescending.”
Wes breathed a little easier with her tone back to normal, but his optimism dipped again when he saw how tightly she was holding the envelope. Her gaze flitted over to him and the color of her cheeks deepened another shade.
Shit.
Was it possible she’d put off starting the flip because she was nervous? That didn’t track, considering what he knew about Bethany and her ball-buster nature. But his eyes were telling him a different story altogether. She was vulnerable in front of the entire crew right now, and her throat seemed to be stuck in a permanent state of swallowing. A lot like his own.
Shit.
“I’m going with her,” Wes said, stripping off his gloves.
Someone dropped a sledgehammer in the back of the house.
“W-wait. What?” Stephen sputtered. “Now?”
“Yup.” He finally made eye contact with a stupefied Bethany. “We better get a game plan together and start rounding up materials.”
She couldn’t seem to land on a response. “I . . . I . . .”
“You what?”
“I mean, this is all very Renée Zellweger in Jerry Maguire of you, but . . .”
He knew exactly which scene from Jerry Maguire she was referring to—when Tom Cruise quits his fancy sports agent job and Renée is the only one who joins him, even though he’s been reduced to stealing the office goldfish—but Bethany needed to know accepting his help wouldn’t change anything between them. Otherwise she might turn him down, and he got a weird pinch in his throat when he thought of her all alone, trying to install drywall without breaking a nail. “Jerry Maguire? Never heard of it. That one of your generation’s black-and-white films or something?”
That spark zipped back into her eyes and relief caused a hitch in his chest. “Apologies. I should have referenced Fast & Furious Nine.”
He bit back a smile. “You ready to go yet?”
She seemed to remember everyone was watching them and started chewing on that sexy bottom lip. “I’m thinking.”
“Bethany,” Stephen cut in. “You’re really going to come up in here and steal one of my best guys—”
“Thanks, pal,” Wes said, tipping an invisible hat.
“What do you think Dad is going to say about this?” Stephen finished.
“Really?” Bethany intoned. “‘I’m telling Dad’? Are we back in the station wagon driving to Hershey Park when we were eight?”
Face slightly red, Stephen looked over his shoulder at the men behind him. “I only meant it’s going to stress him out, us moving in separate directions. We’re supposed to be one team.”
“Well, you know what they say, Stephen,” Bethany said breezily. “There’s no asshole in team.”
Wes coughed a laugh into his fist.
Bethany caught him, her lips jumping at one corner before she sobered. “Before I agree to anything”—she shot a look at their audience and moved closer to Wes, lowering her voice—“I think we should try and get through a planning-stage meeting first. You know, just to confirm we can actually do it.”
He matched her quiet tone. “I was thinking the same thing. We should do it first. Cut the tension.”
“I can hear you,” Stephen wailed.
“You know what I mean,” Bethany snapped under her breath, all worked up and beautiful. So close he could taste the expensive coffee she’d drank that morning in the air between them. “If we can get through a meeting without biting each other’s heads off, then we’ll consider working together.”
“We’re just going to pretend you have other options, huh?”
She blinked and drew in a deep breath. “Are we having a meeting or not?”
Sharpness jabbed him in the middle. “Yeah.”
His answer surprised her, but she only let him see it for a second, before she turned on a sandaled heel with a hair flip. “Stephen, if you bring this up at the rehearsal dinner and ruin the evening, I’ll castrate you. As you were, boys.” She stopped at the door to glance back at Wes and he held his breath. “Meet you at the house.”