The Cottage Next Door (2 page)

Chapter Two

D
IANA STOOD ON
the front porch of the beach house next door to Cheryl and Andrew’s cottage and peered through the open door. “Hello?”

The construction worker she’d imagined earlier pulled aside a plastic tarp hanging from the ceiling at the back of the house. Her jaw dropped in surprise. It was as if her older brother, Brian, had been cloned.

“Can I help you?” he asked, acknowledging her peculiar reaction with a puzzled frown.

“I’m staying over there—­” She pointed toward Andrew’s house. “There’s this dog that seems to be lost and I was wondering if you might know who she belongs to.” She thought a second. “At least I think it’s a ‘she.’ Or it could be a ‘he.’ To be honest, I didn’t look.”

“What kind of dog?” he asked in a way that suggested he already knew.

“About so tall—­” She indicated knee-­high. “Light reddish brown. Friendly. Floppy ears. Mixed breed.” As if on cue, the dog appeared at Diana’s side, its tail shifting into high gear at the sight of the man.

He wiped his hands on his jeans and followed a paper path to the front door. “She’s mine.” He crouched down and cupped the dog’s muzzle, forcing her to look at him. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

As deflated as a football in a playoff game, she dropped her head and let out a soft whine. Contradicting the contrite posture, her tail never stopped swinging.

He offered Diana an apologetic smile. “She’s looking for my daughter and your cousin Bobby. The three of them have been constant companions this summer and she doesn’t understand why they’ve seemingly abandoned her. I hate to tie her up, but it looks like I’m going to have to.”

“Does she always come to work with you?” There was a missing piece to this puzzle.

“Only when my daughter Shiloh is in school or staying with someone. Coconut accepts me, but she’s really Shiloh’s dog.” He gave Coconut’s floppy ears a final scratch, stood, and steered the dog toward the room behind the tarp.

“How did you know who I—­” She made a dismissive wave. “Never mind—­I know. Cheryl told you I was coming.”

He smiled. “Not just me. Everyone in the cove has been told to be on the lookout for you.”

“Sounds like something my mother would do.” While it didn’t thrill her to know she was being watched, her mother would rest easier.

He held out his hand. “Jeremy Richmond—­permanent resident of Santa Cruz, transient here in the cove until I’ve finished rebuilding this kitchen.”

“Diana Wagnor—­possible permanent resident of Santa Cruz, depending on how my new job works out. But after looking at the real estate flyer I picked up last night, I can say without hesitation that I’m a temporary resident of the cove.” The price of a bungalow half the size of the house she’d burned to the ground in Topeka cost ten times as much in the cove; she could only imagine the rental price. What appeared to be an ordinary house that also had an ocean view, but was in another part of the city, would buy the Governor’s Mansion sitting on five hundred acres back home.

“I meant to stop by last night to introduce myself and Shiloh, but it didn’t work out.”

“I’m sorry I missed her.” She looked around the tarp-­covered living room. “I love construction projects. Would you mind showing me what you’re doing? I happen to be one of those obnoxious home improvement junkies.”

“Right now there’s not a lot to see beyond a gutted room and a set of plans.” He moved to the side to make room for her to step onto the paper that covered the hardwood floor. “Are you into the
This Old House
kind of home improvement, or the rebuild a three-­thousand-­square-­foot house in a weekend kind?”

She laughed. “You’re talking to a woman whose first crush was on Norm Abram. I was devastated when
The New Yankee Workshop
was canceled.”

“Then you should appreciate what Julia has hired me to do in this kitchen remodel.”

“Julia’s the homeowner?”

He reached around her to move aside the hanging tarp. “To her it’s more than a home. It’s a love affair.”

Diana went to the newly installed triple-­paned window and looked outside. If this were her home, she’d never use the dishwasher, not when she could stand at a sink with such a view. “You have the perfect job.”

“Why’s that?”

“Building houses and doing it here.”

“I do more rebuilding than building nowadays. The last house I built from the foundation up was a dozen years ago.” He rolled out the kitchen plans on a sawhorse table. “This is the second time I’ve worked on this house. And the first time on any project I’ve done that I’m glad to get a chance at a do-­over.”

Diana held her hands behind her and looked at the plans. “In what way are you glad?”

“The first go-­round was top-­of-­the-­line everything, and wound up too modern and too flashy. The style didn’t fit a hundred-­year-­old house. It needed a ceramic farm sink, not stainless steel, and a subway tile backsplash, not gray and blue art glass. Then there was a leak that did major water damage and Julia got to start over. It took a year of planning and scheduling, but we finally got together.”

Coconut came on point, stood with her head cocked for several seconds, then bent down to crawl under the tarp, her tail whipping around like a lopsided helicopter blade.

“Where is everyone?” A deep male voice came from the direction of the front door.

“Excuse me,” Jeremy said to Diana. “That’s Michael with my lunch.”

Even though it was too much of a coincidence, her first impulse was to ask, “Michael Williams?”

He nodded before he pushed aside the tarp. Diana caught a glimpse of the man she’d be working with at the galleries for the next month—­until Peter, the artist who owned the galleries, returned from Europe. She still wasn’t sure whether she was working “with” or “for” Michael, only that he was in charge of the day-­to-­day operation and would be able to answer her bookkeeping questions.

She moved so that she could see him better through the slit in the opening Jeremy left behind. She guessed Michael to be around her age, give or take a year or so. He was the same height as Jeremy, with black wavy hair and dark green eyes that appeared to be flecked with brown, and reminded her of the boys she’d grown up with in Kansas who worked on their family cattle ranches. Their bodies were hard and lean, their physical abilities exhibited in a quiet confidence and in the self-­assured way they moved. Wearing low-­slung jeans and a blue tee shirt with a whale fading into oblivion, Michael had an enigmatic look about him that said he’d be as comfortable straddling a Harley as sitting behind the wheel of a Ferrari.

It was tempting to think Peter wouldn’t leave his business in the hands of someone incompetent, but it wasn’t unheard of for family ties to trump good sense. More than one son had run his father’s business into bankruptcy.

Jeremy took the white bag and pointed to the box. “What’s this?”

M
ICHAEL
W
ILLIAMS ST
RAIGHTENED
from petting Coconut, who immediately moved to sit on his foot and look up at him adoringly. “You should have known I couldn’t pick up your lunch without getting Shiloh one of her favorite chocolate cookies. Because I was feeling generous, there’s a macaroon in there for you.”

“You spoil her, Michael.” Jeremy took the box and put it on a plastic-­covered dining room table. “And me. I’ll make sure she gets this tonight.”

“Is she with Rosa?” The question was a form of code between them, and didn’t require an answer. Rosa was the visiting nurse who stayed with Shiloh when she wasn’t doing well.

Michael had known Jeremy and Shiloh for almost ten years, starting the summer his mother married Peter Wylie, and Peter hired Jeremy to add a bedroom to his house.

The bonds he’d formed with Shiloh when she was two years old and he was nineteen were accidental. The only toddler he’d had anything to do with up to then was his uncle’s little girl. She was a holy terror who’d poured a soda over the keyboard of his laptop when the sound wouldn’t work on her favorite movie,
Finding Nemo
.

Figuring all kids that age were alike, Michael did everything possible to stay away from Shiloh, even questioning his mother’s sanity for taking on her care when she and Peter had just come home from their honeymoon.

But Shiloh had a way about her that shattered his defenses. He became her favorite, the one she went to with outstretched arms when she needed comforting, the one whose hand she reached for when they went to the beach to look for seashells, the one she clung to at the doctor’s office whenever her lupus came back like a ferocious wounded lion and left her in excruciating pain.

She became the sister he’d never had. He became her defender, fiercely protective and at times insanely angry at a mother who had decided she wasn’t cut out to be the parent of a child with a life-­threatening illness.

After a year of withdrawing both emotionally and physically, Shiloh’s mother had abandoned her adopted daughter and Jeremy, leaving Jeremy with a critically ill two-­year-­old who just weeks earlier had been diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus, an incurable, complicated, and multifaceted disease. Without help to care for her, Jeremy told his clients that he was not going to be able to finish the jobs he’d started, and promised he would put them in touch with other contractors and reimburse them for their losses as soon as he was able.

That was when Michael’s mother stepped in, becoming a surrogate mother to Shiloh and a layman expert on children with SLE for Jeremy.

Jeremy ran his hand through his hair, dislodging bits of sawdust. “It’s her knees again. She said she was feeling great, but that Rosa needed company because the rest of her family was in Mexico.”

It was all Jeremy needed to say. Michael had gone through years of Shiloh’s bouts of severe joint pain, making a game out of carrying her on his back when it hurt too much for her to walk by herself. He’d never told anyone, but Shiloh was instrumental in his decision to attend the University of California, Santa Cruz, rather than Berkeley for his undergraduate degree in marine biology, and the real reason he’d come home to run the galleries every summer when he’d moved to San Diego to get his master’s degree.

Coconut shifted to Michael’s other foot and leaned against his leg, tilting up her muzzle for a scratch. “She must be going nuts without either of the kids around.”

“She sneaked out earlier and went next door. Diana saw her and thought she was either lost or abandoned.” At Michael’s confused expression, Jeremy added, “Your new accountant? The one who’s staying in Cheryl and Andrew’s house?”

Michael felt a look bordering on panic cross his face. “She wasn’t supposed to be here until next week.” He stared at the ceiling and let out a groan of frustration. “I guess I should go over and introduce myself.”

“No need. She’s in the kitchen.”

“
Shit,
” Michael said under his breath. Having her show up a week early was the last thing he needed.

Chapter Three

I
F J
OB PROFILING
still existed—­one of those ancient social mores where everyone automatically assumed a doctor was male and the owner of a day care business was female—­Michael stepped into the cliché with both feet when Jeremy introduced him to Diana Wagnor. He stared at her in tongue-­tied disbelief. She was not what he’d imagined a woman who made her living balancing checkbooks and tracking invoices would look like.

Embarrassed by how readily he’d stereotyped her, automatically expecting a younger version of Hester Savage, the sixty-­three-­year-­old woman who’d kept the books for Peter since he’d opened his first gallery twenty years ago, Michael mentally filed it away under lessons learned. Not that he was disappointed she was a Jennifer Lawrence double. Powerful, confident women defined sexy in his personal dictionary. Give him a woman who looked as if she could take on an army with a bow and a quiver full of arrows, and he was hers.

“Hi—­Diana Wagnor,” she said, coming forward and shaking his hand. “I’m early, but I figured it would be helpful if I got a feel for the town and ­people before I jumped in.”

“First time in California?” Michael asked.

She nodded. “First time I’ve seen an ocean.” A broad smile accompanied the statement. “I’m impressed.”

“Michael Williams,” he said, liking that she shook his hand, and not just his fingers, and captivated by a smile that lit her entire face. “That makes us even. Kind of. I’ve never been to Kansas.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. It’s one of those states most ­people only see from the air.”

Michael looked around at what had been a kitchen a month ago, noting the new lumber on the outside wall. “Couldn’t save any of the old stuff?” he said to Jeremy.

“There were only two studs that I felt confident using so I decided to go with all new, and save what I could for that section of decking that needs replacing.”

“So what’s next?”

“The electrician is coming this afternoon to put in a new ser­vice panel and run another line for the lights Julia wants over the island. In the meantime I have to try to track down the contractor who picked up my tile by accident and then took off on vacation to Mexico.”

“Which sounds like my cue to get out of here and let you get to it.”

“I’d like to try to catch him before he’s so far in the country that he loses cell ser­vice.”

Diana moved toward the tarp. “Would it be all right if I came over once in awhile to see how it’s going? I promise not to take up too much of your time.”

“Come over anytime. And I’m sorry about Coconut bugging you. I’ll leave her home tomorrow.”

“Oh, please don’t. If it’s okay with you and Shiloh, I’d like to take her running with me while I’m staying at the cottage. I could use the company.”

Michael looked at Jeremy and rolled his eyes. “I’m going to have to figure out how that dog wraps everyone she meets around that big hairy paw of hers.”

“Going to take lessons?” Jeremy leaned against the doorframe.

“Hell, yes.” Michael headed toward his car, then stopped, feeling guilty about not being more welcoming to Diana. There was no way she could know how much more complicated she’d made his life by showing up a week early. “Are you hungry?”

“I don’t know. I’m still on Kansas time.” She looked at her watch.

“And?”

She flashed such an enthusiastic smile that it compounded his guilt.

“Turns out I am,” she said.

Jeremy laughed. “Smooth, Michael. By the way, thanks for the cookies. Shiloh will be sorry she missed you.”