Build it Strong (The Ballard Brothers of Darling Bay Book 2) Read online

  Build it Strong

  Rachael Herron

  HGA Publishing

  Contents

  Join the Fun!

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Epilogue

  About Rachael

  Keep Reading

  The Darling Songbirds

  Join the Fun!

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  Chapter 1

  A

  idan couldn’t have been in a blacker mood if the earth had stopped rotating, leaving California’s coast in perpetual darkness. He pulled up in front of the old Callahan house with a roar of tires, a spray of gravel, and an attitude that could strip paint.

  The woman had chosen the wrong damn house.

  And it was all Liam’s fault.

  A cameraperson waved jauntily from the porch, but Aidan ignored him.

  He got out of his truck. When he strapped on his tool belt, his scowl was so deep it actually hurt his jaw.

  His brother came out onto the porch. “Hurry up!” Liam slapped at his watch. “You’re twenty minutes late.”

  Who cared? Aidan sure didn’t. “The Golden Spike was crowded.”

  “And you couldn’t get your coffee to go just once.”

  Aidan shook his head. “I like to sit at the counter in the morning. You know that.”

  “I know you jawjack with the old guys like you’re seventy.”

  “Is she here?”

  “Tuesday?”

  “Whatever the hell her dumb day-of-the-week name is.”

  Liam folded his arms over his fancy pinstriped shirt that probably cost a hell of lot more than Aidan’s three-for-ten-dollars T-shirt had. “You sure woke up with your pants on cranky.”

  Cranky? Understatement of the century. Aidan was mad as hell. “Yeah?”

  “Seriously, you have to keep that attitude off camera.”

  Aidan rested his hand on his favorite hammer as if he were a sheriff with his hand on his holster. “It’ll make the show spicier, don’t you think?”

  “No, I think it’ll make us look like a bunch of country-yokel jackasses.”

  “Whatever. Let’s just get the filming over with.”

  Liam blocked Aidan from entering the house with his body. “I’m not kidding. Pull it together. I don’t care how you feel about this house. It’s hers now.”

  That was the whole goddamn problem. This house—this old, perfect, wonderful, gorgeous beast of a house—belonged to someone who wasn’t Aidan. To a woman who was coming in from the outside. “I was going to buy it. You know I was.”

  Liam winced. “And I wanted you to. But your bid wasn’t accepted.”

  “You could have made sure it was.”

  “You would have had to outbid her big time.”

  Aidan had only had enough in savings for a small down payment. If he’d sold his condo in time, he could have probably outbid her. “Yeah, well, I would have needed you to sell my condo for me.”

  Liam bristled. “You would have needed to make that decision about two months earlier.”

  “I’m supposed to know the future?”

  “Besides, the seller chose her.”

  Aidan’s jaw tightened. “The seller is LouAnn Callahan’s ungrateful cousin who never even came to town to look at the place, and you’re the broker. You should have pulled some strings. It was my dream.” The words felt like gravel in his throat. He shouldn’t have to say this to his brother. Liam knew.

  “I know. Does it help that you still get to work on it?”

  “Seriously?” An outsider would tell him what kind of crappy tiles she wanted. He’d have to build an in-house sauna or something else just as ridiculous for her. It would all happen on film, with the television cameras rolling. She’d be the customer and she’d have to be right. About everything. Then he and his brothers would hand over her key at the end of this episode of On the Market. He’d never have another chance at owning the place he’d loved since he was ten.

  From the entryway, the cameraperson named Anna called, “Hey guys, the light is coming into the kitchen perfectly. Let’s catch this.”

  “We’re coming,” Liam said over his shoulder. Then he said to Aidan, “Get a grip. I mean it.”

  Aidan rubbed a hand over his mouth. He tried on a half-smile, but it didn’t fit his face.

  Liam shook his head. “You look like you’re about to chew off someone’s leg.”

  “It’s going to be yours, if you don’t get out of my way.”

  Inside, it was chaos. The living room was full of light poles aimed toward the group standing in the dining room. Extension cords coiled over every inch of floor.

  “Powder, sir?” A kid who couldn’t have been more than nineteen tried to wave a brush in his face, but she ran away when Aidan scowled.

  A complete stranger tugged at Aidan’s T-shirt and adjusted his tool belt while another person stuck a mic pack into the back of Aidan’s pants. “I feel violated,” he said, but no one was paying the slightest bit of attention to him.

  “Rolling,” someone yelled.

  Liam waved him into the kitchen. “Aidan, I want you to meet our client. This is Tuesday Willis.”

  The woman was medium height with a medium build. She had medium brown hair that was medium length and the medium brown eyes to match. She wore cat-eye black glasses that were probably in fashion but which really served to make her look like a librarian. There was nothing remarkable about her except the fact that she’d stolen Aidan’s house right out from underneath him. She might have been tolerably pretty if Aidan hadn’t despised her so much already. But hell, the more he hated her, the less chance she’d choose him to date during the renovation. If Aidan did his job right, there was a one-hundred percent chance she would choose Jake as her on-screen date-night target.

  She smiled.

  Aidan didn’t.

  Her handshake was firm, but clammy.

  Liam said, “Tuesday, this is my brother Aidan. He’ll be the work foreman, the one in charge of the renovation. That’s Jake over there.”

  Jake, the idiot, waved cheerfully. Yeah, he wasn’t losing his dream today. Tuesday smiled back.

  Liam went on, “I thought we could get a head start on what you might be thinking of doing with this place.”

  “Well, I—”

  Aidan cut her off. “And what is that?” He could practically feel the camera zooming in on his face. Sixteen million people would watch him be a son of a bitch on television, but he didn’t car
e.

  “Sorry?”

  “What is it that you want to do with this place, exactly- ?”

  Tuesday glanced at Liam. “Should we just jump into that?”

  Liam nodded. “Sure. Why don’t you walk us through a couple of rooms and tell us your vision for the place.”

  “Okay, then.” With her forefinger, she pushed up her glasses. Her nails were painted, predictably, medium pink. “Well, I guess I was thinking—”

  “What are you going to do with the wood?” Aidan thumped the frame of the door that led into the kitchen. It was old Doug fir, and while it was scratched and dinged, it was perfection itself.

  “Um. Paint it? I was thinking yellow walls with white trim?” She looked up at the dark beams that soared overhead. “Wouldn’t that be pretty?”

  She’d just failed.

  “No.” Aidan brushed past her, ignoring the fact that her face had fallen. He led the way into the kitchen. “What about in here? What’s your idea of fixing this up?”

  Tuesday had rallied and was smiling at the camera. Obviously, they hadn’t told her that she wasn’t supposed to look at the cameras, that she was supposed to talk just to the other people as if there wasn’t an entire crew hanging on their every word. “Well, I love this old sink.”

  She was right about that. A deep farmhouse ceramic sink, it was perfect, set deep and low in the old butcher-block countertops.

  Aidan waited.

  “But I was thinking of marble countertops. You know?”

  There it was. No surprises here. Turning his dream home into a hipster Pinterest house was going to be the worst gig in the history of Aidan’s construction career. “Let me guess. You’re looking for more of an open plan.”

  She smiled, her face lighting up. Behind those glasses, her eyes sparkled. For one moment, Aidan felt the tiniest bit guilty about growling at her.

  Then she said, “Exactly. If the dining room led into—”

  “Yeah. I get it. Hang on.” He stalked past the crew, out the living room, and to his truck. The cool, damp outside air was welcome against his heated face. He pulled out his biggest sledgehammer and stormed back inside, holding it like a baseball bat.

  “Aidan.” Liam’s voice was a warning.

  “No, I get it. I see our client’s vision. I know how this is going to work. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Ignoring the roar in his own head, Aidan pulled on a pair of safety goggles. “You might want to stand back,” he said to Tuesday.

  “Wait, what?”

  He swung the sledgehammer back with all the force of his body, slamming it through the wall that stood between the living room and dining room. Plaster rained down, the lathe behind it snapping like firewood. “There we go. A good start!”

  Tuesday Willis stepped forward. She put one hand firmly on his chest, and with her other, took away his sledgehammer, hefting it as if it were a lightweight rubber mallet. She looked directly into his eyes, and Aidan felt a thud in his torso that he didn’t see coming.

  Enunciating clearly, Tuesday said, “That’s a load-bearing wall, you idiot.”

  Chapter 2

  T

  he only reason Tuesday Willis knew it was a load-bearing wall was because Liam Ballard, the realtor brother, had told her so when she’d asked if it could be taken out to make more room in the kitchen.

  But it was a good thing to know, apparently. The brother who’d stormed in and punched a hole in that wall was going to be the one who had to fix it. Good thing she had his hammer now, though it was way heavier than it looked.

  “Seriously?” Aidan, the stormy brother, looked at his other two brothers. The one who lived on a boat—Jake—was already leaning on the countertop, laughing so hard it looked like he might hurt himself.

  Liam’s jaw had fallen open, and he clutched at his tie. “Why did you do that?”

  “The load-bearing wall is the south one.”

  Tuesday shook her head and patted the intact drywall above the hole. “The west one. You’re telling me he’s the foreman?” She saw a cameraman grin and felt the lens zooming in on her. “You can’t tell load-bearing from non?” As if she could. Her heart pounded, and she clenched her fingers more tightly around the hammer’s handle, willing the shaking to stop. She’d already been ten kinds of nervous—arguing with the foreman wasn’t helping.

  Aidan’s scowl was so dark he was practically summoning clouds. Well, at least Tuesday was sure which brother she wouldn’t be picking.

  Felicia, the slim showrunner who looked like a model (no pressure or anything—the woman’s legs went up to her armpits) threw her hands up in an I-surrender pose. “Okay! That was exciting! Good job, Aidan, not taking out an entire beam.”

  “Or bringing down the whole house.” Jake grinned.

  Felicia gestured to the side door. “We’ll probably edit that a little bit, so don’t worry about a thing. While the crew patches that up, let’s all go out onto the back porch, shall we? Anna, can you bring out the lemonade and those green glasses?”

  Cameras swiveled. The tall sound guy ducked both himself and his boom mic under the door.

  Tuesday held out the sledgehammer, using every muscle in her arm to do so and determined not to show it. “This is yours, I think.”

  “Yeah.” Aidan took it as if it weighed as much as a pencil. “I’ll be needing that.”

  He turned, following his brothers and the camera crew.

  On the porch, as workers set up lighting and tested things, Tuesday leaned on the rail. Her scar felt hot under her shirt, a sure sign of stress.

  This was probably the dumbest thing she’d ever done in her life.

  Back home in Minnesota, Tuesday’s mother had gotten a lawyer friend to look over the contract. The lawyer said it was good, that both she and the network were protected by it. He’d said, “Careful, though, if you do sign it, you’ll have to go through with it. They’re serious, and they have the money to back that up.”

  That was okay. Since the settlement, she had the money, too. Tuesday had signed the contract, and in her memory the signature, instead of being in the black ink she’d used, was bright red, as if she signed in blood.

  Tuesday leaned forward and inhaled.

  This view was why she’d chosen this house over the other two. It was all a set-up, of course—she’d been surprised at how much of the reality show was done in advance. The network had sent her 360-degree videos of the interiors and exteriors of three houses. They said she could “choose” any of them and they’d start the buying process (with her money, of course). Even though she’d already chosen the older house on the bluff with the view down to the bay, she’d spent her first day in town on camera, pretending to have interest in the other two houses she hadn’t bought. Felicia had explained it all to her. “You’ve seen my episode, you know I’ve been through this, and I agree, it’s just weird. But you’re a grade-school teacher, right? This is make-believe, that’s all. Now, while looking at me, not the camera, tell me what you think about the last place.” Talking to the camera while gazing at Felicia was hard. The woman made Tuesday feel even shorter and rounder than she was. By the time they were done with the show, Tuesday would probably resemble a beach ball just from comparison.

  Liam, the realtor, had walked her through the other houses on camera. “You’ve got a good, big budget, though that much cash doesn’t go as far here in California as it does in Minnesota. For your nine hundred thousand, we’ve got to purchase a house and get the construction done.”

  It hadn’t been hard to look worried. “Can we do that?”

  “Can we? Leave it to the Ballard Brothers!”

  Today she’d not only explored the bluff house for the first time, but she’d also ‘chosen’ it, on camera. It had been a relief, getting to show her true excitement. The house sat at the end of a cul-de-sac. An old Victorian three-story house, it seemed to smile into the street with its the upper windows eyes and the faded red door the surprised mouth. It was pr
etty, but it looked old. It didn’t seem to promise that much.

  Through the house and into the back, though, that’s where the magic was. Tuesday had been hopeful, looking at the video tours. She’d been right.

  Then Aidan had shown up with a chip on his shoulder and a hammer to match.

  Now the man was pacing in the garden below. It would have been easy to stare at his broad shoulders, but luckily there was the whole bay behind him to focus on, a brightly sparkling body of water. She would not gaze at the way the back of his jeans fit his rear end. Nope.

  The wraparound porch was wobbly but it held their weight. Below the porch spread a small garden—mostly roses, two dark blue hydrangeas, and several enormous lavender plants. One low oak tree spread boughs that looked made for climbing up and hiding under. A long hedge ran along the bottom of the garden, and beyond that, the earth dropped away. From the porch, she could see the tops of the buildings on Main Street. And over those dark roofs, the bay.

  The Pacific.

  Finally, she was here.

  “Look!” Tuesday pointed. Brightly colored scraps of fabric hung and swooped over the water, too far away to make out more. “Are those really hang gliders?”

  Liam answered her. “Yeah. It’s a popular hobby here. Aidan does it a lot. Have you ever gone hang gliding?”

  “No! No way.”

  “Nothing like it. We should get him to take you up.”

  “No, thanks. I’m not that tall, and I like to be close to the ground in case I need to hit the deck.”

  “It’s not that scary. And the thermals in the area mean you can stay up a lot longer than you can in other places.”

  A shiver ran through. Stay up. No, thanks.

  She glanced down into the garden again, motion catching her eye.

  It wasn’t Aidan—he was just coming back up onto the porch.

  There. Where the bottom of the garden met the neighbor’s fence, a small gate moved.

  It cracked open. Just an inch.

  Tuesday held her breath.

  The wooden gate parted enough for a small head to poke into the garden.