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Yeah, right. Someone like Faith would never last more than a couple weeks in this small, quiet town. A month at the most. She would get bored, long for the excitement of a big city and leave. The ambitious ones, women like his ex-wife, always did.
“I’m going to like it here,” Faith added. “It’s a cute place.”
“You haven’t been here when it rains. Cute wears off real fast.” Though a few nights at the cheesy hotel near Highway 99 or one of the homey, not-so-elegant B and Bs nearby would probably have the same effect. “Where are you staying?”
“Here.”
“Here?”
She smiled. “I bought this house.”
No.
“Is your last name Addison?” he croaked out the words. “F. S. Addison?”
“I’m Faith Starr Addison. Starr is my middle name and my mother’s name.” She drew her brows together. “How did you know?”
He ignored the question. “You bought this house from Miss Larabee?”
Faith nodded. “She’s so sweet. She reminds me of my late grandmother. We met for the first time last night at dinner. We watched one of my movies together.”
“Dinner and a movie?”
“Yes.” Faith adjusted her baseball cap. “She asked me for my autograph. She was so cute.”
Gabe fought a wave of nausea. He remembered Miss Larabee’s one great passion—the movies. She’d once dreamed of being an actress. Damn. Dinner with a movie star must have been the offer “too good to pass up.”
Still that didn’t explain her selling the house to Faith. Not after he’d shared his own dreams about the house with Miss Larabee over tea during his weekly visits—dreams of restoring the house the way his grandfather had always wanted to do and raising a family here. Guess that couldn’t compare to dinner with flighty and flaky Faith, as the press called her, who merely had to learn to smile and speak on cue and steal people’s dreams.
She sighed with apparent satisfaction. “Henry was right when he told me it would be perfect for a B and B.”
Gabe froze. He couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. But he had to. He had to know. “You asked Henry to find you a B and B here in town?”
“No, I’d never heard of Berry Patch,” she said. “I hadn’t spoken with Henry in months, but he called out of the blue to say hi. We were catching up when I told him about looking for a B and B to buy and he explained how Berry Patch is an up-and-coming tourist destination in the heart of wine country.”
Movie star turned innkeeper? That made no sense. “Why would you want a B and B?”
She stiffened. “I always thought I’d go into the hotel business someday.”
“I can’t see you as innkeeper.”
She raised her chin. “I spent a lot of time working at inns and B and Bs when I was a teenager.” A slight smile formed on her lips. “You should taste my stuffed French toast.”
An invitation? He didn’t think so. Besides Gabe wasn’t interested. She was the enemy. Hell, she was his worst nightmare. The kind of woman his ex-wife had wanted to be. And now he worked for her on a house that should belong to him.
“After Henry told me about this house, he e-mailed me pictures. I made an offer that day. Everything went so smoothly I have to believe it was fate.”
Not fate. Henry. Damn him.
Gabe felt as if he’d been hit in the gut. And it was his friend, Henry, throwing the punches. A mix of emotions swirled inside Gabe. Anger, frustration, betrayal. He clenched his fists.
It was all Henry’s fault.
No, it wasn’t. Henry didn’t know about Gabe’s dream of owning this house. It wasn’t something they discussed over beers at The Vine. He had only shared the plan of his life with his family and Miss Larabee.
“Is something wrong?” Faith asked.
Very wrong. And now he knew why.
The owner’s notes—containing glitzy, glamorous and thoroughly modern changes to the remodeling plans—he’d received via Henry suddenly made a lot more sense. Gabe didn’t like the notes or her.
“You aren’t what I expected,” he said finally.
“I never am,” she murmured with a faraway look in her eyes. But in a moment, her gaze sharpened. “So I have a couple of questions for you. Who are you? And why is your dog sleeping on my front porch?”
My front porch.
Gabe bristled at the words. Resentment overflowed. There was so much he wanted to say to her. “I quit” was tops on the list. He glanced at the house.
Remember what’s important.
It wasn’t Faith. Or him.
It was this house.
His grandfather had been obsessed with restoring it for as long as Gabe could remember. It hadn’t taken long for him to feel the same way. Each time the bus passed by here on his way to school, his own desire had intensified. But when he’d accompanied his grandfather to fix a leak for Miss Larabee, something had happened. Something that went deeper than the house.
Even though Gabe had only been fourteen at the time, everything he wanted in life had crystallized during that first visit—a wife, kids, a dog and this house. The perfect family living the perfect life in the perfect house.
A life totally different from his own.
His family had been far from perfect. Too many kids, too many animals and a house that was nothing more than fodder for a wrecking ball.
He wanted that perfect life. Desperately.
Gabe had made a plan and set out to achieve it. He’d married the girl of his dreams right after high-school graduation. Next on the list were children. But his wife hadn’t wanted to stay in Berry Patch. He hadn’t wanted to leave. So they’d divorced.
But he wasn’t about to let his dream die. Unlike his father, when Gabe made a plan he stuck to it. So what if his first wife hadn’t gone along with his blueprint for a perfect life? So what if Henry had messed up Gabe’s chance of buying this house? So what if Miss Larabee had sold the house out from under him?
Gabe wasn’t giving up.
He had to remain strong, steadfast, to protect the house from Faith.
Already the second floor suffered from remuddling—what happened when remodeling destroyed the character of a home—and he wasn’t about to allow any more damage to be done. And that’s what would happen if he followed through with the changes suggested by F. S. Addison. But Gabe wasn’t about to do that. He would succeed with the Larabee house where his grandfather had failed with the farmhouse Gabe grew up in. The mess of a house his parents still called home.
While Gabe was growing up, his father had ignored Grandpa’s suggestions about remodeling the house. Instead of having a plan, his father took whatever extra money he had and simply added on whatever space he thought they needed most. But the money never lasted due to a tractor needing a new engine or some other farming mishap, so his dad just stopped whatever he was building. He never finished anything. Gabe’s bedroom had been nothing more than drywall and Astroturf for more years than he cared to remember. He’d had to finish it himself when he got older. And his sister Cecilia’s room, too. If not for him, the house would still be a bunch of unfinished rooms and additions.
“Are you going to answer my questions?” She sounded annoyed he’d ignored her for so long.
It was just the sort of snotty pay-attention-to-me-now attitude he expected from the actress, but she was the client. And until she got tired of the country and this house, he was stuck with her.
“Frank is asleep on the porch because he goes wherever I go.” With Gabe’s emotions firmly tucked back in place, his tone was cool but professional. “I’m Gabriel Logan. The contractor you hired to remodel the house.”
Chapter Two
Oh, my. Oh, no.
Forget about the killer canine with the massive jaws and thundering bark. The man was the bigger threat. To her peace of mind. To her plans. To her future.
Faith lowered the brim of her baseball cap, thankful the sunglasses shielded the surprise in her eyes. “You’re Gabriel Logan?”
He didn’t say anything. Just gave a single nod.
She had expected a balding middle-aged contractor, not sex in a tool belt.
Curly brown hair fell past his collar. Long khaki shorts and a green T-shirt showed off his lean-but-strong body. A far cry from an Armani suit, but the casual style fit him. Nicely.
Tall, dark and…
Ruggedly handsome was the only way to describe him. He could easily give Hollywood’s latest “it” boy a run for his money. Long, dark lashes fringed sapphire eyes. Fine lines at the corners of his eyes softened the chiseled planes of his face, a strong jaw and a nose that looked as if it had been broken at least once.
Her heart pounded, and her stomach tingled.
Uh-oh. It always started like this. The shiver of awareness. The air of anticipation.
She was in trouble. A whole lot of trouble.
The last thing she wanted was a man in her life. She wasn’t looking to fall in love. She’d fallen more times than she could count, but she hadn’t found “the one.”
Her one true love.
The way every other Addison had before her. No one had divorced or even separated during the past two hundred years of her family’s recorded history. Faith wasn’t about to ruin the streak. She’d failed enough.
Broken engagements. Broken hearts. Broken promises.
She wasn’t giving an encore performance.
That’s why she’d sunk every penny she had into this B and B project. Renovating an old house had to be easier than finding her one true love. She might not join the ranks of her family who had found their soul mates, but she could certainly join them in their successful hotel business, Starr Properties and Resorts.
A much saner business than acting.
Faith would prove to her mother—to her entire family—that despite making some huge mistakes in the past, she didn’t need a man to take care of her. She could do it herself.
“Henry’s told me a lot about you,” Faith said. But not enough. Not nearly enough. She’d wanted a contractor who was competent, experienced and safe. Two out of three…
“He told me nothing about you,” Gabriel said.
“I asked him not to.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
“I didn’t want you to accept the job because of who I am.”
“Not likely.”
At least he wasn’t starstruck. Men often treated her differently because of who she was, or rather who they thought she was. Their reactions disappointed more than hurt. She tucked a strand of hair back into her cap. “I also didn’t want my involvement leaked to the press.”
She needed this project to remain a secret. She wanted to fix up the house, sell the renovated B and B to Starr Properties without her family knowing it was hers and show her family she was not only ready but capable of taking her rightful place in the business. She was as much an Addison as they were, even if she had never made it to “I do” and had made a mess of pretty much everything in her life.
Gabriel stared at her in disbelief. “You thought I’d call the Berry Patch Gazette and brag that I was working for some movie star?”
Gabriel sounded affronted. Disgusted, too. But it had happened to Faith before. A tabloid had paid one of her ex-fiancés for an exposé of their relationship. “It’s not the Berry Patch Gazette I’m worried about. Tabloids pay a lot and I don’t want the publicity.”
“I thought there was no such thing as bad publicity.”
“Try remodeling a house with sixty photographers taking pictures of you all day.”
“I wouldn’t want to.”
“Then it’s a good thing no one knows about this house.” Faith forced a when-is-this-press-junket-going-to-end smile. “Or me.”
Gabriel’s jaw tensed and she wondered what had caused the sudden change in him. A few minutes earlier he’d been flirting and asking her out on a date. Now he looked as tense as her stomach felt. She didn’t want him to quit. According to Henry, he was the best and she needed all the help she could get. She couldn’t afford another mistake. Not now. Not with this.
Time to make nice. She removed her sunglasses, stuck them above the brim of her cap and wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. “It’s good to finally meet you.”
He didn’t say anything.
Faith extended her arm. A second passed. And another. Finally his large hand engulfed hers. His skin was rough, his grip firm. Strong. He drew his hand back and she was relieved not to be touching him. He was too warm, too male. Too much.
She waited for him to say something. Anything. A false nicety. An insincere compliment or two.
Nothing.
A flicker of apprehension coursed through her.
Faith fought against it. Gabriel had picked the wrong woman if he thought she was going to give up so easily. “So you’re a licensed contractor?”
Another nod.
“And you own your own business?”
“Yes.”
This was worse than trying to get an extra ticket on Oscar night. Maybe he was sulking because she’d shot him down.
Luckily she hadn’t accepted his dinner offer. She’d been tempted. That whole knight-fantasy thing when she’d been in the tree had been very appealing. Knights were heroic. Knights were romantic. Knights took charge. But for once that wasn’t what she needed. Or wanted. Thank goodness she’d listened to her head, not her heart, and avoided making a huge mistake.
She would continue to do the same where Gabriel Logan was concerned.
