It Takes Heart Page 7

  “You said you wanted furniture and stuff for the beach houses.”

  “No, this won’t work.” Geneva shook her head. Beatrice had told her that they were looking for modern design, for a simple, understated look. They’d wanted their clients to be focused on nothing else but their relationship, hence having the same modern furniture in each beach house.

  Not junk.

  What she saw as she followed Rhiannon up the walkway were old doors and windows littered in random places. At the corner was a group of old-fashioned sinks. Against one side of the building were rusted gas station signs. These were the kinds of pieces that her parents would’ve ogled and discussed and reminisced about. Milk glass and sleds. Vintage Singer sewing machines. Framed stained glass left over from an old church.

  “Why won’t they work?” Rhiannon asked.

  “I mean, besides the fact that this isn’t what Beatrice wants, it’s too . . . personal.”

  “But don’t the houses have names? Isn’t that personal?”

  Geneva slowed as Rhiannon’s words seeped in. Then the drive to Nags Head fell away. The day thus far, of dealing with Brandon and the truck fire, dissipated. In its place, her vision for the home’s designs—it takes two—came into full clarity.

  “Something two people could talk about?” she said, more to herself.

  Antiques and one-of-a-kind pieces could augment the entire mission of the resort. Perhaps the Pusos had assumed the wrong thing. Perhaps another way to set the resort apart was to provide a unique, custom experience, down to the house, because wasn’t every couple unique too?

  These pieces could jump-start conversations. They could facilitate bonding, and bonding led to connection.

  “Um . . . yes?” Rhiannon answered hesitatingly.

  “Rhiannon, I was scared as heck riding shotgun, but this . . . this was a good move. How did you know to take me here?”

  She shrugged, taking the lead to the front door. “I just had a feeling. I also know the owner, and I’ve been walking through his junk all my life, and I’ve got ideas. There’s a little bedside table in there that’s made out of a large tree log. It’s neat.”

  Geneva followed her indoors and was overtaken by the smell of wood and metal and must. The barn seemed to have no end; it was as far as her eyes could see. The sight was overwhelming, with nothing in its place.

  But instead of tensing, Geneva’s body loosened. She gravitated toward a grouping of watering cans.

  “Hello, down there!” A voice echoed from above. A man waved from the loft. He was Black and dressed in brown overalls with a white shirt underneath.

  “Mr. Barnes!” Next to her, Rhiannon waved. “I’ve got someone who might want a whole lot of stuff.”

  “Well, that’s music to my ears,” he bellowed. “I’ll be right down.”

  “What time does this place close?” Geneva asked, eyes wandering, taking in all the possibilities.

  “Seven, I think.”

  “Good. Do you mind working past your shift to help me out?”

  Rhiannon’s eyes widened. “I definitely do not mind.”

  “I hope you hydrated, sweet Rhiannon.” She turned on FaceTime and called up Beatrice’s number. Chris would have the final say, but having Bea on her side when she presented the change would yield a better outcome. “We’ve got beach houses to design.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Day 3

  Weather: fair, 83°F

  At Habang-buhay, Brandon tipped his reusable water bottle back and squeezed water into his mouth. He glugged until he no longer could, then twisted open the top and poured the water over his head.

  “Sure you don’t want to come with us?” Mike said in his North Carolinian twang. He exchanged his hard hat for a camo bucket hat. “Food truck’s only here another half hour or so. Adobo shrimp’s the special today. Paula’s is the best.”

  “Paula?”

  He hiked a hand over his shoulder. “Uh . . . Chef Castillo.”

  “Right . . .” Brandon pretended not to notice Mike’s blush. Instead, he looked back to the waves behind him, softly crashing onto the man-made beach, and considered his options. “I appreciate it. But that water’s calling to me.”

  “I guess I don’t blame you. With Oscar coming and all, might as well enjoy it.”

  Brandon scanned the clear blue sky; the hair on his arms stood, so he pretended to wipe dust off them. “Any more news on the storm?”

  “It made landfall at the Dominican Republic, though it’s not too bad for them so far. They’re saying four days to us if it doesn’t veer off course? Though it doesn’t look quite like it now, you just never know.”

  He swallowed down his nerves. It could miss them altogether—there was nothing to worry about, yet. “That could mess up our schedule.”

  “Yes sir, it could. But we’ve got plans in place. Chris was on it as soon as we had word that a storm was possible. We can touch base on that after lunch. But the gist of it is that we work as efficiently as we can while considering that we may have to stop.” He swiped his forehead with a rag. “All right. Maybe I’ll order you some shrimp to go. Unless I eat it first.” He grinned.

  “I won’t blame you, I promise.” It had only been half a day, but Brandon had fallen right into the crew’s routine. It had been important for him to get to know Mike—he hadn’t wanted to step on his toes. Trust was the only way to go.

  Today’s crew was reinforcing the pilings, all in prep for the arrival of Tiny House Specialists, who would swoop down with the prefab tiny houses to replace those that had sustained the most damage: Habang-buhay, Tanggap, and Sayaw. Tanggap and Sayaw were on the north and northwest sides of the island, respectively, and their prep was complete.

  They would be done with Habang-buhay in no time.

  “But see you all in about an hour,” Brandon said.

  He watched the crew go. As soon as the last one was off site, he headed toward the surf and took off his shoes and socks where the grass ended and the sand began. He pulled his shirt off, unloaded his pockets, and threw the contents with his things.

  With the prospect of water, he exhaled, already feeling refreshed, much like how it was to smell coffee brewing—sometimes that, alone, was enough to perk up the morning.

  And he needed the pick-me-up. He’d tossed and turned last night, and caffeine would not be enough to get him through the rest of the day. The culprit behind his insomnia? Geneva’s statement that his memory was serving him wrong. She’d claimed that she’d simply acted on their agreement to keep it simple and light, and that in the end, it was he who told her to go.

  Yes, he’d agreed to that arrangement. But in those three weeks, he’d assumed . . . he’d assumed that they’d risen above “simple” and “light.” They hadn’t just been sleeping together; he’d thought that despite that final fight, they were in a place where they could have fixed it.

  He’d tried to recover their relationship; he’d left her messages, written her emails. The ball had been in her court, and she hadn’t lobbed it back. There hadn’t been a hint of a game left between them. Losing her had been a repeat of his parents’ death: sudden and drastic. He was only lucky that at that time, he’d already been in therapy, and it was accessible.

  Seeing Geneva here and rethinking their history and that one sad night . . . he couldn’t categorically declare that he was right and she was wrong. That he was the good guy and she was the bad. Geneva had never been the enemy.

  And she was right: it was he who had told her to leave.

  Brandon was steps into the sand when he heard the vibration of his phone ringing in his shoe.

  Crap. He walked back to his things and fished his phone out. It was Garrett again.

  Double crap. He would need to take this. He’d ignored his business partner for more than a couple of days.

  “Where are you?” Garrett asked without pleasantries, voice morose in his ears. In the background was knocking, and then the familiar sound of a low-pitched bel
l.

  “Are you—” Brandon frowned. “Are you at my place?”

  “Yeah, I am . . . I drove all the way to Annapolis from Arlington.”

  “Well . . . uh . . . I’m not there.”

  “Obviously. So where are you?”

  Brandon paused. “North Carolina.”

  “As in, the state?”

  “Yes.”

  A litany of curse words left Garrett’s mouth.

  “I told you I was heading down here.” Brandon bit his cheek. Despite his great show to stand up to Chris, Brandon was a sucker. He was a sucker for everyone who said they needed him, and sometimes it was at the expense of making rash decisions.

  He really needed to get himself together.

  “Yeah, but we’re in the middle of flipping Illinois Way.”

  “I told you I needed to see my family,” he yelled, more to the surf than to the phone. From the shadows of the rolling waves came the figure of someone on a kayak, coming back to shore.

  “Which is fine, if you’re there to finally move on the town house sale.”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” He was still trying to settle in—he would have been, already, if Geneva’s presence hadn’t distracted him.

  “Bran, you said we would be equal partners, and I need help with the capital to renovate,” Garrett said.

  “It’s not as easy as you think.” Brandon shook his head, knowing where Garrett’s train of thought was leading. They had been at this endeavor, namely P&C Homes, for a few years now. With the booming real estate market in the DC area, they’d jumped on that opportunity and flipped homes. Garrett was a Realtor, and with Brandon’s construction expertise, it had seemed like a perfect combination. They’d envisioned themselves born of the HGTV home-flipping shows, their brains and brawn clearly a straight path toward a positive cash flow status.

  Not.

  They’d made risky decisions, in design, in negotiations. Twice, they’d bought homes that had severely deeper issues than they’d planned for. Still, they’d survived, until the pandemic, when their business had all but stopped—and for good reason. No one wanted to move into a busy city in the middle of a public health care crisis.

  It had taken them a good six months to find ground to pivot. They’d decided to turn their sights to vacation homes. Together, they’d concluded in the end, it would be all right. But in the interim?

  Garrett had been footing the bill.

  Currently, his business partner was convinced their most recent purchase, a historic and somewhat isolated riverfront home on Illinois Way about ten miles away from Annapolis, was their ticket to cash.

  As Brandon paced across the sand, he noticed something white sticking out next to his toe. He fished it out; it was a scallop shell the size of a quarter, but unbroken. He ran his fingers against the grooves, and it brought him back to beachcombing with his mom.

  “You have to step up,” Garrett said, interrupting his thoughts. “And you and I know that you have the ability to do so. You have been ready to move on.”

  The lashing was at the tip of Brandon’s tongue. He wanted to say that Garrett didn’t have the right to tell him he was ready to move on. But the truth was hard to deny: They’d been friends for almost a decade, both with high entrepreneurial hopes. He’d invested more capital than Brandon, who’d used almost half of his share of the inheritance from his parents’ will. Garrett was his brother from another mother—Garrett had been there to catch him when his parents had passed, when there were days he couldn’t get out of bed to get to grad school classes, much less complete his work.

  Brandon was tied to the guy in cash, in business, and also in friendship.

  And Garrett was right; he did have more, but it wasn’t exactly in cash.

  “You have a solid offer on the table,” Garrett reminded him. “And inside, you know it’s the reason why you’re there.”

  “I’m here to help my family.”

  “And to help yourself. We talked about this.”

  Brandon shook his head, even if Garrett was right.

  Why couldn’t things be simple, like when he was young and reckless, when the worst thing to happen on any given day was the warped wooden floor of a project or an incorrectly chosen paint color?

  Stop it, he said to himself. He knew that kind of talk was neither helpful nor productive.

  “Bran.” Garrett’s tone softened. “You know it’s time. Just bring up that the investor wants to turn it into commercial property for a nonprofit. It’s for a school. But above that . . .”

  “Drop it . . . please.” To discuss the family home required a straight mind, and that he didn’t have at the moment.

  Garrett sighed. “Fine. This still doesn’t take away the fact that I’ll need to start the reno of Illinois Way soon.”

  “I . . . I know . . . and I’m sorry for not telling you that I was headed down. I just couldn’t be in that house for another minute. I’ll figure it out . . .” Brandon relented, eager for the change in conversation, eager for the end of the conversation. “Anyway, that last house we flipped—we sank too much into it. We can’t play in the custom game. That was our downfall. We tried too hard, took too long, and missed the ball in negotiations. We were greedy.”

  “I know, I know.” Remorse laced Garrett’s tone. “It won’t happen this time. I walked through Illinois Way today. Good bones like I suspected—this flip is going to be way more straightforward.”

  “I wish I was there to manage it.” Brandon pressed his hand against his forehead to still his running thoughts and worry. Maybe it had been a bad move for him to come to North Carolina after all. It had, ultimately, been a last-minute decision, after another night of attempting to pack up his parents’ things and then going through their old photo albums. Six hours later, he’d been driving across the land bridge onto Heart Resort.

  “Is that my fault?” His voice was shrill. “Sorry, man. That’s just not cool, you know? You can’t up and leave and not say a damn word.” He heaved a breath. “We’ll try to do some things from afar. We’ll work with the same guys we always do. You’ll be back soon, anyway. Right?”

  Brandon ignored the question. “What’s your estimated budget thus far?”

  Garrett whispered the cost.

  “No!” he yelled. Realizing that the kayak had made it up to shore, he lowered his head and voice. This was a private beach, which meant that the person was with the resort. Brandon turned, and did a double take.

  It was Geneva, in a swimsuit. She raised her hand apologetically as she dragged the kayak out of the water, though unsuccessfully. From his vantage point, he noted that it was caught in the V of two rocks. She was struggling, and Brandon’s focus lost itself in her plight.

  “I’ll call you back,” he said.

  “Promise, Puso!”

  “Yes! I gotta go.” Brandon hung up the phone and tossed it and the shell onto his clothes. He jogged in Geneva’s direction. As he came closer, he lowered his eyes, so tempted to stare. She didn’t deserve ogling, despite his curiosity.

  After she’d left him at the yoga studio, her words had sunk in. And after he’d taken his thoughts out on lifting up some of the wooden floors, mainly to inspect the foundation, he’d landed at the point of momentary acceptance of the truce she’d offered.

  Geneva was out of breath. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was trying to paddle further away, but the waves took me here. I guess I’m out of practice.”

  And gosh darn it, he looked up at her face. At the glistening droplets of water on her skin, at the strands of hair that escaped from her bun. She was wearing a two-piece suit, and it showed the toned muscles in her arms she’d been using in the waves, and the soft flesh of her thighs.

  “It’s all good,” he said, though every part of him knew that none of his thoughts were reflecting good. It wasn’t okay for him to want to get closer. “Here. Let me.” He lifted the kayak from where it had dug itself into the dirt.

  “Thank you.�
�� She gestured to Ligaya just up the small hill. “I can carry it the rest of the way.”

  “I know.” He grinned. This woman had not changed. “And, got it.”

  “You don’t waste time.”

  Confused, he frowned.

  She nodded at the construction site behind him. “I was shocked to see from the house how many people had converged. With the binoculars—that’s what I used. Not that I was snooping or anything.”

  He flushed at how she stumbled over her words, and that it wasn’t only he who was trying to get all this sorted out in his head. “You wouldn’t be alone . . . snooping, that is. We had Tammy taking pictures most of the morning. But anyway, yes, the crew works fast, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, I’m impressed.”

  Her compliment sent a thrill through him. “I wish I could take credit. It’s all Mike.”

  She looked away with a smirk. “Ah, well, that’s probably good. No one needs to see you bragging around here.” She laughed. “I remember the time . . .” She looked up and seemed to think twice.

  He half laughed. “What time?”

  “That time when we went to Kings Dominion, and you got into a competition with a twelve-year-old, in basketball?”

  Brandon remembered instantly. She and Beatrice had wanted to go to the roller coaster park but were only allowed by their parents if they’d agree to take a sibling. Since Chris hated roller coasters and Gil had been busy, Brandon was the one they’d dragged along. “I won by one basket!”

  “He missed a basket because his mother distracted him.” She threw her head back and cackled. “And you were like five years older than him! You were always so competitive.”

  “It takes one to know one,” Brandon said.

  Her expression turned curious. “I’m not competitive.”

  “Maybe not with others, but with yourself you are.” At her sudden silence, he jumped in, “Or what do I know. We haven’t seen each other in years.”

  A gust of wind rocked the kayak, causing the both of them to steady it in Geneva’s hands. It cut through the vibe, reminding Brandon that this wasn’t just a girl from the past but a woman he’d thought he loved.