The night doesn’t end until the sun peeks through his curtains. I’m sore in the most delicious way and deliriously in love. Van gets up to make breakfast spoiling me. Full on eggs and bacon with mouthwatering blueberry pancakes. We fool around making Bloody Mary’s and end up doing shots of peppered vodka before noon. We make plans to visit the museum and while the thought of staying in bed all day slightly drunk is glorious, we’d rather explore our city and check off a few things on our never been list together.
Life will never be the same again, but I’ll have this man by my side and a lifetime of love.
Excerpt from Love Under Construction
Looking for a romantic comedy? Try my Love By Design series, starting with: Love Under Construction.
CHAPTER ONE
HUNTER
“This is it?” Following the GPS, I made the turn, trusting the crisp British woman named something like Sally or Margaret to guide me since my passenger was enraptured with looking out the window. Her slim profile was mostly hidden by her loose pale blond hair while her delicate nose pressed against the fogged glass. Perfecting my poker face driving down the street, I waited for a shimmery ghost to appear and ward us off the property. At the least, I expected Freddie Kruger to slice my tires and Jason to run out of the woods donning a hockey mask and chanting, “cha-cha-cha.” God Save the Queen and my new truck from the pitfalls over cliffs and best friends with big ideas.
My foot pressed the brake, pulling up next to a grey two-story Victorian era house in a depressed block of homes that looked haunted and fresh off the set of The Conjuring. You know, the kind that has wooden siding falling off it, complete with creaking uneven doors and cobwebs thick as wool crowding the window corners, or so I imagined. Looking at it made the shaved hair on the back of my neck stand up, but I would never admit that to anyone even if I were captured by hostiles and water boarded. It didn’t matter that I spent the bulk of my Marine career with the Corps of Engineers; a haunted house was not getting to me.
This house, and I was being generous calling it that, had to be the worst of the lot. A dilapidated structure beyond that must have been a garage of some sort or a place to hide the bodies in winter. If you were looking for the Bates Motel, this could be it, circa the 1890s.
Overgrown shrubs and grass blocked much of the front yard and a large tree had fallen over what I assumed was a gravel driveway from at least fifty years ago. It was a landscaper’s nightmare project between the barren looking grasses and dead shit everywhere. Honestly, I’d be surprised if they didn’t dig up a body somewhere on the property. Tall columns framed the front porch or what was left of it. All I could see from my vantage point inside the truck was a set of rotten wooden steps and a goodly sized hole in the porch veranda. A swinging chair that looked like it had one time been a perfect spot for sipping sweet tea hung precariously by one chain, the rest dragging down on wooden planks. The varnish had easily chipped away a quarter century ago.
A sigh filled the truck from the passenger seat next to me. “Isn’t she gorgeous?”
Confused, I looked back at my best friend of ten years, wondering what crazy ideas that fancy design school in Brooklyn had given her. Naked women with hands full of tits were gorgeous, but this… this building looked like it should be condemned from the structural damage alone, forget about how ugly it was. She needed her eyes and maybe her head examined, but I kept those opinions to myself, merely responding with a grunt in reply to her question.
I couldn’t bear to be the bringer of bad news and watch her little nose scrunch up, lip torn to shreds by her perfect front teeth, and those blue eyes of hers welled with tears. I might be an asshole in general, but this girl could wreck me faster than a truck on Interstate 84 barreling like a bat out of hell on ice. Nope, I was keeping any opinions I had about this house to myself.
“The realtor even said the house isn’t haunted.” She looked back out the window transfixed, while I let the potential horror of the situation work itself into my mind fully.
Think about this, Hunter… Think before you speak. My commanding officer had said that to me easily a thousand times during my first deployment. Aaron Henderson would have been proud to know I did not make this woman cry, not on purpose anyway.
Barely concealing my wince, I asked, “Did the realtor have those ghost hunters check it out to make sure?” My fingers tapped the wheel annoyed, and Taylor Jane touched them, freezing me with her smile. Her touch did that to me, an immediate balm that sucked out the bad feelings and replaced them with good ones even years later. It was some kind of woman voodoo when she did that.
“Oh, Hunter, ye of little faith.” Her face softened with a side smile and I felt myself falling deep down that rabbit hole of no return.
What kind of a fucking realtor gives a house a character reference? “Ooh, it’s nice with a white picket fence and the bodies are buried the required ten feet from the property line and propane tank.” A whack-job, that’s who, and probably one with a snarky accent like my GPS wench, Sally.
“Yeah, babe, because that’s a legitimate reference for a house that looks like it’s about to fall down.” Muttering was all I could manage besides sticking my big foot in my mouth.
“Hunter.” She rolled her eyes, and I swore I should have thrown the truck into drive and headed to St. Mary’s for some damn holy water and Pastor Rooney to lead the exorcism, because I was sure spinning heads were coming next from behind the fallen door on the porch.
Worry filled me because I knew firsthand how impetuous my best friend could be. “You, uh, didn’t sign any papers yet, did you? I mean… please tell me you haven’t done anything with it yet.” I paused, trying to find a delicate way to say this to Taylor Jane before heaving a sigh and cutting right to the most important question I had for her. “For the love of God, Taylor Jane Bryant, please tell me you had an engineer come and look at it first?” I was hoping this was still in the idea phase and I could talk her out of it, maybe find some other depressed house with far less problems to flip, or heck, not at all. I would find walls in my own house she could paint, put up shiplap, and decorate if it meant not committing to a money pit nightmare.
“Of course I did.”
Groaning, I could only imagine what unqualified idiot she might have hired and I was insulted she waited until now to consult with me.
“To which part?” Who in their right mind buys a property within a week of moving home? Getting through a conversation with Taylor Jane required major clarification and a few Hail Marys. We had been close at one time and the distance between us now hurt, though it was arguably all my fault.
“All of it, Hunter. I had Scott Crenshaw look it over last week and then I put an offer in.”
“Honey.” I was going to kill that fucking idiot. “Scott Crenshaw barely passed junior year geometry.” My mind winced remembering the dipshit kid who had a longtime crush on Taylor Jane until I was forced to have words with him that same year before prom. Jackhole pissed himself and I hadn’t even touched him. I wondered what balls he grew even thinking of speaking to her in the decade since that passed. That fucker knew I had a construction business since I came back from my last deployment.