#have a really good idea for a fic and i'm bursting at the seams to tell someone about it | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

megaphonemonday · 7 years ago

Note

Mega Mama: love all of your Bawson fics. Would love a Hallmark style prompt of Ginny moving to a quaint small town and renovating a charming little house. Her cantankerous contractor is none other than Mike Lawson who once hosted a renovation show with now ex wife Rachel. Money pit style calamities and hilarious mishaps and of course the budding romance. Has been on my mind for a while, I'm just not a writer. Please and greatly appreciated:

oh man, i love me some hgtv, so why the heck not? (also, thanks for trusting me with this! i hope you like it!)

i’m ignoring the near-impossibility of a single, recently graduated person actually buying their own home let alone having the money available to renovate it. Millennials aren’t killing the housing market in this fic 😉

handyman special | ao3

Ginny Baker did not run from her problems.

(Did she give up when the Varsity baseball coach didn’t want her on the team or did she show up every day of try outs and prove she was just as good as the boys? Not that showing up every day actually got her on the team, but still. The point stood, okay?)

If it seemed like that was exactly what she was doing by breaking up with her boyfriend of three years the evening he proposed and moving all the way across the country, well, that was just a matter of perspective, wasn’t it?

Her mother called it a disaster waiting to happen.

Personally, Ginny preferred to think of it as moving on. Making a fresh start. Realizing her very own Manifest Destiny.

Just with way less dysentery and genocide.

She didn’t mean to snort at her own joke, but it wasn’t like Ginny’d been spoiling for laughs lately. And, really. What else did she expect with what she’d gotten herself into? There wasn’t a lot to laugh about at the moment.

Or anyone to laugh with, for that matter. It was—to be fair, not unexpectedly—difficult to make friends in a small town like this, and Ginny hadn’t made any inroads on that front. And that was the least of her problems.

There were no fewer than seven voicemails waiting on her phone—though it was a toss up as to whether her mother or Trevor had left more. She’d been living out of her carry on the past week, both her checked bags having been misplaced by the airline. The air mattress she slept on definitely had a leak somewhere because no matter how full Ginny made sure it was before she went to bed or how many duct tape patches she applied, she kept waking up with her shoulder and hip digging into the hard floor.

Which was only happening because Ginny’d checked out of the tiny motel after she bought the house to cut down on costs.

Because, oh yeah, three days into what was supposed to be an extended vacation in a small, California beach town to get her head on straight, Ginny had somehow bought a house. Like, an entire house. An entire house in desperate need of renovation.

(She’d spent the first two days doing nothing but lounging on the sand and wading into the warm water of the Pacific. Ginny had hoped that the waves would wash away some of her worries, but she’d never been that good at waiting around, hoping for the best.

So, she always went looking for it.

Which was what propelled her into exploring the sleepy little town, and what led her straight to the wind-scoured, long-neglected bungalow with a “For Sale” sign in the yard.

That no one would classify her house as the best of anything was undisputed, but Ginny liked it, and that was what mattered.)

Friends (and hopefully the rest of her stuff) would come. This house thing she needed to sort out pretty immediately. She couldn’t keep brushing her teeth with bottled water because the bathroom sink emitted something that was alarmingly brown. She couldn’t keep surviving on sandwiches from the beachside coffee shop down the road. Cara the barista was beginning to look concerned for her dietary choices. It wasn’t Ginny’s fault that every time she used the microwave, all the lights in the house flickered ominously.

And she really couldn’t keep sleeping on that goddamn air mattress.

Clearly, Ginny had bigger problems on her hands than a lack of friends. Anyway, it wasn’t like she’d really been swimming in friends back in North Carolina. The only thing keeping her there was her family and Trevor. And Trevor’d always been more interested in being her boyfriend than her friend.

Now that she thought about it, Ginny actually couldn’t imagine him being just her friend.

Maybe if he had been, if he’d been satisfied with just her friendship the way she’d initially wanted, she’d feel guiltier now about leaving him behind.

But she didn’t. She was happy to be in California. Excited to start a new life.

A new life that required a new house she could actually live in.

Which was exactly where the grumpy, bearded man currently frowning at, well, everything in Ginny’s newly acquired bungalow came in.

Ginny had a hard time imagining him ever being her friend, too.

Which was fine. It was fine! She couldn’t imagine his social life was particularly fulfilling, anyway. Not if he went around frowning like that at everyone he met.

Who cared that the sight of him at her door had kindled something dangerously close to interest? And not just friendly interest, either. With his chest testing the limits of the seams on his worn in flannel and his backwards ball cap, what else could it be? Ginny was only human, okay? And it’d been a long time since she’d let herself notice other men. By all appearances, this guy wasn’t a bad place to start.

Too bad appearances could be so deceiving.

Given the way he hadn’t spoken more than fifteen words to her in the half hour he’d been here, too busy judging her house and clearly finding it lacking, that initial burst of attraction quickly fizzled without anything more to fuel it.

(It’d been a close call when he bent over to inspect an outlet, though.)

No. Mike Lawson certainly wouldn’t be one of her new friends. But maybe he could be her contractor.

He didn’t even bat an eye at Ginny’s snort, just continued scribbling things down in his worn notebook as he prowled around the mostly empty house. There was just Ginny’s one small suitcase, a cheap desk lamp, and her makeshift bed for him to avoid. The few dishes and flatware she’d picked up were tucked away in the kitchen cabinets, but once it became clear the house needed the kind of work Ginny’s high school shop class wouldn’t cover, she figured she’d wait to get anything else. What was the point in blowing a bunch of money that could be put to better use on renovations?

So the rest of the house was bare, showing off the well-worn hardwood floors, freshly painted walls, and bright shafts of sunlight filtering in through the stained glass in the bay window.

Ginny forced herself to focus on these things, trying to figure out how they would come together once the warm afternoon light spilled across furniture and rugs rather than naked floorboards. Better that than trailing after the unfairly good looking man in her house. He hadn’t appreciated any of her attempts at small talk; following him around silently was just creepy.

She’d have to wait for his final assessment.

But not long, thankfully.

Mr. Lawson—he hadn’t corrected her when she greeted him at the door, and Ginny was nothing if not a good Southern girl, manners and all—came out of the small, out of date bathroom, finished making the last of his notes, and blew out a long breath that didn’t do much for Ginny’s confidence.

“What’s the verdict?” she asked, rising from the window seat and trying to manage her expectations.

Mr. Lawson glanced up from his notepad, lips quirked almost charmingly to the side. Before Ginny could go getting any ideas about rekindling any interest, though, he had to go and ruin it.

“You think there’s any chance the bank hasn’t processed your down payment yet?”

She blinked, sure she’d misheard him. “Excuse me?”

“This place is a disaster,” he said, blunt. “I’m surprised there was an inspector alive who let it go on the market like this. ”

Ginny glanced around. Was he seeing what she was? Did he not see the lovely built ins or the back porch that practically ran up against the beach? Sure, there was a long crack running up one of the walls and any time she ran the tap for more than a few seconds, the pipes made a distressing groan, but those things could be fixed. It was his job to fix them.

“So it needs some rehab,” she said, feeling absurdly defensive and protective of this house for all she’d lived in it less than a week.

He snorted and rolled his eyes. “That’s one way of putting it.” Ginny opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. “You said this place was built in the 30s, right? It hasn’t had any significant work done on it since then. It’s falling apart. There are definitely leaks in the roof, the pipes are probably still lead, I’d be shocked if there weren’t asbestos in the insulation, and who knows what kind of shape the wiring’s in.”

Ginny just stared at him, feeling the indignation really settle in.

Whether or not Mr. Lawson sensed this was unclear, but he sighed and took on a slightly more conciliatory tone. “Look,” he said, “you called me in for a professional opinion, right? Well, in my professional opinion, you should get out of here as soon as possible. You’re not the first person to take this place on and I’m guessing you won’t be the last. Do yourself a favor: pawn this place off on someone who can handle it.”

That was all it took to harden Ginny’s general annoyance into fury. Who the hell did this guy think he was?

“I can handle it,” she bit out coldly, jutting her chin into the air and staring down the asshole.

She almost couldn’t believe she still wanted to hire him. It wasn’t like she was really spoiled for choice, though. She knew exactly three people in town: her barista, her realtor, and this guy.

“If you could handle it,” he replied, condescending amusement coloring his words and overriding any pleasure Ginny might get out of seeing his big arms cross over his chest, “I wouldn’t be here.”

God, how did he manage to get any clients with an attitude like that?

“If you only take clients who are capable of doing the work themselves, I have to wonder how you stay in business,” she snapped. He could try and convince her to give up on this project all he wanted, it was only going to make Ginny more determined to see it through. This was her house; it was going to be her home. Whether Mike Lawson liked it or not. “I’m well aware that this project requires a professional, which is why I called you in. But if you don’t think you’re up for the challenge, I’m sure I can find another contractor who is.”

It didn’t matter that Ginny had no idea where to even begin looking for another contractor. Her real estate agent had recommended Lawson Restoration Services when she made her offer, said they were the best in town. (Ha. They were probably the only ones in town.) And while Ginny’d been inclined to trust Evelyn Sanders’ judgment, perhaps she needed to reassess that impulse if this was what it got her.

Across the room, Mr. Lawson’s eyes narrowed. Ginny could practically hear his teeth grind in annoyance. Good. He’d been enough of a pain in her ass, he could deal with a little payback.

At her smirk, he just shook his head and huffed, rolling his eyes to the ceiling like he couldn’t quite believe what he was about to say. “If you’re serious, then I’m in.”

Ginny didn’t let herself second-guess him. Instead, she stepped forward and held out her hand. After a long moment, he gave in and shook, looking like he was already regretting his decision.

She just smiled, pleased to have gotten her way. “Then it sounds like we have a deal, Mr. Lawson.”

The greatest things about being self-employed and mostly working from home were that Ginny could set her own schedule, count everything in her closet as business-appropriate, and avoid dealing with coworkers prying into her personal life because she didn’t have any.

(She could also move all the way across the country without worrying about finding a new job when she settled in, but she liked to think that one had limited usefulness.)

In North Carolina, those had been unequivocal pros.

Here in California, where Ginny’s house was constantly occupied by a small circus of workers and their prickly—still! After three whole weeks seeing each other every day—ringleader, it was more of a mixed bag.

Sleeping in was off the table when a chorus of hammers and drills and buzz saws started every day promptly at 8:00 AM. Similarly, pants were no longer optional with a team of strange men swarming her house.

Ginny couldn’t decide which she missed more.

She couldn’t even really work from home. Not when her home-to-be was an active construction scene with no internet. Lawson had actually laughed in her face when she floated the idea of getting a wireless connection set up right away. Laughed and laughed and laughed until she gave up and walked away. Ginny’d managed to switch everything around in his tool belt so he kept coming up with the wrong thing in retaliation, but he figured it out too fast for it to be really satisfying.

Sometimes, she set up shop on the beach just beyond her back door. It was nice to be on hand if Lawson needed to run something by her, and even better to watch the project progress. More often, though, Ginny'd walk down the street to the coffee shop to hang out with Cara, listen to gossip about people she mostly didn’t know, and use the wifi when necessary. Which was basically all the time. Such was the glamorous life of a web designer.

Both got her out from underfoot, which was the important thing. Ginny had always considered herself a fairly handy person. Her pop had made sure she knew how to fix a leaking pipe and change a flat tire just as well as she could throw a screwball. Watching the crew tear apart the bungalow and slowly piece it back together, though, she was uncomfortably aware that nothing her pop had taught her could’ve prepared her for this.

Sometimes, when she needed a break from tweaking layouts for clients, she’d scroll through the (massive and still growing) folder of photos titled “neverending construction” just to reassure herself that things were actually getting done. Progress had been made.

So Ginny continued to document that progress and tried to learn as much as possible as she went. At least once a week, she spent some of the day drifting through the wreckage of her house and snapping more pictures than she had since her time on the school newspaper. It was nice. Even if Ginny learned early on to make sure Lawson was unaware if he happened to be in the shot. Not only did he frown less when he didn’t know he was being watched, he couldn’t complain about what he didn’t know was happening.

Which, of course, didn’t keep him from grumbling about Ginny distracting his guys from their jobs.

On the bright side, she was definitely meeting people.

There was Salvamini, who surfed on his lunch breaks in spite of Dusty’s conviction that sharks would get him one day. Livan had a dangerous smile, but a love of cilantro Ginny could not abide. Omar was shy, but sweet, while Sonny, Butch, and Javanes hid most of their sweetness beneath many, many layers of ego. Blip, the construction manager, was apparently married to her realtor, which certainly explained Evelyn’s recommendation.

There were more of them, too, a largely friendly gaggle of dudes who cycled in and out, taking away bits and pieces of the house and leaving behind fresh drywall and newly finished floors. They seemed to like her well enough, and not just because she fed them pizza and beer on Friday evenings.

The only one Ginny still couldn’t get a solid read on was their grouch of a boss. Lawson was the only one who was on site every day, and he was the only one Ginny hadn’t managed to learn anything about. She thought he found her amusing more than annoying, which was something.

In her head, and whenever she had occasion to say it out loud, she’d finally dropped the “Mr.” off his name, but only because the entire crew burst into laughter the first time they heard her call him Mr. Lawson. She couldn’t bring herself to call him just Mike the way everyone else did. Not when he was still mostly a mystery.

Which worked well enough for them. They were mostly content to leave each other be: Lawson to his work and Ginny to hers.

Still, sometimes Lawson’s work meant they had to meet in the middle.

“Hey, you got a minute?”

Ginny paused in slipping on her headphones and backpedaled to the Mission Control Center—which was really just a card table strewn with blueprints in what would be the dining room—where Lawson oversaw and planned everything. (Some nights, after the guys had long gone home and the house was quiet, Ginny’d flip through the papers, trying to make out his scrawl and see how much of it made any sense. It usually wasn’t much, but she was getting better at deciphering his handwriting.) She’d just come in to change for a run, but that could wait. She’d been running a lot lately, both to blow off steam and because it was her only way to explore town. God, she missed her truck. The only reason she’d wanted to go now was because she couldn’t stare at her computer screen or the ridiculous doggy haute couture store she was supposed to build for another second.

“What’s up?”

“Just wanted to make sure I can send the drywallers home.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

Lawson rolled his eyes and Ginny only just managed not to roll hers right back.

“If you suddenly decided you wanted to knock down the wall between the bedrooms, that’d probably stop me.”

“Oh.” Ginny thought it over for a moment, but didn’t see much of a point in it. “Uh, no. No walls to knock down.”

Lawson snorted, but it wasn’t quite as derisive as it usually was. “What, you don’t wanna go fully open concept with this place?”

Honestly, Ginny didn’t even know what that meant. HGTV hadn’t ever been all that high on her watch list. She said so and Lawson laughed again, for real this time.

It did nice things to his face, making his eyes crinkle and cheeks round. Not that Ginny cared about any of that. Or the way he licked his lips before replying.

“You’re not missing out on much,” he promised, shaking his head.

“If you say so.” She shrugged and considered the original question. “I guess you can send the drywallers home, then.”

“Livan will be so disappointed,” he drawled.

Was it just Ginny, or was there a hint of something in that observation? An edge, perhaps?

One way to find out.

“Well, it’s not like he doesn’t know where to find me.”

Lawson rolled his eyes again, which didn’t give her any answers. That was pretty much his go to response for, now that Ginny thought about it, everything. “I don’t think even he’d go so far as to stalk you, Ms. Baker.”

Ginny’s nose wrinkled, though not at the mention of stalking. Ms. Baker? Really? After all this time? He hadn’t been Mr. Lawson in weeks. Still, she didn’t bother correcting him.

All this renovation stuff would be over soon, and they’d never see each other again. Sure, the process of repairing the foundation had taken longer than initially planned and all the insulation had to be replaced along with most of the plumbing and the entire roof—to his credit, Lawson never said anything about having predicted these exact problems, but Ginny was sure he’d thought it at least once—but it seemed like it was all coming to an end. It’d been weeks since she last saw the exposed studs of a wall. The house actually felt like a house again.

Rather than say any of that, though, Ginny just shrugged. “If he does, I know who to blame.”

Lawson waved her off with a huff. “Go on your run, then, and get outta my way.”

Ginny did as he asked, but she stuck her tongue out as she went, and Lawson’s laugh echoed in her ears all through her run.

The first morning Ginny wasn’t woken up by the chorus of nail guns or the steady drone of a circular saw, she lay on her semi-deflated air mattress and tried not to think how strange her life had become. Here she was, hardly two years out of school, living in a largely unfurnished house some 2,500 miles away from the town she’d lived all her life. 2,500 miles away from the people she’d known all her life.

And honestly, she couldn’t be happier. Last, week, after Lawson practically threw her out of the house, saying she couldn’t sleep there with all the varnish fumes that came with finishing the floors and baseboards, she’d gone home. Well, back to North Carolina, at least. Mostly so she could reassure Will and her mom that she hadn’t been inducted into a cult the way they seemed to think.

She made it 38 hours in Tarboro before loading up her truck, which had been once been her pop’s, and hitting the road for California. And why should she stay? She’d seen everyone who mattered.

Trevor, she hadn’t heard from at all.

Which, she supposed, wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

The drive across country had been a little lonely, and by the end of it Ginny was happy to be back in her sleepy seaside town. Happy to be back in her—every day less and less—ramshackle house. Happy to go to sleep on her halfhearted air mattress. (Though she was less happy to be waking up in it now.)

She’d almost been happy to see Lawson’s grumpy, bearded face, even.

Which, of course, was just perfect since he was officially done being her contractor.

Between the foundation repair and plumbing issues, not to mention the almost entirely new roof, there hadn’t been enough money for Ginny to justify paying a whole team of guys to sand and paint and seal and otherwise turn the house from a construction project into a home.

She’d been so sure she could take it on, but now, in the cold light of morning, Ginny was beginning to have some very serious doubts.

As she’d had occasion to find out over the past six weeks, web design and interior design were two very different ballgames. Sure, there were some similarities: a general attention to aesthetics and detail, but the implementation couldn’t be more different. Where a few keystrokes and commands were all it took to get a website in working order. Restoring and decorating a house required actual heavy lifting.

Naturally, it was something of a daunting task, and Ginny told herself she was just easing herself into it slowly. So slowly, she wasn’t even getting out of bed yet.

She had felt so eager to take on the challenge, anticipation ratcheting up as workers she’d gotten to know over the past few months began to disappear in ones and twos, off to work on other projects. Soon enough, only Lawson was left, finishing up with the tile in the kitchen and the bathroom, sanding down the last rough edges.

Just last evening, all his work finished up, he’d handed over his spare set of keys and told her, “Well, Baker. It’s all on you now.” If he said it with more than a bit of trepidation in his voice, Ginny thought it was at least a little bit of a joke.

She was about 75% sure.

The remaining 25% was a certainty that he was worried she would either manage to kill herself or pull all his hard work down around her ears.

Which was progress where she and Lawson were concerned. It wasn’t so long ago Ginny would’ve been completely offended by his lack of faith and determined to prove him wrong. Now, she was just determined to prove him wrong.

Honestly, she thought Lawson’s snobbery was mostly funny, though that might have been nostalgia talking; it was strange to be in the house all by herself. He’d been so scandalized when she mentioned she had no idea how to refinish cabinets, but was sure the internet would help her out.

The internet always knew what to do. Even—especially—when she didn’t.

He’d grumbled when she laughed, but only said she wasn’t allowed to tell anyone he’d worked on the house if she ended up ruining it.

With that taunt bolstering her resolve, Ginny rolled out of her deflating bed and one question answered itself easily enough.

This mattress? Yeah, it had to go. It had never been all that good at it’s intended purpose, but Ginny was increasingly sure that if she tried to force the issue, her sad, second-hand air mattress would give up on retaining air altogether. She needed to get a real bed and a real mattress as soon as possible. And if, in the process, she created a real bedroom rather than just the place where she passed out every night, Ginny wouldn’t complain.

It would be nice to have some place to come back to at the end of the day that didn’t do such a good impression of a squatter’s nest.

Which was how, hours later and verging on exhaustion, Ginny found herself standing in the middle of the hardware store’s paint aisle, contemplating the difference between Fuzzy Duckling and Smiley Face. Was there one? And what the hell was greige?

She was still frowning at the mind-boggling array of paint samples when someone interrupted with a gruff, “Excuse me.”

“Sorry,” Ginny replied automatically, stepping out of the middle of the aisle, and checking over her shoulder to make sure there was enough room for their heavily loaded cart to get by. It was then that she noticed who was pushing the cart. “Oh. Hi.”

Mike Lawson paused and actually took her in. Ginny did the same, not that she’d had a chance to forget any important details in the past 12 hours. His beard was the same as ever, thick and dark and framing his mouth in a way that wasn’t intriguing. His flannel was the one he’d worn pretty much every Thursday of their acquaintance, the blue and gray one that sometimes strained around his arms when he lifted something heavy. His wry smile, once recognition lit in his eyes, was the one he always gave when he found her particularly amusing.

“Didn’t I just finish with you?” he asked in lieu of a real greeting.

“You might have moved on to bigger and better things, Lawson, but my little house still needs some work.”

“That’s putting it lightly.” The corners of his mouth tugged, like he wanted to grin. Ginny couldn’t say why he didn’t.

“Says the man who left it in such shambles.”

He rolled his eyes, but didn’t protest. He’d offered to work out some kind of payment plan to get some more work done, but Ginny was actually looking forward to the challenge of doing this herself.

“And you decided to get right to it, huh?”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

He laughed and that little flutter of pride that came every time she managed to startle that sound out of him woke up in Ginny’s stomach. In the beginning, it’d always been a shock that her forbidding contractor was even capable of laughing. As they got to know each other, though, Ginny came to realize Mike’s sense of humor was very much alive. He laughed all the time. At her stupid Laffy Taffy jokes, at Blip’s stories of his twins and the intrigues of the second grade, at his guys almost constantly. Though that was generally at their expense in a way this laugh wasn’t.

“Don’t know why I’m surprised,” he said with a rueful shake of his head before turning to face the wall of paint chips Ginny’d been eyeing. “If you want my two cents, don’t go too dark in the dining room; there’s not enough light. Test out a few of the sample cans and see what you like, though.”

“So you’re a designer now, too?” Ginny teased, more familiar than she ever would’ve imagined during that first meeting.

Something flickered across Mike’s face and the smile he offered her was tight. “Something like that. I’ll leave you to it.”

He didn’t even give her a chance to demand a better answer, instead walking up to the cash register, pausing to pay, and then heading out the door.

All Ginny could think was something that she often found herself thinking when it came to Mike Lawson:

What the hell is his problem?

It was another few days before Ginny got around to trying out the samples she picked out. (Fortunately, none of them were Fuzzy Duckling or whatever the hell greige was.) Which wasn’t to say she hadn’t been busy. She’d driven up and down the coast in her dad’s pick up more times than she could count, scoping out estate sales and flea markets, trying to find furniture to fill the bedroom. And the rest of the house when she found the perfect dining room table and an antique carved screen she had no idea what to do with, but it was too pretty to just leave.

Sure, it would’ve been much easier to just go to the nearest Ikea, but that felt too close to cheating. The house itself would be such a labor of love, she couldn’t just fill it with the same dresser and couch combination as every college student in America.

So, she waded through heaps and piles of junk, hoping to find a few things that spoke to her, or whatever.

Okay, maybe she’d been watching some HGTV in her spare time, or at least had it on in the background as she coded. Ginny was relatively sure her intention—gaining a few interior design instincta purely through osmosis—had been largely unsuccessful, but she’d definitely picked up on the lingo.

Things like window treatments and wood finishes spoke to her now. She had opinions on chair rails and subway tile. Barn doors were beyond over done, but she kind of liked them anyway. And if Ginny never heard anyone say the words man cave again, she would gladly sacrifice her soul to whatever kind god was looking down on her.

And yet, she still found herself cuing up another episode of House Hunters to play in the background as she finally tested out the three shades of blue she’d picked for her bedroom walls.

Ginny must have dropped into some kind of painting zen because the next thing she knew, she was laughing along to Mike Lawson’s familiar snark, as she swept broad swathes of her final sample, a delicate robin’s egg blue, onto one wall.

At first she didn’t realize it wasn’t actually him. She almost called out a reply, the way she had when it was only them in the house, when reality caught up to her.

Ginny blinked, shaking herself. Was she hallucinating? Had seeing him at the hardware store triggered some delayed response to how alone she was all the time now? Before Ginny could really settle in to psychoanalyze herself, another voice rang through the house.

Unless Evelyn had neglected to mention some very active ghosts in the house, Ginny was relieved to believe that her mental health was still intact.

Dropping her roller brush back in the tray, Ginny padded over to her computer, which she’d left well out of the way of the open paint cans. Thankfully, the screen was still paint free. However, the clear screen didn’t help her in figuring out what the hell was showing on it. Hulu continued to play, but that was not a good enough explanation for what she was seeing there. It took her a minute to process it, actually. It didn’t matter how long she looked, though, her brain always reached the same conclusion.

That was Mike Lawson.

Mike Lawson talking into a camera outside a construction project.

Mike Lawson on his own TV show.

What in the actual fuck?

Staring first in confusion and then amusement and back to confusion, Ginny struggled to wrap her head around the sight of him, a few years younger and a beard (and probably a few pounds, though Ginny didn’t think it did much for his appearance) lighter talking into the camera, smiling charmingly as he explained something about what he must’ve been working on.

What was even harder to wrap her head around was the pretty redhead leaning into his side.

“Y’know, I was sure Rachel’d lost her mind when she told me to save all that old flooring, but she was absolutely right. That’s why she gets to make the decisions, and I just follow orders.” He looked adoringly down at the woman beside him, who laughed, tossing her long, red hair.

“It’s true,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder and beaming straight into the camera. “I made him put that in our wedding vows.”

Automatically, Ginny paused the playback.

She blinked. Then blinked once more. She hadn’t realized Lawson was married. Then again, she didn’t actually know anything about him aside from his general disdain for open-concept living spaces and laminate flooring. Well, that and how well he got along with his crew, as both their leader and their friend. And how good his forearms looked when he had his sleeves rolled up to work the power drill—

Okay, back to the topic at hand.

The man was married.

Or had been, Ginny rationalized as she struggled to recall if she’d ever seen a wedding band in all the time she’d known him. He was definitely wearing one on screen.

She could still see it under the dark overlay announcing, “You are watching: Building Character.”

Telling herself that what she was feeling was not disappointment, not at all, Ginny pressed play again.

It wouldn’t hurt to watch a little more. Just to satisfy her curiosity. Nothing wrong with that.

Before she knew what she’d done, it was dark outside, the paint had dried out in the tray, her laptop was about to die, and Ginny had watched half a season of Building Character.

Which at least had the distinction of not being the worst name in the HGTV pantheon.

She forced herself to close Hulu’s tab and shut down her computer for good measure before plugging it in and leaving it alone for the rest of the evening.

What she did the next morning, however, was an entirely different story.

If asked, Ginny wouldn’t be proud to admit that she looked up the show’s Wikipedia article before letting herself get sucked back in the next morning, but she was curious, all right? There were worse reasons to do things. Mike Lawson did not seem like the type to get on board with being followed around by a camera crew, and she wanted to know what could possibly convince him it was a good idea.

There were no answers on that front, but she did skim over sections on the show’s premise and ratings, scrolling until she hit one titled: “Cancellation.”

It was a short paragraph, hardly even deserving of its own heading. All it said was: “Building Character was cancelled after its second season, aired in 2014, following several developments within the cast. Many speculated that its cancellation was due to competitor Bravo’s announcement of a new interior design show in development in the vein of Millionaire Matchmaker or Flipping Out, which Patrick had been tapped to headline. The series shot a pilot, which was never picked up. Patrick also filed for divorce from Lawson at this time.”

That wasn’t nearly enough information. It was hardly even information. There weren’t any sources cited, and no way to tell how true it all was.

Ginny had questions. About a million of them, actually.

(Even if her most burning one had been answered pretty definitively.)

And what better source for answers than the show in question? So, telling herself it was merely to sate her curiosity, Ginny felt only slightly weird about pulling up the next episode to play in the background as she went back to her neglected tasks from yesterday.

Ginny’s discovery left her in something of a strange, quasi-ethical quandary. At what point did she tell Lawson that she’d found his TV show? Should she even? No one on the crew had ever brought it up; he probably wasn’t trading on his semi-fame to drum up business. If he was, he definitely wasn’t doing a good job of it. Maybe Lawson just wanted to leave it in the past? If his short stint as a TV personality had ended in his divorce, there were probably some pretty bad memories tied up in it all. Ginny didn’t need to go digging that up just to sate her curiosity and soothe her vaguely guilty conscience.

And what was there to be guilty about? So what, she watched a publicly available TV show. A publicly available TV show that happened to feature someone she actually knew, but who didn’t know she’d seen his—

It was weird, okay? Just super weird.

Luckily, it was an easy enough conundrum to ignore when Ginny didn’t actually have to see the man in question. Well, not in person at least. In spite of her (more than) daily trips to the local hardware store and even striking up something of a friendship—well, Ginny was determined it would be a friendship by the time she was through—with its curmudgeon of an owner, Al, she hadn’t run into Mike Lawson again.

She thanked God that she hadn’t started her HGTV kick earlier. If she’d found the show while he was still around every day, slowly growing on her, Ginny couldn’t begin to imagine what she would’ve done. He probably would’ve ended up quitting and she would’ve been left with a real problem on her hands.

For all Ginny had actually met the man before she stumbled across his cancelled home renovation show, she wasn’t prepared to come face to face with Mike Lawson again now that she had this information. It was easier to separate them into two entirely different people: Lawson, the grumpy contractor who’d made her house technically livable and wasn’t always as big of an asshole as he’d first seemed was miles away from Mike, the TV personality who both provided Ginny with some excellent inspiration as she fumbled her way through her DIY restorations and was utterly smitten with his pretty interior designer wife.

(Well, ex-wife now.)

Of course, just because it was easier didn’t mean it would always be that way.

Or would even last that long.

A few days after stumbling on Building Character, Ginny was once again at the hardware store, ready to pick up all the paint for her house, as well as drop cloths and tape and brushes and all the other supplies the internet had told her she’d need.

She was just loading the last of her freshly mixed paint cans into her cart when a far too familiar voice drawled, just behind her, “Of all the gin joints in all the world.”

Ginny whirled, paint clattering to the bottom of her cart, a hand to her chest. “Jesus, are you stalking me?” she blurted, ignoring any irony in her accusation.

(Watching a TV show wasn’t stalking, okay? Even if she was using said TV show to glean a few personal details—

Okay, okay. She got the picture.)

Lawson squinted at her, like he wasn’t sure if she was being serious or not. Ginny wasn’t sure either, though at least half her discomfort had to come from the fact that over the past week, she’d binged every episode of Building Character. She kept getting flashes of his TV self, leaner and fresher faced, laid over the current one, like a double image.

“No,” he finally answered, something like a smirk playing over his mouth. “And, y’know, I’m the one who’s been coming to this store for years. Wouldn’t you be the one stalking me?”

Ginny laughed, a little too high and a little too hard to be completely natural. “In your dreams, Lawson.”

“Just Mike is fine.”

The laughter dried up in Ginny’s mouth as her eyes went wide. “What?”

“Mike. That is my name.” His head tipped to the side as he regarded her, curious and amused and too much for Ginny, in all honesty. “You might as well use it if we’re going to keep running into each other.”

“How do you know we’re going to keep running into each other?” she demanded, scrambling to find her footing in this exchange and focus on the Mike who existed in the present, not just on her laptop screen. “So much for making me believe you’re not a stalker, by the way.”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s not such a big town, and Al likes to gossip. He told me you’ve been in at least once a day all week. Given the shape of your house, you’re gonna be here pretty often.”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” she said, dodging the question of whether or not she’d be calling him Mike any time in the near future. Maybe when Building Character and the way she’d chattered at the show like Mike was actually at work somewhere in the house as she painted was further in her mental rearview. God, she needed to make some friends around here. People who would keep her from talking to Hulu to feel like she had company. “There is a lot of work left to do.”

“And you’re starting with the painting?”

Grateful for the segue—and it didn’t even sound nearly as judgmental as she was sure he wanted to be—Ginny eagerly latched onto this topic. “Sort of. I’ve been getting some furniture, too.” She couldn’t seem to stop the steady flow of chatter, even as she was aware Lawson couldn’t be that interested. “Oh! And I just picked up this door from a flea market down in Encinitas. It’s got this art deco stained glass that’s all ocean waves. I’m thinking of painting the shutters blue to match.”

Mike nodded along anyway, but when he opened his mouth, it wasn’t to praise her thriftiness or design instincts. Instead, he asked, “You’re putting a door from a flea market in your house?”

Ginny shrugged. It was cheaper than getting a brand new one and it fit in the frame she already had. Which was exactly what she informed a despairing Lawson. Plus, how many people have hundred year old front doors?

“There’s a reason for that,” he said, clearly exasperated. “It’s gonna splinter the first time someone tries to bash it in.”

It was the sheer grouchiness in his voice that finally shook Ginny out of her awkwardness. This man in front of her, the one frowning so forbiddingly, was Mike Lawson. The one she’d gotten to know over piles of 2x4s and through a fine sheen of plaster dust. Whoever he’d been when Building Character was filmed didn’t really exist anymore.

All she needed to do was look at his beard to know that.

“Who’s bashing in doors around here?” she joked, trying to settle back into their customary banter.

“You can never be too careful,” Mike replied without actually answering the question.

“I’ve managed to protect my house from burglars just fine on my own, thanks.”

Lawson was still frowning when he asked, “You’re really doing this by yourself?”

Ginny rocked back, surprised by the shift in topic. “How else am I supposed to do it? You got me through the difficult stuff. I can manage to strip some cabinets and install a few light fixtures on my own.”

He was smart enough not to argue, though his skepticism was hard to miss. “I’m sure you’re more than capable, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it on your own.”

Ginny snorted, but didn’t bother to explain herself at his curious look. Lawson must have forgotten what it was like to be new in town. Especially a small town like this. Vaguely suspicious stares and curious murmurs still followed Ginny almost everywhere she went, though she’d done her best to present a friendly face, willing to wait out the distrust. Having grown up in a small town of her own, she knew that strangers weren’t always met with open arms. She had her small circle of friends—Blip and Evelyn, Cara, Livan and most of the other guys, and even Lawson on good days—which was so much better than what she’d started with. Ginny could afford the wait on this front.

“Well, I’m going to,” she replied, decisive and determined. (And entirely missing the thoughtful frown on Lawson’s face.)

After all, what other choice did she have?

As it turned out, Ginny had more than a few choices.

Somehow—and the exact mechanics of this information exchange were never quite nailed down to Ginny’s satisfaction—word got around quickly among her limited acquaintance that she might be in a little over her head.

The first person to show up and offer her help was Evelyn Sanders, Ginny’s realtor. Ginny had seen the woman a few times in the past months, but it was mostly in passing. Friendly smiles as they maneuvered past each other at the grocery store and quick hellos in line for coffee. So, Evelyn’s sudden appearance on her doorstep, ready to work, was nothing short of a shock.

Ginny nonetheless invited her and her two rambunctious seven-year-olds inside, falling back on ingrained manners to get over her surprise.

“I’m so sorry it took me so long to come check up on you,” Evelyn said in place of an actual greeting as she ushered her boys in ahead of her. The kids, a set of twins by all appearances, looked up at Ginny, and she looked back, at a loss. Their frank curiosity was a refreshing change of pace from the veiled interest that dogged Ginny’s steps in town. At their mother’s permission, however, they both scampered out the backdoor to the waiting beach. No stranger could compare to the pull of the ocean to two seven-year-olds. “There was this whole thing—there was a house and a contested will and a court order—that just took forever to wrap up, and then Gabe and Marcus started school…”

Evelyn smiled winningly as she trailed off and Ginny looked uncertainly back.

“Oh,” Ginny said, upon realizing the other woman was waiting for a response. She was very aware that she’d gotten a streak of paint in her hair earlier in the day and could in no way compare to Evelyn’s spotless dress. “That’s all right?”

Evelyn flapped her hand, “Thank you, but I still should’ve come earlier. I always try to come for the housewarming, at least.” Then, with an evaluative glance around the living room, which had mostly turned into storage for Ginny’s estate sale finds, she added, “Although maybe I’m not as late as I thought. Blip told me he was done working on the house.”

Right, Blip. It’d honestly slipped Ginny’s mind that Lawson’s right hand man was married to her real estate agent. She hadn’t seen him in so long; he’d been one of the first to disappear from the project, apparently heading up the next one a few towns over. “He is,” she assured. “But I’m not.”

With the enthusiasm of a woman who loved a good project, Evelyn demanded all the details. If she was disappointed that Ginny was largely flying blind, she didn’t show it. She did, however, march through the house to take in the state of things for herself. In no time at all, showing off a mind built for organization and a personality for delegation, she’d helped Ginny catalogue all the remaining projects and construct a feasible timeline to finish them. As she left barely an hour later, apparently late for the boys’ baseball practice, she promised to take Ginny to all the best antique stores and salvage yards.

Ginny wasn’t holding her breath. Evelyn clearly had a lot on her plate, and while the help today was certainly appreciated, Ginny was more than prepared to finish this thing on her own.

All too soon, though, she learned just why no one underestimated Evelyn Sanders twice.

Not only did the realtor make good on her promise to take Ginny bargain hunting, she proved to be a formidable haggler and a determined friend.

Whether she liked it or not, Ginny was going to become part of the Sanders’ social circle.

(She definitely liked it.)

Suddenly, like a switch had been flipped, Ginny’s house was the new place to be.

On the weekends, some combination of the old crew—Sonny or Melky or even Livan, taking a break from his punishing social schedule—came over and helped her pull out the overgrown tangle of weeds in the front yard and, when that was done, moved on to repainting the siding. Blip would sometimes show up with the boys after school to jump in on whatever needed doing. He said he wanted them to learn the value of hard work, but since they were seven and had the attention spans to prove it, they mostly ended up eating cookies and milk in the kitchen while their dad and Ginny stripped cabinets, shit talking one another’s taste in basketball teams. Evelyn would breeze in after her office closed, take a quick tour to survey the newest improvements, and round up her boys so Ginny could “have some peace and quiet.”

Sometimes, she even rounded Ginny up and brought her home for “a proper home cooked meal,” which Ginny would never turn down, even if she thought she should. The sandwiches Cara made down at the cafe were good, but there were only so many of them that she could eat.

In payment, Ginny always made sure to have more than enough beer (or juice for her underage helpers) in the fridge and pizza to feed an army waiting at the end of the day. She, personally, thought she should be doing more in repayment, but every time she offered, they all shook her off. All they’d take was food and gratitude.

Which Ginny was more than happy to give.

She would’ve given a lot more for the comfort that came with knowing there were people here who had her back.

Even if one of those people wasn’t Mike Lawson.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t around. She’d see him at the bar when Livan dragged her out of the house to escape the paint fumes, or at the hardware store when she inevitably had to go back to pick out a different sealant for her salvaged dining room table. He regularly showed up at the Sanders house for their bi-weekly potluck, and never empty handed.

Okay, Ginny saw him a lot, actually.

And every time she did, they got along just fine. Better than fine, even.

It was funny, getting to know the real him, and not just whatever version of Mike Lawson had been deemed fit for TV. On screen, he was clearly meant to be someone’s wish fulfillment: An appropriately rugged man’s man, but also a dedicated husband. Someone who not only worked with his hands, but could appreciate the finer things in life, too.

He was pretty much a walking wet dream.

And, don’t get her wrong, he did an excellent job of it, but he wasn’t quite real, either.

The real Mike had a bit of a dour streak, one Ginny hesitated to believe grew into existence along with his beard. He couldn’t stop rolling his eyes if they were in danger of falling out. He was terminally inclined towards grumpiness.

But he also watched out for his guys like they were his own brothers. He was funny, with a sarcastic bent that Building Character utterly failed to reveal. While he was personally affronted by Ginny’s taste in movies, and threatened her with a Film 101 crash course every other time they saw each other, he didn’t treat her like a moron for liking Mean Girls more than The Maltese Falcon.

Honestly, Ginny liked the man she was slowly coming to know even more than the one she still watched on Hulu sometimes.

For all his faults, Mike always listened to her progress, and Ginny got to pick his brain about particularly stubborn problems she ran up against. He offered advice and Ginny mostly took it with grace. Ginny fed him gossip from his guys, and he pretended not to squirrel away every bit of intelligence.

She even divulged that she’d found his show.

(“I didn’t know I’d hired a famous contractor,” she teased, elbowing him as they both waited for their drinks at the bar. Ginny probably didn’t need any more; she was already pretty buzzed. If she weren’t, there was no way she’d consider this an acceptable topic of conversation. As it was, she kept going. “You had your very own TV show, and you didn’t tell me.”

He rubbed at the back of his neck, sheepish. “It’s not something I really advertise.”

“Well, if I hadn’t heard you complaining about cherry finishes first hand, I wouldn’t have believed it. I never would’ve recognized you.”

“No?” Mike asked, one eyebrow raised and a corner of his mouth turned up, too.

“Nope,” she answered, ignoring how good he looked with that sly grin. “That thing you’ve grown on your face is a pretty excellent disguise.”

He laughed, a sharp burst of surprise that, like always, made Ginny’s stomach flutter. “Don’t hate on the beard, Baker.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Whatever I feel about the beard, it’s only what it deserves.”

The fact that it was the truth, no matter which way she meant it, only made it harder for Mike to argue.)

They were, at least in a casual way, friends.

But he never came to her house.

Ginny tried not to read into it. He renovated homes for a living. Of course he didn’t want to do it in his spare time, and for no money to boot. She couldn’t blame him for spending his free time doing other things. Things that didn’t involve her. (Even if they often involved other women, if the gossip around town to be believed.)

It didn’t mater that he always made sure to seek her out at Blip and Ev’s or the bar or even when they crossed paths in town. He was just being nice.

That was all.

“Son of a bitch!”

Ginny glared down at her phone, though the Lou the tow truck driver had already hung up and could appreciate neither her cursing nor her unimpressed stare. One of the unexpected problems of living in a small town was when there was a big accident up the coast, the only available tow truck was going to be kept busy for a while.

Which meant she was currently stuck on the side of the road, victim of a blown tire.

It was too dark and too far for Ginny to risk the walk into town, though Lou’d assured her he didn’t need her to stick around for the tow if she wanted someone to pick her up. Unfortunately, though, everyone she would’ve considered calling was busy somewhere that wasn’t the side of the road.

Blip and Ev were having a date night down in San Diego, Livan didn’t believe in answering phone calls (and was probably already knee deep in some flirting at the bar), and, well, those were the only people Ginny was actually comfortable calling. Cara the barista had insisted on trading numbers back when it became clear Ginny would be a new regular, but they rarely talked outside of the coffee shop. Their first foray into friendship couldn’t be Ginny demanding a favor.

Mike’s phone number was still somewhere in her contacts, not that Ginny actually had any plans to put it to use. He wasn’t that kind of a friend.

She sighed and flopped back in the bed of her truck, flinging an arm dramatically across her eyes for good measure.

She was so wrapped up in her pity party, she didn’t even hear the other car drive up. She also didn’t hear its driver kill the engine, get out, close the door, and make it within five feet of her.

“Need some help?”

Ginny bolted upright and was immediately blinded by a set of halogen headlights. All she could make out was a large, dim shadow approaching her. She jumped to her feet and immediately wished she’d thought to grab the tire iron or something from the bed of the truck. It might not’ve helped with her blown tire, but Ginny’d seen Criminal Minds, okay? If someone wanted to try and grab her, it would’ve been a hell of a help.

Panic flooding her veins and well before she’d gotten a good look at whomever had approached her, Ginny jabbed out with a fist. Who cared that she didn’t know who it was? She was alone on a dark road, but she was not going to end up as inspiration for the writers of Law and Order.

Unfortunately, blinded as she was, her aim was pretty shoddy. Her hand collided with something solid and unforgiving.

“Ow! Fuck!” her assailant protested, knocking her next punch out of the way. “Jesus, Baker! It’s me.”

“Lawson?” she demanded, reason catching up with panic and battling for control. She squinted against the glare of his headlights, and realized that: yes, she had just tried to punch out Mike Lawson. A hysterical burble of laughter climbed out of her stomach, and she pressed a hand over her heart, trying to calm its furious rhythm. “You scared me!”

He grimaced, holding out his hands placatingly and stepping to the side so Ginny didn’t have to stare straight into the light. Bright spots danced across her eyes, but she could still make out how guilty and concerned he looked. “Sorry,” he said, making sure to keep his distance. “Just, I saw your truck and pulled over to make sure you were all right. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Ginny’s heart was still thundering away in her chest, but she managed to nod. “Okay,” she said, swallowing back the bitter tang of adrenaline. As it went, she felt her knees begin to go, too. Before they completely dissolved beneath her, she leaned back against the lowered tailgate, hoping it seemed nonchalant and not necessary. “I get it. Next time, though, maybe try to avoid startling a woman alone at night.”

“Noted,” he agreed, his eyes sweeping over her in something almost like worry. “Are you okay?”

She waved him off, though the furrow of his brow didn’t ease up at all. “I’ll survive. And maybe by the time Lou gets here with the tow truck, I’ll have my heart rate back to normal.”

Mike ignored her dig in favor of frowning. “Tow truck? What’s wrong?”

“Blew a tire.”

“Don’t you have a spare?”

“That was it,” she replied, nodding to the shreds of rubber still clinging to her back wheel. Carefully, she eased herself up onto the tailgate. Her knees felt less watery now, but the tow truck was still a good half hour away. Might as well settle in for the wait.

Mike rolled his eyes. “You know you’re not supposed to drive around on it, right? It’s just to get you into a shop.”

Ginny rolled her eyes right back. “No, I had no idea, Lawson.” At his unimpressed stare (maybe it was just the shadows playing tricks on her eyes that made her think he was smiling a little reluctantly, too), she threw her hands in the air. “I was prioritizing, okay? I’d rather definitely be able to take a shower than maybe prevent, well. This.”

“What happened to your shower?”

“Nothing. It’s great.” It was. It was maybe her favorite place in the house, and not just because it was the only thing she hadn’t had to put any work into. Mike had turned what was once a tragically outdated bathroom into a mini spa, and Ginny would be lying if she said it hadn’t affected her tiny crush on him at all. “But the hot water heater died last week, and I had to get it replaced.”

He shook his head and heaved himself up onto the bed of her truck, too. “That house is a money pit. How you haven’t already gone bankrupt is a mystery.”

Ginny ignored his halfhearted probing in favor of leaning away from his warm and far-too-close bulk.

“What’re you doing?” she demanded, maybe a tiny bit shrill. But it was only natural. The only times she was ever this close to Mike Lawson, they were surrounded by other people. Now here they were, sitting in the bed of a pickup on a deserted road. It was like they were teenagers parking, only without any of the making out. As Ginny was all too aware.

“Getting comfortable,” he drawled, eying her askance. Once he’d settled in, leaning back on his hands, he let out a gusty sigh. “I’ve been on my feet since 6:00 AM.”

Ginny didn’t need to check her watch to know it was well past 9:00 now. She elbowed him, and replied to his affronted expression, “So you should be going home. Not waiting around in the dark for a tow truck that’s still twenty minutes away.”

Why she didn’t tell him that they didn’t, actually, have to wait at all—could, in fact—leave the truck for Lou to pick up, Ginny couldn’t say. Probably, she didn’t want to impose, didn’t make him drive all the way to her house when he’d done such a marvelous job of avoiding lately.

“I think that’s a pretty good reason for me to stay, actually,” he responded, dry as kindling. “Can’t go around abandoning damsels in distress, can I?”

“Such chivalry.”

“Someone’s gotta keep real manners alive.”

“Well, you’re not much good to me if you’re falling asleep,” Ginny grumbled, feeling warmth rise up her chest. She’d made the mistake of turning to look at Mike, and nearly lost her breath. His eyes were closed, face relaxed and tipped up into the cool night air. He seemed so at ease. Even just sitting on the corrugated metal of her pickup’s bed.

He laughed, low and rich and the goose bumps that erupted across Ginny’s skin had nothing to do with the breeze.

“Just wake me up if someone tries to kidnap you,” he said, laying back and getting comfortable.

She didn’t reply, or even look at him. Just curled her fingers around the edge of the tailgate and tried not to flinch as his automatic headlights went out, plunging them into darkness. With only the moon to illuminate them now, it all felt dangerously intimate. Which was ridiculous. Just because Ginny thought he looked perfectly climbable (and there was a thought she shouldn’t be having about her friends, no matter how their jeans clung to their thighs) didn’t mean—

Her phone buzzed just in time. Before Ginny could become too aware of the sound of Mike’s breathing next to her, or the warmth of his thigh practically pressed against hers.

Eager for the distraction, she pulled it out to see a message from Blip.

Hey, Lou said you’re stuck somewhere on Route 11. Do you need me and Ev to come get you?

Jesus, news traveled fast around here.

“Who is it?”

Mike’s voice was a little dreamy, distant enough to make Ginny turn and look at him against her better judgment. His arms were tucked behind his head, biceps straining against his sleeves in a way that was embarrassingly familiar. In the dim glow from her phone, Ginny could make out one eye open and squinting towards her.

“Uh.” She swallowed and made the plunge. She couldn’t sit out here in the dark with Mike Lawson for much longer. “Lou. He said I should find a ride because the pile up north of town is taking forever to untangle. I can leave the key under the seat.”

Automatically, Mike pushed himself upright, only groaning a little on the way. “All right, let’s get going, then.”

Still, Ginny hesitated. “You sure?”

“Huh.” He paused, like he was thinking it over. “Now that you mention it, yeah. I’m gonna go ahead and leave you here alone.” Ginny didn’t laugh, so he leveled her with a wry glare even as he offered her a hand down. “C’mon, Baker. I’m takin’ you home.”

Trying, and mostly failing, to rein in her grin, she took his hand and followed him back to his car.

The ride was pretty quick, passing easily as Ginny and Mike traded bits of news and gossip. You heard Salvamini’s wife is pregnant again? They think it’s twins this time. Natalie Luongo and Oscar Arguella think they’re doing such a good job at this secret dating thing, but half the town’s talking about them anyway. Tommy Miller got in another brawl with Theo Falcone; he’s lucky he didn’t break his other hand this time.

In no time at all, they were pulling up to Ginny’s house, which was looking more and more like a place someone actually lived. When it wasn’t pitch dark, the blue shutters stood out cheerfully against the window boxes of yellow and white tulips. A jasmine vine curled over the front door, and wafted its scent through the open windows. The place had some curb appeal again.

Mike parked and killed the engine, but Ginny didn’t make a move to get out. She didn’t want this moment to end yet.

“You painted,” Mike pointed out, rather obviously.

“Yeah,” she agreed, feeling a well of words bubble up and not knowing quite how to stop them, “that dingy tan wasn’t working for me. Maybe white’s a little on the nose for a seaside cottage, but I like it.”

“It looks good,” he said, a little too surprised for Ginny’s tastes.

“Thanks,” she replied, dry enough to make him chuckle. Then, in the interest of fairness, she added, “I did have help.”

“So I heard. By all accounts, it’s gone pretty well.”

“All accounts, huh? You gossiping about me, Lawson?”

In the darkness of the car, it was hard to tell if his ears flushed a dull red the way she’d sometimes seen them do when he got caught out in a lie. Still, he tried to play it off, saying, “You hear things around town.”

“Uh huh,” Ginny said, grinning wide and not bothering to conceal it.

He rolled his eyes. “When basically everyone you know is doing something, you hear a lot about it.”

“When everyone you know is doing something, you’d think you might check and see what all the fuss is about for yourself.”

When Mike remained stubbornly silent, refusing to meet her gaze, Ginny’s eyes narrowed. She let herself wonder why exactly Mike had not once shown up when most of his employees and friends—though, okay, the Sanders were the only people in town Ginny could say with any certainty Mike actually liked—were helping her out. Even Al had finally warmed up to her persistent small talk.

(But only after she mentioned having to go see his daughter Natalie after an unfortunate incident involving a hammer and both of Ginny’s thumbs. As it turned out, Al could take a shine to anyone who gave one of his children a compliment. Well, if someone had told Ginny earlier, she’d have been singing the Luongo girls’ praises as soon as possible because she definitely could’ve used that Friends and Family Discount back when she had no idea what she was doing. Now that she mostly knows what she’s doing, it’s still pretty handy, though.)

But Mike had remained curiously absent. Conspicuously absent, now that she thought about it.

“You sent them all, didn’t you?” she demanded indignantly, things falling into place. “You felt bad for me and told everyone I was in over my head!”

“No,” was his immediate response, sure and firm. “I maybe suggested to Blip that Evelyn check up on you, but everything after that was all her. And you, too. You won over people on your own.”

Ginny frowned, trying to hang onto her annoyance even as it fled as quickly as it’d come. “I could’ve done it on my own.”

“I know that,” Mike replied, easy as anything. “But you shouldn’t have to. You know how many people have tried to take on this house and failed? More than I can count. Here you are, though, all on your own and refusing to back down no matter what gets thrown your way. Kinda blows me away.”

She didn’t know what to say, so she just ducked her head and smiled. When she finally felt up to it, Ginny glanced at Mike through the screen of her eyelashes. This time there was no mistaking the flush riding across his cheeks.

“Thanks,” she murmured, shy.

“It’s just the truth,” he said, trying to frown forbiddingly like if he was gruff enough now, Ginny’d forget the soft center hidden behind all that sarcasm and flannel.

“Okay,” she replied, opening her door and flooding the interior with light. Mike blinked, and he looked so endearingly startled, Ginny couldn’t help the next words that came out of her mouth. “Wanna come in and see the progress?” At his hesitation, she teased, “I bet it’s been killing you not to tell me exactly what I’ve been doing wrong.”

He rolled his eyes, but he was already pulling the keys from the ignition. “Fine. But only so I can make sure you haven’t ruined all my hard work.”

“I mean, if you’re pulling everything down to the studs and changing the entire layout, can you even call it a renovation anymore? It’s basically new construction.”

Ginny, who had no horse in this race, just shrugged, making Mike scowl a little. Well, a little more than he already was. It didn’t seem to matter how good of a mood he was in, he was usually scowling at least a little. It made his grins all the brighter.

Except, Ginny had other matters on her mind right now. Well, other matters that should be on her mind. Namely, installing the new faucet she’d picked out for the kitchen sink. The old one had sprung a leak and was ugly as sin, anyway.

Mike had offered to put it in for her, but Ginny’d gotten this far without his help; he only showed up after she’d gotten the old one mostly taken apart, after all. She wanted to finish it herself. He accepted that easily enough, but still claimed he was going to stick around to “supervise.”

If “supervising” meant complaining about the current lineup of HGTV shows, he was doing a bang up job.

He had, at least, managed to keep her from giving up in frustration when it turned out the old faucet was basically rusted into the water pipes. He’d deigned to wedge himself under the sink and put some elbow grease into the wrenching required to free the plumbing from the leaky faucet. If Ginny’d appreciated the picture he’d painted, his shirt riding up a little over his stomach, more than the actual help, that was her business.

Mostly, that was par for the course when Mike came around. He didn’t do much actual work around the house, but he’d show up and look over what she’d accomplished since he was last there. Every so often, he’d be her muscle, wrestling a door into the frame or helping her move around furniture.

More often, though, he was just eye candy.

Not that Ginny ever planned on telling him that.

“Seriously,” he continued, leaning heavily on the counter as Ginny finished tightening the new handles and checked over the coupling between faucet and pipe, “what’s the point in buying a old house if you’re just gonna rob it of all the things that make it unique?”

“What do you do when someone wants to knock down all the walls in a house, then?” she asked because she couldn’t help herself. “Just tell them no?”

“With more tact than that.” At Ginny’s snort, he straightened and pointed a finger at her. “I can be tactful. I can be downright charming when I want.”

Ginny snorted again and set aside her wrench. “Sure you can. You think I can try turning this on?”

Mike shrugged, though he did run a critical eye over the setup. “You can definitely try.”

Since that was as good as she’d get, Ginny ducked down to turn the water on again. When she straightened, his eyes didn’t dart away from her, but there was a hint of pink blooming across his cheeks. Biting back a smile Ginny paused with her hand poised dramatically over the handle. “Moment of truth.”

He rolled his eyes, but came to stand next to her. “All right, Baker, let’s see what you’ve got.”

She flipped the handle and beamed as water began to flow from faucet head. Ginny turned to preen up at Mike, but before she could annoy him into congratulating her, an ominous hissing sound came from the kitchen sink.

In horror, they both turned and watched as the stream slowed to a trickle and stopped for a moment as the pipes began to rattle. Then, right from the base of the faucet, a gushing spray of water burst forth.

“Shit!” Ginny shrieked, ducking away from the sputtering faucet and right into Mike’s warm, firm chest. His arms, which had been reaching around her to fix whatever she’d done, now caged her in, right in the path of the spray. She cringed back from the cold water, further into his embrace. “Mike, move!”

She had to duck under his arm to get out of the way, since he didn’t react quickly enough. Any thrill that she had at being caught up in Mike’s arms was dampened by the situation.

Literally.

Water dripped from her hair into her eyes, and she could only imagine where it hit Mike as he took the full brunt of the spray now that she wasn’t shielding him. He squawked a little, flinching away. Ginny scrambled to reach into the cabinet and shut off the valve.

The spray stopped and kitchen descended back into quiet. Ginny straightened and took in the sight before her.

Mike stood, dripping water like an angry cat. Drops fell from his hair and beard and rolled down his already soaked flannel. It clung to him like a second skin, which was not what Ginny should’ve been taking away from this, but she was only human, okay?

He dashed water out of his eyes and glared as giggles helplessly fell past Ginny’s lips. She covered her mouth with her hand, but she couldn’t stop. She shook her head in apology, but that just made her ponytail swing from side to side, splattering them both with more water as it went. Mike’s grimace finally lightened, his own mouth twitching as he struggled to keep his own laughter in.

When it burst out, it mingled with Ginny’s, a harmony she’d never get sick of hearing.

And there was a thought she shouldn’t really be having. Mike was her friend, and that was all. Get over it, Baker, she told herself, trying to school her features and take a deep, calming breath.

“C’mon,” she said. “I just had the washer and dryer put in. We’ll get your shirt drying and then come back and clean this up.”

“Did you pay someone to come and install it?” He frowned, following her anyway to the hall closet that now doubled as her laundry room.

“No, they do it for free when you buy the warranty.”

“Yeah, ‘cause the warranty’s already a rip-off,” Mike grumbled, stripping off the sopping wet flannel. The white t-shirt he wore underneath was a little damp, though it already fit across his chest in a way that, ironically enough, made Ginny’s mouth go dry.

She blinked and turned to fiddle with the machine’s controls, pulling off her own soaked sweatshirt and tossing it inside with Mike’s flannel. Her tank top had a few damp patches, but it was a dark red and didn’t present the same issues as Mike’s. And there definitely wasn’t a part of her that wished that it did; if there was no reason for Mike’s eyes to go dark with desire, there was no reason to be disappointed when they didn’t.

“Well,” Ginny finally made herself say after getting the dryer started, “I didn’t have much of a choice. If I can’t even install a kitchen faucet correctly, I don’t think there’s much hope I could’ve handled this.”

“You would’ve been fine,” Mike replied with a certainty that always made Ginny’s gut tighten in gratitude. For all he’d been so skeptical of her ability to let someone else fix this disaster of a house, Mike definitely didn’t think that now. And every reminder of that fact, his quiet belief, bolstered her on. “And you could’ve called me, y’know.”

“I could’ve?” She eyed him sidelong, sure that if she faced him head on, she’d do something stupid.

Stupid maybe, but also so, so satisfying.

“Yeah.” There was no eye roll this time, which made Ginny turn and lean one hip against the rumbling machine. Mike’s face was open, even a little fond. “You could’ve. That’s what friends are for, right?”

Ginny’s smile froze and she found herself nodding automatically. When Mike’s brow furrowed, she rushed to cover up any of her disappointment. “I’ll keep that in mind, old man.”

Mike just laughed and shook his head. “Old man, huh? Now I’m definitely not telling you how to fix your faucet.”

He eventually did, but only after Ginny’d pouted at the offending object for a full five minutes, unsure of where she’d gone wrong. When he finally came over to lean against the counter beside her, she soaked up both his advice and his body heat and tried to tell herself that just friends stood this close all the time. And just friends smiled at each other just like this, too. And just friends thought about how easy it would be to pull one another into their bedroom and become more than just friends.

Okay, maybe that was just wishful thinking.

(It definitely was.)

Later, Ginny would blame that for what she did next.

When she turned on the faucet again and they weren’t treated to a second impromptu shower, she maybe forgot herself. Just a little.

Before she really thought about what she was doing, Ginny’d flung her arms around Mike’s neck, laughing in delight. Immediately, one of his arms wrapped around her back, his big hand splayed out over her ribs and pulling her in. Not that she needed much encouragement, rolling up onto her tiptoes to stay as close as possible. She hid her smile against his shoulder and only pulled back when he did. For a long moment, they stared each other in the eyes, Mike’s hand still firm on her waist, fingers flexing. She was so, so sure, something was going to happen.

She wanted something to happen.

And Ginny would swear that it was going to, except—

His phone rang.

Even hours later, as she lay in bed, Ginny couldn’t get the feel of him pressed so tight against her out of her head. The way he smelled, the sound of his pulse near her ear, it all played over and over, making it impossible to sleep.

There was no way her dreams would live up to reality.

What also made it impossible to sleep was the way he’d stepped away to take the call and dismay rushed in to take his place. For a second, she couldn’t quite look at him, feeling like her cheeks might really burst into flames if she did. Nonetheless, Ginny could feel his eyes on her, even as he listened and nodded along to whatever he was being told.

She lifted a hand to her lips, telling herself she couldn’t still feel his breath on them. Her heart threatened to pound its way out of her ribcage, but it wasn’t panic. No, it was thrilling and electric, bright enough to make her feel like she could take off flying.

As soon as Ginny came to this realization, Mike ended his call and disheartening silence rang between them.

Awkwardly, he cleared his throat, looking anywhere but her. For her part, Ginny couldn’t look away now, cataloguing the bob of his Adam’s apple and the almost invisible spray of freckles across his nose.

She might as well, since she had a sinking suspicion she wouldn’t be seeing much more of them in the near future.

Sure enough, Mike made up some excuse—offering up far too much information about the lumber crisis Blip was having for it to be anything but a lie—and was out of the house before she could protest.

No matter how much she’d wanted him to kiss her, he hadn’t.

And she was starting to think he never would.

That didn’t gut her. Not even a little bit.

In spite of her slightly inconvenient—because, really, he’d given no real indication that he wanted to be anything other than friends—feelings for Mike, life did go on. So, while Ginny tried to get over her stupid crush, she also threw herself into finishing up the last repairs and furnishing her house.

In a whirlwind of determined activity, from which there was one conspicuous absence, Ginny threw herself into finding the perfect area rug or refinishing the desk that would go in the guest bedroom or hanging the swing for the back porch.

Anything to take her mind off that absence.

Not that it was all that easy to do. For all Mike had made himself pretty scarce lately, it seemed like he was all anyone wanted to talk about. Everywhere Ginny went, people were dying to give her updates. She heard through the rumor mill that he’d taken on a huge project up near LA, run into his ex-wife, and hadn’t been back in town for weeks.

Well. That was fine. It was even fine that people always seemed to give her this gossip with sympathetic smiles and pitying looks.

Ginny didn’t need his help. There were plenty of other people who would help her out.

And soon enough, all that help and hard work had paid off.

The ramshackle little beach cottage she’d bought on impulse a little more than three months ago was finally finished.

To celebrate, Ginny invited everyone who’d played a role in buffing her diamond in the rough to its current shine to a housewarming party. She set up a bonfire out on the beach and bought enough marshmallows for her own Stay Puft Man. That was exactly what a grown up housewarming party needed, right? S’mores.

For other food, Cara, her barista friend and the woman who’d kept her fed while she was functionally kitchenless, brought all the leftover pastries from the café and Al insisted on manning the grill. Natalie put in an appearance, too, strategically timed so her dad wouldn’t notice she and Oscar showed up in the same car. Of course, so did all the guys from Mike’s crew, along with Blip and Evelyn and the boys.

She even invited Mike, though she didn’t really expect him to show up.

Which, of course, meant he had to go and make an appearance, anyway.

It was late into the evening before he showed up. Well after some guests had already been and left. Still, there were enough people milling around not to make his presence too strange.

Ginny looked up in the middle of a conversation with Sonny and Butch, and even before she caught sight of him, frowning faintly at the arrangement of furniture in the front room she knew he was there. She actually liked her delightful hodgepodge of things. None of it was supposed to go together, not when she’d found it all at estate sales and salvage yards and antique stores, but once it was in the room, it felt like home.

For some reason, it felt even more like home with Mike standing there, too.

Like her weeks of disappointment meant nothing at all, Ginny felt the flutters erupt back to life in her stomach. God, she’d missed him, no matter what she’d told herself.

She made vague excuses to Butch and Sonny, ignoring their smirks and knowing glances, and made a beeline straight for him.

“You made it.”

Mike looked up from inspecting the cushions she’d put on the window seat, maybe startled, maybe not. “You invited me.”

“And I never heard if you were going to come or not.”

“Sorry, I can—”

“No,” Ginny blurted, reaching out when he turned over his shoulder towards the door. She stopped herself just in time from taking hold of his wrist. Her hand fell back to her side, dangling limply. “I was just surprised.”

He nodded, and an awkward silence descended over them both.

Ginny searched for something to say, chewing on her lip and looking over her remaining guests, all of whom were very studiously avoiding this area of the living room. A hot flush started to climb up Ginny’s cheeks.

Just as she was about to make an excuse to leave herself, Mike broke the quiet, gesturing to the eclectic mix of furniture. “Where’d you even find this stuff?”

“Here and there. Evelyn reads the obituaries so she can get a jumpstart on all the good estate sales.”

He snorted and Ginny felt her shoulders relax. Like that was the cue he’d been waiting for, Mike offered her a soft smile.

“I can’t tell if there’s a theme or not,” he grinned, taking in the wingback chair placed next to a Lucite side table. “Am I missing something?”

“Unless ‘Stuff I Like’ is a theme, not really.”

“Not if you’re planning on a career as an interior designer, it’s not.”

Ginny wrinkled her nose, the prospect of having to do all this again making her head spin. “I think one house was all I had in me.”

“That’s a relief,” he said, grinning but still making it sound nothing like a joke. “I’ve had more than enough of interior designers.”

She shrugged, but didn’t bother to wipe the exuberant smile off her face at the certainty in his voice. “Good thing I like my job, then.”

“Good thing,” Mike agreed, his head tipping at a slight angle to take her in.

Ginny simply looked back, the flutters in her stomach now a veritable rush of quivers. Hope clogged up her throat, making her eyes shine.

He shifted, his shoulder closing in on her, creating a pocket of space, just for them. In response, Ginny could feel herself rock forward, just ever so slightly, onto her toes, ready for whatever move Mike might make. Just as he opened his mouth to say something more, something that looked so promising, Livan called out for Ginny from the kitchen.

Ginny shouted a reply automatically, but by the time she’d answered to his satisfaction and turned back, Mike had closed his mouth again, a bland smile on his face.

“I’ll let you get back to everyone.”

“Okay,” she agreed, prompt and more than a little hollow. But what was the point in that? Ginny was sick of missing opportunities with one man when she didn’t let any others slip through her fingers. “Don’t try and leave without saying goodbye, though.”

He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes, and nodded a polite agreement.

In all honesty, she didn’t much expect him to keep his word on that front.

So, it was with something of a jolt that much later, while taking a short break from collecting the empties littered across the sand behind the house, Ginny looked up and caught sight of Mike through the window above the sink, sleeves rolled up his arms as he washed dishes. He was the only one left in the house, everyone else long gone.

She blinked, but he was still there when she opened her eyes.

He hadn’t left. She would’ve sworn he left.

But he hadn’t.

Ginny let her feet carry her to the back porch as she processed this information. But rather than open the door and step inside, where Mike was blithely washing her dirty dishes, she sank onto the swing and tried to reorder her thoughts.

Here was what she knew:

Mike Lawson, against all odds, had gone from grumpy contractor to one of Ginny’s closest friends. Mike inspired feelings that were distinctly more than friendly in her. Mike had disappeared on her after sharing an arguably romantic moment. Mike may or may not have seen his ex-wife recently, which could have done any number of things to his mindset. Mike had come to her party.

Those were the facts. (Though nothing close to all of them. What was she supposed to do with the fact that he smelled the way fall should or that he liked alfredo sauce more than marinara? How about the fact that what he called her “constant interruptions” only annoyed him about half the time? Or the fact that she wanted to know more and more until there was nothing she didn’t know about Mike Lawson?) She just wasn’t sure what to make of them.

Before she could reach any conclusions, though, Mike’s voice broke into her thoughts.

“There you are. Aren’t you gonna come in?”

Ginny stared up at him wide eyed for a moment too long. His head tipped to the side and it was so similar to how he’d looked at her earlier tonight, eyes soft and shoulders relaxed, she couldn’t take it. Not another close call with no resolution.

“There’s so much sand in there!” she babbled instead, unwilling to give any of her other thoughts voice. “I’ll never be able to get it out.”

“You live on the beach,” he pointed out, a chuckle not quite burbling through his words.

“My house is very close to the beach,” Ginny corrected. “Which should stay outside where it belongs.”

“I’ll make sure it gets the memo.”

Ginny laughed, but when Mike didn’t say anything else, just continued leaning against the door frame like some kind of burly male model, she scrambled for something appropriate to say because “Can I climb you like a tree?” definitely wasn’t it.

“I should’ve made everyone rinse off before they came back in. How hard would it be to put a spigot right here? Or an outdoor shower? Those are things, right?”

“For you or me?” He pushed away from the door and ambled closer, making Ginny all too aware of how quickly she was breathing. Mike didn’t seem to notice, though, sinking down next to her, a warm shield against the chilly ocean breeze.

It didn’t seem to stop her shivers any.

“Are you an option?”

It was out of her mouth, the hurt and confusion she’d tried to ignore embarrassingly clear, before she could help herself.

He ducked his head and winced. “I probably deserved that.”

She didn’t argue, just waited.

“It’s been a long time since I felt even close to the way I feel about you, Ginny,” Mike admitted to the dark. “And that scared me. I tried to pretend that I wasn’t feeling anything, but…”

“But?”

“It hasn’t worked.”

Around the knot of hopeful expectation wedged in her throat, Ginny managed a breathless, “What are you saying, Mike?”

“What am I—” He cut himself off with a self-deprecating laugh. “I’m saying that I’m an option. For more than just home repair, if you’ll—”

Ginny didn’t care that he’d undoubtedly get on her case later for interrupting him again. She didn’t want to hear it, not when he’d finally given her more than a hint that she wasn’t in this thing alone.

So, she laid her hand on his cheek, turned his face towards hers, and silenced him with a kiss.

He pressed back against her, his mouth stretching to mirror Ginny’s grin before moving gently, insistently against it. One of his arms wrapped around her, pulling her close and making the swing sway. She threw her arms around his neck for the second time in her life, sighing into his mouth.

When they drew away, foreheads still resting together as their breath mingled, Ginny knew she had to say something. “You’re the only option,” was what she came up with. Thankfully, Mike’s responding grin only grew when she followed it up with, “For home repair, too.”

Their laughter twined together once again, rising into the night like smoke from the dying bonfire. But nothing about Mike and Ginny, except maybe all of the home improvement projects, was at an end.

It was a little funny. Ginny’d left North Carolina—her home, her family, and the man who wanted to marry her—in search of a fresh start. She would never have expected she’d need to buy and renovate an entire house just to find it, but just because the process wasn’t what she’d planned didn’t make the results any less sweet.

As an ocean breeze rocked the porch swing where she sat cuddled into Mike’s side, Ginny was happy to realize that she wouldn’t trade this house, or any of the headaches it had given her, for the world.

Ginny rose and turned to pull Mike up along with her. He came willingly enough, but she answered his silent question anyway.

“You missed the grand tour,” she announced, studying him from beneath her lashes.

Mike, who’d seen every square inch and worked on most of them, just quirked a brow. “Oh, did I?”

She nodded solemnly, struggling to keep her giddy smile under control. “And it might go very late. Too late for you to drive home. You’ll have to stay the night.”

Clearly, he had no such reservations about letting his blinding grin free. His cheeks appled and his eyes sparkled from the sheer force of it. Ginny didn’t get much of a chance to admire it before he was back in her space, his hands buried in her hair and lips pressing against hers. Only once his tongue had swept into her mouth, making her clutch at his broad shoulders as her knees went weak, did he pull away.

“Staying sounds perfect.”

Ginny didn’t need to hear anything else. Shy and excited all at once, she took his hand and led him inside the house.

Except it wasn’t just a house.

It had taught her how to stand on her own while still accepting the help she needed. It had given her friends and a new family all of her own. It had given her Mike, who might not want to marry her, but the thought of someday being his wife didn’t make her want to run for the hills. Which was definitely a step up from where she’d been just six months ago when she’d come looking for something new.

Maybe she was feeling a bit sappy—and who could blame her when she was still swimming through the daze of kissing Mike Lawson for the first time?—but this place really was so much more than a house.

It was her home.

(But one day, it just might be his, too.)

#Anonymous #Bawson #bawson fic #pitch #pitch fic #i wrote something #what's ginny's job you ask?#¯\_(ツ)_/¯#wait no i did actually put something in #it's web designer #where does she live?#idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#somewhere vaguely north of sd #how long do home renos take?#we just can't know

49 notes · View notes