The Good Ones Page 2

  Ryder lifted his eyebrows. “That bad?”

  Maisy shrugged. “Auntie El lived here alone until the last few months of her life and then it was me and a crew of nurses looking after her. She was a tiny little thing and didn’t take up much room. Her collection, on the other hand . . .”

  “Collection?” Ryder tipped his head to the side. “Now I’m intrigued.”

  Maisy thought she should warn him, but really how could she? Seeing was believing.

  “Did you want to tour the place?” she asked. “I can show you around and give you an idea of what I’m hoping to accomplish and what needs to be done.”

  “Absolutely,” he said.

  Maisy pulled the door open and gestured for him to come in. Ryder followed her, his gaze fixed on the house as if he couldn’t wait to see inside.

  Maisy would have laughed, because, boy, was he in for a surprise, but his arm brushed against hers, just the lightest contact, as he walked by and she felt a jolt of awareness. A zip zap of electricity and the intense feeling that this man could alter her life course with a snap of his fingers. It shook her to the core.

  He stepped fully into the house and lifted his arm to take off his hat. The contact was broken and Maisy felt her common sense fall back into place like sand on a beach after being rolled by a wave. Seriously, she had to get out more.

  “Can I get you anything? Water? Sweet tea? Lemonade?” she asked as she closed the door behind them.

  Ryder didn’t answer. Small wonder. He stood in the foyer, slack-jawed and boggled, looking at the sitting room to the left. Maisy couldn’t blame him. Although she had begun to sort and arrange the titles, the room was still packed to bursting with books. Only a narrow three-foot pathway plowing through the center of the room to the settee and matching wing chairs on the opposite end made the room accessible.

  “Books,” Ryder said. “Your great-aunt collected books.”

  “Uh-huh.” Maisy squeezed past him. “Romance novels, specifically.”

  Ryder said nothing. His eyes moved slowly over the room, the hallway, and the stacks on the stairs as if his brain could not comprehend the piles and piles and piles of paperbacks.

  “Did she read them all?” he asked.

  “Every one,” she said.

  “So, you have some decluttering to do,” he said. “Before you get the house ready to sell?”

  “Yes, sell,” she said. The words stuck in her throat but if Ryder noticed he didn’t say anything. She hated the idea of parting with Auntie El’s house. It had been in the family for generations. “The rest of the house is equally crammed full to bursting and what’s worse is I can’t seem to find anyone who wants the books. The fact that they’ll likely end up in a landfill would have broken Auntie El’s heart.”

  “Is that the only option?” he asked. “Maybe a library would—”

  Maisy shook her head.

  “Senior center?”

  “Nope.”

  “Prison?” he asked with a grimace.

  A laugh bubbled up, surprising Maisy. “I actually hadn’t thought of that, but I have to do something with them all, don’t I?”

  She knew her voice sounded forlorn when Ryder gave her a sympathetic close-lipped smile.

  He put his hand on the back of his neck and said, “Maisy, when I meet with clients about renovating their property, the one thing I ask them, so that we’re both clear about the project from the start, is how they want their space to function after the renovation. So, what is it that you really want to do with this house and these books? I saw your face when you said ‘sell.’ It wasn’t the expression of a person who wants to part with something.”

  A little flicker of hope, or possibly agita, fluttered in her chest. Ryder was right. For the past few months, she’d been dithering about the house and its contents while she grieved for her aunt. But now she had to make a decision. What did she want to do with the house? She liked that he put it that way. He wasn’t like her two older brothers, telling her what she had to do or what she should do, or what they would do in her place. No, he was asking what she wanted to do.

  Completely disarmed, Maisy said, “Well, I think I know, maybe, what I want to do, possibly . . . perhaps.”

  “And?” He tipped his head to the side, his blue eyes regarding her with infinite patience.

  She took a deep breath and said, “I want to turn this house into a bookstore, a romance bookstore.”

  Chapter Two

  OH, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

  Maisy bolted up the stairs to the third floor. She burst through the door of her makeshift apartment and thumbed through the contacts on her phone until she found the voice of reason listed under Bestie. She pressed the number and put the phone on speaker.

  “Maisy, my favorite Southern belle, what’s up?” Savannah Wilson answered on the second ring.

  “Rescue one,” Maisy said. She waited a beat and then pulled the pink bandanna out of her hair, fluffing her dark, chin-length curls with her fingers.

  “Uh-oh,” Savannah said. “If you’re deploying ‘rescue one’ this is serious. Are you on a date? Do you need me to text you a bogus emergency to get you out of there?”

  “No.”

  “Have you been arrested? I’d love to help with bail but I’m kind of strapped right now. Think they’d take a promissory note? Or is it really bad and I need to show up with a shovel, no questions asked?”

  Maisy started to laugh. This was why she’d called her former college roommate.

  “No, it’s nothing like that.”

  “I’m relieved and yet oddly disappointed. Go ahead. I’m all ears. What’s happening?”

  “I think I may have just scared off the only restoration architect in all of Fairdale, North Carolina,” Maisy said.

  “Whoa,” Savannah said. “What happened? Did you two have a breakdown in the old form-versus-function debate?”

  “No, first, I got the date wrong for our appointment, so rude, and then I let him into the house, and I think the sheer number of books Auntie El tucked into every available space may have freaked him out,” Maisy said. She glanced in the mirror and drew in a breath at the sight of her reflection. In disgust, she yanked off the sweatshirt and stuffed it into the hamper.

  “Why would you think that?” Savannah asked.

  “Because his jaw hit the ground when he entered the house and I don’t think it ever went back up,” Maisy said. She smoothed the tank top she had on under the sweatshirt. “Can I really blame him?”

  Savannah started laughing. “No, I haven’t been in that house in seven years and even I remember feeling claustrophobic from all the books, and I am not what one would call an exacting housekeeper.”

  “You’re a slob, Savy,” Maisy said. “Your laundry used to be knee-deep in our apartment. I had to wade through your sweaters to get to the bathroom.”

  “Your point?” Savannah asked.

  “Some people find messes off-putting,” Maisy said. “And I’m betting an architect is one of them.”

  She kicked off her Chucks and slid out of her shorts. Over the back of a chair, she found her black flared skirt with tiny roses on it, which matched the shade of her tank top. She located one black flat under the couch and another behind a chair. She hopped on alternate feet while putting the shoes on.

  “Um,” Savannah said. “Where is he now?”

  Maisy crossed the small apartment, which at one time had been her great-great-something-or-other’s rooms for the domestic staff, and glanced out the long window to the driveway below.

  “He’s getting a briefcase out of his truck or making a run for it. Hard to say,” she said. She paused to watch him for a moment. Despite their awkward introduction, she had not forgotten that he was a fine-looking man. Yeah, a man who thought she was a college student. “He called me ‘miss.’” />
  “Why would he do that?” Savannah sounded mystified.

  “Probably because I was wearing my old Fairdale U sweatshirt, had no makeup on, and looked like I should be peddling Girl Scout cookies from a flowered basket on my bicycle,” Maisy said.

  She grabbed the phone and darted across the room to the small bathroom and retrieved her makeup bag from the vanity.

  “I hope you corrected him,” Savannah said. Her voice sounded tight, like she was trying not to laugh. Maisy couldn’t blame her.

  “Not right away. I was too embarrassed to have forgotten our appointment,” Maisy said. “I thought about pretending ‘Ms. Kelly’ wasn’t home.”

  “Stop!” Savannah roared. “That’s classic. I bet he felt like a dope when you introduced yourself.”

  “He was very decent about it, actually.” Maisy lined her eyes and fumbled with her mascara. Lastly she put a little color on her lips, a deeper rose than her top. “He seems very nice.”

  “You sound weird, like you’re putting on lipstick.” Now Savannah was full-on laughing. “Let me guess. Right now you’re frantically trying to slam on makeup and a grown-up outfit before you go back out and face him.”

  “Precisely,” Maisy said. She adjusted her top and skirt, grabbed the phone from the shelf in her bathroom, and headed for the door. “The question is—”

  “Is it too late?” Savannah asked. “Has he already decided you’re as crazy as a soup sandwich and is even now escaping down the driveway planning to change his phone number?”

  “Well, if he can’t handle a little originality then he isn’t the architect for me,” Maisy said. She left the third floor and wound her way down the stairs through the maze of books.

  “Exactly,” Savannah agreed.

  “Ugh, who am I kidding? Maybe he’s right to drive off. What am I going to do with all of the books in this house?” Maisy asked. “I mean, I am completely overwhelmed.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Sell them, donate them, burn them, I guess.”

  “Yes, maybe, absolutely not. You’re not a savage,” Savannah said. “You know you don’t have to figure it out this second. After that horrible breakup with your ex, who now has the full-time professorship that should be yours, you’re out of work, right?”

  “Yeah, I handed in my notice.” Maisy thought about her ex, Dean Berry, and her stomach churned. The dingleberry, as she liked to call him, had romanced a promotion right out from under her. She closed her eyes. She refused to think about what an idiot she had been.

  “So, why not take this opportunity to do the thing you’ve always talked about?” Savannah asked.

  “Skydive?” Maisy asked. “I hardly think now is the right time.”

  “No, you know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “I know. You mean the go-to-Paris daydream, the one where I live in a loft apartment with a sliver view of the Eiffel Tower and exist on cheese and crackers and red wine while I pen my first novel.”

  “You are being deliberately thick,” Savy chided her. “I’m talking about what you suggested doing after you lost out on the promotion to that loser Berry. Your brilliant plan—come on, it’s still in there, I know it is.”

  “You mean the crazy idea—”

  “Yes, that’s it. The one where you take the substantial trust fund Auntie El left you and remodel her house into a romance bookstore, like that supercool shop, The Ripped Bodice, we visited on vacation in California last summer, and shake off that miserable career at the university and become your own boss at last,” Savannah said.

  “Funny you should mention that. I did run the idea of turning the place into a bookstore by the architect.”

  “And what did he say?”

  Maisy smiled. “He said, ‘Let’s get to work.’”

  “Well, there you go,” Savy said. “And in a weird circumstance of planets aligning, I have some free time. I can help you set up an online presence for your bookshop. Who knows, maybe there is a huge market for vintage romance novels.”

  “You’d do that?” Maisy asked. She paused on the landing as Savannah’s words kicked in. “That’s so nice of . . . wait. What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Savy.” Maisy used her friend’s nickname to remind her that she knew all of Savy’s deep, dark, warty secrets and now was not the time to withhold. Maisy twirled one of her chin-length curls around her index finger and then pushed it out of her face. “You are a publicity powerhouse for a top publisher, you don’t have time to sneeze much less help me unless—”

  “All right, all right, you don’t have to badger me,” Savannah said. “I am temporarily out of work.”

  “The merger?”

  “Something like that. Publicists are always the first to go,” she said, sighing.

  “Damn, I’m sorry,” Maisy said. She was indignant on her friend’s behalf. No one was as clever as Savy at promotion. “It’s their loss.”

  “Yes, let’s hope they realize that and soon. Rent in New York City is positively unreasonable.”

  “Then, come here,” Maisy said. As soon as the words left her mouth she knew it was the perfect solution for both of their situations.

  “Come back to Fairdale, the itty-bitty city full of all-you-can-eat pie, horseback riding, and watching the grass grow?” Savannah asked. “Lawd, I haven’t been back there to live since we graduated from Fairdale University seven years ago.”

  “I know the town’s a bit tame compared to life in the Big Apple—”

  “Sweetie, when watching fireflies light up the sky is your idea of a big night out then you have been living in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina way too long,” Savannah said.

  “Aw, come on, you’re not as immune to the charms of Fairdale as you sound—”

  “Ack! I forgot you’re a native and therefore required to be a lover of all things Fairdale.”

  “It’s not that I’m a lover. Okay, I totally am,” Maisy said. “Fairdale is home, and you haven’t been home in forever. Don’t tell me you don’t miss all-you-can-eat night at Pie in the Sky bakery. They still make your favorite coconut cream. Come on, Savy, you know you want to come home.”

  Savannah’s sigh was so long and so loud, Maisy was pretty sure she was going to pass out before she inhaled again.

  “Or not.”

  “Fine, I admit it. I love Fairdale, I do,” Savy said. “I loved going to school there. I loved having you as my roommate and best friend. I loved the old Victorian mansions in the center of town, and I loved the wild beauty of the surrounding mountains and rivers and streams, but I love it more in my rearview mirror than in my windshield. You know what I’m saying?”

  “You don’t want to come back,” Maisy said. She lowered her voice just to give it that little zing of pitiful and added, “Not even for me.”

  There were several beats of silence and Maisy knew that Savannah was wrestling with her desire to help her versus her desire not to drag her butt all the way down to North Carolina.

  “I cannot believe I’m going to say this,” Savy said, sounding genuinely surprised at herself. Then she laughed. “I have to be out of my apartment in a few days and I was planning to put all of my stuff in storage and crash at my parents’ place on Long Island until I find a new job, which, given the dysfunction that is my parents’ and my relationship, will be miserable for everyone involved. I suppose I can job hunt from Fairdale as easily as I can here.”

  “Yay!” Maisy cheered. “You won’t regret it. We’re going to have the best time and you can help me convince Ryder to take the job if he balks.”

  “Ryder, huh? Is he cute?” Savannah asked.

  Maisy stepped around several towering piles of books to get to the window by the front door. She moved the lace curtain aside and covertly studied the man now standing at
the front door. He hadn’t run away. Bless his heart.

  “Honestly, he looks like he stepped off the cover of one of Auntie El’s cowboy romances,” she said. She felt her pulse pick up and she swallowed audibly. Oh, dear.

  “Well, there you go. It’s a sign,” Savy said. “I guess I’ll go pack my elastic waistband pants. All-you-can-eat pie, here I come.”

  Chapter Three

  A BOOKSTORE. A romance bookstore. Ryder pushed back his hat and scratched his head. Of all the things Maisy Kelly had said she wanted to do with the house, even after seeing all of the books, that was probably the last thing he would have guessed. A bed-and-breakfast? Sure. A restaurant? Doable. A coffee shop? Predictable. But a romance bookstore? No, he hadn’t seen that coming, which was really shortsighted of him given that she already had the inventory. It was actually a genius solution to her problem. He found himself admiring her resourcefulness as he knew all about making do with what you had.

  Ryder had grown up poor, poorer than poor, in fact, and he never passed up an opportunity to work, to use his skills, to make some money, because he remembered all too clearly what it had felt like to go to bed hungry. When there had been only one can of soup in the house, he’d always made sure his baby brother, Sawyer, was fed, saving just the watered-down broth for himself. He never ever wanted to be that broke-ass poor again. And so here he was, taking on a summer project to fill the days and make some money before he moved down to Charleston for a high-paying administrative job.

  He tipped his head back and studied the house, its delicate gingerbread scrollwork, with the chipped and peeling paint, that decorated the eaves and the stained-glass window sashes that accented the beautifully arched windows. He felt his fingers itch. He wanted this job. Not just because it would look fantastic on his résumé, but because he knew he could really make this Victorian into something special.

  Ryder had been in Fairdale, North Carolina, for the past three years, working on several projects at Fairdale University. As a restoration architect, he’d been brought in to restore some of the oldest buildings on campus to save the university the cost of rebuilding but also to save the core structures that gave the school its historic significance. Fixing up this old Victorian would be his last chance to get his hands dirty and it might just keep his mind off the big life changes headed his way. Not that he was in denial or anything.