Page 2 of The Fixer

As he stepped into her space, she barely moved, and a soft floral scent drifted up his nose. Not the fragrance he would have expected, if he’d given it half a thought before this moment. He would have pegged her for sharp—like her angles and her demeanor—with an overabundance of spice. Not the good kind of spice either, but the kind that jabs your olfactory senses like turpentine.

With a few manipulations, the key turned in the rusty lock, and a little bell jingled merrily as he pushed open the door. He relished the triumph as he stood back and motioned her in. “After you.”

Her heels clicked on the worn floorboards, coming to an abrupt stop when one of them got stuck in a groove and she stumbled. Pure instinct had him shooting out a hand to keep her from toppling over, but he released her arm a little too quickly and she tripped anyway, catching herself and avoiding a complete face-plant.

“Sorry about that. Are you all right?” Shelookedall right, but civility—and his mother’s voice inside his head—forced him to ask anyway.

She straightened and jerked the hem of her shirt, smoothing it into place. “Yes, thank you.” Her face reflected her fluster, and he glimpsed vulnerability through a crack in her crusty layer.

“If you have some more, uh, practical footwear in your car,” he offered, “this might be a good time to get it. I’ll wait.”

“I’ll be fine,” she tossed over her shoulder as she pivoted toward a glass display case. Her ankles wobbled, and he cringed inside as he envisioned another fall that would send her crashing through the thing. Seriously? If the woman was going to wear deadly weapons, she should know how to control them.

Bracing herself against the case, she peered inside. “Oh. My. God. What am I supposed to do with all this stuff?” Before he could answer, she lifted her head and took in the rest of the clutter crowding the shop. “It’s everywhere!”

He dipped an eyebrow. “You didn’t know? On the phone, you said you’d been here before.”

“That was ten years ago, when I was ninet—never mind.”

“So you haven’t been to Fall River in the past decade?”

“My mother and I weren’t exactly close.” She continued scanning the contents. “This case full of woo-woo junk is a perfect example ofwhywe weren’t bosom buddies. I’m a minimalist, and she was beyond extreme. I don’t see an inch of spare space in here.”

A picture of Joy seated on a white couch that matched her flowing pants and sleeveless blouse popped into his brain. Her surroundings were black and white, the only touches of color in gray tones. In other words, colorless and cold.

He was compelled to defend her dead mother. “It’s not all junk. Look around, and you’ll see some consignment pieces by local artists. Your mom was good about letting them display their work in her shop.”

Joy brought herself upright, and her face fell. “Oh no. I’ll have to figure out who they are so they can get their things back before I empty the place out.” As she spun toward him, Charlie’s eyes snagged on a band of dust dirtying her silky top—something she’d apparently picked up when she’d bent over the case. Unfortunately, it lay across her bustline.

While her clothes suited the hot July day, they, like her shoes, didn’t fit in this store or anywhere else in Fall River. As another thought about appropriate attire streaked across his brain, he sensed her gaze narrowing on him. He snapped his eyes up and pointed at the brown stripe right before she crossed her arms over her chest. “You’ve got dirt there. Be careful what you lean against, or you’ll ruin your outfit.”

She glanced down and let out a little cry. Leaving her to brush herself off, he ambled toward the back of the building that led to an apartment he was intimately familiar with. He’d stopped by countless times over the years to fix this or that for Helene, though he didn’t recall it looking as shabby as it did right now. Even so, the potential lit a fire of exhilaration inside him.

He was taking pictures of the crown molding with his phone when Joy caught up to him. “Unbelievable,” she whispered.

He couldn’t contain his grin. “I know, right? Just look at the scrollwork! You hardly ever see that quality of craftsmanship anymore. It’s nearly extinct.”

The pleats between her perfectly plucked dark eyebrows deepened. “Scrollwork? How can you see anything under the layers of peeling paint? Oh God. It’s probably got lead in it.”

“Every layer is a slice of history,” he sighed. “And once the paint’s removed, the beauty of the wood is exposed. You’ll be able to see it through the eyes of the carpenter who crafted it and put it there a century and a half ago.”

“And how are you going to take the paint off? With a sandblaster?”

He tried to mask his alarm. This woman obviously knew nothing about preservation. Then again, she probably lived in a sterile black-and-white penthouse on top of a blocky Chicago building with no artistic lines. Or at least that’s how he pictured her back in the Windy City—which wasexactlywhere he wanted her to go at this moment. “No, that would chew up the wood. You sand everything by hand.”

He’d almost be willing to work on those details for free just to watch the wood spring back to life—never mind that his hours were already choked by too many projects and subcontractors he couldn’t trust not to cut corners.

One side of Joy’s mouth twitched with a smirk. “If you love this place so much, why don’tyoubuy it?”

“I would if I could.” Like his two older brothers, Charlie had inherited a tidy trust fund from his grandparents.Unlikehis brother Noah, he had invested it, nurtured it, and was used to being solidly in the black. However, between investing a chunk of his cash in the town’s effort to revitalize its antique railway, overcommitting to projects, and juggling them with the aforementioned untrustworthy subs, his finances were stretched as thin as his mental health. Renovating Crystal Harmony Haven would tax his bandwidth even more, but he simply couldn’t turn down the opportunity. Besides, he needed the income to replenish what he’d spent on the rail project.

“And no one else can buy it as-is and fix it up?”

“Well, they can, but again, it has to be brought up to those minimum standards I mentioned.”

“That’s a silly rule.”

“No, it really isn’t. After the crash in ’08, out-of-state speculators swooped in and bought up a ton of property at steep discounts. Then they sat on them and didn’t do one thing to improve them, and the buildingssat and sat. They continued to deteriorate. Some turned into serious hazards. This new rule prevents that from happening again. Nowadays, if you plan to sell one of these old places that hasn’t been touched, you better be prepared to re-wire and re-plumb it, convert it to town water and sewer, replace any broken windows, and make sure it’s structurally sound. All with permits. You don’t have to paint it or pretty it up, but it has to meet code.”

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