“It’s too late now. Don’t worry about it,” she whispers, but her fingers quiver in my hand.
“Nothing you tell me is going anywhere but here. And for the record, no one in this town outside of my family knows about the dyslexia or anything else. And I hope to keep it that way. I’ve shared a secret with you. I hope you can trust me enough to share one with me.”
She looks into my eyes and shakes her head. “I feel so awful about it. So ungrateful. They keep blocking me.”
“Okay. Who?”
“Before I came up to Vermont, I had a massive fight with my mom. I was supposed to be working for her like I do every summer, but—” She shakes her head.
“Go on.”
“I don’t know. I’m so selfish. This one time I wanted to do something else, something for myself, and I begged them to allow me to take an internship elsewhere this summer. They kept on brushing me off. I wanted something small that wasn’t all about the money and the show. Something I could do on my own, to show everyone I’m more than just my mother’s cheap-labor sidekick. I applied for this tiny house gig on a whim and by some fluke I got the job. Now I hear my mom is blackballing me in Miami and my dad has basically told me to find a new job because I won’t be welcome at home or at work in September. They’re looking for someone else to fill my shoes.”
I’ve never met her mother, but already I know that Georgiana is no one’s sidekick. What she really wants is to prove to the world she’s worthy and I totally get that because I’m on the same mission here. She’s already proven that she’s worthy to me, but it seems like she still needs to prove it to herself.
As for not being welcome at home…I’m stalling for a response because I don’t know what to say. I’ve gotten up to a lot of trouble in my day, but two things I’ve always been certain of: Aunt May’s arms were always open, ready to welcome me and hug me tight, and Uncle Bill would fetch me home from the furthest corner of the globe if I needed him to.
And that’s only Uncle Bill and Aunt May. My three brothers and all the Brodie cousins have my back too.
By the sounds of it, Georgiana has nobody. She’s told me she’s an only child and that it’s probably for the best. Now I’m starting to understand why.
“So,” she says as she pulls up straight, “I can’t afford to leave. I need to finish this project and win if possible. I’ll need a reference from you at the end of it, because my mother sure won’t give me one. And once she’s done bad-mouthing me to the whole state, not even all the clients who put in a good word for my résumé will continue to vouch for me.” She swallows and bites out a choked chuckle. “Do you know that I have more than four years’ worth of experience working for them? All those summers, the two years I gave up while my mom was still convinced a design degree would be a waste of time when I could work for her instead, for a pittance? But she realized an employee with no credentials could harm her reputation, especially when clients demanded to have my work signed off by a professional. That’s the only reason why I got to go to college. Which, I might add, I have a student loan for.”
I study her face, starting to feel like an asshole. Georgiana’s been through the wringer and my welcome to Vermont hasn’t been a warm one either. She got here after an argument that sounds more like a tectonic shift in her relationship with her parents. I’ve been working her hard and at night she’s been tossing and turning, worrying about the most fundamental relationship of them all. No wonder she’s had it.
“Is this why you’ve been upset at night?” I ask when we don’t move, our hands still clasped together on her knee.
“Yes. They’ve been ignoring me, not returning my calls.”
“No boyfriend in Miami I need to go beat up?” I ask softly, my heart on a platter now. The last thing I want is to be her rebound. Rebounds eventually move on, but with her—
“No.” She gives a helpless chuckle. “There’s no big bad boyfriend at home.”
Thank God. I search her face, and she seems to have had a weight lifted off her. The tears are all dried up, but her eyes reflect every trial of the day.
“Let me take you home,” I say softly and stand, but I don’t let go of her hand. I pull her up and cup my hands around her shoulders. “Tomorrow we start fixing my mess. Tomorrow will be better, I promise.” My lips burn with the need to kiss her, but I keep myself in check. More than one thing can be derailed with a simple kiss. “Whatever happens, Georgiana, know this: you have a place to go, right here, always. You’ll always be welcome in Ashleigh Lake. At the boathouse with me. With Uncle Bill and Aunt May, because that’s who they are. And if you need someone to help, to fetch you, call me, and I’ll come find you and bring you home.”
20
GEORGIANA
The next morning, we go through the dimensions provided by the National Tiny House Competition. There’s no intense discussion and no cutting comments come my way. When Raiden walks around the tiny house frame, staring at it for a long time, I keep my distance, not wanting to push my luck in this situation.
He circles it twice and it dawns on me that he is recalibrating the whole thing in his head with the right measurements.
“Let’s get cracking,” he says and gives me a nod. “We’ve got this. It’s going to set us back on time, but it’s nothing we can’t handle.”
We dismantle the rafters and the necessary studs, working together, already knowing how to read each other’s body language and little signals.
“So,” he says as he loosens the last screw to a rafter. “What’s the worst job you’ve ever been on?”
I laugh as a rafter drops and I lower it to the ground. “My worst job? Ever?”
“Yep, Miami. Tell me there was something worse than this.”
“Three months dealing with the stingy budget of a wannabe château owner? Who realized too late she’d invested in a pile of rubble? Navigating the French bureaucracy all the way?”
He chuckles. “C’mon, that sounds breezy!”