Mistletoe Daddy. Deb Kastner

one with the problem, lady, because I’m not the one who picked up a piece of property that’s bound to be more trouble than it’s worth. Remodel it in a week? Yeah, not so much.”

      “You don’t know that for sure.” Though she had a sinking feeling that he knew more about it than she did. Was one week a totally crazy estimate? She honestly had no idea how long these things usually took.

      Heat rose to her face. He must think she was a complete idiot. She wasn’t—more like a wishful thinker. Her tendency toward always believing in the best-case scenario had gotten her into trouble more times than she could count, but Nick didn’t need to know that.

      “No. I don’t.” He shook his head, his brow lowering. “But I can make an educated guess. Did you buy the shop at below market price?”

      Now, how had he guessed that? Alexis and Griff were the only ones who knew the details of her own private financial affairs.

      “I might have,” she hedged.

      He chuckled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

      “So it’s not in as good a shape as it could be. What does that matter? When it’s finished, it’ll be amazing. You’ll see. I have an exciting vision for it.”

      She’d made her decision the moment she’d seen the cute little red storefront standing empty in the middle of Main Street, especially when she’d noticed that it used to be a barbershop, no less, right down to the now-cracked twirling peppermint sign. It was locked so she hadn’t gone in, and the windows had been too dusty to see much more than shadows inside, but she was sure she could make it into something amazing. She didn’t care that it needed work. She’d made the right decision, and now she would stand by it.

      Yes, the once-red exterior paint was peeling and the sign hanging from the outside eaves was dangling by a mere thread, but that would have had to have been replaced anyway, with a bright yellow sign declaring her new spa was open for business. When she was finished remodeling, it would be the most sparkling, eye-catching property in all of Serendipity. She’d have customers lined out the door, all excited to take advantage of her many services.

      For the ladies of Serendipity, the blessing of being able to pamper themselves without the hassle of a long drive to the nearest city would finally have come. Full hair services and mani/pedi’s. Eventually she hoped to be able to hire a licensed masseuse so she could add massage to her list of services.

      And it was her special blessing as well, her opportunity to prove herself, to turn her life around and make her world right again.

      Her life—and her precious baby’s. She needed to be able to provide for her child, but it was more than that. She wanted her son or daughter to have a mother he or she could be proud of.

      “Does your vision for this building include having to gut the whole interior before you can rebuild? I’ll have to take a closer look at it, but I’m guessing that’s what we’re going to be looking at.”

      Her dreams hadn’t been overly realistic, she realized, but she wasn’t going to admit that. Not to Nick. It was just a slight hiccup in the big scheme of things. She wasn’t going to let that stop her.

      “I’m not afraid of a little hard work.”

      He leaned back on his hands and raised an eyebrow. “You know anything about carpentry?”

      She shook her head. “Well, no. Not really. But I’m sure I can measure wood and hammer a nail as well as the next woman. And I’m a fast learner. Besides, that’s why I brought you in. Or bought you in.” She giggled at her own joke.

      He snorted and rolled his eyes.

      “I asked around town who might know a little bit about carpentry and your name came up once or twice. That’s why you were on my short list.”

      “Well, that explains it, then,” he remarked cryptically.

      “Explains what?”

      He shrugged. “I was just wondering why you bid on me. Now I know. And you’re right. I know how to help you out. After my dad got sick, I remodeled my mom’s ranch house, where all three of us boys were raised. It gave me something positive to do with my anxiety and grief. And once I was done with that, I built cabins for Jax and me from the ground up.”

      “See, I was right about you. An amateur expert. Or is that an expert amateur?” Vivian smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. With the way Nick had been hedging, for a moment there she thought maybe his skills had been overrated. She really did need someone who knew what he was doing, and Nick was that man.

      He didn’t look convinced.

      Why didn’t he look convinced?

      He’d just told her he’d made a bunch of stuff, some buildings from the ground up. Remodeling her shop would be a piece of pie next to that. Surely he wasn’t second-guessing himself?

      She stared at him a moment longer and then he shifted his gaze away from her and went foraging into the picnic basket as if it were a bottomless well of food.

      He couldn’t possibly still be hungry. He’d eaten—

      Oh.

      The lightbulb in her brain flipped on at the very same moment she took a sucker punch to her gut. He was avoiding eye contact while he tried to think of how to phrase the bad news.

      It wasn’t that he couldn’t build stuff. He just didn’t want to build stuff for her.

      He might as well have taken a baseball bat to her fragile self-esteem. With the help of a therapist she was slowly crawling out of the tortuous abyss of being engaged to a verbally and emotionally abusive man. Derrick had fooled a lot of people with his public persona. His former best friend, Griff. Alexis.

      And Viv most of all.

      With Derrick, she’d always believed she wasn’t good enough for him. She’d tried to change to please him, to be what he wanted her to be, until she didn’t even recognize the woman in the mirror. But no matter what she did or didn’t do, it was never good enough for him. And when she’d discovered she was pregnant—

      No. She wasn’t going to go there. Not right now. Derrick wasn’t the man she had to deal with right now—Nick was. He may not be the kindest or most tactful man, but she knew he was a good, decent person. He wouldn’t attack her deliberately. If anything, he probably thought he was helping her by pointing out the flaws in her plan. He didn’t know how much it hurt her to hear her ideas—her dreams, her hopes for the future—put down again. But no matter. If Nick didn’t want to help her, he just had to say so. If he was having second thoughts about doing the work, she’d even give him the out he needed, since he hadn’t made the most of the first one she’d offered.

      “Just forget about it.”

      His head jerked up. “What did you say?”

      “I said forget about it. You don’t have to give me a hand with my remodel if you don’t want to. I’ll find someone else. Worst-case scenario I’ll have to hire a contractor. No big deal.”

      “But the money for the auction—”

      “—went to a good cause. No hard feelings.”

      She didn’t want to be here at the auction anymore, hanging out on the community green with most of the rest of the population of Serendipity. She didn’t want to sit across from Nick acting like everything was okay when it wasn’t. She was tired of pretending.

      She reached for the empty sandwich wrappers, stuffed them into the picnic basket and then slammed the lid closed. As closed as her heart felt right then.

      She wasn’t lying when she said she would make it. Somehow, some way, she would. With or without Nick McKenna’s help. She shoved her hand forward, ready to shake his and be done with all of this.

      Be done with him.

      He frowned and stared at her palm as if it were