The Trouble with Picket Fences
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Teri Wilson
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17
Chapter One
If Melanie Carlisle was good at one thing, it was taking bad lemons and turning them into lemonade. Truth be told, she was rather famous for it.
As in, national-television-and-a-book-deal famous. There may have also been a tiara involved, but that part had come later. Still, the rhinestone sparkler held a place of honor in a special, custom-made, Lucite box on a plush velvet cushion. Back in Dallas, Melanie had kept the box smack in the middle of a trophy case, along with the rest of her sashes and crowns. Her students often stood with their noses pressed against the glass, gazing at all the dazzle and glitz. Every now and then, she’d remove the crown from the box and let them take turns trying it on.
But Melanie wasn’t in Dallas anymore. As of two hours ago, she’d become the newest resident of Lovestruck, Vermont—a tiny, picturesque town dotted with covered bridges, red barns and fields of bright yellow daffodils as sunny and cheery as, well, a pitcher of fresh-squeezed lemonade. Because Melanie was once again doing what she did best—taking her bad lemons and making them into something deliciously wonderful. A fresh, new start.
Except things hadn’t started off quite as deliciously she’d hoped.
“This can’t be it,” she said to her real-estate agent as she stood staring at the darling two-bedroom cottage that she’d chosen from the Realtor’s website.
The house looked just as pretty as it had online, with pink clapboard siding and swirly Victorian gingerbread trim. It had a cute octagon-shaped tower attached to its right side that looked like an actual turret. Melanie had fallen head over heels for the sweet little bungalow the instant she’d seen it.
It was the sort of house where kids might run across the lawn and play in the sprinkler during the summertime, where neighbors would pop over to borrow a cup of sugar and where red, white and blue bunting might hang from the front porch railing on the Fourth of July. Melanie pictured bicycle parades and block parties, barbecue cookouts and mommy-and-me play groups, trick-or-treating on Halloween and Easter egg hunts in spring. Old-fashioned lemonade stands—obviously—with handmade signs scrawled in crayon.
Best of all, despite the cottage’s obvious charm, it was missing the one thing that Melanie refused to abide...or so she’d thought.
“Where did that white picket fence come from?” She waved a hand at the offending barrier. “This wasn’t in the online photos.”
No white picket fences.
It had been Melanie’s only caveat.
“Um.” Charity Reed, junior agent at Lovestruck Realty, glanced at the fence, a tiny crinkle forming in her smooth forehead. Melanie hoped Charity Reed knew enough to appreciate her skin’s natural elasticity. Melanie sure hadn’t at that age. Live and learn. “It’s been there for a month or so. I think the homeowner added it once the house had been on the market for a while. The fence is so new that we hadn’t had a chance to update the online listing before you made the offer on the property.”
This was what Melanie got for buying a house over the internet. She supposed it could have been worse. At least the cottage seemed to be in decent shape, white picket eyesore notwithstanding.
“Such fences are quite common here in Lovestruck,” Charity said. “Nearly all of the homes in the town’s historic district have them.”
“I’m aware,” Melanie said, flashing her beauty-queen smile.
Eliminating the cottages with quaint little fences had reduced Melanie’s online list of potential homes by about 90 percent. In the end, she’d been left with a choice between the charming pink Victorian or a repurposed red barn on the edge of town. Melanie wasn’t exactly a barn sort of girl.
Then again, she’d never been the mommy sort, either. But that was about to change—just five more months to go.
She took a deep breath and rested a protective hand on her small baby bump. What in the world would her old pageant coach say if she could see Melanie now? Pregnant at forty, starting a brand-new business in a brand-new town.
Alone.
Not exactly where she’d thought she’d end up when she’d been crowned Miss America at the tender age of twenty. But tiaras and low-level fame aside, nothing in Melanie’s life had been anywhere close to being perfect or predictable, including the manner in which she’d taken on the mantle of Miss America. She was used to it by now.
Lemons to lemonade.
“I’d like to have the fence removed,” she said.
The Realtor blinked. “Removed?”
“Yes.” Melanie nodded. “The sooner, the better.”
Charity bit her lip. “Are you sure? It’s brand-new, really lovely and adds quite a bit to the home’s character and property value.”
“I’m absolutely sure.” A wave of queasy exhaustion washed over Melanie. She needed to get her feet up for a bit, but she also needed to walk around the corner to Main Street and check on her new children’s boutique. And the pink cottage was presumably filled with boxes that needed to be unpacked, plus all the other items she’d sent ahead of her arrival. She didn’t have time for morning sickness—at least not until she’d dealt with the most important thing on her agenda.
She cast a meaningful look at the fence and then back toward her real-estate agent.
“I’m sure it won’t be too much of a hassle to remove if that’s what you want,” Charity said.
Melanie wanted it, most definitely. Alas, she had little to no experience with tearing down aesthetically pleasing wooden structures. “Great. How do we go about doing that?”
Charity’s eyes lit up at Melanie’s unfortunate use of a plural collective pronoun.
“We?” Her gaze drifted to Melanie’s hand, still placed atop her rapidly growing midsection. Charity beamed. “Perhaps your husband could take it down?”
Melanie should have seen that one coming. Her beauty-queen smile grew strained around the edges. “I’m not married.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Charity pressed a hand to her chest. “Bless your heart.”
Melanie ground her teeth. Her heart had been blessed enough to last a lifetime back in Dallas, thank you very much. No matter what it might look like on the outside, Melanie had her life completely under control. She didn’t want or need anyone’s sympathy. All she needed was a hammer. Or, better yet, a handyman.
“No need to apologize. I’m fine—we’re fine,” she said, because she was part of a family now, after all. And that family was everything to Melanie. She’d upended her entire life for her unborn baby girl, and she’d do it again in a heartbeat.
That was one of the benefits of what her doctor back in Texas had annoyingly referred to as a geriatric pregnancy. While the vocabulary of her condition might be slightly insulting, she was old enough to appreciate the miraculous nature of what was happening. She’d waited a long time to be a mother, and she intended to cherish every moment of her pregnancy.
Which was exactly why the fence had to go.
“Of course. I understand.” Charity nodded in a way that told Melanie she didn’t understand at all, but that was fine, too. If beauty queens were good at one thing, it was rising above common misconceptions about who they were and what they stood for.
Charity Reed would learn that lesson soon enough, as would the rest of Melanie’s new hometown. She had big plans—for herself, her baby and the entire community of Lovestruck.
First things first, though. “Now about that fence.”
Lovestruck Fire Department Captain Jason McBride lingered in the tool aisle of the mom-and-pop hardware store on Main Street, staring blankly ahead at the hammer display.
Why had he come in here on the way back to the station from his doctor’s appointment, again?
He pressed hard on his temples in an effort to force his careening thoughts back on track. There’d been a reason for this errand. He was certain of it. He just couldn’t remember what it was.
Calm down. It wasn’t the worst news. You’re not dying or anything. Everything’s going to be fine.
He squeezed his eyes closed and tried not to think about the look of concern on Dr. Martin’s face or the intimidating words printed at the top of the brochure the doctor had handed him. NIHL—Noise-Induced Hearing Loss Accompanied by Tinnitus.
It wasn’t a brain tumor, as he’d feared. That was the good news, and Jason was grateful for it. He truly was.
But the bad news was indeed bad. NIHL was permanent, as was the tinnitus. How was he supposed to live—and, more importantly, do his job—with a constant roar in his ears? Just yesterday, he’d missed an entire conversation over his headset. Luckily, it was nothing dire. But what would happen next time?
Make no mistake, there would definitely be a next time. Jason occupied the top spot in the LFD. His career was so integral to his life that he didn’t even go by his own name anymore. His men called him Cap, short for Captain. It had been his nickname for so long that everyone in town called him Cap.
Cap’s own son had thought it was his actual name until he’d gotten old enough to read the label on his subscription to Firehouse magazine. “Who’s Jason McBride?” he’d asked, wide-eyed in a pair of footie pajamas decorated with tiny fire trucks and Dalmatian puppies.
Cap had just laughed. “That’s me, bud. Your daddy.”
He didn’t feel like a Jason anymore, though. He hadn’t in a long, long time. The fire department was in his blood, as much a part of him as his limbs, his lungs...his heart. He liked being Cap. He liked giving back to the community he loved in such a real and tangible way, and he cared about the younger firefighters in the department as if they were his own. If the LFD was a family, then Cap was their patriarch.
He wasn’t ready to give that up. He couldn’t even fathom it.
“Caulk,” he said to the rows of hammers. That’s what Cap was supposed to be buying—caulk for the firehouse showers.
The hammers uttered nothing in response. Still, it took Cap another full minute to stop staring into space and get moving. He really needed to get his head in the game. He’d have plenty of time to worry about the brochure in his pocket later—after his shift, or tomorrow after Eli’s junior varsity lacrosse game, post-game pizza and the ongoing misery of Eli’s calculus homework.
Meanwhile, caulk.
Cap turned toward the sealants aisle, but just as he rounded the corner, a woman with waves of tumbling strawberry blond hair and striking green eyes pointed a sledgehammer at him.
“You,” she said.
Cap glanced around, certain she was talking to somebody else, but they were the only two shoppers in the aisle. “Me?”
“Yes, you.” She thrust the sledgehammer toward his chest. “You look like you know how to use one of these.”
For reasons he couldn’t being to contemplate, Cap obediently took hold of the sledgehammer. “I do, yes. But...”
But who the heck are you and why are you shoving tools at me?
He looked more closely at her emerald eyes, the graceful curve of her neck, the jaunty little tilt of her chin. There was something vaguely familiar about the hammer-wielding woman, but Cap couldn’t seem to place her.
Then again, he’d been going out on emergency calls in rural Vermont for more than two decades. Cap met a lot of a people. Something told him he would have remembered her, though.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Have we met?”
“Melanie Carlisle. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She stuck her hand out.
No wedding ring. Cap fumbled with the sledgehammer and nearly dropped it in an attempt to shake Melanie Carlisle’s delicate hand. “Cap McBride.”
He could feel sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. Cap wasn’t accustomed to making small talk with beautiful women in the hardware store. Once upon a time, maybe, but that had been a while ago. He hadn’t even been on a date in almost a decade.
People didn’t date anymore, though, did they? That’s what Eli told him. They hung out. They hooked up. They Netflixed and chilled. Cap hadn’t done many of those things, either. But he was fairly certain none of those activities began at the intersection of the hammer and adhesive aisles.
“So, you’ll do it, then?” Melanie Carlisle nodded as if they’d just agreed on something.
Cap pressed the heel of his free hand against his ear, muffling the irritating roar in his head. Had he missed a crucial part of the conversation?
He squinted. “I’m sorry?”
“I’m new in town and I need someone to tear down my white picket fence,” she said as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
“Oh. Well.” Cap looked around, again expecting to find a handyman standing right behind him. When one didn’t materialize, he offered the sledgehammer back to Melanie. “Good luck with that, and welcome to Lovestruck.”
Why in the world would someone want to tear down a picket fence? They were all the rage in Lovestruck. Cap was pretty sure the mayor was on a not-so-secret mission to get one in every yard in the historic district.
Melanie didn’t so much as flinch. Nor did she take the tool from him. “It would be really great if you could do it.”
“Me,” he said flatly. “But why?”
Why, indeed. Why was he still sticking around for this bizarre conversation? He should just put down the hammer, grab his caulk and go. He had work to do, a teenage son to contend with—all on his own, thank you very much—and a potentially career-ending medical diagnosis to absorb. Cap had no intention of making firewood out of this strange woman’s white picket fence. Zero.
“Because I can’t, obviously. Don’t get me wrong—I totally would, but...” She waved a graceful hand in the vicinity of her midsection.
Was this a trick? Cap knew he was old-fashioned. Eli and the guys at the fire station never failed to mock his fondness for dad jokes, even though Cap thought they were just jokes, period. Cap also liked to look women in the eye as a matter of basic respect and decency. But Melanie seemed to be guiding his attention elsewhere.
She raised her eyebrows at him, and he reluctantly took a closer look at her stomach. There, beneath the gathered pleats of her breezy gingham dress, he spotted the unmistakable outline of a small baby bump. Something inside of him softened.
“Right, of course, you can’t,” he heard himself say.
“It’s all settled then. You’ll do it. Right now would be great—perfect, actually.” She beamed at him, and for a second, Cap forgot all about his doctor’s appointment, the caulk at the firehouse and Eli’s failing math grade.
Pregnant women glowed. That’s what everyone always said, anyway. This felt different, though. Melanie Carlisle’s smile seemed to burrow into Cap’s chest and make itself at home there.
A man could lose himself in a smile like that.
Not him, obviously—a different man. A younger man. A man who didn’t feel like he was on the verge of losing everything he held dear.
Day by day, brick by brick, Cap had been building a wall around himself. He’d been doing it for months, without telling a soul about the symptoms he’d been dealing with. Today he’d finally begun to face the truth, and now fate had tossed a beautiful woman in his path. His walls were going up, and for some crazy reason, Melanie Carlisle wanted Cap to tear hers down to the ground.
The irony of it was unmistakably bittersweet, and just too damn tempting to resist.
He rested the sledgehammer on his shoulder. The caulk could wait. “Lead the way.”
