Recipe for Disaster (24 page)

Liam grins. “Of course, lass, the more the merrier. But I warn you, these guys have never seen such a lovely thing as you on a job site.” He pauses, then turns to me. “No offense, Anneke.”

“None taken.” After all, I always took great pains to just be one of the guys, why would it hurt my feelings to have him simply acknowledge the truth? Except that it does, a little, deep down where I’d prefer not to think about it.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Jag says, rising from the chair, “I’m going to head down and close everything up. Liam, thank you again, your input is much appreciated; I’ll confirm with you about the site visit.”

“Me too! I’m very excited about it.” Schatzi makes a grumbling noise. “I should really get this dog out. C’mon, girl, with me,” Emily announces as she rises from the couch, and Schatzi gives Liam one more lick on the hand and then drops lightly to the floor, lets Emily attach the leash.

“Will you still be here when I get back, Liam?” Good lord.

“Probably not, lass, have to get back to work.”

Her whole face falls. “Well, it was very nice to meet you, and I’ll look forward to seeing you in a few days!”

“Very nice to have met you, lovely Emily.” She blushes again.

Liam watches her walk out the door. Then he turns to me. “Rebound much?”

“Pretty sure my personal life is none of your business.”

“You’re right. I just, um, well, I like him.”

“So, what? You’re worried he settled? Could have done better? Maybe you could have grabbed a couple sets of tits from the office and double-dated.”

“So bitter, little Annamuk. I wish you and your husband nothing but a lifetime of joy and attractive children.” He raises his hands in surrender, stands and pulls on his coat. “Good luck with everything.”

“Thanks.” Deep breath. “And thank you for coming over, Liam, I do really appreciate your take on things. I’m sure Jag seeing your install will also be very helpful.”

“Anytime. You need help, just give me a call. Better yet, have your little sister there give me a call.” He grins.

I shudder. “First off, she’s not my sister. Second, that child is half your age and twice your intelligence.”

He holds his hands up again in surrender. “Easy, mama bear. I’m not going to defile your cub. I just think it is fascinating that in one day I’ve met your husband AND your sister, the existence of both complete news to me. You’re quite the enigma, Anneke, a puzzle inside of a riddle.”

“What can I say, Liam? A woman needs some mystery.”

“Aye. A girl who can surprise you? No man can ask for more than that.” He winks, and heads for the door. “Talk to you soon, Anneke.”

God, I certainly hope not.

S
o what is Liam’s deal?” Emily asks when she returns with Schatzi, who is running around the place clearly also looking for her new crush. Apparently his pheromones work specifically on the dim and the canine.

“What do you mean?” I ask, knowing exactly what she means.

“I mean, he works where you used to work, right?”

“Yep. Sure does.”

“That must have been awesome.” She looks dreamily at me, as if the very idea of being so lucky to be in his presence for any length of time would have been an enormous gift.

“Really wasn’t.”

“He seems to know what he is doing,” she says.

“He is a very competent builder.”

“But?”

“But not a very nice man.”

Her face falls. “I thought he was your friend?”

“Liam Murphy is the friend of no woman.” I don’t know a simpler way to express it.

“Oh.” She seems to take my meaning, and looks like I’ve just ripped the head off of her favorite doll.

“Well, girls, we seem to have a plan,” Jag says, returning from the hellhole. “Liam was certainly very helpful. I’m glad he agreed to come over. I think the best plan is to wait till I’ve had a chance to observe what he is doing at his project so that I really know the scope of what we’re facing.”

“At least we know where we have to start,” I say.

“Can I keep helping?” Emily asks. “I’d really like to. It was so awesome to get to see some of it come together before, and now that you have to start over, after this whole mess, I just would really like to help if you would let me.”

“Oh, um, thanks, Emily, but, um . . .” Not a chance.

“Let us talk about it?” Jag says. “It’s a lovely offer, we just need to figure out our specifics. We’ll let you know tomorrow if we think it would be possible. We have to deal with some potential insurance issues and things before we say yes.” I snap my head to look at him, but stay mute. I can explain to him later why having her helping is a nonstarter.

“Cool! Okay, then, um, I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

We watch her ponytail swish out the door, and I turn to Jag. “No.”

“We should talk about it.”

“N.O. She’ll make me nuts.”

“Maybe, but we have a lot of stuff to do down there now that doesn’t require skilled labor, and she’s free.”

“That doesn’t seem like a good enough reason.”

“Except that it could speed up our recovery timing by at least twenty-five percent.”

“Crap.”

“Exactly.”

“I still need to think about it.”

“Of course. I just want you to be realistic about what we’re facing and that at the moment, we can’t really afford to look a gift horse in the mouth.” He smiles. “Even if she is something of a flibbertigibbet.”

“Did you just use ‘flibbertigibbet’? Out loud?”

“I did, lovely wife. And so she is. But she has a strong back, as we’ve discovered, and can do basic work without complaining, so I have to vote to let her help as much as she’s inclined while she’s here. Think of it this way, you’re helping her out like you promised, and getting free grunt work in exchange. Seems fair.”

I hate to admit it, but it does.

F
rom Gemma’s Journal:

Sometimes you cannot plan. Things go awry. The weather turns and the delivery doesn’t come, or the family decides to go out. At the end of the day, the difference between being a cook and just cooking is your ability to assess your resources, and make something out of nothing. Any fool can follow a recipe and end up with something edible. But until you can open the larder and see a dish come together in your head, till you have an innate sense of what flavors are good friends, you are just cooking. You cannot call yourself a true
cook.

The house is eerily quiet. Jag and Emily are over at Liam’s job site for the day observing his sump pump install, and Schatzi is spending the day at the vet for her annual checkup. I’m here on my own, with nothing to do, and it makes me edgy and nervous. We’ve done all the demo downstairs, I reluctantly agreed to let Emily help, and even more reluctantly admitted that she was a tremendous and uncomplaining asset. There are huge fans set up to help dry the space out, and until it’s fully dry we can’t get started on anything else down there. There are a couple of smaller projects I suppose I could work on upstairs, but my heart isn’t in it today. For some reason it makes me very uncomfortable to know that Jag and Emily are spending a whole day with Liam. The stories he could tell them, the picture he could paint. They both see me the way I want to be seen, someone strong and competent, someone who has it together. They both know about Grant and my blowup at work and they still care about me and respect me. I don’t want to believe that any of that could change, but the idea of Liam Goddamned Murphy spending the next eight hours regaling them with embellished tales of Annamuk and her quick temper and her inappropriate interactions with clients and vendors . . . It puts a knot right in the center of my stomach.

No. I’m not going to let that arrogant ass pick at the little bit of solidity I’ve scratched out for myself. Jag is awesome, Emily is annoying but useful, and despite this setback, the house is going to be wonderful and saleable. My future is not some uncertain fog. I won’t let it be, and I won’t let Liam’s sudden and irritating reappearance in my life shake me.

Instead, I decide that today will be about me. I call and make a long-overdue appointment to get my hair cut this afternoon, since it’s officially hit the length where it gets as wide as it is long, and I lose all the curl in favor of pure frizz. I walk down to the Cozy Corner and have a huge breakfast of chorizo chilaquiles with a side of pancakes. The weather is still cold, but sunny, and it feels good to walk, so I take the long way home, and then head over to the park. I’m sitting on a bench just enjoying the breeze when my phone rings.

“Hi. You have a minute?” And my newfound calm evaporates.

“Hello, Grant. Yes, I suppose I do.”

“Look, I feel bad having to make this call, but I need to talk to you about my investment in the house.”

“What about it?”

“I’ve had an offer on my share.”

“What do you mean you’ve had an offer?”

“I got a call, someone interested in buying out my share of the investment in the property.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. How did someone even know to make you an offer?”

“Not sure. The offer came in through my lawyer, but it appears to be genuine. And normally I’d just let it go, but, um, there is some stuff going on for me financially at the moment . . .”

“What kind of stuff? According to your ample publicity you are on the verge of taking over the world.”

“Don’t believe everything you read. One of the investors in the new place dropped out. They offered me a chance to buy in and take over his share, which would give me a much bigger piece of the place, as well as future sites if the concept goes national. But I don’t have enough liquid right now to make the first payment happen.”

“What about the TV show? I thought that was the funny money?”

“It is, or it will be, but we’ve pushed it forward. Patrick and Alana were concerned about how many conflicts I have with the new place, they want to be sure that we launch strong, and the network is giving us a shot at a fall season instead of a summer replacement show, so it makes sense to move it, but I was counting on that money a little too much and I’m just a bit overextended. So I thought maybe you could buy me out. Straight deal, no profit or interest or anything.”

Crap. Crappity crap crap CRAP. “Grant, I just don’t have it, you know that.”

He sighs. “I know, but do you think you could get it? Borrow from Caroline or Hedy maybe?”

“ABSOLUTELY NOT.” There is no way in hell I’d ever take money from my friends, and he knows it.

“I don’t know what to do, Anneke, I just don’t. It isn’t like I want to let someone else buy my share, but my financial adviser says that there is no way I should let this opportunity go by, it could completely secure my future. And the trust I set up on the apartment to keep it separate from my business stuff so that if I ever went bankrupt no one could go after it means that I can’t take out a second mortgage on it either.”

My heart is racing. “It isn’t that I want you to miss out on this chance, Grant, I get it, I just don’t have the money, not till the place is sold. How long do you have to make the decision?”

“I can probably ask them to give me a couple of months.”

“Would you do that? Get me some time to figure out how to maybe pull it together?”

“Of course. Yes. I’ll do that.”

“Then I will try to figure out if there is some way to pay you back. Just get me as much time as you can.”

“Okay. For what it’s worth, Anneke, I’m really sorry, it was the last phone call I ever wanted to make.”

“I know, Grant. I appreciate your giving me a shot and not just selling your share without discussing it with me.”

“I’d never do that. How is, um, married life?”

“It’s really good, thank you for asking.”

“Good. I’m happy for you, Anneke. So, you’ll call me soon?”

“Within two months, I promise.”

“Okay, then. Talk soon.”

I get up from the bench and head back toward the house, stopping briefly at the garbage can to throw up my breakfast.

W
hen my phone rings I’m thoroughly unprepared to hear Liam’s voice on the other end of the line.

“I want to talk to you about this project.”

Great. “Yes?”

“It’s really special. That house, I get why you’re there, why you’re doing this.”

“Thank you.”

“I had a chance to talk to Jag when he was at my project, he filled me in on how things have been going. And I think you should let me come in on it.”

“In what way?”

“As a partner.”

“Hold on, I have to check the weather.”

“The weather?”

“I have to see if hell has frozen over.”

“Very funny. Hear me out. You guys are doing great work, but the two of you? It’s going to take forever, and every month it isn’t sold you’re losing money. I know this basement has got to be setting you back probably even more than you anticipated, timewise, moneywise. I’m not an idiot, Anneke. And it’s going to really suck and hurt your potential upside if you have to cut tons of corners to come in at what you can afford. You have what looks to be a hundred-thousand-dollar kitchen in there, all sparkly and pretty with that insanely gorgeous Poggenpohl cabinetry. You can’t start installing shitty tubs and cheap faucets and discount tile all over the place and expect to get the buyer you want and need; they’ll wonder if you cut corners on infrastructure, they’ll underbid, you’ll panic, you’ll take less than you need, less than it is worth. You need this place to be spectacular, and to sell fast. The neighborhood is hot, but it isn’t Lincoln Park. You’re looking to be a pioneer at the top end of the market; people need to covet this place.”

“I can’t afford to bring in another partner, Liam. Even if I thought it was a good idea, which I don’t. Jag and I are going to need to clear enough to find a new place to live, and I’m going to need to launch a new business. How on earth could I afford to cut you in as well?” Plus the whole Grant problem; if I can’t figure out a way to buy him out in the next two months he could legally sell his share of the house to someone else, and while it wouldn’t be a big enough share to have any control over execution, it would be big enough to both have an opinion about sale price, and require profit sharing, which for the moment I had written off on Grant’s insistence, and any dollar given up on the sale is one less dollar I will have to invest in my future security.

“From where I sit, you can’t afford not to at least consider it. I have about a hundred grand liquid now that I could invest, will have access to another fifty or so in the next six months. And some sweat equity to offer. Nights and weekends, some vacation time. You know as well as I do that if you spend a little more on some of the finishes and fixtures, you have the best shot at upping the final sale price. But we’ll do it straight up. Whatever the gross dollar amount turns out to be, that can be how we figure my percentage on the back end, and I don’t need credit or pay for the physical work.”

Shit. I hate to even admit that I’m tempted. His cash infusion would certainly save the project in a lot of ways, maybe even allow me to hand some cash back to Grant to push off the prospective buyer. And while losing a chunk of the profit to Liam would be awful, I also know he’s maddeningly right about getting it done sooner and better and getting a potentially bigger sale. And since the threat of losing a chunk of profit to Grant’s mystery buyer is a possibility, I’m having to actually think about the devil I know. I doubt we’d increase the ultimate number by enough to totally cover his percentage, but there is also the part of me who just wants to do the project right, and cutting back on things the way Liam has pointed out I will have to do? Will break my heart.

“Anneke? You there?”

“Yeah, um, I’m just . . .”

“Hey, just promise me you’ll think about it. I think it’s a potentially good investment for me, and it’s the kind of project I like to work on. You dumped Manning on me for the next year, letting me do something real in my off time is kind of the least you could do for me.”

“I promise I will think about it. And I have to talk to Jag, obviously.” I haven’t talked to Jag about the Grant situation; I don’t want to dump that on him.

I can hear the smirk in his voice. “Obviously.”

J
ag is out for the evening with his gang; I was invited but didn’t feel up for it. I get the sense that Jag is fairly relieved that I don’t insinuate myself overmuch in his outside life. He says everyone completely understands how exhausted I am after working, that I also have my own friends to manage. I wonder sometimes if they all are beginning to suspect the true reason behind our quickie nuptials, and if that is why they don’t push him harder or wonder more about me. I try to go every fourth or fifth time, just to make sure they see my face now and again, and it’s always lovely and fun, but never achieves the ease and comfort of that first party, because of course now there is a big lie to maintain. Regardless, I’ve got a quiet night in for myself, which is a welcome bit of respite. So I’m looking to Gemma for inspiration. For dinner and beyond.