Page 10 of Ten Beach Road

“That’s assuming there is another contract.” James cleared his throat. “Are you certain your agent is still representing both your interests?”

Avery shook her head. “We’ve been negotiating since before the divorce became final. Trent says we should leave well enough alone, but I’m really fed up with so many things.”

“It’s not Trent’s contract I’m worried about,” James said.

“Oh?”

“Seriously, Avery. You’re no longer a package deal and the network knows it. Not to mention that Victoria clearly has the hots for Trent. And he’s not exactly fighting her off.”

“No, he isn’t, is he?” Avery picked up her fork, then set it back down. She had no appetite for the Cobb salad staring up at her. Trent had always been attractive to women. She didn’t think he’d actually started sleeping with any of his admirers until they’d separated, but he was highly susceptible to admiration and flattery. For such a good-looking guy he was surprisingly needy. She pushed her plate away and set her napkin on the table as she forced herself to accept the truth. Trent might not actively throw Avery under a bus, but he wouldn’t necessarily throw himself in front of her and pull her out from beneath the wheels, either.

In the end she felt as if the bus had mowed her down, then backed over her a couple of times just to make sure all signs of life had been squashed out of her. Less than two weeks after her lunch with James, Avery was, in fact, dropped fromHammer and Nail, which would now be hosted by HGTV hottie Trent Lawford. James and Jonathan and the rest of the crew took her out for a very dispirited good-bye dinner the evening after her departure “to seek other opportunities” was announced. This time Avery didn’t even bother to order food, concentrating instead on the pitchers of margaritas that James kept coming. Neither Trent nor Victoria Crosshaven attended. Avery went home with her former coworkers’ best wishes and the makings of a hangover.

Now as she sat in the condo that she’d once shared with Trent, Avery realized that she no longer had a real reason to be in Nashville. Her closest friends were scattered around the country and kept in touch via phone and Internet. Those friends she’d made at the Bradley Group and with Trent seemed uncertain which of them to claim. After five years on television, the idea of going back into architecture held limited appeal.

In her rattiest bathrobe, she channel surfed and ate junk food even though a few extra pounds were something a five-foot-three person could not afford. Her nails were ragged and her roots had begun to show. She clutched a picture of her father and herself in hard hats on one of his construction sites. She figured she must have been about ten at the time, based on her Farrah Fawcett shag and the absence of breasts—just a couple of years before her mother had left them. Looking at the loving smile on his face and the sturdy arm around her shoulder, Avery felt the potato chip she’d been munching go gooey in her mouth. Her vision blurred.

Her dad had died just over a year ago. He’d dropped dead of a heart attack on a construction site. One minute, according to his longtime partner, Jeff Hardin, he was arguing with a drywaller; the next he was toes up on the unfinished subfloor. Avery had done her best to feel grateful that he hadn’t suffered and had died doing what he’d loved most. She’d gotten through his funeral by picturing him in a contractor’s version of heaven with the smell of sawdust in his nostrils and a tool belt slung around his hips. Numb from the loss of the person who’d loved her most, Avery sleepwalked through her divorce. Despite her attorney’s advice she’d asked for little. She’d been the one who’d wanted out. Besides, she had a decent salary fromHammer and Nail. And from the day her mother deserted them, her father had made it clear that everything he had would go to his daughter. After his death, his attorneys had confirmed this, assuring her his estate was significant and it was a simple matter of probating the will.

So while Avery was somewhat embarrassed by how pathetic she felt, the truth was she could afford to wallow a bit. It was all right to take a little time getting her bearings. It wasn’t as if she was going to be out on the street.

She was lying on the couch, clutching the photo and the bag of potato chips to her chest, when the phone rang. The sound seemed shrill and unaccountably loud. The bag of chips rustled as she reached across it for the phone.

“Avery?” It was Blake Harrison, her father’s attorney.

She sat up on the couch, ignoring the crunch of potato chips inside the bag.

“Um-hmm?” She swallowed the last of a soggy potato chip and wiped her free hand on her robe.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.” She stood and walked to the window. “I’m fine.”

“Well, we finally have some news about your father’s estate.”

“That’s good.” She couldn’t really whip up any enthusiasm for the subject. It had dragged out so long now, it hardly seemed real. She would have traded every potential penny to have her father back.

“Well, not exactly.”

Her gaze stalled on the car in the next driveway. She watched it back out slowly, saw her neighbor’s garage door go back down. “What’s going on?” she asked. “I thought it was just a matter of paperwork. ‘Dotting the i’s,’ I think you said. ‘Crossing the t’s.’ ”

“Yes, well, that’s what we thought. But there’s been a bit of a wrinkle.” There was a pause. Avery stared out at the budding tulip tree. The condo’s front yard was small, about the size of a walk-in closet, but pretty much everything in it was in bloom. “We’d like you to come down to Tampa so we can, um, explain things in person.”

Avery hadn’t studied the law. Nor had she dealt with lawyers any more than she needed to, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that “wrinkle” was not a word you wanted crossing your attorney’s lips. She reminded herself that her father had used the firm of Harrison and Hargood since before she was born and had complete faith in them. She looked down at the ancient bathrobe. Her slippers were scuffed, the fake fur matted. “This isn’t really a good time for me to travel. I don’t think . . .”

“Avery, I wouldn’t be suggesting a meeting if I didn’t think it was absolutely imperative. We need to talk about this in person.”

“Blake, I’m not coming unless you tell me what’s going on.”

There was another pause. Avery could feel him weighing the alternatives, trying to figure out how to couch whatever it was in the best possible light.

“Just spit it out. Really. I need to know what’s going on.”

“Well, there’s a reason it’s taken so long to get your father’s estate out of probate.”

She waited.

“And it’s not good, not good at all.”

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