Page 67 of Mr. Fixer Upper
“Look who’s Mr. Pollyanna all of the sudden.”
“It’s hard to be pissed off about anything from where I sit.”
Paige cocked her head. “Hmm, well maybe I should sit where you are.” She slid one long leg across his lap and straddled him. She shuffled food containers to the nightstand and put her hands on his bare chest, enjoying the thud of his heart as it sped up.
“I do like the view from here.”
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They took a break from bed and laundry and takeout. While Gannon had dinner with his grandmother and a couple of cousins, Paige went to her apartment to make sure it was still standing and stock up on fresh clothes for shooting in the heat of summer. He’d invited her, even enticed her with meeting his nonni, but she’d declined. Whatever they were together was so fresh, so new, she wasn’t prepared to open their circle. And she didn’t want to do anything that would fuel the rumors that had spread again since Kings of Construction released the season teaser.
It was the first time they’d been apart for more than a few hours since spring. Even now, she had a low-grade urge to text him, which she brushed off.
She let herself into the apartment, wrinkling her nose at the stale air. Becca was on a movie shoot in Vancouver and hadn’t been home in three weeks.
Paige lugged her suitcase over the threshold and down the narrow hallway to her tiny bedroom.Home.Yeah, right. This tiny, crappy apartment had never been home. Just as her childhood home had never laid claim to that title either. Had it been home to anyone within its walls?
She wondered briefly about her father. About the kind of man who had allowed Leslie St. James to cut him out of the family home and the lives of his daughters. An astrophysicist, he’d been given the opportunity to teach in Germany. Her mother hadn’t deemed Germany good for her own career, and neither wanted to sacrifice, so they quietly divorced. Paige had been five, and Lisa three.
St. James women weren’t supposed to become dependent on men. It was a lesson drilled into their heads from childhood. A lesson that had actually stuck with Paige, unlike the dozens of others she’d ignored such as dinner party etiquette and dressing to impress.
Her mother was deeply disappointed in her career choice, and Paige could only hope that Leslie St. James would see a sliver more worth in documentary filmmaking. Though she wasn’t holding her breath over it. It would probably be regarded as yet another rebellion, a topic that would have her mother clucking into her wine glass in disbelief that a child she raised could be such a disappointment.
Well, the disappointment was mutual as far as Paige could see. Who raised children to be further extensions of a parent’s own success?
Her phone buzzed, and she saw the text from Carina with a picture of Malia sound asleep under pink covers and pillows in her princess bed.
A few more nights in our perfect house before heading to New York for the drug trial! Dr. Singh is almost as excited as we are!
Paige grinned and texted back before she shoved her phone back in her pocket. She had a good feeling about the trial and Dr. Singh.
Enough stalling, she decided and opened her bag on the bed that hadn’t been slept in for two months. She swapped out coats and sweaters for tanks and tees and, thinking of Cat and—okay—Gannon, added two sleeveless sundresses.
Repacked in less than ten minutes, Paige flopped back on the mattress and stared up at the ceiling. On a whim, she took out her phone and dialed Becca’s number. Her roommate answered on the second ring, surprising and delighting Paige.
“Holy shit, do we have so much to talk about,” Becca announced.
“Are you busy? Can you talk?” Paige asked, enjoying the energy she heard in Becca’s voice.
“I’ve got ten, probably more. We’re resetting for a big action sequence that is sucking the life out of all of us,” she said, not sounding the least bit discouraged. “How are you feeling? Healing well?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, glancing down at the yellow, mottled bruises on her legs.
“You sure? I saw the teaser. It looked pretty rough.”
“You know how TV works. Gotta make it look worse than it really is,” Paige said glibly.
“I can tell you don’t want to talk about it, so I’ll be an awesome friend and change the subject. Are you really dating Gannon King?”
“Can we go back to the injuries? I’d rather talk about that.”
Becca squealed. “I knew it. I just knew it. When you took me to the wrap party last season, didn’t Itellyou he looked at you like he was into you?”
Becca had indeed insisted to Paige that Gannon looked far more interested than disinterested. “Yes, you told me, and if there is something going on there, I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll pretend to respect your boundaries, but I’m dying to know where Boobalicious Traxx fits into all this.”
“From what Gannon says, they were never a thing.”
