Page 93 of Mr. Fixer Upper
Becca scrubbed her hands over her face. Her earrings, tiny bells on thin silver wire, jingled in frustration.
“Babe. Iknowyou don’t blame Gannon for the production company amping up the drama quotient.”
“No, of course not. But I could have been better prepared for it if he’d been honest,” Paige pointed out.
“I’m going to say this because you need to hear it. The bad guy here is not Gannon King. It’s those assholes at Summit-Wingenroth and the damn Welcome Home Network. From where I sit, they played Gannon by setting him up with that shitbag blowup doll, and they played you. All you two did was have real feelings for each other.”
Paige squeezed her eyes shut. “Okay. Maybe it’s more because I can’t trust myself around him. You ever think about that?”
She opened her eyes, her confession stretching out the silence.
Becca crossed her arms, tapped her fingers on her upper arms.
“I just spent thirty minutes in the car with him, and all I wanted to do was climb over the console. How am I supposed to work with him for months on a very personal project for him and not get sucked back into that world?”
Becca raised a questioning finger. “Would it be so bad if you got sucked back in?”
“Bec! I wouldn’t survive that again. He’s so… intense and raw and overwhelming. How can I concentrate onanythingwhen I’m being consumed like that?”
“You think a relationship with Gannon would keep you from pursuing your dreams?”
“I don’t know.” Paige heaved herself off the couch and stormed into the kitchen for a bottle of water. “I don’t feel steady when I’m with him. He’s so… much.”
She shook her head. “No. There’s no way I could go back to him and start everything up again.” She’d be too vulnerable, too scared about losing him again. She’d make decisions based on him, his plans, his goals. Arrange her life around him and do it all gladly. And then one day, she’d wake up and see that she wasn’t her own person.
She was a St. James, and St. James women didn’t organize their lives around a man.
Her mother hadn’t let a relationship stand in the way of her career. She’d known what was important to her, what would get her there, and what would take her further away from it.
But was Leslie St. James happy?A little voice inside Paige asked the question.Was happiness the same as success?
Becca took a deep breath. “Look. I didn’t want to go here, but now I have to. Paige, this documentary thing? It’s not just you in it. It’s me, too. And if you don’t take this job, when are we ever going to start it? You can’t wait this out and go back to a show that’s humiliating you for sport. A show that, according to a friend of mine in post-production at Welcome Home, is blackballing you.”
“What?” Paige’s knees went weak.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that no one is willing to even talk to you about a job? They’re making noise about your non-compete. They want another season of you and Gannon sparking it up on screen.”
He’d known. Gannon had to have heard about the blackballing and offered the job out of pity, out of guilt. And she’d thought it was because he wanted her back. She’d embarrassed herself and slapped at him over his generosity. Beggars didn’t have the luxury of being choosers.
But they could take the opportunity offered and work their asses off.
No matter what it cost her personally.
Paige looked down at the water bottle in her hand and, as if from a distance, watched herself hurl it against the front door before calmly walking down the hall and closing herself in her bedroom.
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The brownstone rose four stories out of a tiny brick courtyard within a low wall that butted up against the sidewalk. The front of the building boasted a trio of arched windows on each floor except for the lower level, which lost one window to the tall front stairs in the same milk chocolate tone as the rest of the façade.
If Paige’s dream home had stepped off her secret Pinterest board, it had landed right here on 7th Street. The building faced the greens and golds of a park just across the street, cheerful noise rose from the playground at the opposite end of the block.
“Well? What do you think?” Gannon ranged against the waist-high brick wall, ankles crossed. His jeans rode low on his hips, his green Henley had a rip in one wrist.
“I think if the inside looks anything like the outside, it’s going to be a quick shoot,” Paige said.
He smirked. “You may reconsider that when you see the interior.”
She followed him through the rusted iron gate and up the ten stairs of stoop. The front door, two doors really, were tall and arched to match the windows.
