Marrying The Wedding Crasher

“You can take it to that shop on Polk. They’ll give you money for whatever parts they can salvage and apply it toward the purchase of a new one.”

She couldn’t afford that, either, not without a second job. Until then, she’d be cutting tile with a low-tech manual saw and nippers. “Thanks for the advice.”

Demoralized, Harley released the base from the table and carried the dead saw to her truck, returning for her tool bucket and the worktable.

If only she could figure out how to make playhouse balconies float on air.

Vince was still loading his stuff into his truck’s lockbox when Harley opened the creaky door to her hot cab and climbed in. She missed her Lexus. She missed auto-start and powerful air-conditioning. She turned the key in the ignition.

Nothing. Not so much as a tick of the starter.

She missed reliability.

“Not today,” she muttered. The truck was finicky. It didn’t like to run when the temperature dropped to the thirties or in thunderstorms, but the day had been hot, the skies clear. “Come on, baby,” she chided the old vehicle.

Don’t leave me stranded with Mr. Carrots and that grin.

Vince locked up his tools and leaned on his truck, staring at hers.

Still nothing. Her backside was growing damp with sweat.

Vince came forward. He walked with the swagger of a man who knew what his purpose was in life. And, right now, that purpose was to rescue a damsel in distress.

“Pop the hood.”

She did, hopping out and joining him at the grille. Not that she knew anything about engines. Her mechanical ability stopped at turning power tools off and on.

Vince tsked and gave Harley a look that disapproved and teased at the same time.

“Hey, don’t judge,” she said. “It runs.”

“It’s not running now.” He drew a blue rag from his back pocket. It was the kind of scrap mechanics used to wipe their hands and touch hot engines. “You might want to spray your engine off every once in a while.” He used the rag to check battery connections, hose connections and to prod the engine compartment as if he knew what he was doing.

“I barely clean my apartment. Why would I clean my engine?”

“So a mechanic can see if you’ve got leaks anywhere, for one thing,” Vince said straight-faced. “Why don’t you try it again?”

She hurried back behind the wheel. The truck started right up.

“Traitor,” she accused under her breath.

Vince shut the hood and came around to her window, wiping his hands.

“Thanks.” Harley gave him her polite smile, the one she reserved for helpful salesclerks and the receptionist who squeezed her in at the doctor’s office. “I owe you.”

“Yeeeaah.” He wound out the word and ran his fingers through that thatch of midnight hair. “About that. I need a favor.” Those kind black eyes lifted to her face.

Don’t believe in fairy tales... Don’t believe in fairy tales...

Despite their history, despite knowing better, silly fantasies about princely rescues and Mr. Right fluttered about her chest like happy butterflies on a warm spring day.

She should go. Instead she lingered and asked, “So what’s the favor?”

The devilish grin returned, making the butterflies ecstatic. “I need a date to my brother’s wedding.”

CHAPTER TWO (#u997cc1ae-8b72-5849-a261-c339932b624b)

WHEN HAD A man ever asked Harley to be his wedding date?

When was the last time she’d felt like going to a wedding?

She couldn’t remember on either count.

Harley had turned Vince down, of course. The wedding was in California the weekend after next, but he’d wanted her to fly out with him this Saturday.

Take to the skies with Vince?

Thunderclouds lined the southern horizon.

There was a time when Harley O’Hannigan thought the sky was the limit. A time when everything she’d touched had turned to gold.

Daughter of a couple who owned a tile and granite outlet in Birmingham, she’d been the girl most likely to succeed in high school, valedictorian of her college class, the young architect hired to design beautiful structures for a boutique agency in Houston.

And then reality struck. The balconies she’d dreamed up for a uniquely modern theater couldn’t be built with today’s construction techniques. She’d only shared the drawing with Dan because unbuildable designs could be entered in architectural theory competitions. Winning those awards brought agencies and architects prestige. But Dan had done the unthinkable. He’d presented her design to a client as doable. And they’d bought it.

She’d begged Dan to back out of the deal. But the press he’d received from the sale was amazing, and had led to more architectural business and more requests for impossible, pie-in-the-sky ideas. Instead of admitting the balconies couldn’t be done, Dan had found a contractor willing to begin construction with the interior still up in the air. Literally.

Backed into a corner where all she could do was put Fail on her résumé, Harley had quit, only to be told she’d signed a non-compete clause when she’d been hired. Oh, and since her employment package included the firm paying her college debt, she couldn’t work as an architect if she didn’t work for Dan. Not for four more years. He’d told her he’d reconsider the four-year limitation if she came up with a solution that didn’t compromise the design. Her mind was a blank slate.

She wasn’t qualified for any other job that could support her former lifestyle. She’d moved out of her high-rise condo. She’d sold her Lexus SUV. She’d let go of dreams of greatness in the clouds.

And she couldn’t tell anyone why. There was a nondisclosure clause, too.

Clause-clause-clause. Harley wanted to go back to a time when the only clause she knew was Santa. For the girl most likely to change the world, it was humiliating.

Her parents told their neighbors Harley was discovering herself. Privately, they’d counseled her to find a lawyer, not that she or her parents could afford one. Harley’s friends thought she’d finally cracked under the pressure of perfectionism. They’d offered platitudes and shoulders to cry on. Harley had rejected them all. Taylor, Harley’s older brother, had just shaken his head and told her she should have known buildings always came back to straight lines and right angles. That’s how he and their parents approached tile work and life—eyes on the task in front of them—unlike Harley, who was always dreaming.

Without any professional avenues open, Harley had taken a job as a tile installer, a trade her father had taught her growing up. She’d rented a small studio apartment in an almost up-and-coming neighborhood. She kept her head down, away from the clouds. But her eye occasionally drifted toward the architectural elegance of the Houston skyline. And she wondered what she’d do in four years when her non-compete restriction expired. Straightforward lines or curvature that challenged?

In the meantime she lived day-to-day, job-to-job, paycheck-to-paycheck. But the only way she could do that was to have a functioning tile saw.

She stopped at the tool repair shop Vince had mentioned. It was open late because it catered to construction companies. She carried the saw inside.

“Were you in a traffic accident?” Bart, the owner, looked like he’d forsaken years of trips to the barber and opened a running tab at the tattoo parlor next door. He had long brown hair, a haystack beard and line upon line of ink on his arms. “You need to secure your equipment when you drive.”

Harley didn’t care about Bart’s body art, his hair style or his sad attempts at humor. She cared that his hands were nicked and greasy. It meant he was busy making tools go again. “This happened at a job site. Some idiot trashed it.” Because some idiot couldn’t figure out how to make balconies float like clouds. “Can you fix it?”

“Give me two weeks.” Bart stood back, possibly because he’d given customers bad news like this before. Possibly because construction workers could be as volatile as stiffed loan sharks.