Chapter 1
Audrey tightened her grip on her pen and focused on her client. Grimacing was unprofessional and she needed to remain impartial.
“Here I am thirty-two,” her new client, Carly, cried. “And I can’t find a good man.”
This was Carly’s first therapy session and after ending things with her boyfriend a few weeks ago, she wasn’t past the point of high-pitched crying. Audrey pressed forward even though the sound of Carly’s whining made her cringe. “It’s okay. Take your time. Tell me more when you’re ready.”
“We were together for six months. At first, I thought I wanted to marry him. But it turned out he’s petrified of commitment. In fact, when a friend of mine got married, he wouldn’t go to the wedding with me because he said he didn’t believe in marriage.” She sniffed loudly and wiped her nose. “He always wore this stupid old Atlanta Braves cap. It was so tacky I threw it out. Seriously, Oregon is a long way from Georgia. But he never really listened to me, didn’t tell me how he was feeling either. He said all sorts of stupid things that didn’t make sense at all. He actually thinks he’s funny. And his dog hated me. It’s this little yappy thing, but he wouldn’t get rid of it. It always peed on my shoes and once in my new purse.”
“I’ve never actually had a dog,” Audrey said. “They don’t usually pee on shoes, do they?”
“I don’t know, I hate dogs.” Carly shook her head. “Do you know what else? He believes in Bigfoot.”
Audrey’s eyebrows lifted. Sasquatch sightings were common in Oregon, but she was not personally a believer. “What do you mean? He thought he saw one?”
“He watches this reality show about these hunters out there looking for Bigfoot, then he said he was going to go out hunting for this creature with his friends. He went on this four-day excursion in the woods.”
Audrey wasn’t quite sure what to say. “Did he invite you to go along?”
“No, but I wouldn’t have gone anyway.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“Stupid, because I was dating a lunatic. I mean, what level of insanity is that?”
“It does sound strange…but if you broke it off because he had habits and hobbies you weren’t comfortable with, that’s okay.”
“I haven’t even told you about the day I came over and found a deer hanging out to dry in his back yard. Blood all over the place.”
Audrey thought she would be sick.
“I finally told him we were done. And I thought when we first started dating that he might be the one. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Why can’t I find love?”
Audrey did her best to help Carly. Once time ran out, Audrey ended the session and gave Carly her card to schedule another appointment. As a marriage and family therapist, she met all kinds of people and dealt with a wide variety of issues. It was rewarding when she was able to help people struggling with depression or hard times, and especially when she was able to help a couple learn to communicate with each other more effectively and save their marriage. She felt she was good at what she did, but she couldn’t make a relationship of her own work. The last guy she’d dated hadn’t lasted long at all.
Carly’s situation was interesting, to say the least. Audrey would have dumped that guy much sooner than his girlfriend did.
As she typed her notes into the computer at her desk, the phone rang. “This is Audrey Foster, may I help you?”
“Sis,” Audrey’s brother, Robert, said. “I went by your place to look at that ceiling fan that went out and I could smell burned metal.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Then I checked the breaker box.” His pause made her nervous. “You’re gonna need an electrician to look at the wiring in this place. I don’t know if it was ever updated; you know it’s been sixty-something years since Grandpa built it. Something’s not right. I’m going to text you the name of the guy who did some work for our office. It’s funny, when he showed up I realized I knew him from the baseball team in high school. Do you remember Josh Chadwick?”
“Nope. Maybe I’ll recognize him. Was he over to our house a lot?”
“Not really.”
“He better be really good at what he does, friend of yours or not.”
It had been a month since Audrey bought her grandmother’s home in Romance, Oregon. She knew she wanted it the minute Granny put it on the market. Now that it was hers, she had been experiencing little problems with light switches and fixtures ever since. It hadn’t seemed serious enough to her to call in an electrician quite yet, especially when she’d poured all her savings into updating the kitchen and the house’s flooring. But hearing Rob talk about a burned metal smell was frightening.
“Yikes…thanks for going by, Rob.”
“Call this guy, he’s the best, okay? I’ve gotta get back to the office.”
“Take care of those happy paws,” Audrey said with a giggle.
Her brother was a veterinarian at Happy Paws Animal Hospital.
“Hey, don’t forget about the animal shelter festival. This Saturday, okay?”
“What booth did you sign up for?”
“I’m running the pumpkin cake walk. By the way, will you bring a cake?”
“Thanks for all the notice, Bro,” she said with a laugh. “Sure. I owe you for helping me fix up my house.”
“Ok, I really have to go this time. See ya.”
Audrey made notes on her calendar to pick up ingredients to make a cake, then her phone chimed with the text from her brother with the electrician’s information. She clicked to call the number and hoped that whatever was wrong with her house would be a relatively minor fix.
***
Joshua Chadwick drove into the driveway of an older home near the historic district and sighed. He’d just gotten the news one of his major clients dropped him. It was collateral damage for dating and breaking up with the client’s catty wife’s sister. He regretted losing the business, but was more than happy to put that relationship behind him.
But with a major contract gone, he needed things to pick up quickly. He’d recently acquired a lot of debt and certainly couldn’t afford for his business to go under. They were debts incurred from his grandmother’s long illness. His parents hadn’t had the money and he’d taken it on himself.
And now his lousy relationship had cost him big. He grumbled under his breath thinking about his ex. She had no sense of humor. None. She’d caught him watching an episode of a show about hunting Sasquatch and freaked out. He’d even joked about going to go find Bigfoot on a hunting trip he had planned with his friends. When Josh came back, he’d realized she didn’t understand his sense of humor at all. She’d actually thought he was hunting Bigfoot and had broken up with him that day. He didn’t fight her on it. It was time. He was certain she just wasn’t the one. Maybe no one was.
He definitely intended to steer clear from dating anytime soon.
He grabbed a clipboard from the passenger seat with his new client’s name and address and walked up to the front porch.
He rang the bell and shortly a young woman answered the door. He tried not to stare, but she was gorgeous with long, auburn hair.
“Hello, I’m Josh Chadwick, of Chadwick Electric.” He held out his hand and she took it. Her green eyes caught his attention and his heart rate sped up as he squeezed her soft hand. “Are you Miss Audrey Foster?”
She smiled and nodded. “Yes, nice to meet you.” She released his hand and gestured for him to step inside. “My brother gave me your number; he said you guys knew each other in high school.”
“Are you Rob Foster’s sister?”
“Yes. So you two played baseball back when?”
“Yeah, I was the pitcher who struck him out every time.”
Audrey laughed. “Ah, I do remember that. I didn’t remember who did it though.”
“We lost touch after graduation.” Josh wondered why he didn’t remember Rob having such an attractive sister. They didn’t hang out at the Foster house or anything, but still… Josh broke his eyes away from her; he needed to behave in a professional manner and gawking at the client wasn’t a good idea. He looked past her into the house. “You’re having some trouble with your lights?”
“Yes, sorry, come in.” She opened the door wider and stepped back. It was an older house, but the interior had been modernized with laminate flooring and fresh paint. Boxes were stacked in the living room and no furniture, except a TV stand, indicated she probably hadn’t been living there very long. “The ceiling fan in the living room keeps going out and my breakers flip very frequently.”
“Okay, where is the breaker box?” He followed her to a small closet that stored the water heater and breaker box and she hovered next to him while he checked the breakers. The coconut scent of her hair distracted him for a moment. But the smell of burned metal quickly overtook it.
“That odor’s not a good sign. Let me check some things.” He turned his head as he spoke and found her centimeters away, almost leaning into his shoulder. His pulse sped up as she blushed and stepped back.
“Sorry,” she said. “Was a little worried about what you’d find in there.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“I’ve been a homeowner for a month now.”
“Did you have a home inspection?” He grimaced as he eyed the thin aluminum wiring.
“No, it was my grandmother’s house. I knew it needed a little work, of course, it’s an older home…”
“Oh, I’m sorry. My grandmother died last year.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss. But mine’s not dead. Grandma sold me the house and moved to Miami.”
“Wow, okay.” He lifted his eyebrows. “Does she have family there?”
“Not a one. I did try to talk her out of it, but she was ready for an adventure. She’s having a blast. She said something about wanting to learn how to scuba dive.”
He moved past her, catching another tantalizing whiff of coconut, and pulled a screwdriver from his belt. He knelt by an outlet. When he pulled the wires out, and lifted the ohmmeter from his right pocket, his brows lifted as he measured the resistance.
This was going to be a big job. He sure needed one, but he hated to have to give bad news to Audrey.
“I’m afraid you’re going to need new wiring.”
“New wiring?”
“You’ve got a major fire hazard here. Let me check a few other things, and I’ll write you a quote.”
Josh looked over at Audrey’s worried face, and his heart twisted.
“Are you talking about rewiring the entire house?”
Josh nodded. “I’m going to have to check a few other things, but, yeah, the whole house. I can fish for most of the wires, but if you’d like to get rid of the wood paneling on the walls in the den, it’s a good time to have it ripped out.”
Once he’d finished his inspection, he retrieved the papers he needed from his truck and went into the kitchen to spread them out.
As he set to work on the estimate, he tried to block out thoughts about the beautiful homeowner who stood waiting for him to finish while drumming her fingers on the kitchen counter.
***
Audrey sat in the garage, currently the only light she was able to use, on the beanbag chair she’d dragged there. It was her only chair. She’d moved from a furnished apartment to her new house with every intention of being able to afford furniture. She’d decided to rough it with an air mattress and a beanbag chair a little longer, and spent her savings on updating the old kitchen. Why not? She’d gotten a great price on the house; she then financed a new car. But instead of financing furniture, she was going to need a loan for the electrical estimate in her hands. The number at the bottom of the page was even bigger than Audrey had expected. And she’d expected it to be expensive.
She groaned as she thought of Grandma coming to visit over Christmas in a few months if she still had no furniture. If she couldn’t get financing she wouldn’t even have electricity. Grandma had fought against selling her the house in the first place. She’d planned to sell it to a stranger as a fixer-upper, saying it was out of repair since Grandpa died and would be too much work. Audrey couldn’t let the house go to a stranger.
The highly attractive electrician had left, and Audrey clenched the pen he’d used. Why was she thinking about the electrician? Yes, he was handsome…dreamy, in fact. And he’d smelled so good, especially for a working man.
But she’d just bought a house that could burn down at any moment if she turned on another light inside. Good thing the power in there was turned off. The house her grandfather had designed and built sixty years ago. She still missed him. The house had memories she didn’t want to let go of. It would feel like losing him all over again if she couldn’t repair the house and had to leave it.
Josh Chadwick’s face appeared in her mind again and she thought about his beautiful hazel eyes.
“No more distractions, Audrey,” she said aloud to the empty garage.
She picked up her phone from her lap to dial her brother. “Well, it’s bad news,” she said when he answered. “The whole house needs to be rewired, so the electricity is going to be off for at least a week.”
“Oh no, gosh, Sis. Sorry to hear that. I know Grandma said it needed some work, though I didn’t think it needed that much. Why don’t you come stay with us?”
“Nah, I’ll be fine. The garage is the newest part of the house, even being like fifteen years old, but it’s on another circuit, and I can have the light on in here. The rest of the house is shut off for safety. He’ll be back first thing on Monday with a crew to get started.”
“Um, I missed the part about why you are fine. You have an empty house, now with no power. Are you going to live in the garage?”
“It’s not empty…I have a brand-new kitchen filled with my stuff and there are…boxes and suitcases around. I am not living in the garage, I can come out here when I need some more light, but I’ll get on fine with a flashlight to get to my room.”
“Well, I guess you don’t have to worry about running into the furniture in the dark if you can’t find your flashlight.”
“Yes, that’s the bright side. I’m at work most of the day, anyway; the hard part will be this weekend since it’s only Thursday. I can watch Netflix though on my tablet. I upped my data plan. And I’ll go buy some camp lanterns.”
“Audrey, seriously…”
“Come on, you know I value my own space.”
Though it wasn’t a lie, the real reason she would hold out to the bitter end before she would stay with her brother was her annoying sister-in-law who always wanted to set her up.
“Yes, but…”
“Don’t tell Mom, okay? She’ll try to make me move to Portland again.” She struggled to get out of the beanbag with the phone in one hand and the estimate in the other. “Anyway, I’ll need to use your kitchen to make a cake for Saturday. And tonight I’ll drop off all the food in my freezer. That reminds me, I’ve gotta buy a cooler. I’m on the way out to see about a loan.”
“Let me know if you decide to let me help you.”
“Love you, Bro.”
“Love you, bye.”