If Ever I Fall (Rhode Island Romance #1) Read online

  “It’s my favorite room,” she confessed.

  “Do you like to cook?” Joe asked.

  “I like to cook. I love to bake. I get that from my aunt, I think. I remember her baking cookies and cakes in here. This room always smelled delicious.”

  “Mmm. You’ll have to bake some cookies for us,” Tony said teasingly. “We won’t let you in for the final reveal until you do.”

  She was startled by her own laughter. Some of the tension inside of her dissolved. “I could do that. But not in that oven. It doesn’t work.”

  “Too bad,” Tony said. “I can find a replica if you want to have a similar look in here?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s so much the design of this room, or the happy memories that were made in here.”

  “Would you say that having a large kitchen is important to you?” Joe asked. He’d walked over to the built-in wall unit. He traced his fingers slowly over the surface, not looking at Willa.

  “Yes. I’d love to have at least three times as much counter space than there is right now.”

  “This will have to come out then,” he said, sounding grim. He opened the stained glass cupboard doors. “Too bad this is a built-in. It’s a nice piece of furniture. Looks original to the house. Whoever made this was a master craftsman. Probably the same person who built that Dutch door in the living room.”

  Willa didn’t think she had any feelings one way or the other about removing the wall unit until Joe tugged on the upper right hand drawer. Suddenly, she had a vivid memory of her aunt opening that same drawer, pulling out paper, crayons, colored pencils.

  “No!”

  She rushed forward, brushing against Joe’s side as she peered inside the drawer.

  Nothing had changed. It was all still there, as if the drawer hadn’t been opened since that long ago summer. Crayons, pencils, tape and scissors. Tucked in the back corner was an unfinished work, a childish artistic endeavor depicting two trees, a faceless stick figure holding a basket of flowers. The paper was curled up at the edges, browned with age. WILLA was written in big, bold letters along the bottom.

  She released a soft, sighing breath.

  This drawer contained love.

  She carefully removed the drawing, her hands trembling. “No,” she said again, her voice lowered. “You can’t take this down.”

  She felt fingers grazing her right arm just below her elbow. They seemed to burn through the thin fabric of her blouse as they slid down to gently encircle her wrist, keeping her hand steady.

  “You drew this?” Joe asked, his voice soft and low as he lifted both their hands upwards so he could get a closer look at the drawing.

  “Yes. When I was seven. That was the only time I came to visit here. Every morning, I’d sit at the breakfast nook and draw while my aunt did her baking.”

  “Sounds like a happy memory.”

  She had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. This close, she was even more aware of his height and his strength. She was aware—in a way she never had been before—of her own femininity. Something shifted inside of her.

  She heard him say something, but his voice seemed to come from a great distance.

  It was Tony who was speaking. He’d come to stand on the other side of her. “Cute,” he said, studying the drawing. “You should have that framed.”

  Willa suddenly remembered that there were cameras in the room and that her every word and expression was being recorded. She took a jerking step away from Joe, feeling his fingers tighten briefly before he released her wrist.

  “Yes,” she said on a shaky breath. “That’s a good idea.”

  “We can try and work around this wall,” Tony went on, his tone reassuring. “We’ll put a couple of different layouts together for you; show you all your options.”

  “Okay. That sounds good.”

  “I just have a few more questions for you, Willa. A few more things that my brother and I need to know before we begin pulling the designs together. Why don’t we go out to the backyard while we talk? This renovation includes landscaping, too. Did you know that?”

  During their tour of the back and side yards, Tony asked his questions: What was her favorite color? Did she enjoy any other activities or hobbies aside from baking? Did she find any particular architectural style more appealing than another? Did she have a favorite artist or type of art?

  She gave vague responses, hoping they made sense for the cameras. Her thoughts were concentrated on Tony’s brother, who hadn’t spoken another word since they’d walked outside.

  Finally, someone shouted, “Cut!”

  Veronica hurried towards them, her face beaming. “That was great! Tony and Joe, please go with Tiffany and Curtis to the front of the house for your interviews. Willa, let’s go into the kitchen with Steve.”

  Veronica posed Willa at the breakfast nook, the crayon drawing on the table in front of her so it was visible to the camera. While the camera rolled, Veronica asked leading questions, encouraging Willa to share whatever was in her head. “We’ll be editing out my voice. Just talk to the camera like I’m not even here. Okay? You seemed surprised when you opened the front door. Why?”

  Willa narrowed her eyes. “That’s the reaction you were hoping for, right?”

  Veronica merely arched her eyebrows.

  Willa sighed. “I was very surprised when I opened the front door. I wasn’t expecting the brothers to be so…young. How old are they?”

  “Joe is thirty-three. Tony is twenty-seven.”

  “How long have they been in the construction business?”

  “Their father started the business before they were born. They grew up working on houses. Are you worried they don’t know what they’re doing?”

  “No. They seemed very competent. Tony asked some good questions. Joe seems to like old furniture. I’ve never given my aunt’s furniture much thought, personally. I grew up in a house that was very modern. Everything was always new and neat and clean. I guess I wasn’t taught to appreciate older things.”

  “Can you explain what was going through your head when Joe opened that drawer in the kitchen?”

  “I thought it was pretty evident what happened. You see, I haven’t looked inside those drawers since I moved here. I’d only been inside the kitchen a few times since January. My best and happiest memories of this house took place in that kitchen. When Joe opened the drawer, those memories came flooding back. That’s all.”

  “It sounds like keeping that wall unit intact is important to you.”

  “Yes. I didn’t realize until that moment just how important it would be.” Willa blinked, unfamiliar emotions rising to the surface. Her voice was a little shaky as she finished her thoughts. “I’m not sure how they’ll be able to work around it. I’m really looking forward to seeing the designs they come up with.”

  “Perfect, Willa. That’s all we need for now.”

  The audio technician approached Willa to help her remove the lapel mic. After both he and the cameraman had left the kitchen, Veronica’s features relaxed. She reached across the table and squeezed Willa’s hand. “You did great today! How do you feel?”

  “I’m not sure,” Willa said with a frown. “I feel like there’s something more going on here. Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  Veronica was clearly taken aback. “What do you mean?”

  “When you insisted that I not meet the brothers until shooting began… Why did you do that?”

  “I did that with the other episodes, too, Willa. Not just this one. I am trying to make each episode as real as possible. God, I get so annoyed when reality shows look too staged and scripted. I want this series to stand apart.”

  Willa considered Veronica’s response and felt the sincerity behind her words. “All right, that sounds reasonable.” She managed a smile. “I think you got your ‘good TV’ today. All the single, female viewers are going to be jealous of me.”

  Veronica laughed, fanning one hand in front
of her face. “Not just the single ones. I confess the words ‘eye candy’ were the first to pop into my head when I viewed the audition tapes Tony sent to the network last year.”

  “Is either of them married?”

  “No. Otherwise I would’ve yelled ‘cut’ when you were all upstairs, and Tony had his hand on you. Those two are born charmers, especially Tony. He was made for television. He has an instinct for saying and doing the right things that will draw in the viewers.”

  Willa looked down at the crayon drawing, tracing a fingernail slowly across her printed name. “Joe didn’t seem to like being on camera,” she observed, keeping her voice nonchalant. “He was very quiet at first.”

  Veronica sighed. “We’ve been working on that. It wasn’t his idea to do this series—”

  There was a soft rap on the backdoor before it cracked open enough for Collette to poke her head inside. “Are you done yet?” she stage-whispered.

  “All finished for now,” Veronica said, standing up from the table. “Why don’t you go and relax with your friends, Willa. We’re going to be here for about another hour packing up. And the guys are taking measurements and doing a more thorough appraisal of the overall condition of the house. I’ll be in touch with you in a couple of days to schedule the visit to their office. Okay?”

  As Veronica left the kitchen via the hallway, the girls swooped into the room, drawing Willa into their collective embrace.

  “Veronica let each of us go inside the video truck for a few minutes,” Mercy shared excitedly. “I was watching when you were talking to the brothers in the dining room. That Tony was flirting with you.”

  “Shh,” Audrey scolded, nodding her head towards the hallway. “They might hear you. Come on, Willa. Let’s go up to your apartment. We can watch everything from there.”

  Shirley lagged behind. “I want to get a closer look at that cameraman. He was kind of cute. Such big shoulders…”

  Once Collette had dragged Shirley out of the kitchen and they were all ensconced in Willa’s living room, the four women started talking at once.

  “When you were in the bedroom—”

  “I saw the way he looked at you upstairs—”

  “We should’ve washed those curtains—”

  “Damn. Those two are HOT!”

  It was Mercy’s words that drowned out the others. Everyone looked at her, mouths agape, before bursting into ribald laughter.

  “If only I was twenty years younger,” Shirley said with a mournful sigh after the laughter had died down. “I’d be all over that Tony like butter on toast.”

  “Who says you need to be twenty years younger?” Audrey asked, smoothing a hand over her sleek blond hair.

  Of the four women, Audrey was what Collette called the “sophisticated one”. Tall, slender, polished and poised, she had the bone structure of Audrey Hepburn and the voice and mannerisms of Kathleen Turner. After graduating from RISD, she’d left for New York to start her own jewelry design company, which she’d since moved to Rhode Island. She had a factory in Pawtucket and a retail shop on Thayer Street in Providence.

  Collette wagged her finger. “Back off, Aud. Those boys only have eyes for our Willa. The way they were both looking at her, you could’ve been in the room stripped naked and licking a lollipop and they wouldn’t have noticed you.”

  Audrey gave an affronted sniff.

  Willa blushed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Collette shot her a look of disbelief. “Don’t tell me you didn’t see the way they were staring at you. I was watching the video feed when you all went upstairs. That older brother, especially. Joe. Talk about burning looks. I heard Veronica telling the cameraman to zoom in for a close-up.”

  Willa dropped her head in her hands and groaned. “I signed up for a home remodeling show, not a dating show!”

  “No wonder Veronica was so excited when she first saw you,” Collette went on. “She knew how this story would play out as soon as you opened that door.”

  “She’s assured me that that’s just the way the brothers are. Tony puts on the charm with all the homeowners.”

  “Is that what she called it?” Mercy muttered.

  Willa lifted her head. “I’m backing out. I’ll go talk with her right now. Tell her this isn’t what I thought it would be.”

  “And why would you do that?” Shirley asked. “What’s wrong with letting two handsome guys flirt with you? You should be flattered.”

  “I’m not used to it.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Audrey said. “You’re very pretty, Willa.”

  Willa rose jerkily to her feet and began pacing the room. “Looks don’t matter. As soon as guys find out about me, how weird I can be, they act like I have some contagious disease.”

  “Then they don’t deserve you,” Collette retorted, ever Willa’s staunch defender.

  “Have you ever been in love, Willa?” Mercy asked hesitantly.

  The girls had never broached the subject with her before. They had no reservations talking about every little detail of their own romantic relationships—some details that Willa would’ve preferred not to know!—but had been respectful about Willa’s boundaries in that area.

  For some reason, Willa now felt the urge to unburden some of the emotions she’d kept concealed for far too long. A whisper inside her head questioned how much this desire had to do with the strange feelings that had washed over her the second she’d opened her front door to Tony and Joe Rossetti.

  “The longest relationship I had lasted three weeks,” she confessed, words long-buried suddenly pouring out of her. “I lied to him about my background and my job. I tried to change everything about myself, the way I dressed and spoke, just so I could fit into his world. I made myself physically ill trying to keep who I really was a secret.”

  Audrey jumped up from the sofa and stood in Willa’s path. She put her hand on Willa’s arm, gently bringing a halt to the restless pacing. She lightly set her other hand on Willa’s shoulder and looked Willa straight in the eye. “Listen to me, Willa Cochrane. Don’t ever change who you are for someone else. There’s a man out there for you who will understand that love isn’t about changing someone, even if he thinks it’s for your own good. Real love is about finding someone who’s already the perfect fit.”

  Soaking in the claw-foot tub that evening, Willa idly rubbed her right arm, from wrist to elbow and back again. She encircled her wrist, pressed her thumb against her pulse, felt its accelerated tempo.

  She reflected on the things she’d shared with the girls today. She could almost laugh about it now. It’d been impossible for the four women to totally conceal the relief in their expressions upon learning she’d had sexual relationships. The way she’d refrained from participating in any of their past conversations around that subject probably had them wondering if she was a virgin or asexual.

  She would never share with them that she’d treated losing her virginity like one of her research projects: methodically and logically, mapping out each step that would get her from point A to point B. She read books, poured over issues of Cosmopolitan, eavesdropped on conversations amongst the females on campus.

  That they viewed sex so casually had been alarming to her. Surely there should be some level of trust between two people, some degree of liking, of fondness, if not love? The notion of jumping into bed with someone simply to scratch an itch disturbed a deep place in her heart, an empty place that had never been filled, a secret place that yearned for something more.

  Yet, to enter into her twenties with the title of virgin flashing in her head like an obnoxious neon sign—that she couldn’t do. It would be just one more thing to set her apart from her peers, another oddity that would fester and grow as the years went by. She wanted to get rid of it and be done with it.

  She imagined losing her virginity would transform her somehow—a prison break, a sea change—that she would suddenly blossom into a worldly creature, confident in her femininity, finally owning t
hat power that she sensed in some of the female students, as if they held the secrets of the universe between their legs, wielding it over the young men who ogled and posed.

  On her nineteenth birthday, her father had given her a car. Her first car. With it had come a short-lived sense of freedom. One afternoon, in a coffeehouse on campus, she’d overheard some freshmen students talking about a party that was happening in Berkeley that night. She’d thumbed in the address on her cellphone and found her way there. There’d been a boy—dark, brooding, stoned. He’d cornered her, convinced her to take a puff. She mimicked the mannerisms of the other girls at the party, played cute and coy. He’d led her into a back bedroom and locked the door.

  It had been quick and not as painful as her research had led her to believe. She’d lain quietly on the bed, studying the boy as if from an observation window in an operating room, watching the twist of expressions that played across his face as he moved swiftly inside her before grunting his release.

  She’d brought herself to orgasm in the privacy of her own bedroom a few hours later.

  There’d been a few others since him, but no real connections, no relationships aside from that one guy she’d tried to change herself for—if that brief, three week affair could even be called a relationship. What she didn’t share with the girls was that part of his allure had been the fact that he’d enjoyed going down on her, giving her the first orgasm she didn’t achieve by her own hand.

  But the transformation she was hoping for hadn’t happened. If anything, her inability to maintain any kind of long-term relationship with a man had only further shaped her belief that she would very likely go through the remainder of her life without forming a real connection with anyone.

  The girls were helping to change that mindset. She felt more comfortable being herself with them than she had with anyone before. But could she find that same ease, that same sense of kinship and security with a man?

  The bathwater was growing cold. She pulled herself out of the tub and dried off. She used a corner of the towel to rub the condensation from the mirror above the sink. Blue eyes set in a pale, oval face framed by a damp mass of long, wavy brown hair stared back at her. She had a high forehead, straight nose, a mouth that Audrey had called bee-stung, all the features that the conventional world considered attractive.