One Week with her Rival (Eden Manor #1) Read online

  One Week with her Rival

  Eden Manor, Book One

  Noelle Adams

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Noelle Adams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Excerpt from One Week with her Stepbrother

  About Noelle Adams

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  Monday

  Vanessa Franks stared at the rickety balustrade of the main staircase in Eden Manor and tried to fight a familiar sense of rising panic and helplessness. The staircase must have been a masterpiece when it was carved a hundred and fifty years ago, but now it was dilapidated and broken.

  And Vanessa was responsible for getting it back to its former glory in only one week.

  Ever since her husband had died three years ago, Vanessa had struggled to hold his business together. She’d never wanted to be a contractor, although she’d grown up with DIY parents and so knew more than most about construction and renovation. But her husband, Carl, had poured his soul into his contracting business, and she’d vowed not to let it fall apart now, just because he’d died in a car accident. Even after three years, with each new job she took on, she felt like she was grappling with loose ends that would inevitably slip through her fingers.

  Forcing the anxiety into a tight ball in a dark corner of her mind, she took a deep breath and smiled at Ruth Owens, her friend and the best woodworker in North Georgia. “I know it’s kind of a rush,” Vanessa said, “but do you think you can have it done in a week?”

  Ruth was in her fifties—a strong, plain-spoken, no-nonsense kind of woman. “Don’t know. That’s pushing it, for this kind of work.”

  “I know. But the owners moved up the timetable, and they really want to get it done. Do the best you can, will you?”

  “Sure thing.” Ruth was shaking her head, the loose graying hair that had escaped her braid brushing against her cheek. “What’s the hurry anyway?”

  “I guess their investor is coming to visit this weekend, and they want to show him as much progress as possible. They mentioned the staircase particularly.”

  Vanessa had been thrilled when a young couple had bought Eden Manor, an old lakeside Victorian mansion that had sat empty for years. They were going to turn it into a bed and breakfast, and Vanessa had fought hard for the contract to restore the house.

  She’d been happy to at least get the fine craftsman jobs—the detailed woodworking, the stained glass and ironwork, and the preservation of the old fireplaces. She’d wanted the entire project, but obnoxious Joe Coleman had outbid her for the grunt work. He had most of the construction laborers in the county in his pocket, effectively shutting her out of the bigger jobs.

  It had been different when Carl was alive—since he’d grown up in the area and had a lot of friends—but now there was nothing Vanessa could do to get the workers away from Joe. Fortunately, she had cultivated relationships with the fine craftspeople in the region, or she would be out of work completely.

  She hoped somewhere Carl was happy that his business still survived—that he was pleased about how hard she was working to keep his company afloat.

  “Did I lose you somewhere?” Ruth asked, breaking into Vanessa’s thoughts.

  “Oh. Sorry. Just worrying, as usual.”

  “I’ll do the best I can here. Nothing to worry about.”

  Vanessa smiled, gratified by Ruth’s relaxed good-nature and her loyalty—something the world was in short supply of. “There’s always something to worry about.”

  “You worry too much. You’re doing real good. Carl would be proud of you.”

  A wave of emotion washed over Vanessa, momentarily burning in her eyes. Carl had always been proud of her, even when she’d been in college and her greatest feat had been an A on a difficult exam. “Thanks.”

  “Seriously. I never thought you could make a go of it after Carl died. I thought you should just sell out to Joe like he wanted. No offense—you’re just so little and pretty and delicate, and you don’t look like you could do big jobs like this.”

  Vanessa was used to the sentiment. It was hard enough to be a woman in this business. Being five-three and small-boned, with big brown eyes and long, wavy brown hair made it even harder. She’d had to get used to men patronizing her or coming on to her—or sometimes both at once. “I’m not really delicate.”

  “I know. You just look that way. Anyway, the point is you’re doing a great job and you have nothing to worry about.”

  “I’d worry less if Joe Coleman wasn’t always lurking around, trying to nibble at the edges of my business.”

  Ruth laughed, rubbing the mahogany wood of the lovely old balustrade, as if it were a special friend. “Oh, Joe, he doesn’t mean any harm.”

  “Yes, he does.” Vanessa’s shoulders stiffened at the thought of the man’s arrogant, infuriating face. “You know what he did when he first came back to town. And he still wants to buy me out. He’d love to see me fail.”

  “Nah. I’m not sure he wanted that, even then. He just has a thing for you, is all.”

  “He does not have a thing for me. He does all that flirting stuff on purpose, trying to manipulate me.”

  Ruth appeared to be privately amused. “I don’t think so.”

  “He flirts with everyone. I see him all the time down at the hardware store and the coffee shop. If she has an X chromosome, he’ll flirt with her.”

  The year after Carl had died, Vanessa had been foolish enough to take Joe’s flirting seriously. Carl had been dead for six months, and Joe had moved back to the area from Atlanta because of his parents’ failing health. He’d started up as a contractor and hung around her a lot, being sweet and funny and interested in everything she was doing. It had been far too soon after being widowed for her to consider another relationship, but she’d still been humiliated and deeply disappointed to realize that he wasn’t interested in her at all. He’d just wanted to take over the business that her husband had left her, and he’d been trying to woo her into selling out to him.

  She’d overheard him talking to a couple of his buddies in the hardware store about how he had her in his pocket and how she’d sell out to him for sure. She still cringed at the memory of his smug, amused, condescending tone and how foolish she’d been to take him seriously.

  She knew better now. Joe Coleman might have the rest of the world fooled—thinking he was good guy—but she wasn’t going to be deceived by him again.

  “Right,” Ruth said, still looking unconvinced. “Whatever you say.”

  Vanessa didn’t reply. She’d realized a long time ago that responding to comments like that only made her look weaker and less confident. Anyway, she liked Ruth, and she didn’t want to argue with her about something so silly.

  It didn’t matter what anyone else thought. It only mattered what Vanessa knew to be true.

  Ruth must have been watching her expression because her tone changed as she added, “You could stop all the gossip, you know, if you’d ever decide to go out with someone else.”

  Vanessa gave a huff of resigned amusement. “I don’t know what you believe, but no one has been asking me out.”

&
nbsp; “But that’s your fault. You send out all these back-off vibes.”

  “I do not.”

  “Sure, you do. Maybe you don’t even realize it. But guys are pretty much wimps when it comes to romance, and they’re not going to ask you out if they don’t think you’re going to say yes.”

  Vanessa frowned. “I’m not interested in going out with a wimp. Besides, there’s no one around I want to go out with.”

  It was true. She’d met Carl when she was still in college in Augusta, her hometown. They’d been set up by mutual friends, and they’d hit it off and married within the year, soon moving back to northern Georgia, where he’d been raised. She’d only been twenty-five when he died, and since then she’d been too busy with work to have time or energy to be interested in romance.

  North Georgia didn’t have a lot to choose from in terms of eligible men, anyway.

  “There’s always Joe,” Ruth said.

  Vanessa’s head gave a little jerk. “You’re kidding, right? There’s no way in the world I’d be interested in him.”

  “Of course not.”

  Vanessa had to fight not to snap back a response, but she managed to restrain herself.

  Ruth could tease all she wanted. Joe Coleman was the last man in the world she’d ever want to be paired off with.

  ***

  Thirty minutes later, Vanessa was leaving Eden Manor, heading to her SUV, so she could drive to the hardware store and order the supplies Ruth needed for the staircase.

  Joe’s guys were working on siding. He had six of them on the job today, in pairs on various sides of the house. At this rate, he’d have all the wood siding replaced and painted by the end of the week.

  Peter and Kelly, the new owners of Eden Manor, would be so pleased with his success.

  She tried not to begrudge him. He’d lived in the area all his life, except the few years he’d worked in Atlanta, and he’d grown up with most of the guys on his crew. Naturally, when they were looking for work, they’d gravitate toward him. It didn’t mean all these guys thought she was incapable of doing this job.

  But she knew most of them were watching her as she made her way to her SUV. Today, she was wearing jeans and a simple T-shirt. She never dressed provocatively or even showed a lot of skin. But guys tended to look at women when they passed by, no matter what they wore, so she was used to them looking at her.

  At least Joe didn’t appear to be around. Maybe she could make it through the day without running into him.

  As if her thoughts had materialized him, she saw a familiar pickup truck approaching on the long gravel drive. Her heart clenched in a familiar way, and she worked on steeling her expression.

  Joe had bought a new truck last year—a very large, expensive one that he must wash every few days. He parked it right beside her SUV, making it impossible for her to slip away without confronting him.

  He was grinning as he slid out of the driver’s seat with a clipboard.

  He was about six feet with medium brown hair, blue eyes, and a perpetual need of a shave. She couldn’t help but like the looks of him, something that constantly drove her crazy.

  A man like him shouldn’t be so sexy and good-looking. It was one of the small injustices of life.

  “Vanessa,” he said, still smiling as he closed his truck’s door and walked around her SUV to her driver’s side. “I was wondering if you’d be here today.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” She kept her tone casual. She didn’t like to let him see that even his presence upset her.

  “What do you think about the crazy deadline? The whole entry hall completed by the end of the week? That’s pretty rough.”

  She’d tried to reach her car door, but he’d positioned his body so she couldn’t get to it without pushing him aside. “Yeah,” she said with a light smile. “It’s ambitious, but doable. Your guys are making good progress on the outside.”

  “Yeah.” Joe looked back at the house, an automatic assessment of the work done in his absence. She recognized the look, since she wore it herself all the time. “Who is this guy we’re supposed to be showing off for anyway.”

  “Their investor,” Vanessa said with arched eyebrows. “Didn’t they tell you?”

  “Yeah, but they acted like I should know who he is.”

  “Harrison Damon. He’s one of those Damons. You know, the family who owns all those old-fashioned hotels, restaurants, and tea houses. Surely you’ve heard of them.”

  Enlightenment dawned on Joe’s face. “Oh, yeah. No wonder they’re so uptight about it. How did they hook up with an investor like that? They look like they’re barely out of school.”

  Despite her attitude toward Joe, Vanessa could understand the sentiment. Kelly and Peter Blake, the new owners of this bed and breakfast, had to be in their early twenties. They apparently knew what they were doing, and so far they’d done everything in a very professional manner. But, at twenty-eight, Vanessa still felt old next to them.

  She wasn’t used to feeling that way.

  “You know better than to assume appearance has anything to do with competence,” she said coolly.

  “True.” Joe’s friendly smile changed slightly, and he leaned in closer to her, planting a hand on her SUV behind her. “I’d never believe someone as little and pretty as you could be a good contractor.”

  She realized there was a compliment implicit in the words—that she was a good contractor—but the reference to her appearance and the sudden heat in his eyes immediately raised her defenses.

  He’d looked at her that way a lot when she’d first met him, in that year after Carl had died. She’d believed the appreciation was real.

  She knew better now.

  “And I’d never believe someone as obnoxious as you could maintain employees longer than a couple of months, so I guess we both have to work on our assumptions.”

  To someone else, the words might have been mean, but Joe obviously didn’t take anything about her seriously. He didn’t look offended. He looked amused.

  And she had to put up a good defense with him or he would just walk all over her.

  “Good one,” he said, laughter in his eyes. “But what you find obnoxious, others might see as having a good sense of humor.”

  She shook her head, trying not to respond to the warm amusement. He could—he did—sometimes make her laugh, which just annoyed her even more. “Shows how clueless some people are.”

  He chuckled and lifted his hand, for a moment looking like he would touch her face or her hair. But then he dropped it quickly and straightened up.

  Vanessa sighed in relief—and maybe the slightest bit of disappointment—now that she wasn’t trapped between him and the SUV. “Anyway, I’ve got work to do.” She put on her professional face, hoping he’d get the hint and move on.

  Joe Coleman never seemed to take any hints. “It’s going to be a challenge to get that whole staircase done by the end of the week. Do you think you can do it?”

  In anyone else, she would have assumed he was genuinely interested and maybe a little concerned for her sake. But she wasn’t deceived by the sincere look in his eyes. “Yes. Of course I can do it.”

  “It’s not just the railing, which is going to be hard enough even for Ruth. It’s all the stairs. I was looking at them the other day, and they’re in pretty bad shape.”

  She sucked in a breath. “Why were you looking at them? The stairs are my job.”

  “I know. I was just interested. Who do you have to work on them?”

  She had Carl’s cousin, Hal, and a buddy of his. Those were the only competent guys she could rely on to do basic construction work, since everyone else wanted to work for Joe. But she wasn’t going to admit this to him. “I’ve got it covered.”

  “I could lend you one of my guys, if you need someone else.”

  Narrowing her eyes, she tried to see what was going on in his mind, but all she saw was his typical laidback amusement. “And what would you expect in return?”


  “You could lend me Ruth for the Ungers’ house. They’ve got carved paneling in the dining room that no one on my crew is good enough to tackle.”

  No wonder he was being so generous. He needed something from her. Typical. “You can ask Ruth yourself, if you need her for a job. She’s a freelancer. She doesn’t work exclusively for me.”

  “Yeah, but she won’t even take my calls. She doesn’t like me.”

  Vanessa tried very hard not to feel pleasure at this admission. “I can’t help you with that.”

  “I bet she’d do the job if you asked her to.”

  Ruth probably would. “I’m not going to ask her to do a job for someone she doesn’t like.”

  “But I’m pretty sure she doesn’t like me because of you.”

  “I can’t dictate how other people feel about you. It’s your own fault. She’s not forgiven you for being such a jackass with me when you were trying to get my business before.”

  His face twisted slightly. “That was two and a half years ago. It was one mistake. I honestly thought you’d be glad to unload the company. I was just being nice and trying to convince you it should be to me you sold out to.”

  Unload the company. That was what he thought of the business Carl had worked so hard to build.

  She bit back her initial response, which was to berate him for how he hadn’t been nice—he’d been trying to take advantage of her. But that would make her vulnerable, show him that his treatment of her still really bothered her. So she said coolly, “If you want people to like you better, you might try to tame your obnoxiousness.”

  Joe’s gaze flickered between frustration and his characteristic amusement before he got back down to business. “But seriously. I’d give you two guys on the stairs this week if you’ll put a good word in for me with Ruth.”

  Momentarily, Vanessa was tempted. She could use some extra laborers this week. But her relationship with Ruth was one of the few advantages she had in keeping her company afloat. She couldn’t give it up. “If you want Ruth to work for you, you’ll have to approach her yourself. I can’t help you with that.”