Finding Home (11 page)

It
took less and less these days to tire Brad. He was getting old, he thought as he drove home from the hospital. Though a little after six, there was no sign of evening.

He would have preferred the darkness. He wanted shadows.

Forty-eight was old, and he didn't care what Stacey kept saying to the contrary. Stacey lived in some pretend world. She didn't have to face what he did on almost a daily basis.

Cars whizzed by him on the freeway, their owners intent on getting home. He steadfastly maintained the speed limit. And was the slowest vehicle in all three lanes.

In the operating room, God wasn't his co-pilot like that old classic movie title maintained. Death was. God didn't seem to be anywhere around, especially today. But Death had stood there, looking over his shoulder, waiting for a chance to snatch away his patient. Waiting for a chance to undermine his confidence.

Both had happened today.

He knew that at times, the odds were against him. That he would lose some of the battles. But he didn't like losing. And he didn't like having his confidence in his abilities, in himself, shaken.

What made it worse was having his confidence sapped away in his own home as well.

This time, it wasn't the ever-present aura of death that was responsible. It was a contractor.
The
contractor, to put it in Stacey's terms.

As he arrived home, he felt like turning around again. If he wasn't so tired, maybe he would have. But then, it was only postponing the inevitable. Stacey would just reschedule. Her tenacity astounded him. He knew she was stubborn about little things, but this was the first time that her stubbornness had pitted her against him. Against his wishes.

Frowning, Brad got out of the car, slammed the driver's side door harder than he should have and made his way up the walk. He tried the doorknob before reaching for his key. She'd left it open again. Sighing, he walked in.

And was immediately greeted with joyful dissonance and some drooling by not just Rosie, but Dog as well. He fondly petted his pet and then grudgingly petted the other animal, who appeared ecstatic at the attention. He hated to admit it—and certainly not to Stacey—but the mongrel was winning him over.

“Down, guys,” he ordered in a voice that was far too friendly to make an impression on either animal. “I've got to get this over with.”

He absently wondered how Stacey's contractor would react if he were rushed by both dogs. Would he leave and not look back? It was something to consider….

Brad followed the sound of voices from the rear of the house. And a deep male voice, laughing.

He disliked the contractor immediately.

Alex Stone sat in his family room, obviously making himself comfortable on his recliner, looking more like the Hollywood version of a construction worker than someone who actually made his living driving nails into drywall.

The man was too damn good-looking, Brad thought, annoyed. And too muscular. Stone wore a long-sleeved shirt that had been rolled up as far as it could go, poetically em phasizing his biceps, which seemed to flex as he breathed.

Introductions were made and Alex rose to shake hands. The man had a hell of a grip. Damn, it had been a long time since he'd been to the gym, Brad thought as he took a seat on the sofa, suddenly aware just how out of shape he was in comparison to the man on the recliner. Maybe he could lobby for an extra hour to be added to the day. Or better yet, find a way to manage to do without sleep.

Just thinking about it made him tired.

His mind was wandering. Stone had talked almost the entire time. Brad tried to focus.

“You won't regret this,” Stone was saying. His broad smile took them both in, but predominantly, Brad noticed, the contractor had addressed most of his statements to Stacey.

He was regretting this already, Brad thought. But then, it wasn't as if he had any real say in the matter, no matter what Stacey said about wanting to pull him into the process. The inheritance was hers and she was rubbing his nose in it. Nicely. The way she did everything. Nicely.

Somehow, that made it sting all the more.

“So—” Stone looked from him to Stacey “—when would you like me to get started?”

Instead of immediately giving him a date, the way Brad fully expected her to, Stacey turned and looked at him. “Brad?”

Never.

What would stud-man think of that, he wondered. What if he said exactly what was on his mind and could make it stick? If he told the man to pack up his reference book of pretty pictures and get the hell out of here, never to come back?

The thought made him smile.

But there was no sense dwelling on it. That wasn't going to happen. So instead, Brad shrugged casually in response.

“That's pretty much up to you,” he told Stacey. His eyes shifted to Stone for a moment. No, he just didn't like him. “The two of you come up with something?”

Stone took the initiative. “I can have the crew out on Monday, bright and early if there are no objections.” He looked from one to the other, waiting.

The crew. It sounded like a wrecking service, Brad thought. It also sounded as if no one was hiring stud-man despite his biceps.

“Work a little slow?” he couldn't help asking.

Stone had a two-thousand-watt blinding smile. And perfect teeth. Something else not to like him for. God, was he having a midlife crisis? Couldn't be. He was too old for that. If it were a midlife crisis, that meant he intended to live until he was ninety-six.

“Actually, no,” Stone told him. “This crew that I'm calling in is busy finishing up work on a house in Tustin right now.”

“This crew,” Brad echoed. Even though he wanted no part of this conversation that he felt should have remained strictly
between Stacey and Biceps Boy, he couldn't help letting himself be reeled in. “You have more than one?”

Stone nodded. His biceps flexed as he leaned forward. “Two, actually, although I'm hoping to put together one more by the end of the year. The other crew's working on renovating a church in Corona Del Mar.”

A church. He supposed that made the man reputable. Brad laughed shortly.

“Guess you'd better do a good job there, or you'll be in trouble with the Boss.” Stone was looking at him as if he didn't quite follow his meaning. “You know, no cutting corners.”

Embarrassment welled up inside Stacey. The smile on the contractor's face tightened just a little. What the hell had come over Brad? He didn't act this way.

“I never cut corners,” Alex told him, his voice mild, even. “That would be shoddy. And dishonest. A contractor relies on word of mouth, which has to be good. Anything else and his reputation goes down the tubes.”

Brad shrugged, uncomfortable with his own behavior. He wasn't entirely certain what had come over him. “Sorry, didn't mean to offend.”

But he had, Stacey thought. What had gotten into him? He was always polite, if distant. This behavior was completely out of character for Brad. He was acting like a common, ignorant lout. Brad had faults, but the need to build himself up by putting someone else down had never been one of them.

“No offense taken,” Stone replied.

But she knew there had been. Lines had been drawn in the sand, even if she couldn't see them. She did her best to gloss over the incident.

Turning to face the contractor, she asked, “What time on Monday?”

He didn't pause to think. “Seven. My guy likes to get an early start.”

“And just exactly what is your ‘guy' going to be getting an early start on?” Brad asked.

Alex glanced down at the notes. “Your kitchen.”

Brad scowled, looking toward the area beyond the family room. It was a small kitchen by modern standards, yet satisfactory enough to him. His opinion didn't matter, though, so there was no point in voicing it. “I guess I'd better get my breakfast early, then.”

And then he paused as another thought occurred to him. One of the doctors at the hospital had issued condolences to him when he'd heard that he was about to begin remodeling. “How long is this going to take?”

This time, Stone did pause, doing mental calculations. “Depends on how fast everything gets here. Four, five weeks.”

Brad looked at Stacey. “What's everything?”

“Cabinets, sink, the granite for the counter. Tile for the floor,” Stone enumerated. Leaning forward, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out several sheets of paper, folded in fourths. He handed them to Stacey. “When you called me back the other day, I took the liberty of jotting down the names and addresses of some of the stores in Orange County that carry the materials you'll need to look at.”

Stacey tried not to notice that the papers were still warm. She felt something odd and disturbing moving through her. Forcing herself to glance down at the names, she couldn't make out a single one. It had nothing to do with Stone's
handwriting, which was crisp and perfect, and everything to do with the fact that her pulse had accelerated.

Belatedly, she realized she hadn't said anything. She forced a smile to her lips. “That was very thoughtful. Thank you, I'm sure this is going to be very helpful. We're novices at this.”

“Hey, even God had a first day,” Stone told her.

Brad looked from his wife to the man he was allowing to invade his house. He felt completely shut out, like an outsider in his own home.

“Because
I don't want to,” Brad retorted with an air of finality, “that's why.”

Annoyed and frustrated, Stacey stared at Brad and wondered what she ever saw in him. Whatever it was, there was no trace of it in the man sitting at their kitchen table, absently poking at the remains of the vegetable omelet on his plate. His eyes and most of his attention was focused elsewhere, on an article in the local section of the
L.A. Times.

Stacey struggled to rein in her irritation. Losing her temper wasn't going to get her anywhere. She'd learned that years ago. Brad did not respond well to hot words or displays of temper. And coaxing, when he was being stubborn, had to be conducted with a light, delicate touch, as if she were painting a face on the head of a pin.

You'd think she was asking him for his last pint of blood instead of asking him to accompany her to do something that affected both of them. But at times, trying to get Brad to cooperate was like trying to teach a seal how to walk upright. A miracle or two was seriously needed before that could occur.

Eight in the morning and she was tired already. She thought back almost fondly to the hectic years when she'd
been raising both overenergetic kids without two seconds to rub together. Back then, she couldn't wait to have them grown. Now they were gone and she missed them terribly. And she wasn't out of the infant-raising game, either. The care and feeding of a husband was far more difficult than nurturing two children had ever been.

Stacey tried again, hoping to appeal to that sympathetic side of him that had initially sent Brad to medicine, seeking a career. “I don't want to go and pick everything out by myself.”

He raised his eyes from the article only for a moment. “Then don't.”

“You're not like other husbands, Brad. You actually have good taste.”

Setting the paper down—he was pretty close to finished with the article, anyway—Brad raised an eyebrow at the statement, wondering if she was complimenting him or if this was some kind of hidden put-down. Stacey wasn't given to being nasty, but lately, she seemed to be changing from the woman he thought he knew. The one who never rocked the boat.

“And this is your house, too.”

So she said. But he was beginning to have his doubts about that. “If it's my house, then why can't it stay the way it is?” he challenged. “Without sucking in everything your crazy uncle left you.”

Her immediate response was to defend Uncle Titus. But that would only lead her from the path she was trying to walk. She blew out a breath, wondering if she was just beating her head against the wall, trying to get Brad involved.

“We've been through this so often, I feel like I could put numbers to the conversations.” Even so, she went over it
again, this time in summary form, hoping that it would finally put a dent in that thick head of his. “Because things are falling apart and need to be fixed, so why not fix them in a way that's pleasing rather than putting Band-Aids on the problem? Because Uncle Titus said I should spend the money the way I want. And because—” and she knew that for Brad, this was the clincher “—we signed a contract with Alex. We can't back out without forfeiting the down payment.”

That had gotten to him the second she'd told him about it. He'd thought she had more sense than to be taken in this way. “Which I wouldn't have given him until I saw some work done,” he underscored.

“It's the way things
are
done,” she pointed out. She removed his empty plate and placed it in the sink, fighting the urge to throw the plate instead. Lately, it felt as if her temper came only one way—frayed.

“No, they're not,” he contradicted with feeling. “I don't ask my patients to put money up front before I do the surgery.”

She closed her eyes, searching for strength. Running water over the plate for a second, she left it where it was and sat down at the table opposite him. She was afraid that if she sat next to him, she'd be tempted to strangle him. He was being so damn thick-headed and stubborn.

“It's not the same, Brad.” No, she wasn't going to let this dissolve into another argument. She wanted them to be a team, not opponents. “Now, we need tile, granite, cabinets, appliances, fixtures, all that good stuff.” She saw him wince. “Please, please,
please
come with me to start picking things out.”

Brad muttered something unintelligible under his breath, then drained the last of his coffee, now very cold. Setting the
cup back down on the saucer, he looked at her. “Why don't you get ‘Alex' to go with you?”

Her eyes never left his. “He offered.”

She saw Brad's complexion grow just a shade rosier. It had nothing to do with a healthy glow. “What?

“He offered,” she repeated with absolutely no feeling, no indication one way or the other as to her reaction to the contractor's offer. “When I gave him the check for the down payment, he offered to come with me to help choose some of the materials if you weren't able to go. He said most of his customers usually valued a second opinion.”

That was probably not all they valued, Brad thought darkly. He felt something stirring inside of him, something unsettling he couldn't name. Exasperation, probably, he guessed. And possibly the beginning of an ulcer.

Disgruntled, Brad looked at his watch. It was a little after eight-thirty. “I guess I can give you an hour.”

He was due on the golf course today at eleven. It was Saturday and one of those rare days when he actually had no patients recovering from surgery at the hospital, so there was no reason to go in and make his rounds. He'd planned on unwinding with three other doctors.

“An hour?” she echoed.

The man had no clue as to what was involved, did he? She'd already done a little preliminary scouting, heading up the clogged San Diego Freeway after work on two separate occasions. It amounted to getting her toe in the water. She was going for the full leg today, or at least more than just an ankle. That was going to take longer than an hour, even if they were quick.

“Take it or leave it.”

Definitely not the man she fell in love with and married, she thought.

And yet she smiled at him, inclining her head the way she always had when she'd given in to him. “I'll take it, of course.”

Once they were there, he couldn't very well just leave her and go back home, could he? she reasoned. Having gotten him to agree to look, she intended to take him to as many places as she possibly could today. God only knew, between his work and his stubbornness, when she would get another opportunity to get him to go with her.

 

“Why in God's name would anyone make so many different kinds of tiles in so many different shapes and colors?” Brad grumbled just as they walked into the third store devoted to surfaces found within bathrooms, kitchens and pools.

Or maybe it was the fourth.

By his own admission, he'd lost count as to how many stores they had actually entered. Squares of ceramic, marble and God only knew what other kind of material were dancing before his eyes. It was worse than a blinding migraine. Instead of bolts of zigzagging light, he was seeing an infinite number of patterns set in some kind of stone.

“I guess it's for people who are having trouble making up their minds,” Stacey replied.

Like you,
she added silently.

Talk about a woman having trouble making up her mind, Brad had turned out to be ten times worse. There was something wrong with almost every piece he looked at. Too rough, too slippery, too busy, too bland. Too something. And that
“something” was the deciding factor that ruled out one sample after another in store after store.

To say she was stunned was an understatement. After the second store, Stacey had fully expected her husband to announce that he was tired and that he wanted to go home, or at least drop her off there before he headed for the golf course. But thoughts of the golf course had apparently vanished from his mind as Brad pored over one tile after another, as intent as if he were searching for the Holy Grail.

After they had left the second store, he'd mumbled something about the third place being the charm. Mystified, she'd gotten into the car and pointed out a third store that was part of “tile row,” the unofficial name for a cluster of tile stores that ran along a busy thoroughfare in Anaheim. There seemed to be stores that handled nothing but tile in one form or another for as far as the eye could see.

And now, here they were, entering their fifth store. The daunting side of their pilgrimage through Tile Land, Stacey thought wearily, was that they were still tileless.

She'd expected too much by hoping for an instant rapport. It certainly wasn't for lack of trying. The back of their car now contained an abundance of samples, with the promise of more to come. If this kept up, they would be able to do all three bathrooms in an eclectic mosaic motif, using all different pieces.

She'd learned something today. She'd had no idea that Brad could be so terribly fussy. Married all this time and she'd just learned something new about the man. The realization, even about such a minor thing, took her breath away. She would have sworn that she knew him inside and out.

Brad made no response to her comment about there being so many different tiles due to the inability of some people to make up their minds—he knew it was directed at him. It wasn't that he was having trouble making up his mind. His mind knew it didn't like what it saw. Not really. Nothing stood out. Nothing struck him as being exactly right. As being pleasing enough to live with.

Odd, he supposed, since he didn't actually care one way or another.

Still, since she'd asked and he was going to all this trouble, Brad wanted to feel satisfied with what he picked. So far, the feeling had eluded him. After several hours' worth of traipsing from one store to another, the only thing they managed to agree on happened completely by accident.

One of the stores dealt with the complete kitchen instead of just the counters, walls and floor.

“Nice wood,” Brad commented out of the blue as he stopped to take in one display.

“I like the stain,” Stacey agreed. It was something fancifully called “breezewood,” she discovered, reading the name out loud. Specifically, breezewood with caramel tones, applied to maple.

Stacey breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Looks like we have a winner.”

Brad looked at her, confusion knitting together his eyebrows just over his eyes. They were looking for tile and she was pointing at the cabinets. Had he missed something?