The Renovation: A Reverse Harem Romance Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  The Renovation

  A Reverse Harem Romance

  Mika Lane

  Headlands Publishing

  Join Mika’s Insider Group

  www.mikalane.com

  Contact Mika

  Copyright© 2018 by Mika Lane

  Headlands Publishing

  4200 Park Blvd. #244

  Oakland, CA 94602

  The Renovation is a work of fiction. Names, characters, (most) places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s creativity or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of quotations in a book review.

  ISBN ebook 978-1-948369-06-0

  ISBN print 978-1-948369-07-7

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Contact Mika Lane

  About the Author

  Also by Mika Lane

  Chapter 1

  JAYMA

  DEAR HOMEOWNER:

  A review of our records indicates that your home mortgage loan is in default. Unless payments can be brought current in thirty (30) days, we will take steps to terminate your ownership in the property with foreclosure procedures or other actions to seize the home under the terms of your mortgage agreement.

  I didn’t bother reading the rest of the notice. I couldn’t and besides, I didn’t need to. It’d be nothing more than legal mumbo-jumbo and, as it was, I was struggling to catch my breath. I sank down into my sofa and let the letter flutter to the floor, where my cat came over and promptly pissed on it.

  I knew I liked that cat.

  Shelle?” I wailed.

  “Oh my god. What’s wrong? You sound horrible. Are you crying? What the hell happened?”

  I blew my nose without pulling the phone away. She was my best friend, and I could blow my nose in her ear if I had to. That’s how close we were.

  “I got the letter from the bank,” I sobbed.

  “Letter?” Shelle asked. “What letter? Did you overdraw your account?”

  “No! About defaulting on the mortgage.” Just saying those words brought the taste of bile to my mouth. I needed water.

  “Oooh. Shit, I thought maybe you’d had that straightened out,” she said.

  “I was hoping, too. You know how Lance and I put the house in my name because I had better credit? Well, now the whole note is mine. That’s how it works.” I lay back on the sofa. Maybe that would help with my growing nausea.

  “Holy shit. He can just bail on the house payments like that? God, I didn’t know. But I guess if his name’s not on it, he can—”

  “Yes, he can, and he did. I can’t make the payments myself on my receptionist’s salary, and now I’m gonna lose the house. The money I put into it will be gone, my credit will be ruined, and I’ll have no place to live. We were supposed to fix it all up and sell it for a nice profit.” God, all this crying was giving me a splitting headache.

  I hated Lance, that fucker. Gave him three years of my life, and he hooked up with one of his fellow attorneys at the firm. God, I hoped they’d have ugly children some day.

  He’d come home from work, and right away, I sensed something was off. I figured it had been a rough day at work, or maybe he’d been yelled at by the senior partner he worked for. It happened all the time.

  My job, on the other hand, as phone-answerer-in-chief at an ad agency, was a breeze. I was done for the day at five p.m. Back at home, dinner usually fell to me. That was fine, though, because I needed to learn to cook anyway. Lance, on the other hand, who was trying to advance at the firm, worked crazy hours. Sometimes late into the night. On occasion, he even slept at the office.

  More like he fucked at the office, as it turned out.

  On that memorable day, when he’d seemed so weird, he started the conversation with, “Jayma, I have something to tell you.”

  I thought he was joking. You know, pulling my leg. “Pretending” something big was up.

  “Can we sit over here?” He pointed to the sofa. Why was he being so stiff?

  I added silverware to finish the table setting. “No, babe, dinner’s ready. Let’s talk here at the table.”

  “No. No.” He raked his hand through his hair. “Let’s just sit down over here.” Okay, something was really up. He’d not taken off his jacket or tie. Actually, he looked kind of sexy, all suited up. I reached for his hand, thinking I might start a little playing around, but he was already halfway to the sofa. Maybe later, then.

  Annoyed he wasn’t more enthusiastic about my cooking efforts, I traipsed after him into the living room, which really wasn’t much of a room and really wasn’t livable, either. There was a hole in the floor that opened to the crawl space under the house, over which we’d placed plastic to block the draft. And so that neither of us stepped there and accidentally fell through, we’d put one of those construction sawhorses up, which we’d stolen from down the street. We planned to put it back when we had a better solution.

  I settled into the sofa next to him and, oh, my god! It had finally occurred to me.

  He was going to propose!

  He squirmed to get comfortable on our lumpy old sofa (why buy a good one when the room wasn’t ready yet?) and turned to face me. He seemed not to know what to do with his hands, but finally reached out and held mine. By the fingertips. That was a half-assed handhold if you asked me, but I understood. The pressure! It must have been immense.

  The guy was about to propose. He was a mess. It was to be expected.

  “Jayma?” He was getting choked up, and his voice broke.

  God, I loved him so much at that moment. On the verge of tears as he was proposing. I’d tell our children and grandchildren about this someday.

  Which reminded me, I better write it all down, afterward. I didn’t want to forget a thing.

  “Yes, Lance?” Geez, I surprised myself with a tear in my eye
, something that rarely happened.

  “Jayma,” he repeated.

  For fuck’s sake, get on with it!

  “Sweetie...”

  “Yes?” I breathed.

  “It’s over.” He shrugged a little, the way a cashier would when telling you they couldn’t give you change for a dollar.

  ‘Course, being the glutton for punishment that I was, I had to have him repeat it.

  Which he did. Several times. And then he left.

  Dinner was on the stove, warm and ready to be eaten. I was down one boyfriend and down one marriage proposal. So I ate everything.

  Okay,” Shelle said, waiting for me to catch my breath. “Let’s think this through. There must be something we can do. Don’t give up!”

  Easy for her to say. She lived in a house her parents bought her.

  “Can’t you just sell it?” she asked. “And then pay off the loan?”

  “Yes, but that wouldn’t cover the entire loan. We overpaid for it, thinking we’d renovate and make a killing.”

  “Oh, right. Like one of those TV shows where they flip houses,” she exclaimed.

  “Yeah. Like that. Except it always works out for the people on TV. My life is a different story.”

  “Well. You can come live with me.”

  That made me cry even harder. “You—you know I’m mildly allergic t—to dogs,” I sputtered. “And I have a cat.”

  “I’ll send the dogs to my parents. And I promise to vacuum.”

  Ugh. What was I going to do?

  I was going to get it together, that’s what. I wasn’t normally one to wallow in my problems. I blew my nose hard and wiped my eyes. Thank god, I didn’t wear makeup because by now, it would have run down my face and onto the front of my shirt.

  I’d have my little pity party and be done with it. I was going to figure this shit out.

  Chapter 2

  CARTER

  Hey, neighbor,” I called out to the nice-looking woman next door. What was her name again? Jane something-or-other?

  She looked up from where she was crouched by the house’s foundation, and waved.

  “Hi,” she said without much enthusiasm.

  I’d had a good day. Was in a good mood. Shit, I felt like talking. I walked over to where she was and squatted down right next to her.

  She looked at me with one of those what the hell do you want? looks. Damn, I hadn’t taken her for such a bitch. But if she wanted to be that way…

  I stood back up. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bother you.” I headed back toward my house. Christ, the Grinch would have been friendlier.

  “Wait,” I heard her call. “Hold up.”

  I turned around.

  I’d never really spent any time talking to her and her boyfriend, even though they’d been my neighbors for a couple years. They’d always seemed so…busy. Or uninterested. I was never sure which. What was the guy’s name anyway? Larry?

  And because they were always on the run, I’d never actually seen her close up. Only from a distance, where I could admire that crazy red hair of hers. And of course, her booming little figure.

  Admiring her from afar, I’d not had the chance to appreciate the gorgeous spray of freckles across her face that looked like someone had painted with a tiny pointed brush. They almost didn’t look real. And she had brown eyes. People with red hair can have brown eyes?

  I thought they had to be blue or something.

  Anyway.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I have a lot on my mind.”

  “Something wrong with the house?” I asked, pointing at its crumbling foundation.

  She sighed. “What isn’t wrong with this house?”

  “Oh. Right. I see what you mean.”

  Old Man Wagner had lived there since his childhood. And I think that’s the last time anyone spent a cent on the place. Then, this young couple bought it when he died—the redhead and Larry (or whatever his name was). Word in the neighborhood was that they planned to fix it up and sell it for a profit. I hoped they knew what they were getting into.

  Renovating a house was not for the faint of heart.

  “I’m sorry, but can you tell me what your name is again?” I asked her.

  “Jayma. Jayma Kersey.” She pointed to the spot she’d been checking out just a minute ago. “This piece of the house here, I think it’s called the foundation. It’s kind of falling apart. I’m not sure what’s wrong with it.”

  Since her hostility had subsided, I was feeling friendly again.

  “Oh, yeah. That’s dry rot on the house. And the foundation below it is cracking.” Anyone could see that.

  But I guess it took her by surprise because she looked like somebody had slapped her.

  “Dry rot? Now I’m not exactly sure what that is, but it sounds bad.” She shook her head. “Shit.”

  Whoa. She knew way less about house renovation than I thought she would, considering she was about to get into a big one.

  “I mean, it should be something your boyfriend can repair fairly easily.”

  Her head snapped toward me and she glared. “Um, yeah,” was all she said.

  Okaaaay…

  “I can loan him some tools, if he needs them,” I offered. I thought that was pretty neighborly.

  “Oh, um, that’s okay. He’s away. On business.”

  She bent again to pick at the rotted wood, and I got a glimpse of the top of her thong above her trousers.

  God, I was an asshole. The woman had a boyfriend.

  If he’d had any sense at all, this boyfriend, he should have been able to fix a little dry rot. On the other hand, whenever I’d seen him, he’d seemed kind of douche-y. Like overly impressed with himself, especially after he found out I was a working class kind of guy. But he was the fool who moved into the money pit with no apparent do-it-yourself skills. He was going to pay through the nose for what he could have learned with little effort. Not that it was my problem.

  Me, I was just the contractor next door. Not that he knew that. Because he rarely spoke to me.

  “Hey,” Jayma turned to me and said, “want to come in for a beer?”

  I looked around to make sure she was actually speaking to me.

  “Um, sure.” I was done working for the day. Why not?

  I hadn’t been inside the house since long before Wagner had passed, but I sure hadn’t been expecting to find what I did.

  Chunks of the plaster were missing from the walls, exposing the horizontal lath boards. I knew they’d eventually be replaced with drywall, but a house in that condition could have any number of behind-the-wall problems. Like old electrical, insulation, mold, pests. You name it.

  I followed her through what must have been a living room, sidestepping the sawhorse covering a huge hole in the floor. The kitchen looked serviceable, with a 1970’s fridge and stove, but the enameled sink looked original, and the linoleum floor was worn in a few spots to the subfloor. I took a look around. Just as I’d remembered it, the house had good bones, but it was in need of some serious TLC. A cat hissed from the corner of the kitchen and took off running.

  “Is a Stella okay for you?” she asked, pulling two beers out of the fridge.

  Honestly, any sort of beer was okay for me.

  “So,” I said, taking a long draw on my cold one, “what’s your plan with the house? You and your boyfriend, I mean. Hey, what’s his name, again?”

  Her lips pursed. Christ. Better not ask any more questions about the boyfriend. They must have gotten in a fight or something.

  “Lance. His name was Lance. I mean, is Lance.” She gave a little laugh. Sounded forced, if you asked me.

  I took another swig of my Stella. “Oh, that’s right. Yeah.”

  “How long have you lived next door?” she asked.

  “‘Bout ten years. I knew the last owner of this house, Wagner. He was a great old guy.”

  She looked around the house. “Maybe, but he sure left this place a mess.”

  “No kidding,” I a
greed, looking around. Oh shit, that was rude. “I mean…sorry. Didn’t mean to say your house was a mess.”

  She smiled, her freckles practically jumping off her cheeks. “It’s okay. It is kind of a shithole. We had planned—I mean, are planning—to renovate and then sell.” She looked at her beer bottle, playing with the label.

  Okay, something was definitely up. And I wanted no part of it. I hoped the boyfriend hadn’t been a dick to her.

  I continued talking. What the hell? I didn’t have anywhere to be. “Yeah, I’ve been in my house ten years and have been a contractor about eleven.” I shook my head. It was incredible how fast time had moved.

  She tilted her head as she studied me. “How’d you get into your line of work? Had you always enjoyed building things?”

  It’s funny how life sometimes just happens to you. Or doesn’t.

  “My dad was a contractor, and I used to help him during the summers and the weekends. When he passed away, I took over to finish up what he had in the works and close out the books. One thing led to another, and ten-plus years flew by.”

  She stood from her chair. “Hey, I was going to make a little dinner. Would you like to join me?”

  “Uh, sure. That sounds nice. Thank you.”

  She started taking some things out of the fridge. Green beans, chicken, potatoes. Simple, fresh, real—just how I liked it.

  But where was Lance?

  When her back was to me, I peeked around the corner of the kitchen, where I could see through the living room into one of the bedrooms. The house was in bad shape, but it was tidy enough.