True North Read online

  True North

  Amy Knupp

  Contents

  About the Book

  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

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  True Colors—Excerpt

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Amy Knupp

  About the Author

  About the Book

  It might be a fake date, but what if he’s not faking it?

  * * *

  Loner Cole North has always been the odd guy out. His IQ is sky-high, but he’s not so bright when it comes to people or relationships. Years ago, he spurned expectations, shunned his family’s business, and embraced a career in construction instead. Now he values his job above everything, in part because of his secret feelings for his boss, Sierra. While he could never be right for her personally, he endeavors to be exactly what she needs professionally.

  * * *

  Remodeler Sierra Lowell might be creative, hardworking, and a color-outside-the-lines thinker in her job, but there’s one line she’s never crossed. It’s tough enough to be a woman in a man’s job without adding sex or emotions to the mix. Smart, sexy Cole is without question her right-hand man, but the lines get blurred when Sierra's life is complicated with a wedding date crisis and the television opportunity of a lifetime.

  * * *

  Cole impulsively steps up to be her go-to guy for both. When their fake date is interrupted by a family emergency, having Sierra at his side makes him realize there’s a fine line between alone and lonely and that maybe he’s ready for less of both. Can he find a way to go from being a right-hand man to the right man for her?

  Chapter One

  Getting dumped sucked, even when you weren’t that wild about the guy to start with.

  Getting dumped two days before your sister’s wedding, being left dateless… That was an altogether different level of suck.

  Sierra Lowell shut the back door of her business harder than she meant to and let out a quiet but heartfelt stream of swear words.

  “Everything okay?”

  She turned from the door to see Cole North, her foreman, sticking his head into the room.

  “Fine,” she said, brushing off the irritation from her personal life and slipping back into business mode. It probably revealed a lot about her relationship—former relationship—that she so easily got her mind back on the subject of her meeting with Cole. “Sorry about the interruption.”

  “You sure?” he asked as she approached him from across the kitchen of the cute Cape Cod house, built nearly a century ago, that served as the headquarters of Dunn & Lowell Remodeling. They’d been about to start a two-person evening meeting when Kevin, her ex, had interrupted.

  “Yep,” she said, not having to fake the optimism in her tone. “What I want to discuss is important.” She led Cole back into her office, originally one of the two cozy bedrooms of the house, and retook her place in front of her notebook, laptop, and coffee at the round table in the center of the room.

  Before sitting again, he pulled his gray hooded sweatshirt over his head to reveal the black T-shirt with the small Dunn & Lowell logo on the chest and tossed the sweatshirt on the chair between them. Both were dusty after their regular workday at the jobsite. Sierra wouldn’t call herself clean either, but that was status quo and a sign that they’d worked hard. “So what’s up?” he said as he sat down across from her.

  She flipped back several pages in her notebook to some notes she’d jotted down late last night. “Chances are good you’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  “Sounds like a normal day.” Cole wasn’t one to smile a lot, but the tips of his lips tilted up slightly now as he pulled his legal pad and carpenter pencil closer.

  Sierra leaned back in her chair and pulled her cargo-pants-clad legs up to sit cross-legged, took in a deep breath as she chose her words carefully. “Are you familiar with William Eldridge?”

  “I’ve heard the name. Is he the guy who owns a bunch of TV networks?”

  “Networks, newspapers, magazines, websites, who knows what else,” she said, brushing back a long strand of hair that’d come out of her ponytail hours ago. “Originally from Tennessee.”

  “Richer than God if I remember right.”

  “You do. Also egotistical, from what I’ve heard, and loves being in the spotlight. Anyway, I saw something on his home remodeling network last night between shows. He recently bought a mansion in town, south of here. An old Italianate-style house built in the early 1900s. He got it for a steal because it’s a mess—”

  “And he needs a remodeler,” Cole said.

  “He needs a remodeler, but he’s not going about finding one in the usual way. He’s holding a competition and putting it on a TV series.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Cole sat back in his chair.

  Sierra’s heart sank the tiniest bit at his tone, but she reminded herself it was exactly the reaction she’d expected from him. “When you own one of the top networks devoted to remodeling, what else are you going to do?”

  “And you want to get into the competition, just like that? Because you saw an ad on TV?” Cole said, his eyes narrowed at her.

  “Of course I do. But I wanted to get your opinion on it.”

  He studied her with the look in his eyes that she’d expected—as if she hadn’t given it enough thought. Yes, it was sudden, but how could she not try? As soon as she’d gone to the website and read the details, she’d known she had to enter.

  “This is your company,” he said. “You make the calls.”

  “Yes and yes.” She kept her voice firm. She would do this, would go for it, because winning the competition would propel her company to new levels and give her a new platform. The thought had excitement pulsing through her again. But the project would be a lot smoother if Cole, her right-hand guy, was on board.

  Dunn & Lowell was doing well, always had a lineup of projects, the vast majority of which were remodels of historical buildings. They received most of their business through word of mouth because Sierra personally did everything possible to ensure her customers’ complete satisfaction and she employed an excellent crew with remarkably little turnover.

  She was blessed in so many ways—to have inherited the business from her grandpa, Roger Dunn, to have learned the industry from him, one of the best in the field, and to genuinely love what she did for a living. Beyond the basics of carpentry and construction, her grandpa had instilled in her a passion for uncovering and bringing out an old building’s soul. Quality and authenticity were valued above shortcuts and cheap solutions, and his tenets were what she continued to build the company’s reputation on. But lately she’d been thinking a lot about how to make the business even more. She was at a crossroads, where she could either decide this was the pinnacle of Dunn & Lowell or she could work on taking it even higher. Her vote was for pushing it higher. The timing of this opportunity couldn’t be more perfect.

/>   “What would this entail?” Cole asked, tapping his flat pencil on the table.

  She lowered her legs, sat up straighter, and referenced the bullet items in her notebook even though she knew them by heart. “There are three stages, and at each stage, the field of competitors narrows. Application, interview, and the final one is a full-blown, in-depth, multimedia proposal for the mansion.”

  “It’s a circus parade just to get to the proposal stage,” Cole said, tapping away.

  “That’s the spirit of TV, I guess.” Truth be told, Sierra would thrive on the chance to be in the spotlight. She wasn’t shy, and she knew her stuff. Being a woman in a man’s field had always been an uphill battle and she continually had to prove herself and then prove herself again. Making it past any of the contest rounds and appearing on Eldridge’s network would increase her credibility as an expert and show that women could run a renovation company just as well as a man—and better.

  “So the prize is the job?”

  “That’s just the beginning.” She took a sip of her coffee—vanilla caramel in her mug that said GIRL BOSS—before continuing, to slow her thoughts and her speech, which were both ramping up with her enthusiasm. “The remodel would be featured in detail on the network for a full season, and after that season, we’d get our own show for a year, where we basically go about our business as usual and they film our work, interview us, show what we’re doing and how we do it.”

  “So a typical home network show.”

  “Yes, with a focus on century-old-home renovations.”

  “Our bread and butter,” he said.

  “I know we could compete.”

  Cole sat up taller, a cocky look on his handsome face. “We could do more than compete. We could win it. But are you sure you want all the bullshit that would come with it? The show, the attention, the bureaucracy, being accountable to someone besides yourself and the client?”

  She nodded, loving that he felt comfortable enough to speak his mind. That’s what she wanted. Not some yes man. “I thought about all of that, thought about it practically all night long, and it’s a lot. To me, the benefits outweigh the negatives, but it will affect everyone who works here to some extent.”

  “Sure as hell will.” He said it with conviction, and Sierra’s mind spun with how to bring him around, how to get Cole’s support.

  She didn’t want to hard-sell this. She wanted Cole to be in favor of it without her persuasion, because he’d become important to her business, almost like a partner in some aspects. He was highly intelligent, had above-average skills and knowledge, and worked as hard as she did. In the years he’d been in the industry, he’d gained immeasurable experience in solving whatever problems arose—and because they dealt with decades-old, sometimes centuries-old buildings, they’d had some real headaches.

  “When’s the deadline for the application?” he asked, doodling designs along the margin of his otherwise-blank yellow legal pad.

  “We’ve got a week and a half.”

  “What would my role be?”

  “I can do the app. I went through some of it last night, the short answers and financials. There’s a few essay-type questions, like why I want to win, what’s the most challenging historical renovation we’ve done, that kind of thing.”

  “What about the other stages?” Cole asked, interrupting his doodling to look her in the eye, and it hit her that that was where his hesitation lay. While she loved the idea of being on camera, being the center of attention, being hailed as an expert, Cole wouldn’t. He would detest it.

  “How about this? If we get past the application, you can stay behind the scenes. I’ll handle the interview and the proposal.”

  Cole’s body language changed, telling her she was on to the key. “What if they want a second person involved?”

  “Someone else can do it. Troy, maybe. Demetrius. They’re both extroverts who never shut up. Even Carlos. With a little coaching, he’d do great, and probably gain a few female fans in the process.”

  “That’s the last thing he needs,” Cole said. “It all sounds okay, but what if we win? There’s no way you can guarantee I can stay behind the scenes then.”

  “I’ll tell them you’re off-limits. Maybe I’ll tell them you have a speech impediment,” she said, grinning.

  “Next thing we know, they’d want to do a feature on the tongue-tied foreman. Hell no.”

  “There’d probably be times when you might be on screen, but I’ll do whatever I can to keep them from interviewing—if we get that far. It’s a long shot and you know it.”

  He set his pencil down, crossed his arms over his chest, and sat there pensively, silently. Sierra had more than a little practice with sales techniques, as she was the primary salesperson for the company, so she knew it was time to shut up, to not jump into the heavy pause as she had the urge to do, and to let him think through things.

  She sipped her coffee and flipped to the next page in her notebook to double-check the deadline schedule for all three stages, which she already knew, but she was fighting to seem nonchalant.

  “You really want to be a TV star?” he asked as he leaned his elbows on the table, his biceps flexing from under the ends of his T-shirt sleeves.

  “Not a star,” she said, because that wasn’t the end goal. “But if this is the way to teach more people why old buildings are important, why we should bring them back to life instead of knock them down and throw up a brand-new cookie-cutter version, I’m all in.” She was itching to spread the knowledge and the passion she’d gotten from her beloved grandpa. And this, she believed, was the best way to do exactly that.

  Cole met her gaze, his hard-edged caramel eyes giving no hint as to his thoughts, and she raised her brows in a silent Well?

  “Yes, you’re crazy as a loon, and yes, I’ll stand behind you on this, do whatever you need, as long as it’s off camera.”

  She didn’t have a chance to celebrate before her phone dinged with a reminder. She picked it up and read the note to pick up her sister, Kennedy, for the bride’s and bridesmaids’ pedi/mani, and with that, she was plunged into the wedding to-do list that would only intensify tomorrow, which was why she was taking a rare day off. Now she needed to call her mom and tell her she didn’t have a plus one after all—that or find one. She’d be much better off finding one, but at this late date…

  “Dammit,” she muttered to herself as she set the phone down hard on the table and started packing her things in her bag to take home with her.

  “Okay,” Cole said, already standing, his legal pad and pencil back in his work bag, ready to go. “What did what’s-his-name do to you?”

  “How do you know it’s what’s-his-name?” She stood and picked up her Dunn & Lowell fleece jacket from the back of her chair and put it on.

  “You were fine all day, even with the wedding stress. He shows up, you slam the door, I find you swearing a blue streak after him… Are you going to tell me it’s not?”

  Cole was the kind of guy who didn’t say too much but who paid attention, sometimes more than she wanted him to. “He screwed me over for a wedding date,” she said.

  “He canceled on you?”

  “Broke up with me. Which wouldn’t be a big deal if not for Kennedy’s wedding. We were never that serious but had agreed to at least get through the wedding.”

  “What changed?”

  She blew out a breath as she pulled her ponytail out from under her jacket. “He met someone he really likes. Wants to see her this weekend.”

  Cole watched her, assessing, and then he said, “That blows.”

  “I’d be okay with it if it didn’t leave me in the lurch for the wedding.”

  “Do you really need a date?” he asked skeptically.

  Such a guy.

  “I really do. My mom is militant about RSVPs and head counts for the hotel caterers. If I don’t show up with a plus one, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  There was more—as the youngest Lowell sibling, S
ierra always felt she had to prove herself, in every arena, justified or not, and both her siblings had found their person, were settled or settling, and she was so far from it, it wasn’t funny—but it wasn’t worth going into with Cole. She fully acknowledged it was at least partially in her head, but it wasn’t likely she could resolve twenty-some years of mental crap in the next forty-eight hours.

  “Plus there’s the bridal party dance…” She shook her head, realizing how woe-is-me she would sound to admit out loud she didn’t want to be the odd girl out.

  “What kind of dance?” Cole said, lowering his bag to the chair he’d been sitting on.

  “Just a slow song. Standard partner dance. Nothing special, but it’s a thing.” She looked away, pressed her lips together as she started sorting through options, because the other single attendant—the groom’s brother—was bringing a date, and they’d already decided their dates would join them for the bridal party dance. If Sierra didn’t find someone, she’d either look like a dumb ass out there by herself or be conspicuously absent for that song. She disliked both options.

  “It’s Saturday night?” he asked, looking pensive.

  “Five thirty. I have”—she picked up her phone and pushed the button to check the time—“forty-seven and a half hours to find someone. I’m not going alone.”

  She unlocked her phone, opened her contacts, and was about to tap on her brother’s name, hoping he’d know someone he could set her up with, as pathetic as that was, when Cole said, “I can stand in for your date.”