If for Any Reason (Nantucket Love Story #1) - Courtney Walsh Page 0,81

but she found their excitement infectious.

When she left that morning, she was surprised to see Jack’s work truck pull up.

“You work on Sundays?”

“Tight schedule,” he said. “Besides, you’re working, aren’t ya?”

She smiled, apologized that there was no coffee made, and then got on her way.

That night, Emily arrived home after most of the workers had gone but found Jack standing in the center of what she thought had been her kitchen but was now mostly an unrecognizable shell of a room. The cabinets had been torn out, the appliances were gone, and the flooring had been ripped up.

They’d gutted it in a matter of hours.

“Wow,” she said, dropping her bag on the floor just outside the kitchen door. “You guys were busy today.”

“We got a lot done.”

“New cabinets and appliances will go a long way in here,” Emily said. “Though I’m not sure how I’ll function without a kitchen.”

“That’s why God invented carryout.”

“I guess.” She walked over to the wall she’d instructed them to remove. Knocking it down would open up the lower level, and Emily had no doubt an open floor plan was just what the old cottage needed. “The wall is still here.”

“I was waiting for you,” Jack said. “You sure you want to tear it out?”

She faced him. “Do you think I shouldn’t?”

“Would it matter if I did?”

She shrugged. “Not really.”

He laughed. “That’s what I thought.”

He’d picked up on her decisiveness. Good. While she’d been vague at the onset, she’d come up with a pretty good plan for the renovations, feeding them to Jack one room at a time.

To his credit, the man had taken her changes and suggestions in stride.

“What can I say? When you know, you know.” She smiled.

For a split second, Jack froze. “Right,” he said after several seconds. “When you know, you know.” He bent over and picked up a giant hammer-looking thing and held it out to her.

She stared at it. “What’s that?”

“It’s a sledgehammer.”

“What would you like me to do with it?”

“Thought you might want to do the honors.” He nodded toward the wall.

She laughed. “You want me to hit the wall?”

“No,” he said. “I want you to demolish the wall.”

Emily finally reached out and took the hammer. “This is heavy.”

He only shrugged.

“How am I supposed to demolish the wall if I can’t even lift this thing? Maybe you should do it.” She tried to hand the hammer back to Jack, but he took a step away, hands up as if in surrender.

“You know,” Jack said with a sheepish grin, “this is a great way to let off steam.”

“You think I need to let off steam?”

He shrugged again. “You seem a little stressed out.”

A little anxious. A little neurotic. A little of a lot of things.

She thought of her professional disaster—of how it was highly unlikely she’d ever recover from it. Of how she didn’t have the energy to try. Of how Gladys didn’t believe in her even now, and of how she couldn’t really blame the old woman.

She didn’t believe in herself either.

Never mind that the auditions had gone well, that the cast was solid, that she’d spent the day researching costumes and sets and props, creating giant vision boards to hang in the rehearsal space.

That feeling of accomplishment was so short-lived in the shadow of such a giant mistake.

Would she ever feel confident again?

Yeah, she needed to let off steam. Demolishing a wall wasn’t something she’d tried before. What could it hurt? “What do I do?”

“Just hit it,” Jack said. “As hard as you can.”

“As hard as I can?”

“As hard as you can.” Jack chuckled. “Here, maybe this will help.” He walked over to his tool bag, pulled out a can of black spray paint, shook it, then painted a giant X on the wall.

Emily imagined it was the face of the reviewer who’d given her play the worst of all the bad reviews. She turned sideways, heaved the sledgehammer up over her shoulder, and hauled it into the wall with as much muscle as she could muster.

The hammer got stuck smack in the middle of the X, and she didn’t have the strength to pull it out. “At least I have good aim.”

Jack laughed, reached over, and tugged until the hammer came out.

“Now do it again.”

The impact had jarred her to the core, and she wasn’t sure she had the strength to do it again.

“Come on, Muscles. If you can demo a room, you can do anything.”

“Ha.” Emily wasn’t so sure. Could demolishing a room help her put