Chapter Five

      Ryder loved his job. Of course, he’d prefer doing it without cameras recording him every step of the way, but he’d long ago accepted that as a necessary trade-off for being able to do the work he wanted to do. Ryder to the Rescue was currently one of the top-rated programs at WNCC, with a viewership that continued to grow with each successive season, but Virginia Gennings, the producer, wanted to keep the show fresh and the Room Rescue contest was her latest brainstorm.

      Ryder’s only real objection had come when Owen had delegated the task of choosing the contest winners to him. Three winners out of more than nine hundred entries from as far away as Texas and Seattle, with requests that ranged from a modest bathroom rehab to the complete reconfiguration of a floor plan. Owen’s criteria for selection: stories that would appeal to viewers. Which meant that Ryder’s original plan—to put all of the entries in a box and draw three at random—fell by the wayside as he spent hours reading application after application, sorting them into three distinct groupings of Maybe, No and No Way in Hell.

      The majority of applications that went into the third pile were those that included naked pictures and explicit offers to express appreciation for his work when the cameras were gone or, in one notable case, with the cameras still rolling. The requests for free renovations by home owners who could well afford to pay for the work they wanted done landed in the No file. And then there was the Maybe group, from which he selected the winners.

      Lauryn Schulte’s application had appealed to him for several reasons, including her reference to the husband who didn’t have time to do the renovation. Because the existence of a husband meant it was much less likely that he’d have to fend off the attention of an overzealous fan—a sticky situation that was occurring more frequently, seemingly in direct correlation to the show’s increasing popularity.

      According to Virginia, Ryder was the whole package—smart, sexy, strong and charismatic—and the female viewership of Ryder to the Rescue was so high because women trusted him and wanted to invite him into their homes. But Ryder liked to keep his private life private. Okay, so maybe he did date a lot of women, but he didn’t dish about any of them and he made it clear that if they dished, they were history. As a result, for the first few seasons that the show was on the air, he’d mostly managed to keep a low profile.

      Until the previous spring when he’d agreed to help Carl, one of his cameramen, build a deck on the back of his house. It was a simple project—a few hours’ work on a sunny Saturday afternoon—and he hadn’t hesitated when Carl asked if he was available. But it was a sunny and hot Saturday afternoon, and it hadn’t taken him long to decide to strip off his T-shirt, as the other guys had also done. But he was the only one whose name was in the title of the show, and one of Carl’s wife’s friends had snapped a photo of #shirtlessRyder #summerdays and tweeted it to all of her friends. Apparently, the damn photo had gone viral, resulting in an endless discussion on social media about his #yummymuscles. He’d been appalled when Carl sheepishly brought it to his attention; Virginia had been delighted.

      Since then, he’d been heralded not just as America’s Hottest Handyman but also the Sexiest Man on WNCC. As a result, he’d become the target of much female admiration and media attention. And when WNCC launched the Room Rescue contest and had let it be known that all applications would be personally reviewed by the show’s host, it was an opportunity for women to throw their pictures and phone numbers at Ryder in the hopes that, even if he didn’t bring his construction crew to their homes, he might call.

      He didn’t.

      The first project chosen was a master suite reno for a young couple near Anderson, South Carolina. The second assignment took his crew to Montana to finish a basement apartment for the college freshman son of a forty-seven-year-old widow in Miles City. The final winning application was Lauryn’s.

      Kitchen and bathroom renovations tended to be popular because they directly added to the value of a home, providing a good return on investment when it came time to resell the property. As a result, he’d done a lot of kitchen upgrades and remodels on the show. And while he wasn’t overjoyed at the thought of starting yet another one, he was happy to finally be back home and able to sleep in his own bed.

      Of course, he now knew that one of the main factors that had weighed in favor of Lauryn’s application was no longer valid—the husband who had never found the time to do the renovation work was gone from her life. On the other hand, her two children obviously kept her busy enough that he didn’t anticipate she would be an impediment to the project. She’d also shown less than zero interest in his celebrity status or #yummymuscles, making it clear that the only reason he was being allowed access to her house was that she desperately needed the new roof he’d promised to provide.

      So what was it about the single mother that made her so unforgettable? With her long, dark hair, creamy skin, gray-green eyes and perfectly sculpted mouth, she was undeniably beautiful, but he’d met a lot of beautiful women over the years without becoming fixated on any of them.

      Or maybe his fascination was with the kids rather than their mother. Because when he looked at Kylie and Zachary, he couldn’t help but think about his sister and himself and the scars that were a result of growing up in a broken home. But Kylie and Zachary had one clear advantage over Avery and Ryder: an amazing mother who, despite the weight of so many responsibilities on her slender shoulders, did everything she could to ensure her children felt loved and secure.

      And they were great kids. Zachary was an adorable and affectionate child with big blue eyes that seemed to take everything