Page 9 of His Build
But Stan had spotted his opportunity, and glancing around at the crew, boomed, “You wanna know how indoor plumbing works?”
Lucy’s stomach had plunged, her cheeks flooding with heat. She didn’t know what she’d said, but it had been the wrong thing. It was something laughable.
The grown men had burst into great guffaws. Their laughing at her amplified her mortification by a thousand, which in turn, made them laugh harder. They thought it was hysterical that her embarrassment caused her pale, freckly skin to go crimson.
After that, Stan found ways to humiliate her just to get that reaction.
“Don’t be such a tomato!” he’d say.
Her mother was no help. She’d pat Lucy on the back and told her that’s just what men were like.
Even now her cheeks grew hot at the memory.
But she wasn’t about to let memories of Stan ruin whatever she had left of her positive mood. After Lucy had learned to speak up for herself. She knew how to put men in her place—especially these kinds of men. She’d left Coombes with a reputation for tearing a strip off any guy who tried to so much as look in her direction.
Lucy tucked her clipboard under her arm and walked towards the gravel path leading up to the front of the house.
As she made her way over to the house, she was relieved to see that for all the trucks and sounds of hammering on site, there appeared to be only a half-dozen people working on the building now. Mostly roofers, strapped on with rope to several odd angles on the sheathed roof. A couple of them glanced at her as they went out to greet the truck that had just arrived with supplies, but when she looked in their direction, they nodded benignly.
So far, so good.
Alfred had said in his email that his head contractor at Grayscale knew Lucy was coming, that he was a good guy to work with, and understood she represented Alfred’s interests when it came to design choices. In other words, he shouldn’t give her any trouble. She peered down at her clipboard again as she walked up the gravel path through the dirt towards the large tarp-clad opening that would be the front door. She’d written the guy’s name down, but she’d been near the end of her glass of celebratory pinot noir last night and she couldn’t quite remember what it was. Greg? Gary?
The tarp folded back in a crackle of plastic and Lucy’s stomach dropped. The man coming out of the house had on a worn-to-nothing t-shirt that clung to a broad chest and equally worn jeans splattered with a streak of paint. His steel toe boots clunked as he made his way down the temporary wood steps, and then he froze, his eyebrows going up.
Lucy’s heart banged against her ribcage.
Graydon. That was his name. She could hear that weaselly guy she’d rear-ended saying it.Get your hands off me,Graydon.
“Shit,” she said. She didn’t think this word, it came out unbidden.
She cleared her throat and forced herself to take a step forward, then another, until she was standing right in front of him. She could feel the heat from his body and took a step back.
Thrusting her hand out, she said, “Lucy Fulham.”
“Nice to see you again, Lucy,” said Graydon. The look of surprise in his eyes—slate-gray eyes, she took in now—was barely contained. His lip twitched just slightly and she could tell he was trying not to smile. “How’s your bumper?”
A deep, old fury rumbled up in her chest like an ancient furnace come to life. Big men around a construction site laughing at her embarrassment. Her stepdad pointing at her so the laughs came harder. Lucy narrowed her eyes. The twitch in Graydon’s lips disappeared.
When she spoke, her voice had a coolness in it that she’d honed to a sharp knifepoint over the twenty years since she’d been a tween on her stepdad’s job sites. It had been honed on one side by slaying small town high school boys and the other by taking down slick New York jerks.
“Thank you again for what you did yesterday. I do owe you one. But I’d appreciate it if we could move on from my… accident. It looks like we’ll be working together for the next while, and we have a job to do.”
Something flashed in Graydon’s eyes. He knew he’d offended her.
For a moment, Lucy felt a wash of guilt. It wasn’t his fault Stan had soured her to men like him. Alfred said he was a good guy, after all. But she couldn’t assume he also wasn’t just like any other guy. Men couldn’t always tell these things between them.
“What accident?” he asked.
She was about to snap something smart at him when she understood what he was doing.
“Can I show you around?” Graydon said.
Lucy straightened her shoulders. “I’d prefer to look around myself if you don’t mind. I know the plans.”
He studied her for a shade too long. If he so much as opened his mouth she’d shove past him—no matter how sturdy he looked—and not give him a moment more of her time. But he nodded and stepped aside, his boots sinking into the mud at the side of the path. “Of course. This is your site now, too.”
Lucy stood a second longer, then gave her own nod and walked briskly to the door. When she passed him she caught a whirl of scents: soap; sweat; and something else heady and masculine and unnamable that made a warmth roll low in her belly. Without meaning to, she pressed a hand against the side of her neck as if she could force the fine hair there from their prickled-up state down to flat.
