Page 14 of Forgotten Dreams
“Okay,” she replies. “Do I leave you the key?”
“That depends,” I say, and she looks up at me.
“On?”
“If you trust me or not?”
“I don’t know you well enough to answer that question.” She doesn’t miss a beat answering my question. I don’t know why it suddenly feels like we aren’t talking about the house but about something else.
“Well, you can either come here every morning at eight to let us in and then come by to lock up”—I look back over at the guys now standing together talking—“or you can leave me the key, and I can let them in and out.”
“I’m leaving as soon as we are done here,” she shares, and I have the sudden urge to ask her where she’s going. “I’ll be back next week.”
“For good?” It’s so wrong for me to ask her this and so unprofessional. There is no reason for me to know this answer, yet I can’t help but ask it.
“That’s the plan.” She smiles, pulling the key from her back pocket and holding it out to me. I reach out and grab the key from her hand, my fingers grazing hers. I want to let them linger, but she pulls it away quickly. “If you need anything”—she tucks her hands in her back pockets—“you can call me.”
I tap the key in my hand, trying to prolong our conversation. “Oh, I will,” I assure her as she dips her head and turns to walk away. “Drive safe, yeah?” I tell her, and she opens her door and gets in without saying anything else.
I watch her drive away before I make my way over to the door. “Fucking finally,” Theo grouses. “I was wondering if we would have to disappear in a puff of smoke while you were doing the mating dance.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I retort, walking to the door and sliding the key in.
“I’m talking about you looking like you were going to pounce on her.” Theo laughs. “And she was looking like she was going to stab you in the eye if you did anything.”
“How could you know that from here?” I unlock the door and push it open.
“The whole time you were talking to her, you didn’t move, not an inch,” he elaborates, picking up his stuff to follow me inside. “Jesus Christ.” He looks around. “You fucking lied.” He drops his stuff by his feet and the noise echoes in the empty house.
“How?” I put my hands on my hips and look around, knowing exactly why he’s freaking out. I might have fudged a little bit when he asked me about the house. A smidgen.
“A little work,” he scoffs, taking a look around. “A little work?”
“Do you think I would have called you all the way from home if it was a little job?” I turn to walk out to grab my own tools. “That was your first mistake.” I shake my head. “It’s like you don’t even know me anymore.”
“You are totally right,” Theo grumbles. “I should never, ever trust what you say. A little. A little my ass.”
“Didn’t you call me the other day asking me…” I remind him. “No, begging me to let you come back here?” He rolls his eyes, walking to the stairs. “The stairs need to be reinforced before anything,” I tell him. “The wood is in the back of my truck.”
The three of them groan, putting down their things before following me out to my truck. Each of them takes a plank of wood before the trailer gets here with the tools we’ll need for this job. Dominic parks the truck with the trailer in the driveway. “Good morning, boys!” he hollers, opening the back of the trailer. We help unload the tools we need, taking the table saw first, putting it in the living room, and walking to grab a couple of other tools. By the time I walk back in, Theo already has five pieces of wood cut for the steps while Frankie is nailing them in.
I walk back out, seeing Dominic taking the last of the tools out, when my phone rings, and I look down, seeing it’s Mikaela. “Hey,” I say, putting it to my ear, “I’m unloading?—”
“Okay, I’ll make it fast,” she cuts in. “I hired a new one today. His name is Owen. He comes from the Cartwright crew, so he has experience.”
“That sounds promising. Send him to work with David for now.” I mention the guy I hired when I got into town. He’s been with me the longest and is almost finished doing a remodel. “He will assess him and let me know. They are starting a small job tomorrow that David was going to do by himself but now with the extra hand he’ll be able to really see what he can do.”
“Already done. Also got the quote for the house on Preston Street.”
“Yeah, and?”
She whistles out and I can hear the creak from her chair that she’s in. “It’s pretty fucking steep.”
“Send it over to me so I can check it out, and I’ll call and discuss it with her,” I tell her, and she snickers.
“Since when do you call clients to discuss things with them?”
“Are we done?” I ask, and she doesn’t bother answering me. Instead, she hangs up on me.
