Evander would have to beparticularlyannoying to get his way. Which wouldn’t hurt his feelings. A real excuse to give Ozzy a hard time? Wonderful.
Aras grumbled about the light fixtures—mostly the fact there were none, just capped wires and holes in the wall and ceiling—and Robinson frowned slightly when he looked at the bathroom, but it simply wasn’t a huge space, so it wasn’t long before they wrapped up. Melanie saw them inside, past the tumbleweeds and into the back door of the main house. As it closed behind them, the contractor’s crew buzzed back to work, collecting up the weeds into theoretically more manageable piles.
Melanie seated them all in a dining room with a high ceiling, next to the open concept, black and gray kitchen. “Coffee? Water? Snacks?” In her own home, she seemed a thousand times more relaxed, but Evander couldn’t miss the fact she seemed to move in a way that avoided looking out the back windows or the sliding glass door.
Once they were all beveraged up—from the sidelines, Eliza nixed the snacks to save the editors from unnecessary chewing sounds when they went through the audio—Melanie sat down. Back to the windows, of course.
Mason spread his papers out again, then flicked through to some blank sheets. “Okay. So clearly, there’s some outdoor work.”
Ozzy rolled his eyes. “I noticed that.”
Melanie sighed. “I know it looks pretty bad. It just got away from us. With Jack’s schedule and managing the kids, it went on the back burner. Nobody seemed to want to move into the house back there, so it was easy to just stop using the backyard.Then we had a rough year for wind. Then another rough year. Filled up with weeds and…” She spread her hands out, palms up. “Yeah.”
Mason nodded. “No judgment, all right? We’re here to help.”
That was a lie, but Evander let it stand. Clearly, there was judgment. Ozzy was openly judging. Evander was definitely judging, even if he knew better than to run his mouth. After a couple drinks, Mason would probably be more than happy to judge. Once the cameras and mics were off. He was charming, but catty as hell in private.Or maybe not? Haven’t hung out with him in private in a long time. Maybe he’s changed.
“This is going to be hard if we can’t talk to your parents about this.” Aras clicked his tongue. “No idea what style they actually want besides your dad gardening. Should we just be modeling it after this?” He gestured around at the house, but his movements were angular and harsh enough it seemed dismissive and annoyed. Which…yeah. That was Aras.
Melanie nodded. “I have plenty of pictures to show you their style and everything.”
Nobody jumped on that as a great option, but nobody said anything about it. So Evander spoke up instead. “I think we’d be in much better shape if we could actually see their place. Any way we could arrange something like that? Take them out to dinner or take them out of town for a day?” If hewasn’tbeing so willingly diplomatic for the cameras, he would have just told her there was no god damn way to get a house worth bothering with if they couldn’t spend at leastsometime and energy figuring out what her parents liked or needed.
“Soon, if possible.” It wasn’tquiteOzzy agreeing with him, but still surprising to hear him jump on the bandwagon with Evander like that. He nodded at his own suggestion, which irrationally annoyed Evander. But he said nothing and let Ozzycontinue. “I’d like to get an in-person look at the landscaping your dad has too.”
“It’s a good idea,” said Mason. “Bunny, Jake, and I can probably stay here just fine to do what we need. The rest of you put together a cohesive design idea, bring it back, and that should get us a lot more comfortable with the renovation.”
Melanie nodded, then pulled out her phone. She tapped and flicked around on it. “Let’s see. I can probably…would it be enough time if I got something by Saturday? My folks are always up for a day trip up to Kalamazoo. I could take the kids and make it a whole thing. Give you my spare key.”
“I could stay busy until Saturday.” Ozzy stretched and groaned. “Going to be plenty of work in that back yard until then.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Mason rapped his knuckles on the table. “Sorry for the extra difficulties. We just want to do the best job we can for them. And get your yard in order.”
Chapter five
Ozzy
It wasn’t often thatOzzy had occasion to use a propane weed burner, but it was always way more fun in his head than it was in practice. He always forgot the annoyance of hauling around the propane tank, the blowback from the ash filling his nose and eyes, and the heat. Somehow, theheatof the fire always escaped his memory. The main thing about fire.
But after he jumped so hard on the chance to be the one to use it to clear out the sea of tumbleweeds, he wasn’t going to bitch out and pass it off to someone else. So even as he was pretty sure he lost part of his eyebrows, he kept on. And in his defense, hehadbeen right when he told Eliza this was the solution. They had to devote three of the contracting crew to stand on safety duty, two armed with hoses and one with a fire extinguisher, and they’d already soaked down the fences and the bare spots on theground from raking up the weeds, but the fire made quick work, snaking through the skeletal jumble.
Still, after almost two hours, Ozzy was ready for an actual break. Which wasn’t normal for him at all. He sat in one of the neglected Adirondack chairs on the back patio and took in the state of the yard around him. Without the tumbleweeds…it still looked bad. Really bad. The char and ash didn’t help, but even taking that aside, there was so little grass, now also largely blackened, and so many swaths of exposed soil, it looked like an abandoned property. It still got under Ozzy’s skin. It got away from them or whatever their excuse was. They could have taken care of this.
He sucked in a harsh breath, then pushed himself to his feet. There was no point in getting annoyed about it. Even though, after helping Quinn out of a bad house situation with the first job—his grandfather had been a hoarder and left the property in a state of disrepair—this felt like a waste of their efforts. But if he kept up that line of thinking, it would impact the work. He didn’t want this to impact his reputation or his results. Moving around and doing something, even if he was tired and it was stupid busy work, would help distract him.
He headed for the outbuilding where the crew was working on the basics. They’d gotten a box truck and pulled it as close to the side gate as they could manage. With Melanie’s direction, they lugged boxes and totes out of the house-to-be. Most of them went to the truck, but she seemed to have at least some idea what was in all of them, since she directed a few of them toward the house without actually opening anything up.
“Oswald.”
Ozzy’s back tightened at the voice and the name. Only one person called him by his full name. Even his parents shortened it up, and they, frankly, sucked. Not Evander, though. Heinsisted, even when they were dating.And I didn’t see that as a red flag.When they’d be in the on-again parts of their on-again, off-again relationship, it had been cute and charming in a way. A fun bit of needling.
He turned and saw Evander standing in the sliding glass doorway of the outbuilding. He smiled tightly. Ozzy knew that expression. He wanted something. But of course he did. He didn’t tend to single Ozzy out anymore if hedidn’twant something.
But they were on a job and on camera. He wasn’t going to completely ignore his fellow host, even as the urge to walk away washed over him. “Evander. Can I help you?”
He walked over, hands held up in front of his chest. “Don’t be mad. I just want to have this conversation now instead of a big fight about it later. I know how territorial you can get on the job site.”
“And I know how vague and annoying you can get when you’re trying to be supplicating. Considering how much you harp on about honesty, seems like you don’t want to spit out what it is you want to say.”
