“Okay.” Lips pressed tight, I back out of the room to a much less amenable Calvin, who waits impatiently in the tiny hall.
“I’m not sure you’ll find much else in your price range.”
Asshole.The two bedrooms that occupy a complete floor are generously sized, although the larger of the two has a dubious stain on the carpet that I think I’d rather not know about.
“Do you think you can manage a project this size?” Calvin’s eyebrow lifts.
I stare a little too long while trying to decide if he’s had them tinted or not. “Do I look completely helpless?”
“It’s a fair question,” he bites back.
“Given a fair answer.” A manhole into the attic hovers above his head. “Does it have a ladder?”
“No.”
“Have you been up there?”
The man scoffs. “Of course not. I’m a realtor, Kyra, not a builder.”
“Then I’d better get someone who knows what they’re talking about to give me a fair assessment.”
He opens his mouth to say something, yet sputters instead before eking out, “You plan to make an offer?”
“I’ll buy it,” I grit. “Provided the building report is to my satisfaction and it passes all the relevant checks.”
“The bank won’t loan the asking price, given the state of it.”
“Good thing I’m paying with cash, then, isn’t it?”
I leave the asshole floundering on the landing and make my way back down to Mom.
“Seen enough?” she teases.
I nod. “Until I start the remodel. Yes.”
No asshole’s going to tell me I can’t do hard things.
THIRTEEN
JINX
“Progress?”I toss aside the steel bar I use to break ground for the new gate posts as Darko approaches the end of the driveway.
Loki continues to unload the sheets of corrugated steel off a flatbed trailer that’ll make up the new panels along the roadside. I hate that we have to do this. That we have to shut ourselves away as though we need to hide from the world. But it makes sense.
The farm is too open. Too many sight-lines from all around to where the farmhouse stands sentinel in the front of the yard.
We need to be sensible.
“Yeah,” Darko answers as he looks left and right down the new boundary line. “But not on what everyone’s expecting.”
“Oh?” I snatch up my water cooler from the grass and unscrew the lid. “What then?”
“Kyra.”
I damn near forgot to swallow the liquid. “How’d you manage that?” I spent hours scouring the web for signs of her income stream and came up with fuck all. What the hell did he do differently?
“By not starting at the source.” Darko casts a quick look in Loki’s direction to check he’s still out of earshot. “You tried finding her sub page first, am I right?”
