She blinked at me before moving and my stomach lurched when I realized I needed to give her something to do. Mind blank, I called up the calendar on my computer and glanced at the week ahead. Five minutes together and my head was already fucked up. Squatting beside the milk crate holding the on-deck projects, I selected twelve canisters and dropped them on the table.
“These are work-in-progress. We’ll walk them all at some point this week, and these,” I grabbed three, “today.” Andy nodded, and our eyes met when she accepted the canisters. I didn’t immediately let go, and we stood frozen in a tug-of-war.
Before I could continue with instructions, a quartet of voices rang down from the attic conference room. “Seven thirty!”
“Jesus Christ,” I murmured, releasing the canisters and darting to my desk to snap my laptop shut and tuck it under my arm.
“Should I go with you?”
“No,” I stammered, and though I was far from certain about my response, I did not possess the strength to run a staff meeting with her at the table. That prospect heightened the brain-dick explosion probability, which was already quite high. “Figure out the plans.”
I leaned against the wall at the landing, sucking in a deep breath to clear the haze from my mind before climbing the stairs.
Some of my favorite memories in recent years were seeing three—four, since Riley finished school—heads bowed around laptops and bluelines at seven thirty on Monday mornings in the attic conference room. The stress of managing a small business kept me up most nights, and spending an hour with my partners every week brought me a few kernels of sanity, especially when our work took us in so many different directions we barely saw each other outside of this time.
The familiar scene should have been a calming force, though the lavender-induced chaos in my system left me more impatient than ever. Most days, impatient was the best word to describe me. I didn’t have Matt’s tolerance for the unexpected, and I never managed to captivate anyone with talk of solar panels like Sam. I was impatient and intimidating, and there wasn’t an easily accessible memory of when it was any other way.
Shannon rolled her eyes when I slipped into my seat, and she leaned to my ear. “I don’t know what the fuck your problem is, but you need to fix it. We are not losing Andy because you’re a moody son of a bitch.”
“I didn’t want to hire her in the first place.”
Not entirely true. I didn’t want to spend the next few months working alongside a gorgeous woman who pushed all my buttons when I knew damn well I shouldn’t touch her.
“You need to have your head examined. Learn to know a good thing when you see it.” She leaned away and sipped her coffee before returning. “Why didn’t you bring her with you?”
“Isn’t this a partners’ meeting?”
She waved her hand dismissively and glanced at a new email on her screen. “Sure, boss, whatever. As if that means anything around here.”
“If we don’t start these goddamn meetings on time, there’s no reason for me to be here on time, and I’m gonna start sleeping an extra ten minutes,” Riley loudly whispered to Matt, who mouthed something back to Riley that I didn’t catch.
It was good to see them working together, and Matt keeping Riley in line. God only knew what I would have done if I had to put up with his computation errors and inability to keep coffee off his clothes.
“Nice to see you all again. I’m super happy today because Andy Asani started this morning,” Shannon announced. “She’ll be working directly with Patrick as we try this apprenticeship model on for size. Please be nice to her. She’s very smart and I think she’ll add tons of capacity for Patrick because he really, really needs it, but he insists on being a dick to her and I’m concerned he will ignore her and she’ll quit before Friday.”
“That sounds about right,” Matt murmured.
He looked tan and more relaxed than usual, if that were possible. The love of a good woman suited him, and a trip to Mexico to meet Lauren’s parents during their winter RV trip didn’t hurt either. It was especially nice that her father, Commodore Halsted, didn’t dropkick Matt’s ass into the Pacific Ocean for touching his one and only baby girl.
“Is there a specific issue that you have with her, or are you just being an inveterate ass?” Sam asked.
I ignored them both while I called up my master workflow spreadsheet to track progress against milestones. “Riley. Bunker Hill. Make it fast.”
He flipped his head, tossing his shaggy hair away from his brow. “We were on fire last week. Banged through hardwood refinishing, moldings, and plaster on all properties, and interior paint is on deck today.”
“When should we expect to be down to punch lists?”
“Two weeks. Maybe three, depending on inspections.” He shrugged and glanced to Matt, who offered an approving nod. Matt was good at mentoring, taking Riley from a useless heap of disjointed architectural skills to managing four concurrent builds with success.
“Fine.” I turned to Shannon and glanced at the Multiple Listing Service map of Charlestown’s active properties on her screen. “Put the word out. Get some traction. I want to unload those properties the minute we have the green light on occupancy. I don’t want these on the market more than a week past a clean CO.”
“Yeah,” she murmured as she typed. “Riley, let me know when they start on punch lists and I’ll go check it out. Let’s not have realtors walking through construction sites again.” She glanced pointedly at Matt and he held up his hands in surrender.
Working around the table, I tracked updates and flagged issues in my spreadsheets. For the moment, Andy wasn’t in the forefront of my thoughts.
We were in a strong position despite a freak Thanksgiving blizzard that brought progress to a standstill for over a week, not to mention our father’s fatal stroke. We bounced back from all of it as best we could, but Angus’s shadow lingered over us.
I counted seven investment restorations that would be hitting the market within the next six weeks, plus a full slate of client projects launching in March, and three dozen new queries for our services in the past week.
