Chapter 9
“Where’s Connor?” Craig asked as Rory handed him a crowbar.
“I, um,” she had to swallow back a chuckle and force herself to keep a straight face as she continued, “I think he’s taking the day off.”
“Are you serious? The second day on the job and he’s taking the day off?” Craig asked in disgust.
“It’s shameful,” Rory said, nodding solemnly.
“It’s bullshit. We have enough to do without adding supervising his men to the list,” Craig said, sighing heavily as he grabbed a pair of work gloves off the shelf of their doublewide storage unit.
“It won’t be that bad,” Rory said, initialing the order form before tossing it back to Eddie, one of the few supervisors she had working for her that wasn’t blood-related. He looked it over before nodding and heading out to get the supplies they needed.
“Decide which of Connor’s men are qualified to help you with the roof today. Have Sean put the rest to work on gutting the first and second floor. I don’t want anyone working outside unless they’re on roof detail. We don’t need accidents this early in the game,” she explained, knowing just how quickly accidents could happen on a project this big.
The rest of the men would work on gutting inside and checking for damage to the frame. While they were doing that, she was stuck with basement duty. She’d been looking forward to getting to work on the roof, but McGill called this morning while she was on her way to work and asked if she could reconfigure the plans for the basement. Apparently, after talking with his partners, they’d decided that they wanted to double the size of the wine cellar.
Even though it changed her plans for the day, she’d agreed to look into it and draw up new plans for the basement. Having the client call up with changes this early in the project was not a good sign, but she wasn’t about to complain since it meant more money for Shadow Construction and it made the client happy, which is what she really cared about since she needed them to approve her plans for the attic. As long as they allowed her to build the attic suites, she’d bite her tongue and nod when they suggested something that irritated the hell out of her.
“That sounds fine,” Craig said, heading for the double doors. “Do you want me to send any of the men to help you in the basement?” he asked over his shoulder.
She shook her head as she grabbed a flashlight. “No, I shouldn’t be more than a few hours. I’m going to measure the rooms again and see what I can shift around,” Rory said, biting back a sigh. A few hours was being optimistic. She had a feeling that this particular project was going to take up most of her day. “As soon as I’m done, I’ll come up and help,” she promised as she grabbed her water bottle and headed towards the manor.
As she made her way through the large foyer, she wasn’t at all surprised to find a decent amount of her men already working on gutting the first floor and tearing down the old grand staircase. Her men knew what was expected of them. When something needed to be done, they did it without having to be told. It was one of the benefits that she found from treating her men like equals and making sure they knew the game plan from start to finish. She also kept them updated of any changes.
She wasn’t really surprised to find Connor’s men standing around, talking. Honestly, she didn’t know how he’d built the reputation he had by having slackers work for him. The majority of his men were hard workers, but the rest of them left a lot to be desired. From what she’d seen, it was his friends, the men he’d made foremen, who caused most of the problems.
When Connor wasn’t around, they seemed to give up the pretense of working, instead choosing to hang out while the rest of the men worked. Connor must have to micromanage the hell out of each project, Rory realized, nearly wincing in sympathy for the bastard.
“Gentlemen,” she said, gesturing to the men standing in the foyer and getting in the way of the men working, “if you’re not working, then you need to leave the site.”
“We’re waiting for Connor,” Andrew, Connor’s oldest friend and one of the biggest assholes she’d ever met, explained.
She didn’t like the jerk back in school when he’d been nothing more than one of Connor’s lackeys and she sure as hell didn’t like him now. He was arrogant and lazy. As much as she hated Connor, and dear god, did she hate the life-ruining bastard, she thought he could do better. She wasn’t sure why Connor kept this asshole in his life for this long, but that was his problem. As long as they didn’t interfere with this project, she didn’t care what they did.
“Then wait for him outside,” she said, gesturing to the wide-open battered doors that were going to have to be replaced sometime today since construction sites had the unfortunate luck of drawing vandals.
With a nod, they headed for the door. They’d probably bitch and moan to Connor the next time they saw him, not that he was going to need much encouragement to yell at her. The last time she’d checked on him, he was making all sorts of promises to her ass that didn’t sound like fun for her, so she’d left him where he was...
After she’d taunted him one more time, of course.
Not only had she gotten back at Connor first thing in the morning, but she’d made damn sure that he wouldn’t be bothering her for at least a day...or two. She’d definitely have to let him go before the forty-eight-hour mark passed just so she could avoid someone filing a missing person’s report on him since the last time that happened hadn’t exactly ended well for her.
Then again, the judge clearly agreed with her that the circumstances of his “imprisonment” hadn’t really been her fault. No one had forced Connor to follow her into the old shed on the back of her uncle’s property. Just because she might have “accidentally” locked the padlock and ignored his demands to be released didn’t make her responsible.
Of course, the judge may have thrown the case out because they’d only been seven at the time and he had kind of asked for it by chasing her with his pet python. It also didn’t hurt that the judge thought that Connor’s mother had overreacted to the whole thing. Not really a big surprise since the woman had always overreacted to everything.
It never mattered whose fault it really was, it was always her fault, according to Janice O’Neil. Her son had been a perfect angel and only acted up because of Rory. It never mattered how many witnesses there were or if the incident had been captured on camera, it was Rory’s fault and Janice made damn sure that everyone knew it. Not that anyone had believed her, they hadn’t, but that hadn’t stopped Janice O’Neil from bitching about Rory since the first time Rory and Connor came to blows.
The only thing that had saved Connor from a broken nose for all the trouble his mother caused her was the fact that he seemed embarrassed by his mother. Again, not that she could blame him since his mother treated him like a five-year-old. She knew that it had embarrassed Connor when his mother showed up at school or at one of his games, making a huge scene if someone got too close to her son on the football field. So, of course, Rory made sure that his lovely mother had a front seat at all of his games so that she could back and laugh her ass off as she enjoyed the show.
She turned on her flashlight as she opened the thick oak door leading to the large basement and stepped inside, only pausing to close the door behind her before she carefully navigated the old stone stairway. The stairs were in pretty good shape, but like the rest of the house, they’d been damaged over the years by wear and tear and needed a little TLC. She was reminded of that fact several times as her foot landed in ruts where rocks were supposed to be and almost went flying on her ass.
Thankfully the designers of this basement had the foresight to add plenty of windows so that the area wasn’t pitch-black, but she still needed her flashlight to get around. Although she knew the layout of the entire manor by heart, she still needed to look around the large basement rooms to get a better idea of how she was going to work a much larger state-of-the-art wine cellar into the plans.
A half-hour later, she still wasn’t sure how she was going to do this without causing some serious damage to the foundation. She glanced at the cracked plank door of what appeared to be a storage room filled with old crates. Maybe she could break through that room and keep the original spot she had planned for the wine cellar, but that all depended on what was behind those crates. If it was a stonewall, then she’d have to come up with something else, but if it was wood, then she’d have the space she needed and could go focus on the roof. She’d change the plans later tonight.
Eager to get this over with and help the guys with the roof, Rory made her way over to the thick door and pushed it open with her shoulder. She swung her flashlight around the damp, dark room, praying that she wasn’t about to have a run-in with some furry little friends or something with eight legs. When nothing came running out at her or dropped from the ceiling, Rory focused her attention on the wood crates stacked against what she was hoping was a wall constructed of wood.
