"There's a leak in my shop." I winced at the characterization of the flood. Would she understand the gravity of the situation?
"What do you mean?"
"I was trying on new product in the dressing room when water seeped under the door," I said, remembering the exact moment when I realized there was a problem.
"Did you call Hudson?"
"He's here already," I said, feeling something swirl in my stomach at the memory of him pressed against my back. His body was strong and hard, and he smelled delicious.
I didn't even have time to feel embarrassed about being dressed in lingerie when his gaze traveled over me appreciatively. It wasn't a sexy encounter.
"Can I talk to him?" Eve asked, her voice insistent.
Hudson appeared. "Let me show you what's going on."
I moved away from the table. "Listen, Eve. I think you should see this. You need to come here."
"I'll be right there," she said as she clicked off, and I tucked my phone into the pocket of Hudson's hoodie. Would he mind if I kept it? I had a feeling it would be nice to wear around my apartment on chilly evenings.
Hudson waited for me to join him, his gaze slipping to my legs. I hadn't bothered to go upstairs and change because thisfelt like a situation I couldn't walk away from. "I'm able to get the water to go down this drain. But once it's cleared, you're still going to have wet floors. It's going to take a while to dry out."
"At least you got rid of most of the water." The water level had gone down to about an inch.
"I have to wait for it to drain, so it's tedious. Once the standing water is gone, I'll set up industrial fans to air the place out. It's not going to be easy with the cold weather. We can't exactly open the doors. Especially with you dressed like that—" He gestured at my bare legs.
I sighed. "I haven't had a chance to change."
His face pinched. "I thought your clothes were wet."
I pointed at the ceiling. "I live upstairs. I just need to run up there and grab something."
His eyes flashed with concern. "You won't be able to stay here. The water's going to be off for the foreseeable future."
That was something I hadn't even thought about, and now that he'd mentioned it, a ball of panic formed in my chest. "I live there with my daughter."
His eyes softened, but his voice was gruff. "You can't stay there without running water, especially with a kid."
I bit my lip, wondering what I was going to do. I'd moved here after college to live with my ex, Gus, who'd gotten an engineering job nearby. I'd stayed because it seemed like a good place to open a shop, and I wanted to give Gus a chance to be part of Ayla's life. My parents lived in Arizona, so I didn't have a lot of help. "I'll figure it out."
That was my go-to motto. I'd figure it out because I didn't have a choice.
He nodded because it wasn't part of his job duties to find me a temporary place to live. "Cooper's on his way with everything we'll need."
"Do you know how this happened?" I asked him, trying to focus on the shop, and not my living situation.
He moved toward the break room and the hole in the wall. "This is the obvious problem."
"Did a pipe burst?"
He reached through the hole and pulled out a piece of the blue-and-gray pipe with a hole in it. "We call this Poly-B, polybutylene, installed in the nineteen seventies through the nineties. It was cheap and easy to install, but it's brittle and prone to leak."
My nose scrunched. "It figures I'd rent the space with bad pipes."
He waved a hand in the air. "The buildings in town were probably built at the same time. I assume they all used the same material."
My eyes widened. "You're saying that the pipes in town will have to be replaced, or they're going to burst too?"
He gave me a curt nod. "Most likely."
