“I thought that was the point of having a medical supply shelf in the closets of every building.” He tilted his head and looked at her, because she’d informed him of the need for a closet in every building the very moment they’d gone out after her tour at Shiloh Ridge.
She raised her eyes to his and glared. “Yes, well, we don’t have that in this building yet, do we?”
Trap blinked at her, sure she hadn’t just spoken to him like that. “What’s wrong?”
Lila Mae sighed, and her shoulders went down. Until that moment, Trap hadn’t even realized how bunched up they’d been.
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I can get you doctored up tonight.”
She smiled, nodded, and said, “Thank you, Trap.”
He swallowed, because it still felt like the ground might vanish beneath him at any moment. “So what are we doing here?” he asked, because he might as well rip off this bandage and deal with whatever he found underneath it.
“I’m wondering if it would be too hard to make some modifications to Cat House Three.”
Trap sighed and rolled his eyes. “Lila Mae, you’ve really got to stop making modifications.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because they’re hard to deal with,” he said. “We order supplies, and some of them take weeks to come in. I have sub-contractors scheduled for certain things at certain times. Youmake modifications, and we have to cancel them. We have to re-order. Modifications slow us way down.”
She frowned and looked back down at her papers. “I just want it to be perfect.”
“Well, it’s not going to be,” Trap said.
She looked up again, fire burning in her eyes. “Why can’t it be perfect?”
“Because it doesn’t need to be,” he said, his own irritation firing up. “And every time you go to a ranch and you see something great doesn’t mean you have to change what you’re doing here.”
She blinked at him, and Trap sighed and reached out his hand. “Show me the paper.”
She put one palm over it. “If you don’t think you can modify it?—”
“I don’t know if I can modify it, because you haven’t shown it to me,” he said. “I’m just saying it’s generally difficult to make modifications this far in.”
Lila Mae swallowed, and while a hint of defiance remained in her eyes, she also looked a little bit nervous. “Okay, well, you’ve never held back with me before, so I’m assuming you’ll just tell me the truth.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and Lila Mae released the paper to him.
Trap frowned instantly. “Lila Mae, this isn’t an octagon.”
“No, it’s not,” she said. “I guess I just feel like it might be a little too….” She waved one perfectly manicured hand. “Whimsical.”
He looked up from the paper, because whimsical was a great way to describe Lila Mae. He glanced down at the end of the table as Cleo leapt up onto it and started stalking toward them.
“We’ve poured the foundation, sweetheart,” he said. “I just put up all eight walls today, and now you’re telling me you don’twant it to haveeight walls.” He shook his head and let the paper drift to the table. “I’m sorry, we can’t make this modification now.”
Cleo meowed loudly, as if she knew she should protest. Lila Mae simply folded her arms and leaned back in her expensive conference chair.
“We can make this Cat House Four, if you want, but I need to know today, because we’ve got cement coming on Friday, and they’re expecting us to have the area ready.” He pulled out his phone, lifting up on one hip to do it. “Jason’s been building that today, hasn’t he?”
“I don’t know what Jason’s doing,” she said. “He’syourguy.”
Trap glared at her, not quite sure why she was being so snappy with him. Maybe she’d reverted into the Lila Mae of six months ago, when she’d first called him, when she was still Southern royalty, wearing pencil skirts and heels to ranches in Texas and demanding he meet her somewhere in less than sixty minutes.
“I’m pretty sure Jason was building out your foundation for Cat House Four today,” he said slowly. He tapped on his calendar, and sure enough, the job popped right up. “Yeah, he is. Hedid. It’s almost six o’clock, Lila.”
