She smelled good.Really good.Like vanilla and jasmine and something warm and spicy he couldn’t name.His gaze slid to her mouth.Her teeth were white and even.And her lips looked, well, entirely kissable.
Shocked at the direction of his thoughts, he jerked his gaze away from her face and looked down at the door handle.Clearing his throat, he grasped it firmly.As Bonnie stepped back a bit unsteadily and straightened, he hauled the steel door up.
An aroma of old paper and printer ink wafted out along with the faint chemical undertone of document preservation boxes.
“Welcome to Cobbler Cove's history,” she said lightly.
Gray looked around.The storage unit was long and narrow, the left wall lined with tall filing cabinets.The right wall was floor-to-ceiling shelves holding lidded cardboard boxes labeled by year.
He commented, “This is quite a collection.”
“These records go back to 1889.”She threw the light switch and a row of fluorescent fixtures flickered to life.“The oversized documents are stored in flat-file cabinets in the back, sorted by year.”
He followed her down the narrow aisle to three large, flat-file cabinets.Each one stood about five feet tall and had a dozen shallow metal drawers running across its entire width.
She opened the drawer marked2012-2013.Inside, oversized drawings lay flat in a loose stack, each one labeled with a tab sticking out from the right edge.She tilted her head, reading the tabs.
She murmured, “They’re filed in chronological order by permit number.”
“We’re looking for permit 2013-0247,” he responded.
“You memorized the permit number?”
“I’m told I have an unusually good memory.”
“That's either awesome or alarming.I’m not sure which.”
“Most people land on alarming, eventually.”
She shot him a brief smile and went back to the tabs.“Here it is.”
He lifted the heavy stack of documents lying on top, while Bonnie carefully slid out the stapled sheaf of drawings.The large-format drafting paper had probably been rolled up originally, but years in the drawer had rendered them completely flat.
In the far corner stood a scarred wooden worktable.Bonnie laid the set of blueprints on it.The paper had yellowed slightly at the edges, but the drawings themselves were still white on brilliant blue.She gestured for Gray to take a look.
As he leaned over the blueprints, their shoulders brushed just enough to send his pulse off to the races.
Professional, Dude.You’re colleagues.Nothing more.
Maybe right now, the little devil on his shoulder retorted.She’s smart, funny, curious, a great mom.Exactly your kind of woman ...plus she’s gorgeous and isn’t put off by how big a geek you are.
He smoothed his palms over the cover page and read the title, neatly handwritten in block print by whoever had drafted these.Shoemacher Horse Barn, 2013.Architect: Hennessey & Co., Billings, Montana.
The permit application number, date, and the Shoemacher property’s lot and parcel information were listed along with a note stating that there was no zoning restriction on this agricultural use land that prevented such a structure from being built.All standard stuff.
He reached for the corner of the cover page and lifted it carefully.Bonnie helped turned the brittle piece of paper, laying it face down gently.
The floor plan loomed in front of him.It was a large structure—fifty-feet wide by two-hundred-feet long, laid out in a standard horse barn configuration.Two long rows of stalls along the exterior walls with a wide central aisle running the length of the building.Tack room halfway down on the south side of the aisle, a bathroom and workroom on the north side opposite the tack room.
He turned the page.Huh.The second story was smaller than the ground floor, on account of the roof line, but it was still a large space, some 30 feet wide and running the full two-hundred-foot length of the building.An office was drawn at the east end.Feed and hay storage took up the rest of the space.
Gray traced the main aisle with his index finger, picturing the concrete foundation he’d visited several weeks ago with his brother, Tucker.The two blackened, pitted circles in the concrete would have been in the middle of this aisle, centered about thirty feet from the big sliding barn doors at each end of the alleyway.
Bonnie shifted her weight and he glanced over at her.She was studying him curiously.“What are you picturing?”she asked softly
“Give me a moment.”
She did.He appreciated that about her.She didn't fill every silence with noise.
