Page 10 of How Dare You
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The beat drops in my headphones right as my feet hit the road on the longest stretch of my run without stoplights. My heart rate is high, but my breathing is strong, and my speed catches up to the music. Left. Right. Left. Right. Buzz. A text vibrates my phone. It’s six in the morning. It can wait. Left. Right. Left. Buzz. I’ll be home in half an hour. It can wait. The next buzz isn’t the short text notification. It’s ringing. I give in and check. It’s Alex, the general contractor on three different projects I’m working.
“Yes,” I answer, doing my best to conceal my breathlessness.
“A pipe burst at the Calle Vista house. Whole first floor is flooded.” Good morning to you too.
I breathe in through my nose. Out through my mouth. “That’s not great.”
“No shit, it’s not great,” Alex barks. “It wasn’t my guys who let this happen. You need to get over here and clean up your mess.”
The plumbing in that house is over sixty years old. It wasn’t anyone’s guys who caused this. “Are you there?”
“Yes, I’m fucking here. That fancy ass wallpaper you talked them into is ruined,” he adds, irritation thick in his voice.
“The hand-painted geometric for the upstairs office?” I lean against a nearby fence, still working to regain my breath. “That was supposed to be installed two days ago.”
“You never told me that.” Yes, I did. “We found it rolled up in the corner of the dining room, and now it’s mush.”
In through my nose. Out through my mouth. “I’ll be there in thirty.”
“Thirty minutes? How far away do you fucking live?” he protests.
I hang up, gazing longingly at the missed portion of my run before turning back toward home. There is a wide range of what’s considered a design emergency. Most things are not as serious as people make them out to be, but a burst pipe and a flooded mid-remodel house? This one counts.
My phone rings four more times on my ten-minute run home. Twice from Alex, who is probably mad I hung up on him. Once from the homeowner who can only be described as losing her ever-loving shit. Once from Bea, who Alex had no right to call this early, but is blessedly going to meet me at the house with coffee after her barre class.
My morning routine prioritizes ease. Usually, I go for a run, take a long shower, blow dry my hair, and catch up on my gossip podcasts over breakfast. Today, I have to skip it all and show up to the jobsite with sweat-mussed hair and still in my workout clothes.
So, obviously the first thing I see when I turn onto Calle Vista is Rhett’s truck.
Rhett is reckless and nonchalant, the exact opposite of my type and the last person whose opinion I should value. But somewhere in my brain there is a disconnect because I am helplessly attracted to him. I get obnoxious little butterflies every time I hear his voice when I walk onto a jobsite. And when he smirks at me, I hear his slow southern voice saying, ‘You’ll be calling me daddy soon enough.’
It’ll pass. I’ll make sure of it.
No one’s living in the Calle Vista House while it’s under construction, so the burst pipe was likely flooding it for hours before anyone was here to notice. Water squelches under my running shoes as I walk around and assess the damage.
When I round a corner into the dining room one of Alex’s subcontractors says, “Whew, tight pants today. Showing off for us?” Before I can respond, Rhett’s there, saying something to him in a low growl that I can’t make out. Whatever it is causes the guy to apologize to me.
Rhett looks confused when I send him an irritated glare. I can handle myself without his help, but apparently the obnoxious butterflies don’t know that, because they make an appearance anyway.
“You’re finally here,” Alex says, misdirecting his frustration to me when he joins me in the soaked dining room. We walk through the house together, and he gives me a thorough update on what I missed by ‘sleeping in’ making a point to emphasize that this can’t possibly be his fault. The damage isn’t the worst I’ve seen, but it will put this project on hold for at least a few months. Which means, it’ll put the income Friday West is getting from this project on hold for a few months as well.
Alex and I part ways at the garage, where most of the materials that were waiting to be installed were stored, and the flooding is the worst. There are half a dozen people sorting through boxes and moving things out to the patio, including Rhett, who’s crouched low, assessing stacks of wood.
“How is it looking?” I ask him.
He stands up to his full, impressive height, ignoring his task in favor of giving me his complete attention. “Only the bottom six or seven boards in each pile are soaked. The weight of the dry boards should stop most of the warping if we stack them on top of the wet ones outside. I’m thinking we can salvage most of it.”
There is a long list of other things that could use my attention, but I find myself asking, “You need help getting it all out there?”
He cocks his head at me, raising his brows in surprise. “Are you offering?”
“I have time.” I shrug, sliding on a pair of gloves.
“How many can you lift?” he asks.
I’m tempted to say as many as you can, but his biceps flex as he tests the weight of the boards, and I know that can’t be true. “Let me see.” I grab the edges of a few and check. Probably two, comfortably.