The Space Between (4 page)

“Should I go with you?”

“No,” I stammered, and though I was far from certain about my response, I did not possess the strength to run a staff meeting with her at the table. That prospect heightened the brain-dick explosion probability, which was already quite high. “Figure out the plans.”

I leaned against the wall at the landing, sucking in a deep breath to clear the haze from my mind before climbing the stairs.

Some of my favorite memories in recent years were seeing three—four, since Riley finished school—heads bowed around laptops and bluelines at seven thirty on Monday mornings in the attic conference room. The stress of managing a small business kept me up most nights, and spending an hour with my partners every week brought me a few kernels of sanity, especially when our work took us in so many different directions we barely saw each other outside of this time.

The familiar scene should have been a calming force, though the lavender-induced chaos in my system left me more impatient than ever. Most days, impatient was the best word to describe me. I didn’t have Matt’s tolerance for the unexpected, and I never managed to captivate anyone with talk of solar panels like Sam. I was impatient and intimidating, and there wasn’t an easily accessible memory of when it was any other way.

Shannon rolled her eyes when I slipped into my seat, and she leaned to my ear. “I don’t know what the fuck your problem is, but you need to fix it. We are not losing Andy because you’re a moody son of a bitch.”

“I didn’t want to hire her in the first place.”

Not entirely true. I didn’t want to spend the next few months working alongside a gorgeous woman who pushed all my buttons when I knew damn well I shouldn’t touch her.

“You need to have your head examined. Learn to know a good thing when you see it.” She leaned away and sipped her coffee before returning. “Why didn’t you bring her with you?”

“Isn’t this a partners’ meeting?”

She waved her hand dismissively and glanced at a new email on her screen. “Sure, boss, whatever. As if that means anything around here.”

“If we don’t start these goddamn meetings on time, there’s no reason for me to be here on time, and I’m gonna start sleeping an extra ten minutes,” Riley loudly whispered to Matt, who mouthed something back to Riley that I didn’t catch.

It was good to see them working together, and Matt keeping Riley in line. God only knew what I would have done if I had to put up with his computation errors and inability to keep coffee off his clothes.

“Nice to see you all again. I’m super happy today because Andy Asani started this morning,” Shannon announced. “She’ll be working directly with Patrick as we try this apprenticeship model on for size. Please be nice to her. She’s very smart and I think she’ll add tons of capacity for Patrick because he really, really needs it, but he insists on being a dick to her and I’m concerned he will ignore her and she’ll quit before Friday.”

“That sounds about right,” Matt murmured.

He looked tan and more relaxed than usual, if that were possible. The love of a good woman suited him, and a trip to Mexico to meet Lauren’s parents during their winter RV trip didn’t hurt either. It was especially nice that her father, Commodore Halsted, didn’t dropkick Matt’s ass into the Pacific Ocean for touching his one and only baby girl.

“Is there a specific issue that you have with her, or are you just being an inveterate ass?” Sam asked.

I ignored them both while I called up my master workflow spreadsheet to track progress against milestones. “Riley. Bunker Hill. Make it fast.”

He flipped his head, tossing his shaggy hair away from his brow. “We were on fire last week. Banged through hardwood refinishing, moldings, and plaster on all properties, and interior paint is on deck today.”

“When should we expect to be down to punch lists?”

“Two weeks. Maybe three, depending on inspections.” He shrugged and glanced to Matt, who offered an approving nod. Matt was good at mentoring, taking Riley from a useless heap of disjointed architectural skills to managing four concurrent builds with success.

“Fine.” I turned to Shannon and glanced at the Multiple Listing Service map of Charlestown’s active properties on her screen. “Put the word out. Get some traction. I want to unload those properties the minute we have the green light on occupancy. I don’t want these on the market more than a week past a clean CO.”

“Yeah,” she murmured as she typed. “Riley, let me know when they start on punch lists and I’ll go check it out. Let’s not have realtors walking through construction sites again.” She glanced pointedly at Matt and he held up his hands in surrender.

Working around the table, I tracked updates and flagged issues in my spreadsheets. For the moment, Andy wasn’t in the forefront of my thoughts.

We were in a strong position despite a freak Thanksgiving blizzard that brought progress to a standstill for over a week, not to mention our father’s fatal stroke. We bounced back from all of it as best we could, but Angus’s shadow lingered over us.

I counted seven investment restorations that would be hitting the market within the next six weeks, plus a full slate of client projects launching in March, and three dozen new queries for our services in the past week.

“So when are we going to read Angus’s will?” Riley asked.

Shannon minimized her open screens, leaving a picture of the five of us after we finished last year’s marathon. The envelope arrived from Angus’s attorney by messenger last week during my standing budget meeting with Shannon. We stared at each other and the delivery for longer than logical before she stowed it in her safe. We didn’t say a word on the subject.

“I have it in my office.” She looked up. “Sealed.”

“Isn’t there a timeline or something?” Riley continued. “It’s been over a month since the miserable bastard shook hands with Satan.”

Shannon rolled her shoulders as all eyes turned to her. “Yes, but…I think we need to be suitably drunk before that envelope opens. And set a few ground rules.”

My sentiments exactly. It was anyone’s guess what Angus had in store for us, but I knew he wasn’t finished fucking us over. For all we knew, he left his assets to a stray Jack Russell terrier he befriended at the Alewife T station, leaving us with a few bags of rusty nails.

“Does Erin need to be here for this?” I kept my eyes on my screen to avoid withering under the glare I knew Shannon was shooting at me. My attempt to end the feud between my sisters was proving more complex than anticipated.

“No. Not when she couldn’t be bothered to show up for the funeral.” Shannon’s eyes swept the table, inviting a word of dissent. We all knew better than to go there. “I’ll FedEx her copy to her in Spain or Morocco or wherever the fuck she is now.”

“Friday,” Matt offered. “At the house.”

“No. I’m not driving out to Wellesley and getting drunk in the Haunted Mansion. That’s how the
Blair Witch Project
started.” Riley shook his head. “And I won’t ride the commuter rail back in, not drunk, and especially not since a goddamn python went missing on one of those trains.”

“Now that’s a coherent argument if I’ve ever heard one,” Sam deadpanned, twisting the titanium ring on his thumb.

“My place,” Matt said.

We nodded quietly but didn’t meet each other’s eyes. We were better when we lived in the present, in the lives we created for ourselves. We struggled with the lingering gore of our history, and true to form, we coped by ignoring, avoiding, and evading.

And alcohol. Lots of alcohol.

“Only if Miss Honey’s going to be there,” Riley said. “And she orders me some paella.”

Matt shook his head as he turned to Riley. “My fiancée lives there, and I’ll order paella, but do not call her that or any derivative of that.”

“You call her that,” he retorted.

“Right. She’s
my
Miss Honey. It’s part of the deal when I put a ring on it.”

“All right,” Shannon muttered. “Enough. We’ll figure this out on Friday. I’ll put Tom on catering duty. You all go do what you do, and be wonderful at it.”

“Damn straight, sister,” Riley hollered. I continued typing notes while my siblings shuffled out.

I had at least two major issues to handle at jobsites and a short lifetime’s worth of prep for the next wave of projects, but I reviewed emails from my general contractors and tweaked four bids before sending them to clients.

Twelve stairs and a landing separated me from Andy.

I was stalling.

ANDY

“T
houghts?”

Patrick approached me when he was finished discussing the terrace excavation necessary to fix the main drain issues with the plumber, welder, and mason. I learned more about managing subcontractors from Patrick’s twenty-minute conversation with his team than in any other field experience.

It was equal parts humbling and horrifying. I was tempted to write a letter to Cornell requesting a refund.

Standing in a brick Greek Revival off Newbury Street, I bit the inside of my cheek to prevent a monologue of questions and ideas from exploding out of my mouth and onto Patrick. I turned in a circle, taking in the Quincy brick fireplace and built-in shelving niches with ornate carvings and imagined walls where the studs stood bare.

“The ceilings,” I said, gesturing above my head. “They’re low. Too low for this style. Off by three, maybe four inches yet the plans don’t call for an adjustment.”

Patrick’s eyebrows lifted and he fought a smile. “Yeah, that’s right. You saw the plans?”

“Yes.”

I walked past him into the kitchen, and he narrowed his eyes at me. “I don’t remember giving you this one.”

While Patrick was in his partners’ meeting, I furiously studied the bluelines. I scribbled pages of notes and sketched drawings, and listed important design elements and preservation techniques. When Tom dropped by to say hello and warn me about Patrick’s revolving door of assistants, he mentioned their Monday meetings often ran closer to ninety minutes.

I took it upon myself to flip through the other plans nestled beside Patrick’s desk. I might not have been a Girl Scout, but I knew a few things about preparedness.

Since my interview, I cleared out my apartment in Ithaca—no more lake effect snow for me, thank you—and devised a plan to keep all thoughts about Patrick strictly PG while moving into my new place. Although the plan was limited to ‘don’t think about Patrick as Sex God or hot, sweaty rugby player,’ I was determined to succeed.

I attributed most of my X-rated thoughts to the extra time on my hands since graduating in December. Once work consumed my time, I’d forget all about Patrick’s narrow waist and muscular arms. As soon as I got my hands dirty with projects, I’d forget about getting dirty with Patrick.

I’d definitely stop looking at his ass, too.

“Hm,” I murmured, measuring the distance between the countertops. “You didn’t give it to me. I read this one, and all the others, anyway. Can we talk about extending this island six more inches? Is that something you’re open to considering?”

“You read them all anyway?” His voice rang with disbelief and he continued squinting at me.

“Yes.”

“You didn’t know we were coming here today.”

“Hm.” I shook my head. “The island. Six more inches?”

He stared at me before studying the empty shell of the kitchen. It materialized in his eyes—the keen awareness of space and dimension that allowed him to see the form and function of design before him—and it was exactly as magical as I hoped it would be. It was what I spent years imagining and it didn’t matter that I wanted to lick his entire body because I finally knew how design looked in his eyes.

“I would agree with you, but I see this,” he gestured to the spaces marked off for cabinetry, “as a stress point in the flow.”

Crossing the kitchen, I stood beside Patrick and tried to see the shapes.

“If this is the primary route in from the mudroom,” he pointed between us, “and there is a breakfast bar coming to here, imagine barstools backing up to here.”

While he described the kitchen, a picture formed in my mind and I saw everything. Three-dimensional shapes sprang from the ground, and I felt their presence in the room. It reminded me of the fuzziness between dreaming and waking where I was aware of my dreams and they still made sense.

“Do you see it?” he asked, his voice deep and rough in my ear.

I didn’t realize we were standing shoulder-to-shoulder until tilting my head to look up at him. I smiled, nodding, and his eyes brightened. My ‘no fantasizing about sex with the boss’ project was doomed if I had to stare into his eyes at this range every day.

“What do you want to do about it?”

Dismissing the sensuality in his voice and the sense he wasn’t referring to the island anymore, I stepped away from Patrick’s force field. I stared at the floor for several minutes, yanking my measuring tape from my belt and testing a few hypotheses before responding.

“Half-moon. It would cut down the bottleneck over there while still providing the seating and increasing the functionality of the room.”

Patrick considered my suggestion and strode into the front room and up the stairs. “Since you’ve already rifled through the plans,” he called over his shoulder, “make the changes to the development drafts this afternoon and we’ll reprint tonight.”

“Why aren’t you blowing out the ceilings?”

He stopped at the landing and faced me with his hands on his hips. Afternoon sun shone through the two-story window and illuminated the shades of red and brown in his hair. “You tell me.”

I cycled through reasonable explanations while he gazed me. His phone alerted several times, but he never tore his eyes away from mine. It was fantastically unnerving: my dream apprenticeship was exactly as ideal as I hoped and being this close to Patrick was nearly overpowering.

“Windows,” I answered slowly. “The only reason you’d leave the ceilings intact would be the windows on all the other floors. You’d have to reposition them or they’d be oddly low, and that would mean destroying the stone façade.”