Page 26 of A Little More Forgiveness

“Too fucking bad.” When I’d heard about him building cabins by the lake and worked out they’d be unfinished, I’d been itching to work with him on them, get my hands dirty again after years of sitting on my ass in an office. So, pitching in, I happily gathered up a few of the already cut two by fours, headed over to a section he’d already marked out and set about building the frame.

“The hell you doing?” he yelled.

“Same as you.”

He stomped over to me. “I told you I don’t want your help.”

“And I told you too fucking bad.” I went chest to chest with him, well…shoulders to chest. “You want this place finished, don’t you?” He didn’t respond, only glared harder, his mouth tightening to a thin line. “I’m going fucking stir-crazy sitting around doing nothing, so stop your whining and let me help.” I grinned at him. “Believe it or not, I’m not just a pretty face.” His scowl returned tenfold. “Look, our company got started by flipping houses, so I know what I’m doing, okay?”

He huffed out some air, his hot breath caressing my skin. He warred with himself as to whether he’d let me help or not, but I figured playing into his desire to get the place finished would tip the balance in my favor.

“Fine,” he ground out. “But make sure you keep out of my way.”

“No problem.” I got started, and working side by side, by the time we were done, we’d completed all the framing of the rooms. My skill took a while to return, but once it did, I felt like I was once again working on our first construction project from over ten years ago. As we stood together, appraising our work, Mitch appeared relatively calm, so I decided now was the time to broach the main reason I’d come down here in the first place. “He didn’t mean anything by touching you,” I told him gently.

Mitch tensed beside me, but his shoulders soon slumped in defeat. “I know. Bad timing, I guess.”

I shrugged in agreement.

“Is he all right?” he asked.

“He’ll be fine—once you apologize for biting his head off.”

“Yeah, okay,” he sighed and nodded, while keeping his gaze fixed out the window to the lake beyond. “I have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Why you?”

I frowned. “I don’t understand?”

“Why did you come here to oversee the sale instead of someone else? I checked you and your company out. Surely, as a partner, you must have far bigger deals to oversee. Multi-million-dollar deals, I’m sure. So why waste your time with the buyout of my small parcel of land outside a quiet coastal town? It doesn’t make sense.”

There’s no way I’d tell him I come here to hide away from my life, to be a different Gabe Sanchez than I am in Manhattan. That all I wanted to do was bury my head in the sand and not have to deal with the wounds I still carried from being rejected by the men I’d loved.

“You’re right. I am busy, extremely busy, but I’m no stranger to Melrose Bay. In fact, I own a house here, as does Mason, one of my other partners. Land acquisition is under my remit within the corporation, so me being the one to close the deal made good business sense.”

“Oh.”

His single word response carried a whole breadth of meaning, and watching him now, as his shoulders slumped and his head bowed, he looked…defeated. As if I’d burst his bubble because he’d secretly been impressed a partner of a huge construction company had taken the time to visit him personally, making him feel important, rather than us sending a lower-level sales guy. For some reason I didn’t understand, I felt the urge to make him feel better, to let him know he was worth every second of my time and effort as, God knows, he needed the boost.

“I’m glad, though, I’m the person who came, the one who got to meet you despite the deal stalling.”

He turned from the window to peer at me. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. It gave me a chance to see what this cabin and its land truly mean to you. Most of the time I’m so far removed from any purchases, I forget how much a sale can sometimes emotionally cost the seller. You’ve given me a stark reminder there’s a lot more to the transaction than merely cash, so thank you.”

He stared at me for the longest of times, as if reconsidering his initial impression of me and wondering whether to change his opinion. He gave a ghost of a smile and gazed out the window once more. “So you’ve done some construction work in the past?” I let him off with the subject change, as even though I might have massaged his ego somewhat, I didn’t want to push my luck any further.

“Unbelievable, right?”

He readily agreed. “I guess. I mean, even though you mentioned you started by flipping houses, I thought perhaps now you’d be—”

“Far too important to indulge in physical labor these days and not want to get my hands dirty?”

“Something along those lines, yeah.”

I shrugged. “People aren’t always what they seem.”

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