Page 18 of She Was Made for Me

She glares at me, one eye twitching with barely restrained anger. I’m being a dick and I hate myself for it.

“Well,Kyle, I’ve put through applications for two different permits with the Landmarks Preservation Commission for a start.”

I rub a hand across my beard, attempting to hide my surprise. “Two?”

“Yes. We need one for the interior and one for the exterior, as well as a permit from the Department of Buildings, which I’ve just sent off. I had a lovely chat with Ruth at the DOB who’s going to try to push our permit through within the next few days.”

Okay,that’simpressive. Permits can take weeks to come through, if not longer.

“And I’ve got an architect coming to meet with us on Monday. His name is Ben, and his firm specializes in townhouses like these.”

Huh. I may have underestimated her.

I sip my coffee, trying to appear underwhelmed. “When were you going to tell me this?”

She lifts her brows. “When wereyougoing to tell me you were coming here to work today?”

“Uh…” Shit, she’s got me there.

“Exactly.” She smirks. “Anyway, you’re welcome.” She pivots on her heel, as if to head out of the room.

“Where are you going now?”

“To the bathroom.” She throws an indignant look over her shoulder. “Or do I need your permission for that, too?”

Normally on a site like this I’d say yes, but given the engineer assured us the plumbing is all in working order—apparently the people who owned the place before Rich had it redone—I shake my head.

I force myself to stare at the crumbling ceiling as she leaves the room.

* * *

Violetand I manage to avoid each other for most of the morning, and when I pop out to grab a late lunch, I consider asking her if she wants anything, then decide against it.

She’s a big girl and can clearly handle herself.

But when I come back to the house after three, she’s still hunched over her laptop, showing no signs of having taken a break at all.

“Hey,” I say, and she jumps.

“Shit.” Her hand goes to her chest but her eyes don’t leave her screen. “You sure love to sneak up on me.”

“I wasn’t…” I shake my head.She sure gets lost in her work, I think, but I don’t say it. “Did you eat?” I know I should leave it but I can’t help myself. I used to skip lunch all the time and my body paid the price. Rich asked me to look out for her, after all. Though I’m not entirely sure this is what he meant.

She waves a hand, eyes glued to her laptop. “I’ll eat later.”

“Itislater.”

She finally looks up at me. “What? It’s only—” She glances down to check the time on her screen and her eyes widen. “Crap, I didn’t realize.” She snaps her laptop closed and rises to her feet, and this time I make sure to turn away when she stretches.

“Sitting on the floor like that can’t be good for your back,” I mumble, then I feel about a million years old. Twenty-five-year olds don’t tend to worry about shit like that.

She shrugs, but I make a mental note to look for the fold-out camping chair I always take to job sites. It’s somewhere in the back of my truck. She needs a desk, really. Maybe there are some stray building materials in the basement or yard I can cobble together into something—

Or maybe you should focus on the job and stop thinking about what she needs.

“I want to start putting together a plan for how the project is going to unfold,” Violet says, apparently forgetting about lunch again.

Something comes back to me from my days in law, something I haven’t thought about in ages: Gantt charts. They’re essentially a bar chart that shows how a project schedule will unfold. Rich used to go on about how they were a useful tool for planning legal projects and communicating procedure with clients, and insisted we all use them. I’d never considered their application in a reno project, but I can see how they might be useful in a large-scale one like this.

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