Page 36 of The Fixer

She shrugged. “I changed my mind.”

Reality reared up and sank in. They were doing this.

What the fuck had he just signed up for?

Chapter 10

Dudley Do-Right

“Hey, Estelle. I’m goingto need more time out here. Can we go over my calendar?” Joy had cleaned up the Haven’s kitchen table, which was now strewn with papers, pens, sticky notes, a notebook, and her laptop. In other words, it looked like her office back in Chicago, with a grimy surface in place of smoothly polished glass.

“Sure thing, boss, although it won’t take long. I anticipated you might need a week or two, so I cleared your calendar before you left. As stuff comes up, I’ll add it to Sterling’s calendar. He’ll never know.”

“He owes me anyway,” Joy snorted. Sterling never hesitated to stack Joy’s calendar when he needed a mini-vacation, and he needed them often. “Seriously, though, uh, thank you.” Had she ever thanked Estelle before?

“You’re welcome. Now tell me the good stuff. How are things going withMr. Hottie?”

“Well, that’s one of the reasons I’m delayed.Mr. Hottiestill owes me his bids, which means I need to hang tight so I can review those with him in order to get the ball rolling.”And I have a date at the end of the week—that’s really not a date—to go to some music festival in a town that’s even smaller than this one.She still wasn’t sure how she’d fallen into that one. Maybe it was because it had come across as a challenge, and Joy relished rising to challenges.

“I take it you haven’t seen him in his tool belt with no shirt on yet.”

Joy choked back a laugh. “No, nor am I planning to. This is strictly professional.”

“Well,that’stoo bad … and boring.”

Joyce smirked. “I had dinner at a local tavern last night owned by his brother, and he was filling in behind the bar. I heard one of his many admirers refer to him as a ‘golden retriever.’” Joy couldn’t remember if it had been uttered by Neve or her admin person. “I’m not interested in shredding the vendor-slash-client relationship for a … dog.”

“A reallyhotgolden retriever whosehead I’d love to have in my lap,” Estelle gushed.

After Joy picked up her jaw, she came back with, “I’ll save him for you. Of course, you’ll have to wrestle every other female in town for him—maybe the entire western half of the state—but my money’s on you.”

Estelle brayed. “Sounds like I need to travel out there and stay for a little while myself. Speaking of which, since your time is up at the Majestic, I took the liberty of looking for other digs—”

“I’ve got it covered.”

Estelle’s eyes went big and round. “You do?”

“You don’t think I’m capable of handling my own accommodations?”

“Uh, no.”

Desperate times call for desperate measures.“I found a place with running water and a decent bed. I can stay as long as I need to, but room service sucks.”

“Really? Did you find an Airbnb someplace?”

“Not exactly. Here, let me give you a little tour.” Joy stood and panned her phone around the kitchen. “Welcome to Crystal Harmony Haven.”

“You’re staying atyour mother’s store?”

“I’m just as stunned as you. But it has running water chock full of minerals—good for the skin, I hear—lots of space to spread out, and it’s a block away from the best pastries ever.”

“Huh. Since when do you care about pastries?”

“Since I found the best pastries ever.”

“You don’t sound like my boss. Should I be worried about what all that mountain air is doing to you?”

Joy explained that she couldn’t take another night in a stuffy hotel room with no running water and questionable decor, so after dinner at the Miners Tavern, when she’d returned to said stuffy room, she’d decided to vacate the not-so-grand Grand Majestic. She’d packed up, driven to her mother’s store, and moved in. What shedidn’telaborate on was how she’d downed half of a bottle of wine she’d found unopened. The alcohol had wrapped her in a glowing, mellow haze, and she had seen the place through a soft-focus lens—a much less jaded view—that put the spotlight on the positives.

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