Page 52 of I Choose You
“Everything alright?” I asked, peeking my head into Claire’s office. After I dropped her off on Christmas Eve, I didn’t see her again for a full week. She opted to skip Christmas dinner with my family. I knew it was because of me. I felt like such an ass, kissing her the way I did under the mistletoe. We’d texted a couple of times, wishing each other Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, but otherwise, we each kept to our own space. I fucking hated it. It wasn’t until we were back to work after the New Year that I could breathe again.
“Yeah,” she said. For a quick moment, the sunshine mask that she wore like armor dropped, the strain of the additional workload getting to her. “Andrew just asked me to help him and Derrick out on another project they have. Just some preliminary research to get an idea on characteristics needed.”
“Haven’t you been working on that idiot’s project all week already? You were going to work on the stair designs today, weren’t you?” She already had her hands full with this project. We were trending on schedule, but just barely. If we didn’t get everything ordered and purchased now, we wouldn’t get the supplies in time to stay on track. And apparently, that was a big deal to him. It was important to me too, but I didn’t hold anyone’s job on the line because of it. The fucker.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get it done.” She smiled, pretending like it was fine. If she thought she was fooling me, she was wrong. She didn’t need to put on some fake-as-shit smile for methough. She didn’t need to pretend for anyone’s sake.
“Hey, boss,” Shawn called from the third-floor mezzanine.
“What’s up?”
“There’s a soft spot up here that I don’t like. I think we might need to remove and replace. Can you come check it out?”
Fuck. My shoulders tensed. I rolled my head side to side in an effort to get my muscles to relax. Another small setback.
I left Claire to get some work done and made my way to where Shawn was. He was right. The floor was soft in one section. We hadn’t installed the new floors up here yet, so the removal of the old subfloor and plywood would be easy enough. It just took time.
I pulled Richie from his workstation, where he and Dale had been working on restoring the original interior doors.
“Hey, can you and Shawn take my truck to the hardware store to pick up material to replace a section of the flooring upstairs? Figure an eight-by-eight area, full replacement.”
“You got it,” he said, taking my offered company credit card and going to collect Shawn.
“How’s things going in here?” I asked Dale.
Dale’s deep sigh didn’t leave me feeling warm and fuzzy.
“Mostly pretty good. But there is some damage—looks like from animals—that’s going to be hard to repair.
“Show me.”
Dale pointed out various spots on a few different doors that had either rotted due to water damage or been eaten away at by animals. “Okay. Let’s make patching them the priority. If we can’t get them looking perfect, then I’ll need time to source new doors, and finding ones that match these is going to be a bitch.”
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll just finish sanding the one I’m working on, then I’ll switch gears.”
“Thanks, man.”
I told myself that I wasn’t going to look into Claire’s office as I passed it this time. My gaze darted to her automatically. Fuck. I needed to get her out of my head. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her… in those fucking knee-high boots. That short dress almost showing me everything. I’d gotten off to that image of her more times than I could count. Almost as often as the fantasy I had of her dropping that towel she had wrapped around her in her parents’ guest room.
I knew Monroe gave her his number. Had she called him?
Christ, this was getting ridiculous.Either piss or get off the pot, Wilder. Make a move or don’t, but put a stop to this stupid torture.
“Claire,” I called. My voice was louder than I intended, and Claire jumped at the sound of it.
“Jeez. Did you have to yell?” She laughed, her hand over her heart.
“Sorry.” I stalled. I hadn’t really thought this through. Was I asking her out? Should I just say something casual, like, “Hey, we should grab dinner later,” or make it clear it was a date?
She was looking at me expectantly, and I froze. I hadn’t asked a girl out since I was in high school. I didn’t remember it being this hard, but then again, I didn’t think I’d ever asked Kayleigh out like this anyway. We kind of just ended up together. This was different.
Ringing cut through the silence. Claire glanced at her phone and pouted.
“You can take that,” I told her.
“It’s just my mom. I can call her back.”
“Take it. I’ll catch up with you later.”
