Page 24 of Hero Next Door
“Why do you look like you’re planning the next attack in some world war?” a voice suddenly asked.
I yanked myself out of my thoughts and saw Parker staring at me from across the table, tools and a jug of orange juice sitting between us. She was looking at me expectantly, like she knew I’d been thinking and was now expecting me to share everything with her.
God, how long had I been sitting here daydreaming?
“Not a world war,” I replied quickly. “Just planning out our day. Though… I guess if it goes the way it went yesterday, it’ll look sort of like a war.”
She laughed and took another bite of eggs, and I looked down and saw a cup of coffee that hadn’t been there before.
When I took a sip, I realized that she’d made it exactly the way I liked.
* * *
We spent the day taking cupboards out of additional rooms and throwing them out on the pile of discarded stuff in the driveway. We picked out flooring for the entire house from the catalogue I’d brought, along with fixtures like lighting and door knobs, and I gave her some recommendations for reasonably good contractors in the area. People who could take care of the heavier lifting without costing her an arm and a leg.
And while we did all that, we talked. We talked about her life in Nashville and the things she’d seen and done there. She told me all the things she loved about the music industry… and the things she’d change if she could. And we talked about where she wanted to go. What she wanted to be.
“Head of a studio,” she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Isn’t that what everyone wants?”
I chuckled. “I sort of doubt it. That’s a pretty high-up goal for just any old guy.”
She shrugged, accepting that. “I’ve never wanted anything less. And I’ll make it. I know I will.”
I had no doubt. This was a girl who saw what she wanted and reached out to take it, without any apology for what she had to do to get there. It wasn’t that she didn’t take care of the people around her—from what I’d heard, she did that in spades.
It was that when she decided to do something, there was nothing in the world that could stop her.
“So how about you?” she asked, her eyes on the nails she was taking out. “Why do you just happen to know so much about renovation? Do you moonlight as a construction guy or something, after you finish with the cows?”
I laughed. “Finish with the cows? What do you think we do, having dancing lessons we have to take care of or something? Dates that end at a specific time? I don’t have time to moonlight as anything, girl. Ranching is a full-time gig, and that includes middle-of-the-night, one-of-the-cows-is-in-trouble situations.”
She rocked back, a smirk on her mouth. “And does that happen often?”
“Course it does. You grew up down here. You should know.”
A shrug from her. “I grew up in town. I didn’t exactly go hang out on the ranches and study the night time habits of the cows.”
Well, that much was true. I remembered her and Olivia during high school. They’d run with a crowd that didn’t have time for the people who dealt with cows. All town, all the way.
Then she and Olivia had escaped to Nashville, sneaking out of town the moment we graduated. I wondered why. They’d always seemed like they had it made here. Heiresses to some of the most important shops in towns, families that would let them stay on. There hadn’t seemed to be any reason for them to cut and run.
I wondered if she’d tell me if I asked.
“I know renovation because I did my own house when I bought it,” I said quietly.
She frowned. “Wasn’t that the Wheating place? Didn’t they take good care of the house when they lived there?”
I smiled and shook my head. “They took great care of the place. But I didn’t want to live in a house that looked like it had been designed by a forty-year-old woman.”
She laughed outright at that. “Well I guess I can’t blame you for that. What’s next?”
I sat back and looked around us. We’d managed to get through the whole bottom floor, and that was no small thing. There were more rooms in this house than I’d anticipated, and every one of them had at least one set of cupboards. And we were only doing the removal. We still had the installation of the new cupboards—but not until the new floors went in, and though they were already on order, it would be stupid to put the floors in before the plumbing was done.
Please see the flood we’d caused all by ourselves in the kitchen. That floor was ruined, but it was also due to be replaced. If that was the new flooring, it would be a disaster.
The plumbers were coming tomorrow, the flooring would go in the day after. We could do the new cabinets after that. Until then…
“Next,” I said, “we take this lot out to the driveway and arrange for someone to come pick up the lot and take it to be turned into shavings. And then we go get something to eat.”
