Page 36 of Hero Next Door
A butterfly. There was a dead butterfly on the floor.
They’d welcomed me back to town, those butterflies. Back to Butterfly Glen. And now there was a dead one on the floor of my kitchen.
I closed my eyes, tried to pack all of my baggage back into the trunks where I normally kept it, reminded myself that I’d been on my own for years and had been just fine, and then stepped over the butterfly and walked to the cabinet to start collecting the food I was going to take with me back to Nashville.
CHAPTER20
Dev
When I arrived the next morning, I found the place bustling with activity. There were at least ten more people there than there had been, and they weren’t just plumbers. The driveway was full of construction trucks—both personal and those that had an actual job, like cement mixers—and Parker was nowhere to be found.
At least that was what I thought. When I got into the house, shoving my way past a number of men carrying goods to and fro, I found that she was most definitely still in residence. She was mid-staircase, a pad in her hand and her eyes rushing from one man to the next as she gave out the orders for the day. This man was to work on the pipes and finishing up the second floor bathrooms. This man was to help with pulling up flooring so the new floors could be installed. This man was to unplug and move things like the fridge and dishwasher so they could lay the new floors in the kitchen first.
When she looked up and saw me, her face went from serious and engaged to cold and very, very hard. “Make sure you turn off the water before you unplug those,” she said firmly. “I don’t want anyone making mistakes that ends up ruining the stuff we’re putting in.”
She turned and walked up the stairs without another glance at me.
And I stood there like an idiot, watching her go, too shocked at her behavior to do anything more than stare.
* * *
I sat back on my heels and looked around. There was no one in this room and that gave me a moment to stop working so hard—the place was like a freaking beehive today—and actually consider the situation.
I’d gone back to work on the cupboards, which, amazingly, had evidently been left off the list of things she’d hired someone else for. I still couldn’t put the new ones in, as the flooring had to go in first, but the second floor had a number of cabinets that still needed to come out, and I’d started there.
Hoping I’d run into Parker at some point.
I hadn’t. Either she was going out of her way to avoid me or I was just unlucky when it came to running into her. Both were equally likely, though I was relatively sure it was actually the former. The house was big, but it still had four outer walls and a limited number of rooms. I could hear Parker moving through them, issuing orders, and it would have made sense for her to stumble across the rooms I was working in at some point.
She hadn’t, and I’d decided halfway through the day that she was actively ignoring me.
I’d felt that down to my bones, every cell in my body screaming at the thought. After the last week, after that kiss and the way the world had turned on its edge, I’d been convinced that there was something between us. I hadn’t know what I was going to do about that something, but it had been there.
I knew it.
What had happened since I’d brushed my lips across hers? What had changed her?
The tenor of everything outside my room suddenly shifted, and I tensed, hearing the sound of trouble. The voice of one man was rumbling from downstairs, the tone intense and… not angry, but definitely insistent, like he was trying to convince someone of something and they were resisting. I wondered what was going on and how serious it was—and who he was talking to like that.
And then I heard Parker answering, her voice equally serious, but with an edge of worry to it. She was asking him for something and he was refusing. Or he was telling her he wanted to do one thing and she was refusing.
Either way, she was losing the argument, and that didn’t surprise me as much as it should. Construction guys weren’t used to working for a woman.
They would have no problem telling her no, even if she was the one signing their paycheck. And if I knew Parker, she’d blow right past that, assuming that they were going to respect her as much as anyone else.
Which would just make the situation worse.
I got downstairs to find her nose-to-nose with the foreman of one of the construction crews, her finger practically jabbing him in the chest as she tried to make her point.
“And I’m telling you that he has no place here,” she said, sounding like she’d been repeating this point for a while now. “He’s not in charge, he doesn’t have any claim to the land, and I won’t have him involved.”
The foreman almost laughed. “He’s the best developer in the area, lady. He’ll have valuable advice.”
“And I don’t give two figs about his advice!” Now her voice was rising, getting more abrasive. “This. Is. Not. His. Project. It’s mine. And as long as it’s mine, I’m the one who makes the calls and brings in the consultants. Period.”
The man backed off, shaking his head. “If that’s the way you feel, I don’t think my crew will be coming back.”
I stepped in at that point, unwilling to let the man just walk off the job, and took him to the side, telling him firmly—and in my most masculine tone—that we had a contract and that he would in fact be coming back if he and his company wanted to be paid for that contract rather than dragged to court for a breach.
