Page 37 of Single-Minded
Still, it can’t hurt to look a little. While Joe reviews the specs with him, I quickly scan Nate from head to steel-toed boots. White T-shirt speckled with paint, revealing finely muscled arms and just a peek of well-toned abs when he raises his hand to mark the wall. Dark jeans that look like they were designed with his body in mind. Likealljeans were designed with his body in mind.Sigh.If TLC ever gets a peek at Nate, he’ll have his own show in a reality-TV minute.
“Doc?” says Joe. Oh gawd, I must have zoned out.
“Um, yes.” I say. “I was just thinking about the, er, project and the, um.… ceiling height issue.”
“So sorry about that,” says Nate. “My bad. I made the assumption since the hallway height was the standard nine feet that the offices would be as well. It’s no problem at all to fix it, I’ll get it taken care of today.” He’s looking directly at me as he apologizes, and I can feel myself getting lost in those gorgeous green eyes. Like some kind of smutty hypnosis.
“Great, great,” I say, trying to tear myself away from his gaze. “Try not to bump your head.” I laugh awkwardly. “On the ceiling.” Awkward pause. “Because you’re so tall.” Jeez, that was smooth. What am I? A gawky middle schooler, or an accomplished professional woman who owns her own business?
“I’ll try.” He grins. “Not to question your judgment or anything,” he says, “but you do know that seven-nine is a very low ceiling height, right?”
“I do know that,” I say. “But lower ceiling heights are conducive to intimacy, connection, and emotional safety, which is what we’re trying to evoke for the patients here. If the room helps patients to open up more, they can be helped in fewer or shorter sessions, and get to the real work of therapy much faster. The main and outdoor therapy spaces have higher ceiling heights, of course, because we don’t want the people who work here to feel boxed in, and the outdoor therapy spaces have a different objective.” The doctor is in.
“Cool,” Nate says. He smiles at me and I smile back, unable to be the first to break our mutual gaze.
“Doc, tour?” interjects Joe, and I can feel myself blushing.
“Thanks, Nate,” I say, following Joe out of the room.
“Feel free to check my work anytime,” he says. I don’t respond as I trail Joe down the hallway, but I can’t stop myself from thinking of all the ways I could do just that.
As Joe mentioned, the rest of the therapy spaces have been framed out, but not yet been completed. Joe opens the door on the left at the end of the hallway, and we step down into what will soon be one of the outdoor therapy spaces. The landscapers are outside placing plants and digging the holes for the large royal palms. I scan the space, and seeing some inappropriate greenery, I pull a pad of sticky notes out of my tote and begin marking the plants that have to go.
Nicky, my landscaper, appears from behind the small fountain that is being installed. A stout, swarthy New York transplant, he’s straight out of Central Casting if you are looking for a Mob Guy #3—but the man loves plants and flowers, and despite his gruff demeanor, he’s a sweet, sensitive artist whose chosen medium is foliage.
“Hey, Doc,” Nicky says. I generally prefer to be called Alex, but Joe the contractor always calls me Doc and so the rest of the crew just follow his lead. “Whadya think?”
“It looks amazing,” I say. “I love what you’ve done with the color, it feels like an oasis out here. You’re a vegetation virtuoso.” He smiles widely, proud of his artistry.
“Got any notes?” he asks.
“Literally,” I say, laughing as I hold up the pad. “I stuck Post-its on a couple of small varieties you have on the ground over there.” He cracks up because I’m such a stickler for those kinds of details, and he takes great pleasure in endlessly teasing me about it. We’ve worked together for so long now that he doesn’t need to even express the joke in words anymore. Anytime I hand him a spreadsheet, a color-coded map, or tagged greenery I want moved, he skips right to the punch line. I don’t mind, I know my control freak tendencies can be comical at times. I also know it’s a big part of why I am where I am. It’s all in the planning.
I laugh along and let Nicky have his fun, and then continue: “I see where you’re going with this, but we can’t have any plants with sharp edges, so none of those spiky ones over there, and definitely no cactus.”
“I love the flowers on those,” he says. “We need a pop of color.”
“I know,” I say gently. “The color is gorgeous, and I’m totally up for it if you want to replace them with something softer. Think breezy, round, feathery, tropical oasis.”
“Done,” Nicky says, with a finality that seems better suited to confirmation of a Mafia hit than a flower selection. But I have total faith in him, the man is a greenery savant.
27
It’s almost four by the time I leave the psychology office job site, which is looking better by the day. It seems like a wreck now, but I’ve done enough of these jobs to know that we’re in the final stretch and the project will be completed to perfection in a week to ten days.
I have two more stops to make at completed project sites, just to touch base with my clients. Neither will take more than ten or fifteen minutes, which is good because I have a meeting with Daniel Boudreaux at his new restaurant at five and I don’t want to be late. I hate to be late.
I’ve done numerous restaurants in my line of work and I’ve found that the meetings always tend to happen later in the day, I suppose due to the necessary nocturnal habits of those in the culinary industry. I find myself looking forward to my meeting with Daniel, not just because he’s so interesting and his enthusiasm for his work is so contagious, but because I cannot stop thinking about the jambalaya he made last time we’d met. I haven’t eaten all day since my breakfast meeting with Olivia Vanderbilt Kensington and I’m completely famished.
Parking quickly at the marina, I walk down the dock to Daniel’s restaurant, enjoying the bay breeze on my skin and watching the sun play on the water. What a gorgeous afternoon. The paint on the outside of the boat has been stripped since my last visit, and is in the process of being refinished, although there are no construction workers to be seen. I board the boat and peek inside the indoor bar area.
“Daniel?” No answer. I walk back toward the kitchen, but there’s no sign of him there either. Checking my schedule on my phone, I wonder if we’ve gotten our times mixed up. Heading back outside to the deck, I walk around the back side of the boat, holding carefully to the mahogany railing. The back deck is larger than the front, with room for probably eight tables, although there is only one for the moment. Daniel is leaning over the railing, shirt off, hauling something up over the side. The sun reveals a glint of auburn in his short brown hair.
“Hey, Daniel,” I say, and he jerks his head back unexpectedly, causing him to lose his footing and go over the railing headfirst. I scream as he falls into the drink, and rush over to the railing where he’d been leaning just a second before.
There he is, grinning from ear to ear, treading water in the bay, with a thick rope in his right hand.
“Hi,” he says. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
