Page 59 of One Bride for Three Single Dads

First of all, we knew it was “remote,” but we didn’t know it was on the edge of the goddamn planet. For instance, I naturally assumed there would be roads. As in, paved roads. Not gravel paths stuck on the side of practically sheer cliffs.

I also assumed we were staying in a house. If I had known we were going to be trying to live together in somebody’s renovated garden shed, I would have left Alexis with her mother.

Oh my God. Amber is going to kill me.

My only hope is that somehow Alexis magically brings a garden gnome to life. That’s it. That is the only thing that will save my ass when Amber finds out that I took her daughter out of the country and I expect her to live in a garden shed for three months.

Seriously. I’m a dead man.

And lastly, we were supposed to be doing finish work on a house that had already been roughed in. That’s it. We were supposed to be putting up doors and decorative molding and maybe hanging cabinets and installing flooring and that sort of thing.

But as Ambrose drives us along the terrifyingly narrow footpath toward the job site, I start to get a much clearer idea of what we are really in for here.

It’s only got half a roof.

It’s been vacant and open to the sea air for a year.

I start to prepare myself for Ambrose to tell us that we are going to need to first demolish the existing structure, then somehow magically rebuild the entire thing on-site.

How, I wonder?

Literally, how? Should we roll timber down from the top of the cliff? Hope it doesn’t land in the ocean a hundred feet below us?

Like, I can’t even imagine getting a refrigerator over this path and through the front door.

Right now, the only thing that is sustaining me is Ambrose’s white knuckles on the steering wheel.

He doesn’t like heights.

He is suffering.

Good!

But I did promise to have a good attitude. His speech about manning up and putting on a good show for Jolene and the kids is still ringing in my ears. Yeah, he’s got a point. If anybody should have known this was going to be a complete shit show, it should have been us.

And now Jolene and the kids are going to suffer for our mistake.

The least we can do is whistle a happy tune, right?

Ambrose urges the truck slowly up the driveway. He seems to relax a little bit when the path widens into a front yard. At least he is a few more feet away from the edge of that cliff, I guess.

He throws it into Park.

“Okay!” he announces in that way-too-cheerful voice of his. “Let’s see what we’re working with here.”

We all get out of the truck and stand facing the front of the house. The left half does look roughed-in. There are windows. There is a roof. The right half has window openings, but no glazing. No roof.

Boone shoots me a meaningful look. I shrug, pantomiming my complete helplessness.

In response, he pantomimes zipping his lips closed, twisting an invisible key, and chucking it into the ocean.

“Front door is probably open,” Ambrose opines optimistically.

Yeah, probably. I mean, why not?

We go right up to the front door. Mentally I am already calculating man-hours. The front garden is only maybe fifteen or twenty hours. We walk into the vestibule, and I am surprised to see a room that sort of looks like… a room. Floor, walls, even electrical service.

Okay. Finishing this room, thirty hours.

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