Page 92 of Fierce-Gabe

“Elise, do you have a minute?”

She looked up and saw Colt standing there. He didn’t talk to her much. He worked more with her father and Royce. Though he was managing most of the home builds, he still talked to Royce.

“Sure,” she said. “Come in.”

“Sorry to bother you. The Maxins will be calling you today, I’m sure.”

“Oh boy,” she said. “Do I even want to know?”

The poor guy got stuck for his first build with an annoying couple that were driving him insane. Some people were greatwhen having their house built; others would blow your phone up daily with updates and want walk-throughs.

She wasn’t sure she could handle that. Her father did a better job with it than Royce, but her brother sucked it up.

“I had four emails from them before ten last night. My mistake was replying.”

“I’ve learned that people email after hours because it’s convenient for them, but once they think you are working, they expect you to be at their beck and call.”

“Most people aren’t bad,” Colt said. “I got up this morning and Ginger had sent me three more. She keeps changing her mind. Not just in the kitchen layout but now the cabinets she wants to be ordered.”

“I expected this much,” she said. “The good news is, she still has four weeks before she makes up her mind and then the orders have to go in. Once they start work on them, if she wants changes, they pay for it.”

If someone wanted custom cabinets, they came at a price. Stock items could be returned if need be, but custom, that was it and their company wouldn’t eat the cost if someone was indecisive.

“I’ll talk to your father once he’s here about the layout. I think it’s simple enough. But I need him or Royce to sign off before I call Fierce Engineering and get someone to change it there.”

“Who is the engineer that did the work?” she asked.

They’d had Ryder, as an architect, create a lot of new home designs recently. Most people would pick a design and tweak it here or there and it was minimal change on the blueprints. But the Maxins wanted to recreate the blueprints so much they should have just started from scratch.

“Drake,” Colt said. “I guess it’s a good thing it wasn’t Chloe or they’d be waiting even longer. Not that I expect Drake to stop what he’s doing to work on this either.”

“That’s right.”

“The good news is, we are still on schedule to break ground. It’s only the layout of the kitchen and some of the plumbing.”

“Makes it much easier.” She heard her father talking to someone up front. By now more staff would be here.

“Colt,” her father said. “You’re here early. I thought you’d be at the site.”

“I need to talk to you,” Colt said. “If you’ve got a minute before I take off.”

“Come to my office.”

So much for her having her father’s ear before anyone else showed up today.

She wouldn’t get in front of Colt though. That was business and this was personal for her.

It just sucked that it was almost three hours later before she had time to slip into her father’s office. Gabe had texted her to say he’d talked to his father at the site.

She wanted to do it first but couldn’t control those things and just told Gabe to tell his father to not say a word.

“You wanted to see me,” her father said, walking into the office. “Since when do you send me a text requesting that and not just come knock on my door?”

She smiled. “You’re pretty popular today,” she said. “That was more important. Shut my door, please.”

Her father came in and shut the door behind him, then took a seat. “What’s going on? You look upset.”

“What?” she asked. “No. I’m not upset.”

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