room himself. “She’s got the list of what goes where, so she can run down to Bast, tell them what to deliver up here.”
He made notes on his clipboard—shipment of towels and linens, purchase of lightbulbs and so on. Behind his back Beckett and Ryder exchanged looks.
“I guess we’re loading in.”
“I don’t know who ‘we’ is,” Ryder corrected. “It’s not me or the crew. We’ve got to finish the damn place.”
“Don’t bitch at me.” Beckett held up his hands. “I’ve got to make the changes to the bakery project next door if we’re going to shift the crew from here to there without much of a lag.”
“I could use a lag,” Ryder muttered but headed down behind Owen.
Owen paused at Elizabeth and Darcy, gave the propped-open door a study. “Beckett, you might want to talk to your pal, Lizzy. Make sure she keeps this door open, and the terrace doors shut.”
“It is open. They are shut.”
“Now they are. She got a little peeved last night.”
Intrigued, Beckett lifted his brows. “Is that so?”
“I guess I had my personal close encounter. I did a walk-through last night, heard somebody up here. I figured it for one of you, messing with me. She thought I called her an asshole, and let me know she didn’t care for it.”
Beckett’s grin spread wide and quick. “She’s got a temper.”
“Tell me. We made up, I think. But in case she holds a grudge.”
“We’re done in here, too,” Ryder told him. “And in T&O. We’ve got to run the crown molding and baseboard in N&N, and there’s some touch-up in E&R, and the bathroom ceiling light in there. It came in, finally, yesterday. J&R in the back’s full of boxes. Lamps, lamps, more lamps, shelves, and God knows. But it’s punched out.
“I’ve got a list, too.” Ryder tapped his head while the dog walked over to sit at his side. “I just don’t have to write every freaking thing down in ten places.”
“Robe hooks, towel racks, TP dispensers,” Owen began.
“On the slate for today.”
“Mirrors, flat screens, switch plates and outlet covers, door bumpers.”
“On the slate, Owen.”
“You’ve got the list of what goes where?”
“Nobody likes a nag, Sally.”
“Exit signs need to go up.” Owen continued working down his list as he walked to The Dining Room. “Wall sconces in here. The boxes we built for the fire extinguishers need to be painted and installed.”
“Once you shut up, I can get started.”
“Brochures, website, advertising, finalizing room rates, packages, room folders.”
“Not my job.”
“Exactly. Count your frigging blessings. How much longer for the revised plans on the bakery project?” Owen asked Beckett.
“I’ll have them to the permit office tomorrow morning.”
“Good deal.” He took out his phone, switched it to calendar. “Let’s nail it down. I’m going to tell Hope to open reservations for January fifteenth. We can have the grand-opening deal on the thirteenth, give us a day for putting it all back together. Then we’re up.”
“That’s less than a month,” Ryder complained.
“You know and Beck knows and I know there’s less than two weeks’ work left here. You’ll be done before Christmas. If we start the load-in this week, we’ll be done by the first, and there’s no reason we won’t get the Use and Occupancy right after the holidays. That gives two weeks to fiddle and fuss, work out any kinks, with Hope living here.”
“I’m with Owen on this. We’re sliding downhill now, Ry.”
Stuffing his hands in his pockets, Ryder shrugged. “It’s weird, maybe, just weird thinking about actually being done.”
“Cheer up,” Owen told him. “A place like this? We’re never going to be done.”
On his nod, Ryder heard the back door open, shut, the sound of heavy boots on tile. “We’ve got crew. Get your tools.”
Owen kept busy, and happy, running crown molding. He didn’t mind the regular interruptions to answer a call, return a text, read an email. His phone served as a tool to him as much as his nail gun. The building buzzed with activity, echoed with voices and Ryder’s job radio. It smelled of paint and fresh-cut wood, strong coffee. The combination said Montgomery Family Contractors to him, and never failed to remind him of his father.
Everything he’d learned about carpentry and the building trade he’d learned from his dad. Now, stepping off the ladder to study the work, he knew his father would be proud.
They’d taken the old building with its sagging porches and broken windows, its scarred walls and broken floors and had transformed it into a jewel on the town square.
Beckett’s vision, he thought, their mother’s imagination and canny eye, Ryder’s sweat and skill, and his own focus on detail, combined with a solid crew, had transformed what had been an idea batted around the kitchen table into reality.
He set down his nail gun, rolled his shoulder as he turned around the room.
Yeah, his mother’s canny eye, he thought again. He could admit he’d balked at her scheme of pale aqua walls and chocolate brown ceiling—until he’d seen it finished.
Nothing ordinary or hotel-like about it, he mused—not when Justine Montgomery took charge. He thought this room with its Deco flair might be his favorite.
His phone alarm told him it was time to start making some calls of his own.
He went out, then headed toward the back door for the porch as Luther worked on the rails leading down. Gritting his teeth, he jogged through the cold and bitter wind across the covered porch, down to ground level, then ducked in through Reception.
“Fucking A it’s cold.” The radio blasted; nail guns thumped. And no way, he decided, would he try to do business with all this noise. He grabbed his jacket, his briefcase.
He ducked into The Lounge, where Beckett sat on the floor running trim.
“I’m heading over to Vesta.”
“It’s shy of ten. They’re not open.”
“Exactly.”
Outside, Owen hunched against the cold at the light, cursed the fact that traffic, such as it was, paced and spaced itself so he couldn’t make the dash across Main. He waited it out, his breath blowing icy clouds until the walk light flashed. He jogged diagonally, ignored the Closed sign on the glass front door of the restaurant, and pounded.
He saw lights on, but no movement. Once again he took out his phone, punched Avery’s number from memory.
“Damn it, Owen, now I’ve got dough on my phone.”
“So you are in there. Open up before I get frostbite.”
“Damn it,” she repeated, then cut him off. But seconds later he saw her, white bib apron over jeans and a black sweater with sleeves shoved to her elbows. Her hair—what the hell color was it now? It struck him as very close to the bright new-penny copper of the inn’s roof.
She’d started changing it a few months back, going with most everything but her natural Scot warrior-queen red. She’d hacked it short, too, he recalled, though it had grown long enough again for her to yank it back in a tiny stub when she worked.
Her eyes, as bright a blue as her hair was copper, glared at him as she turned the locks.
