After checking my list, I turned to Deanna. “Azaleas, rhododendrons, hydrangeas, right?”
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Heather Webber
“Right. To go with your blue and white theme, I picked up some bellflowers, belladonna delphiniums, blue balloon flowers, blue chip campanula, and butterfly blue scabiosa, white dragonflower, white bleeding heart, and Deutschland astilbe,” she said, actually using the pencil to tick off the list on the pad of paper in front of her.
“Sounds great.”
“Stanley checked in this morning. The deck is on schedule,” Kit said.
“And you’ll be helping him with that, right?”
“That and the seating once the excavating work is done.”
“Coby? What’re you doing?”
“Fire pit and lighting.”
That’s right. “Got everything?”
“Yes.”
“Kit, have you checked in with Ignacio? Is he all set?”
Ignacio Martinez was a floater. He and his crew of workers drifted between different jobs, working where there was money to be had. Sometimes they did landscaping, other times bricklaying or general construction. I hired Ignacio and his crew for particularly tough yards. They were worth every cent I paid them under the table.
I scanned my notes. “The sod and topsoil will be arriving at seven a.m.” I checked off bullet points in my head. “All right. I think we’re done here. The excavation work is going to be—”
“Painful?” Deanna cut in.
That worked. The Lockhart yard was one of the most overgrown, weed-infested yards I’d ever seen. And I’d seen a lot of yards. I’d have turned the project down flat if I hadn’t had ulterior motives for doing it. “Definitely. But once that’s done, it should be clear sailing.”
“You did it again,” Tam called out from the reception area.
Aha! I’d known she was eavesdropping.
7
I peeked at her through the open door. She shook her finger at me.
“Is ‘clear sailing’ a cliche?” I asked.
Five heads bobbed.
I had picked up the worst habit of sounding like my mother, using abridged cliches and trite expressions. Except lately I’d noticed she’d been using them less and less, and I’d been using them more and more. “Hey! It wasn’t abbreviated, though! That’s something.”
“It’s hard to abbreviate a two-word cliche,” Tam said, jotting something down. I imagined she had a notebook filled with my grammar transgressions.
Hmmph.
The small set of chimes attached to the front door rang out.
The door used to have a cowbell, but the clanging had apparently gotten on Tam’s nerves because I came in one day to find the bell flatter than a pan— I caught myself and stopped.
It was flat.
And there’d been a baseball bat nearby, namely in Tam’s hands. I hadn’t asked questions. The next day the chimes were on the door.
Heads craned to look out the conference room door to see who’d come in. Four sets of eyes then turned to me when Jean-Claude stumbled into the office.
“What?” I said to them.
“You need to take care of this.” Kit rose.
I looked up, up, up at him. “I will.”
He arched an eyebrow, and I noticed that he didn’t look nearly as scary with a fuzzy head. It was hard to look scary with baby chicken hair.
I wondered if he knew that.
Didn’t think I should be the one to tell him.
Jean-Claude froze when he spotted us. I
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Heather Webber
Everyone remaining at the table stood and scattered, leaving me to deal with Jean-Claude in private. “Come on in,” I said to him.
