The Design(29)

Dirt-stained trucks lined the street when I arrived at the house. Construction workers were spread out everywhere. There must have been enough men to make up two or three crews, easily. I didn’t spot Grayson at first, so I made my way through the house, careful not to step on anything that could pierce the sole of my construction boots.

“Cammie,” Grayson called once I arrived in the kitchen.

I turned to see him standing next to two men. When he’d called my name, they both turned to watch me join them.

“Hi,” I offered meekly, trying to figure out if I was meant to listen to their conversation or stay on the sidelines.

“This is Cammie, an associate architect at my firm,” Grayson told the men. I turned to greet them. There was a hip guy with black dreadlocks and gauges. Next to him stood a lithe man with circular glasses that seemed to teeter precariously on the bridge of his nose.

“Cammie, this is Jim and Patrick. They’re helping out with the electrical wiring for the house.”

Jim, the guy with dreadlocks, stepped forward and shook my hand.

“It’s good to see a woman on site, Cammie. How did you get roped into the architecture field? It’s not very glamorous work,” he said with a smile.

The men turned to me and waited, and I realized they expected me to actually answer his question. Shit. Did they have to stare at me so attentively? It’s called iPhones, people. Get one and stop paying attention to real life.

“Oh um, yes. Actually, it’s not very interesting,” I began, looking around at the construction workers who’d stopped to listen to my answer. I couldn’t pick apart anything but their random features: wide lips, frizzy hair, straight noses. My hands shook and I hid them behind my back, trying to hide the evidence of my nerves. “It was actually through a friend of my older sister.” I cleared my throat. “He was, uh, he was in graduate school for architecture when I first met him and I overheard him talking about his job. His passion was impossible to ignore.” I purposely stared anywhere except at Grayson. “And, um, yeah. Just hearing him talk about architecture is what made me fall in love.”





Chapter Eleven


With architecture. With architecture! Hearing him talk made me fall in love with architecture! I’d forgotten to add the ending to the sentence. Maybe it was a Freudian slip, or maybe it meant nothing at all. Either way, Grayson would have had to be a fool not to realize that he was the subject of my story. How many friends did Brooklyn have that happened to be architects? One. Grayson Cole.

Did he have a clue how influential he’d been on my life? It felt so embarrassing to admit that I’d molded my entire future off of a conversation I’d overheard when I was in high school. Who does that? People who need to be on crazy pills, that’s who.

“Well, we’re glad to have you, Cammie,” Jim said with a warm smile.

I stood there silent as they continued to discuss whatever it was they’d been talking about before I’d arrived. I kept my gaze focused on my feet, trying not to feel like a royal idiot for admitting the truth to Grayson.

A few minutes later, Grayson turned and motioned for me to follow him. I sighed and forced my feet to move. When we were out of sight of the others, Grayson turned and reached for my arm so he could pull me to the side of the hallway.

His hand on my arm, just below the sleeve of my t-shirt, was enough to stop me in my tracks.

“Was that story true?” he asked, staring down at me.

“What story? Oh yeah, the one about Brooklyn's friend Chuck? He's a landscape architect, you probably don't know him.”

Evasive sarcasm was my only hope.

He shook his head, staring down at his feet—and then finally he looked up. His icy blue eyes were almost too much to handle.

“I didn’t know I was the reason you fell into architecture,” he said.

I didn’t fall into architecture, I fell into Grayson. The two happened to coincide.

I shrugged, highly aware of the prying ears around us.

“Well, I’m really glad you’re here. You’ll like this next part,” he said as he turned to head down the hallway.

I pressed my lips together, concealing my megawatt smile. When he’d invited me to join him on the job site, it had seemed formal and scripted. But, when it was just the two of us in a deserted hallway, the words were real and their meaning was heavy, tangible… the game was definitely back on. I wanted Grayson Cole.

…



When we arrived at a small room near the back of the house, Grayson picked up a sledgehammer off the ground and handed it to me.

“Here ya go,” he said with a cheeky smile.

“What? Why do I need this?” I asked just as I caught the full weight of the tool. It was heavier than I thought possible.

“The crew added sheetrock in here yesterday without my approval. The clients want to hang a massive mirror along that side wall so we need to add a layer of plywood before we put up the drywall.”

“So you want me to demolish the wall?” I asked, my eyes practically glowing.

He smirked. “Exactly.”

He handed me a paper mask to wear so I wouldn’t get dust in my lungs and then left me to it. I thought he’d stay with me, but he had other things to attend to around the job site. For a while, the only sounds coming from the room were my hammer slamming through the drywall followed by my heavy breathing against the thin mask.