Maggie Moves On(22)

“That’s not what we do,” she promised. “We just tell the story.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” he said, turning her around to face the house. “Now, just picture how nice this terrace area will be as long as Billy there doesn’t take a header off your roof.”

Maggie could picture it. Cool stone under bare feet and strings of lights. Music. Drinks. Food. Laughter. Plants in greens and rainbows of color spilling out of pots. The tinkle of water in the fountain. Stolen kisses in the shadows.

Whoops. Rewind. Undo.

“Come on, you two. The world needs to hear the story of how you met,” Dean called from the front porch.

“Kevin is gonna be so embarrassed,” Silas quipped.





8



The day was done. And in the grand tradition of big jobs, things looked worse than when they’d first arrived.

Half of the roof was stripped, and the east side of the house looked naked without the plantings that just this morning had crowded the walls with a tangle of half-dead foliage. There were piles of rock, debris, and weeds that would only grow bigger in the coming days.

It was a good start to the project, Silas decided, dropping the tailgate on his truck and dragging the cooler closer.

Tradition. It was valued in Kinship. The shared history of people who’d grown up together, raised their kids together, worked together. Generation after generation. Sure, there was new blood every once in a while. And every summer and winter brought with it an influx of strangers looking for fun.

But the foundation was the people who lived and died there.

“Gather round, Bitterroots,” Silas called.

Elton, a scruffy, weathered guy in his forties who could run a forklift and lay pavers in his sleep, gave him a hand with the cooler. He’d arrived after wrapping up the next-to-last day on a hardscape job one town over. “Hell of a place,” he observed.

“That it is,” Silas said.

He heard the sound of a drill biting into wood and spotted her on the porch. Apparently the front door had given up, much like the screen door. Maggie Nichols worked just as hard as any crew member on and off camera. It was a surprise. A pleasant one. And not because he had sexist leanings. His mothers had relieved him and his brother of any of those misconceptions before either of them realized that girls did not, in fact, have cooties.

He’d assumed that since she was the money, since she was the face of her own show, she wouldn’t be the one hauling cabinets out of the kitchen or opening up walls to get at a house’s secrets.

And he’d been damn wrong.

Elton let out a low whistle. “Heard she was a looker.”

“This time they weren’t exaggerating,” Silas agreed.

“You and Michelle on again or off again?” Elton asked.

The fact that Silas was used to the question confirmed he’d let things drag on for far too long. “Off. Permanently this time.”

His friend grunted. “Good timing.”

It hadn’t felt like it a month ago when Silas had looked his sometimes sort of girlfriend of five years in the eye and finally said the words they both needed to hear. He hadn’t known exactly why he felt like he had to do it then and there.

But he was a man who believed in signs. And now things were looking a little more clear.

“Hey, Nichols?” he called out.

She looked up from the hinge she was trying to secure. “Wha?” she said around the two screws between her lips.

“Want a beer?” he offered, giving the cooler a jiggle. “First-day tradition.”

She considered for a beat and then dropped the drill and screws and stepped off the porch. “Why not?”

He felt something like hot chocolate in his belly as she walked toward him. Silas was a fan of things that made him feel. He chased deep, complicated feelings and wrung every ounce of pleasure out of them.

Leading the way around the side of the house, he found his crew lounging under the new leaves of a maple.

They pounced on the cooler when he set it down. He managed to fish out two beers in the melee. Twisting off the tops, he handed one to Maggie.

“Some place you got here, Ms. Nichols,” Travis said. The kid was taking a gap year between high school and college. Judging from the moony eyes the kid was shooting in her direction, he’d already developed a crush on the boss.

Silas couldn’t blame him.

They sprawled in the shade, half a dozen of them sitting on coolers or the ground. Maggie—at home with a crew of dirty, sweaty men and women proud of what they had accomplished—stretched those long legs of hers out in the grass and lifted her face to the sun.

The conversation ebbed and flowed, crisscrossing back and forth across their little circle. She wasn’t quiet, but she wasn’t a talker either, he noted. She asked more questions than she answered.

The more he saw of Maggie Nichols, the more he liked the whole package.

There had been clients who treated his crew like faceless labor, like the people doing the sweating and the work they’d been paid to do were somehow less than those opening their wallets. Those clients didn’t earn new slots in Bitterroot’s schedule when they called back for more work.

There was nothing shameful about physical labor. Maggie seemed to get that. She was someone who understood the satisfaction of a long day of damn hard work and appreciated others who did the same.