The Cunning Thief (Stolen Hearts #6)(6)

Thanks to her line of work, her tetanus shot was up to date. She threw the piece of glass in the trash, and moved on. Even though Blackthorne had to be dealt with, she had more than enough things to keep her busy for the time being. The house she was working on had to be ready to put on the market in a few months. Snowbirds usually started looking at properties around the spring and through the summer, so she had the rest of the winter to fix it up.

This wasn’t the first property she’d flipped, but it was by far the biggest. She’d put her entire life savings into the house, and it was imperative that it made profit, or at least the money she put into it. The beautiful home was right on the beach, and the beaches on the west side of Florida were, in her opinion, the best. The water was calmer, but it was still wavy enough that the kids would enjoy it without the parents having fear of a riptide sucking them down. The sunsets were to die for, and the white sands of the beach were ideal for someone who wanted to escape the cold weather for a few months every year.

But as great as the scenery was, the house needed a lot of work. Shae didn’t know much about the owners of the place before it went to auction. A house like this must have cost a lot of money, but they put no effort into maintaining it. The salty breeze had done its damage on the outside of the home, and the inside was devastatingly dated. Shae’s job was to make the most cost-effective upgrades to make the home as luxurious as possible.

The first home she flipped she’d bought for only twenty thousand in a not-so-reputable area of Miami. But after putting in ten thousand dollars of work, she’d managed to sell it for fifty thousand and made a pretty good profit. And considering the other homes she had seen, her repairs were much better quality than what a lot of flippers these days were doing.

Shae knew she had a full workday in front of her, but she still took a moment to go out the back door. She reluctantly put on flip-flops to protect her damaged foot from the sand, but she usually loved to walk this path barefoot. She liked to feel the sand beneath her toes and appreciate the limited time she had here. If this job worked out, everything would change for her. She wouldn’t be a single-woman operation, hiring contractors whenever necessary. She might be able to organize a small staff and actually have people she could trust working for her instead of finding people she didn’t know in every city. Also, if this job went as planned, maybe she could stop worrying about her father dragging her back home.

But that was something she didn’t want to think about. She walked closer to the water’s edge. There was still a bit of a ways to walk before she could actually reach the water. Thanks to the recent cut on her foot, she couldn’t let her feet sink into the sand and feel the waves crashing like she loved. She stopped at a safe distance and looked at all the shells that had been scattered along the beach. A sandpiper got daringly close to her as he continued looking for his food for the day. In the distance, a pelican soared overhead, looking for food, while another seabird took a deep dive and stabbed into the water beak first.

It really was beautiful here. Maybe when she made enough money, she could look into getting her own place on the beach. Not as big a place as she was renovating, of course. Maybe a one- or two-bedroom. Something cozy that didn’t need a lot of upkeep. It was her job to restore homes, so she didn’t want to spend that much time working on her own. Right now, she normally lived in the places she was working on. Some days it could be inconvenient, or downright hazardous depending on the state of the building, but it saved a lot of money on rent. Besides, what better way to make sure homes were livable than to actually live in them?

She was still taking in the beautiful sight of the ocean when movement caught her attention from the corner of her eye. Shae turned and saw someone was in the neighboring property—the McCormick Place. Not the most original name for a home, but the McCormicks were rarely ever there. They used their home maybe four weeks out of the year and spent the rest of the time renting it out. She’d only met them once or twice while she’d been working on Seaside Escape. So the person she was seeing silhouetted on the back porch was most likely their newest renter. She squinted but couldn’t make out any of the man’s features from this far away. Just from his build, she guessed he was probably younger. Maybe around her age, in his late twenties. He probably had his wife with him. This was more of a retirement community, so single guys didn’t really frequent the area. There weren’t a lot of clubs nearby, or beaches with a bunch of bikini-clad ladies.

She’d have to make sure she didn’t do any loud late-night work. It was nice that the place was deserted most of the time, because she didn’t have any neighbor on the other side of her and she didn’t have to worry about bothering anybody. But because she was going to try to sell the place, it was important that she maintained good relationships with the locals.

And just like that, Shae’s mind went back to work. She had a laundry list of things she would need to do before she could put the home on the market. Right now she was focused on flooring. Pretty much the entire thirty-five hundred square feet of the house had been done in a dated shag carpeting. So Shae’s life currently was taken up by flooring. Hardwood would’ve been ideal, but it was so temperamental and expensive. Instead, she’d chosen an upper-end vinyl. It didn’t have the class of hardwood, but the overall effect it would give once the home started showing would be priceless.

However, that didn’t make it any easier to actually install the stuff. Luckily the home was mostly empty of furniture, which meant there wasn’t a lot of heavy lifting required. She considered herself reasonably strong, but even she had her limits. If she needed a helping hand, there was a local handyman she could hire. He helped her prep the house, but the actual installation she was mostly doing by herself.