Page 9 of A Dream for Daphne

He grinned. That had been part of the plan.

The same reason he had his sign at the front of the property where he was working. Not that many could see his work way back here, but they’d drive by and know he had been hired.

Just from the planting he’d done alone back in the spring and people seeing his sign driving by, he’d gotten some more calls.

The McGills carried a lot of clout in this area.

Might have to start hiring soon. He already had three more college kids working this summer than last.

“From your lips to the magic workers’ ears.”

It was a joke his father always used to say.

Mac looked up from the plans and then laughed.

“Let’s get to it. The guys are itching to start the machines up,” Mac said.

They’d spent most of the morning marking the spots they were going to dig. “Let me get Reese to verify the path is exactly where he wants it, then we can start. He already said the workaround the cabin to the back of the property was good when we are set to start in a few weeks.”

He was pretty much going to be covering most of the grounds. Ripping up the old path to the docks to have it match all the new work.

A path to what he’d been told was the nanny’s cabin, the work around that, then laying out the groundwork to put in a guest house on the property that was in the works.

It was like a fortress out here.

He could drive over to the barn, but it wasn’t that far to walk, so he took off in that direction.

The sun was shining, and he had sweat trickling down his back like he did on a daily basis, but it’d be worse if he was out there digging and hauling like his men.

He would be doing it soon enough, but most times he was walking around inspecting things. He had other jobs to deal with and check on too, and Mac was going to be in charge here while that was going on.

The barn door was open, music was blasting out of speakers, but it was doubtful anything was heard over the saws running.

When the saw shut off, Reese lifted his goggles. “Hey,” Reese said. “Need me for something?”

“If you’ve got a minute,” he said. “Just want to show you where we are digging the new paths before we break ground.”

“Sure,” Reese said, leaving his goggles on the counter.

The two of them left the barn and walked along the dirt paths that led from the barn to the house, he saw Reese’s daughter running around a fenced-in area and a woman pushing a stroller back and forth. Must be the nanny, but from a distance he couldn’t see much more than light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and a petite body in jeans shorts and a pink T-shirt.

Five minutes later, he asked, “Everything ready to go? The guys are itching to play with the toys.”

“Shit,” Reese said. “I don’t blame them. I’d want to do it too. It all looks great.”

“Perfect,” he said. “The plan is to rip it up in stages since it’s so big. No reason to have holes and dirt everywhere, especially if it rains. We’ll get your path from the house to the barn done first.”

“I appreciate that,” he said. “Then my wife won’t yell at me for bringing dirt in.”

He snorted. “I’ve heard that enough in my life from my mother.”

“It’s only dirt,” Reese said, shaking his head. “As I’ve said, it wipes up and washes off. My grandmother and mother were the worst. Poppy, she’s pretty good about it, but at least I won’t have to hear it anymore.”

He laughed over the way Reese rolled his eyes.

Abe had known Poppy as a kid. They were in school at the same time.

He knew the Bloom sisters' history too. Though Poppy had a massive multiple-million-dollar business now, those girls didn’t come from much.

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