Page 22 of His Build

Graydon shook his head. “Nope. Windows and doors are coming in at the end of the week, and there’s no way they can come any earlier. I’m sure the tinters will be happy to come back over the weekend after those are in to make this right. That kid crossed a serious line.”

Lucy smiled and his chest fluttered like a schoolboy’s.

“Thanks again for your help. I got him to understand he made a mistake, but you threw the threat down.”

“Team effort,” Graydon said. “Led by you.”

She smiled, her cheeks going pink again, and they held each other’s gaze for what must have been a moment too long, because she looked abruptly out at the lake before turning back up to the path. “Well, I guess I don’t need to stick around—I have plenty of client work to take care of today.”

“Life coach by day, man slayer by… other day?”

She laughed. “Yep. Full Heart Coaching is my main gig. I launched it a few years after quitting designing.”

Full heart. That was appropriate.

Lucy glanced back up the path, as if thinking about getting going.

Graydon didn’t want her to leave yet. He scrambled for something to say to keep her here, just for a few minutes more. “Alfred said that was how he knew you.”

“Oh yeah?” She seemed surprised. “What else did he say about me?”

“He said you changed his life.”

Her eyes went wide at this. Then, to his shock, they grew wet. Tears.Shit.

“Oh! I’m sorry,” Graydon said, stepping towards her as if he would what—hand her a handkerchief? He held his hands up in front of him but didn’t know what to do with them, so he shoved them back into his pockets.

Lucy recovered quickly. “Sorry,” she said, wiping at her eyes with the heels of her hands. She was flushed again, but this time Graydon’s thoughts didn’t go directly to the physical—except for wanting to wrap her in his arms. He managed to resist.

“It’s just… sometimes I forget why I got into this business, you know? And coming out here, the last couple of days spent planning for this project, the fact that the site hasn’t been the nightmare it could have been…”

“Nightmare?”

She laughed, but there was no humor to the sound. “I’ve been on construction sites before. They can be a little… macho.”

“Oh,” he said, getting it completely. “Yeah, not on my watch. It’s one of the first thing I set straight with anyone working with me. Joking around is great. Victimizing isn’t. We have young people apprenticing on the job all the time and I have a responsibility to make them feel welcome.”

She was looking at him with her eyebrows up again. It wasn’t just her skin that was expressive. “Are you telling me you’re a woke contractor?”

Now it was his turn to laugh. “I don’t know about woke. I just… I wasn’t raised to worship that macho shit. My dad was a carpenter; he worked on sites too, and my mom would get so upset when she’d visit him and have to deal with it. It wasn’t all the time, but it was a lot. He hated it and told me all the time to not just do the ‘guy thing’ because that’s what guys do. He said it was our responsibility to change things.”

“Your parents sound like great people,” she said, and her smile was so sweet he hated knowing it would disappear when he had to do that awkward thing and tell her they were dead.

He hadn’t had to tell anyone that information in a long time.

Normally he rushed through it quick, saying something like, ‘they’re not here anymore, but it’s okay, it was a long time ago.’ But for some reason this time he nodded. He wanted her to know the truth. Maybe not all of it—he didn’t want to scare the crap out of her. But the truth about who his parents were.

“They were the best people.”

Her smile turned to something like compassion as she caught the past tense. And for the first time in a long time he didn’t feel awkward about it. Her look wasn’t one of pity, but of true understanding and caring.

He could tell the difference.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Are they both gone?”

He nodded. “Just over twenty years now.”

Lucy looked at him with such kindness he felt a knot growing in his throat.

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