Page 3 of Nailed

I swore.

Sarah deserved someone her own age, I reminded myself; someone with their future ahead of them. Not winding down like mine. My dream—which I was working on—was to move out of town, to my cabin in the woods. I’d already bought the land. To build fine things in my custom workshop. To drink my coffee on the porch with the roar of the Quince River behind the birdsong, and to one day be at peace with the people I’d lost and the ones I’d never find.

But I headed to Sarah’s anyway.

I was never not going to go.

CHAPTER2

Sarah

I’d just gotten the last of my bags in the trunk of my car and was still breathing hard at the effort when a truck turned off Maple Street and into my apartment building’s snow-covered outdoor parking lot. I didn’t recognize the vehicle, but when the window opened and a handsome face appeared, I grinned, wiping my brow with my sleeve.

“Ms. Cooper,” the man said, grinning back at me.

“Hey, Sam!”

Last week, our receptionist Cora Caplin had asked if I’d mind meeting her brother Sam, who was newly returned from a decade working overseas and keen to get into homebuilding. One of the things I’d miss about being Project Director at Reilly Contracting would be the constant stream of attractive men wooing me for jobs.

Sam hadn’t quite decided exactly what part of homebuilding he was interested in, and I wasn’t in charge of hiring labor anyway, but he’d still wanted to take me to lunch to pick my brain. Sam was smart, funny, and with his chocolate brown hair, blue eyes, and wide grin, he was definitely easy to look at. But besides it being a professional meeting, he was also nearly ten years younger than me, and, sadly, being around him hadn’t set off any sparks. Maybe if he was well over six feet with silver hair, a barrel chest, and a perma-scowl, I’d be attracted to him. Because apparently that was extremely my type.

I shoved thoughts of my grumpy boss—and the reason I was quitting—aside as Sam hopped out of his truck. I was already going to be spending a whole weekend with Jamie Reilly. I didn’t need him ruining my drive there, too.

“Thought I recognized that…” He hesitated.

“Shitkicker?” I offered. “And it’s Sarah. Please.” I’d told him that at lunch, but he apparently couldn’t shake his polite upbringing.

“I wasn’t gonna say it.”

I looked over at my trusty red Civic. “She may not be pretty, but Cruella’s outlasted a career change, business school, three jobs, and a husband.”

Soon to be four jobs.

Sam laughed. “Cruella?”

“My friend Winona named her. 101 Dalmatians. Tough as nails, but slightly evil. And sometimes has harebrained ideas.” Like blowing her radiator last summer with no warning halfway through a trip home to Ohio. I’d had to keep the heat on the whole way home to keep the engine cool enough. In July.

I could have bought a new car years ago, but I didn’t want to pour energy or resources into anything that wasn’t my career, or career adjacent, like Heartbreaker Trades, the women-in-trades passion project I was developing with Winona.

Sam nodded. “I like it. But you’re not really driving her all the way to Maine, are you?”

It was a six-hour drive from here to Crestville, Maine, where the conference was taking place.

“I just got a tune-up. Plus, it’s not supposed to snow on the route today. I’ll be fine.” I neglected to mention the mechanic had warned me that no amount of tuning up could prevent the car from experiencing a catastrophic failure; likely soon.

Sam looked truly concerned as he scanned Cruella’s faded red paneling. “The roads can get pretty hairy this time of year.”

I walked around Cruella to sweep off my rear window. He was sweet. “I’ll be fine. I’ve got my cell charged up and an emergency bag in the back in case anything goes wrong. Which it won’t. Besides, I’m behind on my podcasts.”

Sam looked at me warily but nodded, clearly not wanting to counter someone in a position to hire him someday.

I cleared the last of the snow from my rear window and tossed the brush in the trunk next to my bags. Then I remembered I’d left my phone adapter in my suitcase.

I could sense Sam hemming and hawing about something. “Did you come by for something specific, Sam?” Still rooting around in my luggage, I looked pointedly into his baby blues. Yes, a woman who had better luck juggling a career and a love life than me would be very lucky to be with him one day.

Sam clenched his cap in his hands. “Well, no, I was driving by and happened to see you out here. But I was thinking about what you said about networking.”

“Oh yeah?”

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