Page 21 of Forty and Fighting Dirty
“Are you using the hammer action?” I leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb, enjoying the sight of her coming slightly unraveled.
Her eyes went squinty, the hostility in them clear, and then she glanced at the drill. “Hammer action,” she mused, tilting the tool this way and that. “What does that do?”
“Did Ollie explain anything to you before handing you that thing?”
“Keep Ollie out of this,” she said, still studying the drill. “He’s nice to me. Unlikeother peopleI’ve met in this town.”
Hearing her defend my cousin made discomfort slither through me. I hid it with a frustrated huff andtook the two steps required to close the distance between us. “Here,” I said, and flicked the hammer action on with the turn of a knob.
“Fabulous,” Piper said, and lifted the drill again.
“You sure you don’t want me to do this?”
“Thank you, no,” she said. “I’m the one wearing the safety glasses.” This time, when she started drilling, a thumping sound came along, and big pieces of concrete began flaking away. Piper screamed through bared teeth, pushing the drill until it jerked forward. She’d made it through the front wall of the concrete block.
But she’d been pushing too hard—or hadn’t expected to make it through so fast—because when the resistance on the drill bit suddenly ended, Piper wasn’t expecting it. She fell forward, her finger still pressing the trigger on the drill, her scream of determination turning to panic.
I jumped forward, grabbed the drill, reversed it out of the hole in a second, and set it aside. Then I turned and grabbed Piper’s shoulders. “Are you okay?”
Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes were wide. I could see the pulse fluttering in her neck. She could have hurt herself, and I didn’t like how much that scared me.
“Hammer action for the win,” she said, blowing a piece of hair out of her face.
I growled in frustration. My own heart was thumping a little harder than I liked. If she’d tripped, or if the drill had jumped, or if she’d dropped it on herself…
Why was I even thinking these things? Why did I care, other than the fact that she worked for me and I’d hate to have to pay workers’ compensation on an already tight budget? Butthe anxiety that had spiked inside me in that moment wasn’t about company finance projections.
I turned to the hole and blew out the concrete dust that had settled inside it. “Usually I just get it started with the hammer action, then once I’m partway through I flick it back to normal drilling.”
She straightened, scowling at me. “You could have mentioned that!”
“You seemed very intent on doing things your way.” I kicked a piece of concrete block that had flaked away from around her brand-new hole in the wall.
“Yes, well,” she said, then trailed off. With a huff, she opened the box of wall anchors and grabbed a new one, along with the hammer she’d set aside earlier. With gentle little taps, she fitted the anchor into the hole, then grabbed the drill again.
It only took one warning glare for me to understand she didn’t want my help, but I hovered nearby anyway. The woman was a danger to herself at least—and to society at worst. Crossing my arms, I leaned against the wall beside the door and watched her swap the masonry bit for a Phillips-head bit, and then she carefully screwed a screw partway into the anchor.
With the drill still firmly clutched in one hand, Piper tugged on the screw with the other. When it didn’t budge, she turned toward me and flashed me the biggest, most genuine smile I’d ever seen on her face so far. It only lasted a second, quickly replaced with a suspicious glare, but I saw it, and it was glorious.
For just a moment, I wondered how Piper treated people she trusted. I wondered if being afraid of her seeing through mymask so easily was stopping me from getting to know a truly amazing woman.
Then she announced, “You can leave now.”
“That’s all the thanks I get for helping you?”
She considered me for a moment then gave me the sharp smile that I liked almost as much as the big, bright, genuine one. “Yep!”
Huffing, I turned on my heel and went back to the office.
The drilling continued for some time, then was replaced by the scraping sounds of furniture moving, and finally a flickering of the lights in the office followed by a “Whoops! Sorry, folks!”
I was halfway out of my chair, determined to tell Piper to stop messing around and get to work, when my laptop chimed with a new email. It was habit that made me glance at the screen, and confusion that made me sit back down. The email was from the procurement and finance department’s head, Nora, and the subject line read: “Expense report for office fit-out, Piper Darling.”
I clicked the email, which, in Nora’s typical efficient fashion, only said, “FYI, see attached,” and then clicked the attachment.
“That little?—”
I stood up so fast my chair hit the back wall and was out of my office in seconds. Finding Nora at her desk, studying a multi-color, multi-page spreadsheet, I paused only long enough to say, “Come with me,” before stalking back across the office to where the noise of Piper Darling’s audacity had banged and scraped and drilled all day.
