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I bit my tongue, feeling a tiny bit snippy and irritable, and instead moved the chair just slightly away from him and sat in it, peering at the screen. It was a spreadsheet, filled with projects, costs, calculations and estimates. It reminded me of my job—I’d been in finance my whole life. My fingers itched to take the mouse and keyboard, to analyze his work, to make it better, more precise. But I sat still, my hands in my lap. “What’s this?”
“I was just trying to get us organized, figure out how best to apply the renovation funds to all the things that need doing in the house.”
“I see.” That was smart. That was exactly what needed doing. I sighed. I felt useless once again, and it reminded me of everything else in my life—living in limbo here in Singletree, Luke, who had clearly moved on to something or someone better, and my job, which I really needed to check on. I was used to being the person who did the things that needed doing. Now somehow I’d been relegated to incapable of blowing up camping mattresses and watching other people build spreadsheets. Maybe I was somehow overreacting, but it felt warranted. I was tired of having to depend on everyone else.
“This is the list of projects here, and they’re broken into sub-projects, with estimates where I got them from inspectors who came in to look or who I spoke to on the phone over the last couple days. And then here are some of the estimates I made myself”—he pointed to another column—“and this stuff here is pure guesswork.”
“You did all this yourself?” My voice was flat, emotionless. Useless. I did not want to be so useless.
Michael turned to look at me, those dark blue eyes open and friendly—until they met mine. “Are you angry about something?”
“You know this is basically what I do for work, right?” Of course he didn’t. Why would he know that?
“Renovate ancient houses?” A tiny smile lifted the corners of his mouth, but even his charm couldn’t charm me out of the bad mood I’d worked myself into.
“No, analyze and valuate companies. Organize budgets and estimates. Calculate risk based on numbers.” My voice was cold, partly because the indignant and overconfident career woman inside me wished she had done this work, or been asked to, but partly because having that part of me rear up, angry and possessive, was confusing.
“I didn’t know that.”
“You just went ahead without me.” I stared at his work. “There’s an error here.” I pointed to the screen.
“Oh,” he said, leaning in closer. “Yeah. Thanks.” He fixed the number and then turned to face me, worry written in the wrinkle between his dark red brows. “Listen, Addison. We’re going to have to work together. And agree on things.”
“Yes.”
“So if you’re pissed at something I’ve done already, I guess you should tell me and we’ll figure it out.”
I let out a long breath. I wasn’t mad at him, not really. I was unhappy with the situation, with everything external to this, and a little bit with this. “I think I’m frustrated about a lot of things. Things that maybe don’t have to do with this.” I waved my hand at the laptop. “But also, I want to be real partners. We’re in this together, right?” I let my eyes find his, and the warmth and patience I found there took a bit of the steam out of my anger.
“Right, and I was trying to offer something to the team, to bring some value, get us started.” He was being patient and kind, and I felt like I was in the middle of some kind of mild adult tantrum.
I sighed. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Fine.”
“In my experience, when a woman says ‘fine,’ it’s like an iceberg.”
I narrowed my eyes and jutted my head forward, furrowing my brows. “What?”
“Fine is just the tip. Everything looming below that fine is so not fine it’ll sink you.”
“Well, we’re as fine as we’re going to be for now,” I said, leaning back and crossing my arms. “If you really want to get into icebergs and whatever other Titanic references you need to bring up, we can do it tomorrow. I’m grumpy and not in the mood for allusions to enormous chunks of floating sea ice.”
He tilted his head sideways, just a tad. “Bad day?”
I let my eyes slide shut, reeling the day back to my argument with Mom, who had made herself into a human doorstop and literally refused to let me out of the Tin when I told her I would be sleeping somewhere else from then on. “Lottie doesn’t like this idea at all.”
“Not shocked. My uncle was pretty pissed about it too, though he seemed to think it would be a good chance for me to kill you off, make it look like a freak construction accident, and collect the property for the Tucker clan.” He shook his head as my blood turned to ice in my veins. I hadn’t even thought of that. I narrowed my eyes, evaluating him the best I could. From what I could read on his face, he didn’t seem to be buying into that plan.
“If you did that, my evil cousins would probably come out of feud retirement.” I had two distant cousins on Mom’s side—Eunice and Esther, who were both over seventy, unmarried, and united in their hatred of the Tucker clan. But since Eunice’s fall last time they were spray painting “Tuckers are Fuckers” in the road in front of Michael’s feed and farm store, they’d declared themselves too old to carry on with tradition.
“How’s Eunice’s hip?” He actually sounded concerned. After seeing him with Mrs. Easter, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that he’d been kind to Aunt Eunice that day, despite her evil intentions.
“She uses a walker now,” I said, shrugging. “It was nice of you to call the ambulance.”
“Discovering old ladies who’ve fallen in the street is kind of becoming my thing,” he said, closing the laptop and smiling. “Eunice fell on top of the ‘F’ she’d just finished painting, so at first I didn’t realize exactly what the girls were up to.”
