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“Why would I care about that? We live in the twenty-first century. Young women are allowed to experiment before marriage without being cast out of their families and society.”

“I’m not getting into that conversation with you.” I laugh, spinning my chair back around toward my computer. After spending fifteen minutes on the phone rescheduling the appraisal for later in the week, I put on my coat and grab my purse, then tell my mom I love her before I leave the office and head out to my car.

Taking a minute before I put the key in the ignition, I send Wyatt a text to let him know what is going on with the appraisal and that I’m heading over to the house to see exactly what is going on. Not surprisingly, since he never takes long to get back to me even when he’s at work, he asks if I want him to meet me. I debate it for a minute before I text him back that I’ve got it covered. If he was off today, I would probably say yes, but he has a job to do, and it’s not fair for me to pull him away from that.

It doesn’t take me long at all to make it over to Lavender Hill, and when I pull up in front of the house, there are two cars and four work trucks out front, the trucks all marked with the same construction company logo on the side. There is also a huge pile of broken-up drywall that looks wet, along with some wood.

I don’t get a warm, fuzzy feeling seeing it. Sure, I like that things are being fixed, but that pile and the four work trucks here imply that there must be some major damage inside. Getting out of my car, I leave my bag but take my cell phone with me and walk up to the porch, where the front door is wide open. The first thing I notice when I step into the house is that there is an odd buzzing sound filling the air, and I can hear multiple voices coming from down the hall. I head in their direction, looking into rooms, noticing that everything looks exactly like it did the last time I was here with the inspector. But that all changes when I step into the kitchen.

The entire ceiling in the room is missing down to the studs, and I can see into the bathroom above because the floor has been cut out. And the buzzing sound is coming from three huge fans in the room.

I must gasp or make a noise, because the men in the room all turn to look at me at the same time. “What happened?”

“The bathroom upstairs flooded, and as water tends to do, it ran through the floor to the kitchen down here,” a very attractive man with dark hair and a beard to match says as he walks toward me carrying a ladder.

“How is that even possible?” I whisper, stunned by the amount of damage. Even the drywall on one of the walls is missing near the back door.

“That’s what we’d like to know,” an older gentleman says.

“How much damage is there upstairs?” I ask, and the guy with the ladder scans me from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.

“Can I ask who you are?”

“Sorry, of course, Genevieve Fenwick.” I hold out my hand, hoping that I don’t get myself into trouble, because technically I shouldn’t be in the house without Linda knowing, and I didn’t tell her I was planning on stopping by today.

“Maddox,” he mutters, letting my hand go.

“My client is purchasing this house, and we were supposed to have our appraisal today. How long do you think it’s going to take to fix all this?” I ask him while scanning the room once more.

“Most of the damage was contained to this area and the bathroom. We’ve removed everything that couldn’t be salvaged and gave it a couple days to dry out. Today we are going to replace the floor upstairs and get that bathroom up and running and start on the drywall down here. That’s going to probably take today and tomorrow to finish.”

“I’m guessing that this won’t all be done by the end of the week?”

“We’re going to do our best to get this done quickly, but I’m not big on cutting corners to rush a job,” he tells me, seeming almost annoyed, and I wonder if Linda has been putting pressure on him to get this finished.

“And I appreciate that,” I tell him as I hear footsteps approaching. Turning, I see a very pretty woman who looks about my age or maybe a couple years older, with red hair and startling green eyes, coming down the hall, and when she sees me, her footsteps falter.

“Uh, can I help you?”

“Hi.” I step toward her. “I’m Genevieve Fenwick. My client is purchasing this house.”

“Oh.” She looks stricken. “Linda didn’t tell me that you were coming by.” Oh, thank god she’s not Linda.

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I was in the area, so I stopped by to check on things.” The lie is ridiculous—no one would be in the area unless they lived out here, and there is only one house on this road.

“It’s okay.” She looks past me, biting her lip, then lets it go and meets my gaze once more. “As you can see, we had a leak, but I promise we are getting it fixed and it will be as good as new by the end of the week.”

“I really appreciate you getting this taken care of,” I tell her, and her shoulders slump ever so slightly, like she’s relieved.

“I’m really sorry about this. I know that this kind of problem doesn’t look good when you’re selling.”

“It’s all right. Accidents happen, and it looks like your guys know what they are doing, so it’s not a big deal,” I say, then remember what Linda said about the brother not wanting to sell the house, and I’m sure that any setback is making her more stressed. “Anyways.” I smile. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Okay,” she says as I step around her.

“It was nice meeting you.”

“You too.” She watches me leave, and when I exit through the front door, there is a guy standing on the porch, smoking a cigarette while glaring at the vehicles parked in front of the house.