by Eden Rayna
“Permanently moved in or getting it ready to sell?”
Brett’s a real estate agent and fucking crazy if he thinks he’s going to be listing the house for her. That home will not hit the open market until I’m the one selling it.
“Seems permanent.”
I miss my shot and lean along the wall with Greg while Scott chalks his cue.
Jenn, the usual Saturday night server, hands me my Tool Shed Flat Cap Stout with a smile that says more than here you go. After delivering everyone else’s drinks and sauntering away, Brett tips his chin in her direction. “Since you’re not interested, mind if I tell her I am?”
“Suit yourself.”
I’ve never said that phrase before, but it’s been playing on a loop in my head since Iris Jr. said it to me after boosting her truck. I keep having these thoughts about wanting to help her, but every time I offer, she shrugs and tells me to suit myself. It’s like I’m projecting my aloofness on to her, and I don’t like it. I’d rather she become the block party coordinator—that way I’d have a good reason to avoid her. Grounds to stop dreaming up ways I can be useful to her. Especially ways that have nothing to do with the constant erection I sport.
“Suit yourself?” Greg squints at me, asking where that phrase comes from. I offer my usual silent response.
Scott misses his shot and takes the frustration out on me. “Iris Jr. is ruining his intentions to build a house on every lot on the east side of 16a Street. The fate of the Shrine to Owen rests in the hands of his sexy neighbour.”
I have never called her sexy.
He misreads my black expression. “Yeah, I’ve dubbed 16a your street.”
I’m not a boastful guy. I’m the opposite in fact, and I’d rather fly under the radar most days. Fewer conversations to have that way.
“Pops wanted that place,” I say.
Work on 16A started long before I was at the helm. A collective moment of reflection is offered for the man who mentored all of us in our young careers. “And I promised Tommy he could help with it.”
Tommy is my Little Brother—in the volunteer sense, not the biological one. The agency tells Big Brothers and Sisters to never make promises because some of these kids are so used to being disappointed that it erodes the relationship we’re trying to build.
I did it anyway. I was sure that once Iris passed, the home would be put on sale and I would be the one to buy it. Scott, who’s also my project manager, doesn’t know this, but I offered Iris more than market value so I could make it happen for the two most important people in my life—even though one of them will never realise it happened. It didn’t cross my mind that someone in Iris’ family would want to keep that old shack.
Iris Jr. came along and fucked up my plan. I completely misjudged her. It’s going to take a hell of a lot more to get her to sell than I thought.
She loves that house. She loves the memories that place holds and the memories she thinks she’s going to make there. No amount of money can sway a person who’s that emotionally invested in their property. She needs a reason to leave that’s better than the one making her stay and I haven’t identified what that is. Yet.
I miss my shot by a mile because my focus is elsewhere.
“Iris Jr. might be worse than the original Iris,” I say, and all the guys snicker.
“Is that really her name?” Brett asks for everyone.
“Don’t know her name.” I grab my beer and stare into it to avoid the six eyes on me.
“What do you mean?” Scott asks, perplexed. “You never thought to ask when you showed up uninvited to Iris’ funeral?”
I shake my head.
“Or when you helped her with the truck?”
I shrug that off too.
Scott pulls out his phone and types. “I’ll get it from the registries on Monday. You know,” his lips shut in a straight line, “you could have done that. It is a public registry.”
“If I did your job, then what would you do?”
SCOTT LETS HIMSELF into the house Monday afternoon with a shit-eating grin on his face and a stack of rolled-up papers in his hand.
“’Afternoon, boss,” he chirps.
I hate it when he calls me that. I may be the one who signs his pay cheque, but we were friends first and that’s more important to me.
I’m sitting at the kitchen counter drinking my coffee, flipping through plans for the upstairs lighting. Either I’m having an issue with basic electrical drawings, or the designer screwed up. Again.
I’ve been working with this design firm for a few years now. Well, one designer in particular from this firm. Unfortunately, Claire left the city, and I haven’t been able to find anyone else who I like working with. They’re all amateur. Claire knew my style, and she knew how I liked things done without having to ask me a million questions. The new guy should ask me a million questions, yet he doesn’t. He’s clueless and still somehow has enough ego to fill both sides of this duplex. Worse is that he’s disappointing clients and I had one family recently fire him.
“Look at this.” I slide the plans to Scott and point to the wall switches, then drag my finger to the placement of the lights in the ceiling.
Scott shakes his head. “Naw, that’s wrong. That one needs to be a two-way and that needs to be a three-way.” He points at two different walls.
I circle them in red then make a note in my file under “New Guy’s fuck-ups.” I understand human error, at the same time, I don’t tolerate it. Pops created a standard for Black Ladder homes, and it won’t deteriorate on my watch.
I shift the plans to the far side of the island to make room for the papers Scott holds. He unrolls them and flattens them out in front of me. The first page is an invoice and I slide it away without reading it. The second one is the same. After a cursory glance at the third page, I look at Scott, annoyed. I don’t deal with invoices until Saturday. He knows that.
With a half-witted grin, he shuffles some pages aside until he comes to a printout from the registries' office. I know exactly where to check on the page for the information he’s presenting me.
“Isabella?” I say her name as though it leaves a foul taste in my mouth.
“What, you don’t think that’s right?” Scott asks.
It isn’t unheard of, but Land Titles rarely makes mistakes on the names of deed owners.
“Doesn’t suit her.”
Scott moves around the island to stand in front of me. That’s his style of telling me I need to explain. I don’t want to clarify, but his dumbass grin says he thinks I’ve been spending time dreaming up names for her.
“Isabellas are princesses. Iris Jr. is not a princess.” Although she did describe wanting to live out a fairy tale life next-door.
“How do you know? Been following her around town, seeing what she does all day long?”
“Fuck off.” I’m far from relationship material, but I’m not a deviant, either. At most, I peered over the fence to make sure she was okay after falling off the deck. And one more time in the middle of the night when she insanely slept outside in a neighbourhood that she knows nothing about.
Scott pours himself a coffee and tops off my mug before returning the carafe to the coffee maker.
“On her first night in the house, she slept in the backyard.”
Scott chokes on the sip of coffee, then circles back to his earlier question. “But you’re not stalking her.” He slow-talks me.
“I was outside having a beer and I heard her talking with her cousin. They got stoned and slept outside.”
Scott stifles a second laugh. “Definitely not a princess.” He leans against the sink on the far side of the kitchen and crosses his bulging arms over his massive chest. “Princesses don’t get high and sleep in tents.”
“No tent,” I say.
“Huh?”
“Just sleeping bags and toques.”
I bet she wore next to nothing in that sleeping bag. Nothing but a white ribbed tank top and simple white cot
ton panties, nipples peaked with the chilly night air, fingers tucked between her thighs to stay warm.
I pull the plans towards me before I growl out loud. I need to focus on something else.
Scott laughs again. “You’ve got a problem.” He strides around and pats me on the shoulder. I grunt in agreement. I have many problems and they all stem from one person.
“I haven’t told Tommy that we aren’t getting the house.”
I’ve never been in a position where I wasn’t able to get what I want and what’s best for Black Ladder. Then again, I always had Pops to guide me through the difficult deals. I could really use him on this one. He’d know what to say to me, to Iris Jr.—I won’t be calling her Isabella—and to Tommy so that we all end up happy.
Tommy and I have been creating different designs for that lot. I’ve been walking him through the full process, right from the beginning with land surveillance and city permitting. I thought it would be a struggle to get him interested, that he’d balk at all the rules that have to be followed and the thousands of steps in each stage. He proved me wrong. He’s been engaged in each aspect, asking great questions and providing a creative perspective that only fresh eyes can—like putting a rocket launchpad in the backyard. It was no easy feat drawing up the permits for that feature.
I wonder if Pops felt the same way when he started letting me work on plans with him. If he felt the pride as I do when Tommy catches a planted mistake and the joy when Tommy solves a problem.
“The kid’s not the issue.” Scott pats my back again, prepping me for something worse than letting my Little Brother down. “You like her.”
I shrug his hand off me. His eyebrows rise, waiting for me to provide a better reason. “My problem is that a princess would be easier than the tigress next-door.” I never thought I would hear myself say that. I’ve dealt with a lot of high maintenance clients before, and believe me, they’re far from easy.
“Speaking of which, I’m off to the Morrow place to check on progress. I’m hoping to get there before Mrs. Morrow comes for her daily inspection.”
I grunt goodbye and set my sights on the plans in front of me, thinking I might need a better plan of my own to deal with Princess.
Chapter 7
Izzy
This week has been impressively productive. I finalised the designs on two projects and landed a new client, thanks to word-of-mouth from a job I did a couple years ago. And I’m down to the last of Gran’s junk drawers to go through.
I pull the last drawer open in the kitchen—that ubiquitous drawer in every house that collects coupons and business cards and pads of paper from real estate agents. I upend its contents into a massive pile on the kitchen table, then drag the garbage bin behind me and sit to start the sorting process, which isn’t hard, as most of it is easily trashed without thought. There are, however, business cards from one company that pique my interest. Black Ladder Developments, Custom Home Builders. After all the grandstanding, could Gran have been considering selling?
Each one has a date written in Gran’s curly script. The cards from the bottom of the drawer, which ended up on top of the pile as I dumped it, are dated from a little over two years ago. The logo looks familiar, but I can’t place where I’ve seen it before. With the number of builders I work with or have met in passing, that doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is the sheer number of them.
Fifteen.
The only reason to have this many interactions with the same builder was if she was seriously considering selling. Which she wasn’t. She promised me this place would be mine, and I promised her never to sell it.
Unless . . .
This is the reason she thought people were trying to steal her home. Fifteen times, Black Ladder came knocking on her door.
Her rants about being heckled were more than her opinionated and sharp-tongued way of communicating. This was harassment. I should have put more stock into what Gran said about the house thieves. Why didn’t she show me these when I visited? If I had seen the evidence, I would have done something about it.
Angry tears prick at the corner of my eyes. I’m furious with Black Ladder, but I’m mostly disappointed in myself for ignoring her fears. All the times she said that she was worried someone was going saw her house off the foundation and put it on a flatbed truck then haul it away to a farm in Northern Alberta while she slept in the bedroom upstairs, I brushed off as her being her usual, derisive self. I put it up there with blaming Glynnis for the syphilis outbreak at her seniors’ residence, and the certainty of a lurking hearse every time she got a flyer from a funeral home in her mailbox.
With this, though, she wasn’t joking. Black Ladder legitimately scared her.
I blink several times to clear my sight and focus on the business cards and dates again, flipping them from Gran’s writing over to read the employee names. Iain MacLeod is the primary culprit, there’s also one from a project manager, Scott Preston, and finally, a letter from Black Ladder, according to the stationary. I don’t read the contents, instead, I scan right to the bottom to know who signed it.
That can’t be.
I pull up the website, disbelieving of the name I see and the logo I now recognise. My hand shakes so violently that the letter flies free and lands on the floor, skittering to a halt at the base of the cabinets.
Owen MacLeod.
The logo that graces the lawn next-door.
Gran told me that the builder who wanted to buy her house lived on her street. She also told me he went to the community association meetings to update everyone on his projects. She never told me his name, but it has to be the same guy. Carhartts. Works from home. Unhappy that I’m renovating.
Owen made it sound like he was watching out for Gran. What did he say to me? I close my eyes and picture where we were standing when he came to the funeral reception. Beside the couch, Kelsey to his left, Asher on my arm. I hear his voice, his short sentences, his flat tone. “Keeping an eye on her.” My misinterpretation couldn’t be wilder. He wasn’t looking out for her; he was looking out for himself.
It all makes sense now. Helping me move in, boosting the truck. Same approach, different target. The things I thought I was imagining—the judgemental grimaces he gave me about my appearance, the frustration that I was moving Gran’s stuff to storage—were real after all. He’s shifted his focus from Gran to me while staying the course to get what he wants: my home.
I double over, putting my head between my knees to catch my breath. I should have paid better attention to his attitude and less to his appearance. I was attracted to him. I had sinful dreams about his calloused fingers running across my bare skin. I’ve given myself countless orgasms in the past few days, thinking of him taking me in every one of these rooms before I knock down the walls.
On shaky legs, I retrieve the paper from the floor. It’s dated three weeks before Gran went into the hospital. My eyes mist over again. Until her last moment, he was bothering her.
My jaw aches from the tension building in my bones. I let him into my house. Into Gran’s house. I tried being friendly to him when he did nothing but harass my grandmother.
I swipe away the tears and read the letter from his company. I scan the offer to purchase, then read it for a second time with more purpose. I know what this place is worth. I’ve worked in many homes in this old neighbourhood. It pains me that the offer is a good one. It’s above what Gran would get if it went on the open market. And the terms are fair; no inspection—obviously since it’s a teardown—and a 90-day possession with moving assistance.
I call Kelsey. Someone needs to help decide where to go from here. Gran was just as much her family as mine, and she should have a say.
“The balls on that guy. What are you thinking?” she asks after I give her the rundown on what I found.
I lean back in my chair, tapping the folded letter against the table. “I could tell him to fuck off.” From the little I know of him, I doubt this would have any effect, as I’m sur
e people do that multiple times a day. “I could counter his offer with one of my own.” After all these years of effort, I bet he’d pay more than what he offered only to claim victory. “I could sell to someone else.” I say this one with a chuckle—it’s my favoured option, if solely for spite value. “Or I could ignore him and go about my life. Just like Gran did.” Soon enough, he’ll sell his current project and move to another street, departing from my life for good.
“From the way you said that last one, it sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.” Kelsey knows me so well.
“Yeah, but if you want me to go in another direction, I will.” I’ll consider it, at least.
“The house is yours, Iz. Do what you want,” she says sincerely.
The problem is, what I want and what is best rarely line up. I tend to get emotional and can’t see situations clearly—although I’d never admit that to Kelsey. Her icy heart thinks my affective personality is a flaw.
“You think I should sell.” I push her to tell me what she’d do in this circumstance. Kelsey thinks this project is way too big for me.
“I never said that. But I believe you missed an option. What if you hire Owen to do the renos? Less stress on you to be perfect and no headache from him because he’s making money.”
Surely she’s joking. Why would I pay someone—him, no less—when I have access to all the same trades and can use people I trust?
“You’re crazy,” I tell her. Talking to her was useless. “I’m going with my gut.”
AFTER A CUP OF TEA in one of Gran’s teacups to calm myself, I busy myself in a blur of sketching plans, making notes and thumbing through paint chips and fabric swatches. Asher’s coming by to discuss my wants versus needs, and I don’t want to waste his time dwelling on my asshole next-door issue.
Gran’s fifteen-hundred square foot house stands short and proud amidst two brand-new, three-storey semi-detached infills. The neighbourhood has undergone many changes since she moved to Calgary in the 1950s. She and Gramps were the first to live in this house. Now it acts as a reminder of what the city was like nearly seventy years ago and is one of the few houses of its kind left on the block.
