I knew that. It was one thing my dad and I had argued about when I first came to work here. But it wasn’t something I was eager to discuss with Grant. Not now. Not this soon after he barged into my dad’s office and took it over.
“We have to be careful about how we go about doing something like that.”
“I know. That’s why I want you to make me a list of the employees you would be most comfortable with letting go. Those close to retirement that we can offer an early pension to. Those who just started here and have a good chance of finding something else quickly. I’m no more interested than you are in putting people out on the street who won’t be able to take care of themselves without this job.”
I wanted to believe that. I did. But it was so hard to know from day to day which Grant I was getting—the one who had a kind heart and always wanted to do the right thing, or the one who left me sitting alone in a diner because my father had paid him off.
“Anything else, boss?”
He studied my face for a long moment. Then he touched me, his fingertips moving slowly over the curve of my jaw.
“We’re in this together, like it or not. Is it really necessary to build up this wall between us?”
“I don’t know,” I said, speaking the most honest words I could possibly offer him. “I really don’t know. All of this is happening so fast…”
“I never lied to you, Addie. I just never told you the entire truth. I didn’t know how.”
“You walked away from me. No note, no phone call, no good-bye. You just left.”
“I didn’t want to do it that way, but your father—”
“I don’t really want to know.” I touched his chest, unable to help myself. “I’d rather have been the one to walk away this time, but you’ve tied my hands. But that doesn’t mean that whatever happened between us in the past, or even this past week, has to continue. You’re my boss. I’m your COO. That’s all.”
Pain danced in his eyes, but he simply nodded.
“Pick me up at six tomorrow morning. I want to hit all the sites before noon.”
“Okay.”
I walked out, aware of Rebecca watching me with naked curiosity. The childish part of me wanted to turn around and stick my tongue out at her. But, of course, I didn’t.
I was a grown-up. It was time to act like one.
Chapter 12
He was waiting on the sidewalk in front of his building when I pulled up ten minutes late. I’d been up half the night going over the financials he’d sent to my office, still trying to figure out what he was up to and how to use his accounts to pay up what the company owed all its suppliers. Joseph camped out at my office for hours trying to help me, but in the end it proved to be easier to do it myself.
This morning, money had been sent to most of our creditors’ accounts. On Monday, we should be up to par on everything, and there should be no delay in construction supplies for our ongoing projects. It was the first time in over a year I could actually say that.
He climbed into the cab of my truck dressed in jeans and heavy work boots that looked a lot like the ones he wore when we first met. In fact…was that a paint stain on the side of that boot?
“You have the same boots you wore seven years ago?”
“I don’t throw things away.”
“But they look…”
I remember staring at those boots on our first date. He was running late because they were behind schedule on the site and the foreman made everyone stay until they’d gotten done what he laid out for them to do that night. Even broke out the floodlights so they could work in the dark. I was upset because I’d thought he stood me up, then I was embarrassed to have gotten so worked up over something so stupid. So I stared at those boots, imagining the dozens of different ways he could have gotten that stain on the toe of the left one.
“Where to first?” I asked before he could follow my train of thought and figure out what I was doing.
I could tell by the way he looked at me, though, that he knew. Much to his credit, he let it go.
“How about the south side first?”
I put the truck into gear and pulled out slowly. It was so early on a Saturday morning that most of the city was still asleep. We hit some traffic, but not as much as we might have later in the day. A few joggers, too. But, mostly, it was just him and me and the news on the radio.
“I made a list of those employees,” I said when I couldn’t stand the lack of conversation a moment longer. “I e-mailed it to the address on your business card.”
“I got it. We’ll go over it together on Monday after the meeting.”
“And I made payments to most of our creditors.”
“Good.”
“I have a meeting with Burt tomorrow afternoon.”
“You don’t have to report your every movement to me, Addison,” he said, dragging his fingers through his hair with this weary movement that suggested he got as much sleep last night as I did.
“You’re the boss. I just thought—”
“I trust you. I’m sure you’ll do what I asked you to do.”
He sounded weary. Distracted. I glanced at him, but he was staring straight ahead as though he was more interested in where we were going than who was in the truck with him. It shouldn’t have, but it bothered me.
We pulled up to the first site and went to work. I showed him around, introduced him to the foreman, and stood back while he asked all the right questions. Mr. Philips had said that his client knew very little about running a construction company. But Grant clearly remembered what it was like to be on a construction site, and he had obviously done enough research to know what he was looking at, what he was talking about, and what was going on around him.
It was that way at all five of the sites. I just watched, grudgingly admitting to myself that if we had to sell the business, if we had to walk away, we’d done well selling it to Grant.
“Hey, Addison,” Billy called as we were leaving the last site.
“Billy,” I said, retracing my steps to give him a big hug. “I thought you were on the Teller Street project.”
“I am. I just came over here to give the guys a hand.”
I shook my head. “You have the day off. You should be at home.”
“What’s a day off?”
He laughed, but then he focused on Grant, his eyes narrowing slightly as he took in his presence. “So you bought the place, huh?”
“Where did you hear that?” Grant asked.
“I hear things.” Billy took my hand and squeezed like a parent might do. “You didn’t mention anything about it when you were here before.”
“Had to keep it quiet. Didn’t want word to get around before the deal was done.”
Billy inclined his head slightly, his eyes moving over me. “Your dad—he get a good deal?”
I glanced at Grant before turning to Billy, a forced smile on my lips. “Grant’s going to save the company, Billy. That’s what matters now.”
“Your dad gave me a job when I desperately needed it. Never looked at my resume, never batted an eye when I told him I’d been in prison. Just handed me a tool belt and told me to get to work. He’s a good man.”
“He is,” I agreed.
“Did he get what he deserved out of this deal?”
I nodded, the fake smile gone. I could never lie to Billy. He was a living lie detector. He could tell when I was lying even over the telephone. He was the first to realize Grant and I were seeing each other all those years ago, because of the way I talked about him, I suppose. Or maybe it was as simple as the way I looked at him.
“He most definitely did,” Grant said.
His eyes were on me as he said it. The look in his eyes dared me to argue with him. And I wanted to, but how could I? My dad agreed to this deal, so even if I thought it was wrong—though I wasn’t sure I did—there was nothing I could do about it.
Billy seemed relieved. He smiled as he took my hand and one of Grant’s.
&n
bsp; “And the two of you, back together. That’s nice.”
I shifted on my feet a little. “We’re working together, Billy. That’s all.”
“Yes, well, time spent together will bring you back to each other. You wait and see.” He squeezed my hand and leaned into me. “I always knew the two of you were meant to be.”
I glanced at Grant, who was watching me with that same thoughtfulness.
I pulled away. “We should really get back to work.”
I kissed Billy’s cheek and walked away, expecting Grant to follow close behind. But he stayed with Billy, talking about something I couldn’t hear. Business, I assumed. But part of me suspected that it was something else. Grant and Billy had been close. Grant started working for Berryman Construction fresh out of high school. Billy took him under his wing, not only taught him how to hang drywall quickly and efficiently, but taught him how the world worked, too. If Billy was a father figure to me, he was very much a father to Grant, too.
I climbed into the truck and waited. A few minutes turned into ten minutes. Billy was animated in the way he was talking to Grant. Grant, though, stood quietly and listened, reminding me of all the times I’d observed them together on the construction site all those years ago. Grant was cutting drywall in the mud the first time I ever saw him, but then Billy walked up. They were standing exactly like they were now.
“Who is that?” I asked my dad.
“I don’t know. One of the drywall workers.” He handed me a clipboard. “He’s been with us for three or four years.”
“And you don’t know his name?”
“There was once a time when I knew all their names. But that was back before we had more than three hundred employees.”
“Billy seems to like him.”
“That’s probably why he’s been with us for three or four years. Billy trains them well.”
I watched them, the way Billy talked to him, the way he bent his head a little so that he could hear Billy. There was respect in the way he watched the older man. I wandered over there even though my dad had told me to stay close to him when we were on a site. I’d been coming to the sites since I was a little girl, but I usually stayed in the truck. I’d been working with my dad for only a few months now, mostly in the office. This was the first time he brought me out to the site, the first time he let me walk with him among the organized chaos, and I was already breaking the rules. But I was curious about this tall, dark-haired man.
“Hi, Billy!”
Billy’s face beamed as he turned toward me. “Miss Addison,” he said with something like reverence.
I smiled, but my eyes were on the stranger. Billy must have seen that, because he immediately gestured to him. “This is Grant McGraw,” he said. “One of our best drywallers.”
I inclined my head. But before I could speak, my dad was behind me.
“Addie, you’re to stay with me, remember?”
And he was pulling me away.
Never spoke a word to Grant. But the way he looked at me…I would never forget that moment. And when he asked me to the movies a week later, I was gone. I would have run away with him then. I was so naïve; I thought nothing else mattered but that look. Maybe it was because there had never been anyone else. No one in high school was interested in the little, awkward girl who knew more about framing a house than popular culture. Or maybe it was because I was so desperate to be loved…I don’t know. Whatever it was, Grant had this power over me that had yet to fade.
I watched him as he climbed into the truck, tension in his shoulders. Whatever he and Billy had talked about, he was upset about it.
“Back to your place?”
“Do you have time for lunch? I think there are a few things we should discuss.”
I just nodded, throwing the truck into gear and heading back downtown. I didn’t even ask. I automatically went to this little diner tucked into a small, residential neighborhood where my dad used to take me all the time when I worked with him. The waitress, an older woman with bright red hair, smiled when she saw me.
“Addison,” she said. “It’s been a while.”
“Things have been a little slow.”
“It’s spring now. Should be picking up.”
“Should be.”
I slid into a booth at the back of the dining room and Grant followed, slipping in across from me.
“They know you here.”
“My dad and I used to have lunch here several times a week when I first went to work for Berryman Construction.”
“You went right to work with your dad after leaving Yale?”
I shrugged. “What else was I going to do?”
“You have an Ivy League education. You could do just about anything.”
“Maybe. But this company is my legacy.”
“Is it really that important to you?”
“How could you not know that?”
He bit his bottom lip as he watched me, then his eyes dropped to the tabletop. “I suppose I should have.”
We ordered when the waitress came back over, coffee in a carafe for our cups. When she was gone again, I poured myself some of the dark magic and sipped at it.
“What did you want to talk about?”
“I think we could make a few changes in the materials we use on these sites.”
My eyebrows rose. “We use top-of-the-line materials.”
“And some of those could be a little more environmentally friendly.”
“We follow guidelines.”
“Could do more, though.”
I shrugged. “I talked to my dad about that sort of thing. He thought it would be more expensive because we would have to train our workers how to use those new materials.”
“I think it would be worth it in the long run. Make us more acceptable to some of these clients who want to think they’re reducing their environmental footprint, or whatever they call it.”
“These clients you’re talking about seducing? Are there some of those among them?”
“Yes.”
I picked up my coffee cup again, took another long sip. “If you can get Billy onboard…”
“Yeah, well, I was kind of hoping you could do that. He’s a little peeved with me at the moment.”
I muffled a giggle. “Peeved?”
“He thinks I should have allowed your father a position with the company when I bought it.”
“Why?”
Grant hesitated. He picked at something sticky on the tabletop, his eyes moving everywhere but near my face. The tension was back in his shoulders, making them seem broader than they really were.
“There are things about my past I never really wanted you to know,” he said quietly. “I sort of assumed your father would tell you after I left—things to make you feel better about not running away with me.”
“He didn’t talk about you at all. He took me home and told me to pack for Yale. That’s all.”
His eyes came up to mine. “I’m sorry for that.”
I shifted, my gaze moving to the window. “I think he thought it was just a summer fling. That I’d get to school and realize how inconsequential it really was.”
“Did you?”
I thought about the long hours I spent curled up in bed those first few months, refusing to participate in all the activities they had going on for freshmen. Even my roommate gave up on me after the first few weeks, tired of trying to drag me out of bed. I was something of a zombie those first few months. After that, I went to class. I went to parties. I socialized. But inside I was still hiding under the covers of my bed, pretending the world had ended when my heart got broken.
I looked at him. “Does it matter?”
“I didn’t want to leave you, Addison. But my brother needed that medication, and money was the only way to get it for him.”
“I know.”
“He’s a doctor now. He’ll save dozens of lives over the course of his career. Don’t you think that matters?”
“Of course it
does.” I ran my finger over the rim of my coffee cup. “But I could have given you that money.”
“You could have. But I never would have asked.”
“So it was okay to take it from my dad, but not from me?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
He shook his head as though the movement would help him organize his thoughts. His eyes were wide and tight on my face, as though he were trying to make me understand just by looking at me. But I didn’t understand.
The waitress chose that moment to return with our food. Plates piled high with eggs and steak and potatoes. By some coincidence, we’d ordered almost the same thing. But I was no longer as hungry as I’d been when we’d walked through the door.
We sat in silence for a few minutes, both of us pushing at our food with our forks. I kept thinking what it waste it was, but I couldn’t stomach even a single bite. All I could think about was how easy it was for him to take that money and walk away. If he’d really wanted to be with me, would it have been that easy?
“My mom died when I was just a month or two from graduating from high school,” Grant said into the silence. “I had a full scholarship to UT Austin. I was going to be a lawyer.”
I nodded. I’d known about his mother’s death. He told me late one night while we were walking back to his car from a movie theater. We’d only been dating a couple of weeks. He was very clinical about it, but I could hear the pain in his voice when he talked about his mother.
“My father left when I was eight. She was a housewife. She had absolutely no work experience. She had to take a job cleaning houses for this company that paid her off the books. And then she managed to get a job in a hotel. Menial work. But she did it for our family, so that we wouldn’t end up on the streets. And then she just died one day. Collapsed in a guest room. No fanfare, no long illness. I always believed it was the stress of having to work so hard all those years.”
No mention of a brother. No discussion of how he helped his brother finish high school and get a scholarship to UCLA. Just that little bit of information. But I was already so head over heels, I thought the fact that we’d both lost our mothers was a sign that we were meant to be together.
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