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I pressed the button to unlock the door, then opened it. When I looked back, she was still standing at the front of the truck.
Finally, she stepped toward me. “You don’t have to do that, you know.”
“What?” I asked, faking innocence.
“Hold doors for me. We’re working together. It kind of makes things personal.”
At that point, she was just inches from me. Our eyes met. The contact sent warmth rushing through my body, and my stomach did a strange fluttering thing that it hadn’t done in years. Not over a woman, not for anything.
“It can never be anything more than professional,” she said. “You’re my boss’s contractor.”
Normally, I’d be discouraged by those words, but there was something not quite convincing about the way she said them. In fact, it was almost as though she was trying to convince herself this couldn’t be personal.
Yeah, she was definitely feeling it too. It was not one-sided.
“I’m a gentleman,” I said. “Don’t take it personally if I hold doors for you. It’s just what I do. My mom raised me to be respectful to a woman.”
She eyed me for another long second but then gave a nod. “Okay.”
Then she climbed into my truck and pulled her own door closed. I smiled to myself as I ran around the front of the truck. But that smile disappeared when I opened my door and remembered my truck needed a serious interior cleaning.
“She’s my work truck,” I said. “I don’t get around to cleaning her very often. I’ve been putting in some long hours.”
“She?” Sierra asked with a smile. Then she waved a dismissive hand in front of her. “It’s fine. Mrs. Gray is just happy you’re moving things along so quickly. Apparently, there were a lot of delays with the exterior.”
I winced as I backed out of the parking space. Those delays were on my watch. I’d done my best to keep everything on track, but I was working with subcontractors out of Knoxville, and they kept pushing us back in favor of other projects.
Instead of fessing up to that, though, I went another route. “Four years,” I said. “Four years from project approval to where we are now, and we’re still not finished.”
“But you will be soon,” she said.
“As I told your boss, I’ll do everything within my control. There’s your boss’s dog. Have you met Toby yet?”
I gestured to the left, where a golden retriever wandered the backyard of Zack and Ashlynn Gray’s house. Their cabin sat at the very front of the property where Ashlynn’s retreat center was being built.
“No,” Sierra said. “She showed me his picture during our first meeting, though.”
Toby’s owner, otherwise known as Sierra’s boss, was standing on the back patio. Her maternity T-shirt showed off that she was well on her way to her delivery date.
When she looked directly at us and waved, a sudden thought caused me to grip the steering wheel a little tighter. What if she noted us leaving the property together and thought we were getting personal?
No, that was ridiculous. It was two colleagues going to lunch. Both Ashlynn and her husband were good people. I’d known Zack for years, and I’d gotten to know Ashlynn pretty well while working on this project.
These days, Ashlynn didn’t come around much. She’d stepped on a nail early on while walking around the construction site, and from that point on, Zack wouldn’t let her come near the place. That was why she’d hired someone to keep an eye on things, I was guessing.
“Do you live in Rosewood Ridge?” Sierra asked.
“Yep. Moved here from Georgia about twelve years ago,” he said. “I wanted a simpler life.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her looking over at me. I couldn’t quite make out her expression, but I was guessing she was calculating my age.
She couldn’t be older than her early twenties, which meant twelve years ago she would have been in elementary school. Considering the thoughts I’d been having about her all morning, I didn’t even want to consider how young she’d been when I moved to Rosewood Ridge.
“So, what do you recommend for lunch?” she asked as she faced forward again.
Oh, shit. That had been the only reason she asked if I lived here. She wanted my restaurant recommendations. The good news was, as someone who did my fair share of takeout, I’d tried all the restaurants in town.
“Depends on whether you’re in the mood for something heavy or light,” I said. “There’s a new diner on the square. We also have a Mexican restaurant, some Asian places, and a retro-style hamburger joint…”
