But if nothing changed in the next few days, if Emma was still “curious” about it all, then the thing she’d been trying to ignore—the fundamental fault line between them—had just cracked open. If that happened, Kate could no longer pretend the problem wasn’t real.
The man she loved had reached her daughter in a way Kate couldn’t. And he’d done it with the one thing Kate couldn’t share.
She blew out a breath and let the weight of that settle.
Meredith’s day started with Vance Brennan riding in on his high horse…and went downhill from there.
The Pippin Lake Development liaison appeared in the Acacia office with a printed copy of Meredith’s Alastair floor plan tucked under his arm and the look of someone who’d found a problem and intended to enjoy delivering it.
Her father was at a Phase One site walk with the builder, which meant Meredith and Connor had the office to themselves. That particular configuration was either productive or distracting, depending on how often Connor did the thing where he rolled his sleeves up—a feat with one good hand—while frowning at a spreadsheet.
Today, she’d been doing well. Focused. Professional. Definitely not—well, barely—noticing the forearms, casted or not.
But now…Vance.
“Morning,” he said, not waiting for a response before spreading the design printout across the edge of her desk. “I’ve got a concern about the Alastair roofline.”
Meredith frowned, scanning the blueprint. “What kind of concern?”
“The pitch.” He tapped the drawing with a thick finger. “I’ve been hearing from one of our contractors that this roofline might not meet the HOA architectural guidelines for Lakeside. The pitch looks steep for the community standard, and if it doesn’t comply, we’ve got a problem—because this is the floor plan everybody’s buying.”
Because it’s a masterpiece, Meredith thought, but kept her face neutral, ignoring the heat flickering behind her ribs. “Which contractor raised this?”
“Bayside Mechanical. They flagged it during a site review.”
Connor, who had been quietly organizing permit files at the cabinets, glanced over. He didn’t say anything, but Meredith caught the slight tilt of his head—the one she’d started to recognize as hisI’m paying attentionface.
She turned to her monitor and tapped the keyboard to pull up the Alastair specs. “The HOA guidelines for Lakeside specify a roof pitch between six-twelve and ten-twelve for all primary structures. The Alastair is an eight-twelve pitch.” She pointed to the screen. “It’s right in the middle of the approved range. I designed it specifically to the community standards—I have the HOA design manual on my desk if you’d like to see it.”
She also had it memorized but declined to drive that point home.
Vance didn’t look at the screen. “I’m just telling you what I’m hearing. These guys have built in a lot of communities, and they know what flies and what doesn’t.”
“And I’m telling you what I designed. The Alastair doesn’t just meet the guidelines, it exceeds the minimum by two increments. The pitch was calculated for both aesthetic consistency and hurricane wind-load resistance, which in this zone requires?—”
“Look, I’m not questioning your math, miss.”
Miss. A step up from “kiddo” but not much.
Connor turned fully now to take in the exchange. Or to leap to her defense, based on the sudden squareness of his shoulders.
“I’m just saying,” Vance continued, apparently unaware that he’d detonated a small bomb, “maybe it’s worth having a second set of eyes. Someone local, someone who’s been through the Okaloosa County permitting process a few times. It’s a rookie move to assume your first design is going to sail through without pushback.”
Rookie move.Seriously?
Meredith could have pointed out that she’d designed seventeen—including two award-winning—residential elevations and floor plans before she’d had an architect’s license. She could have mentioned that the Alastair was the bestselling model in the entire Lakeside development, that two more buyers had requested it just last week, and that Vance’s boss had called it “the best coastal farmhouse design I’ve seen since that style was invented.”
Instead, she picked up the HOA spec manual from her desk—a three-inch binder she’d tabbed and highlighted before she ever saw the inside of this office—opened it to the roof pitch specifications, and set it in front of Vance.
“Page twenty-three,” she said calmly. “Section three, subsection B. Approved roof pitch range, six-twelve to ten-twelve. The Alastair is eight-twelve. It’s compliant, it’s permitted, and it’s been reviewed and approved by Pippin’s architectural review boardandOkaloosa County. If Bayside Mechanical has concerns about a roofline they aren’t building, I’d be happy to walk them through the engineering and design specs.”
Vance looked at the binder, then at Meredith with tapered gray eyes. Something shifted in his expression—not respect, exactly, but the uncomfortable recalculation of a man who’d shown up to a fight and found his opponent better armed.
“Well,” he said, straightening up and rolling the blueprint, “I just wanted to flag it. Better safe than sorry.”
“Always,” Meredith agreed pleasantly. “Anything else?”
“Not today.” He nodded vaguely in Connor’s direction and left, the door clicking shut behind him.
