Page 49 of Guarded by My Gargoyle

“Nah, that got canceled.” The kid consulted his clipboard, cheerfully oblivious to her growing anger. “Boss called it off yesterday. Said no point paying rental when he had one sitting. This one’s yours.” He grinned at her. “Congratulations. Beauty of a machine. Where’s she going?”

The gravel felt very far away under Maris’s boots. “Mine,” she repeated.

“Yes’m. That’s what he said.” The kid flipped a page. “Assigned to you. Mr. Stonehaven’s orders.”

Mine. His orders. The words landed on something old and bruised and the shame she thought she’d left in Charleston reared its head. She’d lived with the way money took over since Jeff’s death. A problem she’d been carefully managing herself was suddenly solved over her head without a word—because to someone with enough money her struggle wasn’t a struggle at all. It was an untidiness to be smoothed away so they didn’t have to watch her strain.

We’ve taken care of it, dear, her in-laws had said, every time they arranged her life without consulting her.

She’d rented that machine. She’d done the math. She’d decided. And Garrick had ignored her decision and canceled it.

“Where do you want her?” the kid asked uncertainly, because he was smart enough to see that she was not happy.

“Nowhere,” she said. “Don’t unchain a thing.”

Behind her she heard Sylvie murmur, “Uh-oh,” in a low, interested voice. Then gravel crunched again, and she turned, and there he was.

He’d come through the gate, big and unhurried, still in his work clothes with dust on the knees of his dark jeans. He came towards her like he expected her to be glad, and the coldness in her chest went white-hot.

“They’re a little early,” he said mildly, glancing at the truck. “I told them after⁠—”

“You canceled my rental.”

He stopped and tilted his head, studying her face. Something in his expression recalibrated, as if his plan had met an obstacle he hadn’t drawn on the schematic. “Yes.”

“You bought me a Bobcat.”

“I didn’t buy it. The company already⁠—”

“Do not.” Her voice came out shaking and she hated that it shook, hated that her eyes were stinging, hated all of it. “Do not stand there and explain the logistics to me like the logistics are the point. You made a decision about my business. About my money, my job, the company I built with my own hands, and you did it without one single word to me. You went behind my back and you fixed it, like I’m a—a rotten joist, like I’m a problem on one of your sites you could just⁠—”

“You needed the Bobcat.” He said it slowly, like it was obvious. Like he could not for the life of him locate the problem. “It didn’t cost me anything. It saved you the rental fee. I don’t understand why⁠—”

“Because you didn’t ask me!” she snapped, loudly enough that the delivery kid took a step back towards his truck. “Because it’s not yours to fix. And because I already told you.” Her voice hitched and she fought it level. “I sat in your living room with my son asleep on your floor and I told you exactly how the Pinckneys do it. They never ask. They decide, and then they tell me how grateful I ought to be, like I’m something they’re being very generous about. You said they sounded terrible.” Her hands were fists at her sides, and the newsletter had fallen somewhere in the gravel. “I came here so that everything I have, I earned. I’d rather rent a Bobcat I can barely afford than take one you don’t even have to think about, because at least the rented one is mine.”

Silence. The truck ticked as its engine cooled. Sylvie hadn’t moved from the doorway, a flat of coreopsis forgotten in her arms.

And then she saw it happen. She watched him stop looking at the Bobcat and start looking at her, watched him remember his front room and the fire and everything she had told him that he had heard only as history, and watched him think about a hundred and forty yards of loaded wheelbarrow and thin margins and pride held together with baling wire. His jaw worked once. Gold came up in his eyes, and then it banked back down to grey. He took a slow breath in through his nose.

She braced for the justification. For but it’s practical. For but I can afford it. For the patient, reasonable, unbearable voice of a male used to being right about numbers.

“You’re right,” he said, and she blinked.

“I made a decision that wasn’t mine to make. About your work. Without you.” He didn’t move towards her. He stood where he was and let her have the distance between them. His voice stayed low and even and stripped of everything but the facts. “I saw a problem and I fixed it because fixing things is what I know how to do. I didn’t think about what it would feel like to be the person I fixed. You told me, and I didn’t hear it. That was arrogant. I’m sorry.”

The white heat in her chest guttered, confused, with nothing left to burn against.

“How about this? The Bobcat stays with the company,” he went on, his voice still level. “The Bobcat belongs to Stonehaven Construction. I’ll assign it to the Stonehaven grounds project the way I’d assign equipment to any subcontractor on any job I’ve ever run, because that’s what you are. A subcontractor, with expertise I’m paying for because it’s worth paying for. When the job’s done it comes back to the company. You don’t own it. You don’t owe me for it. It’s simply a tool the general contractor put on the site for you to use.”

She stared at him. Her ears were ringing a little.

“The rental,” she said. “You canceled⁠—”

“If you’d rather have the rented one, take the rented one. I’ll call them and put it back. Your call. It’s your site to run.” He tipped his head, one degree, almost gentle. “It was always your site to run. I forgot that yesterday. I won’t again.”

The delivery kid looked between the two of them with the expression of a male who very much wanted permission to leave.

She rubbed the heel of her hand over her chest. The anger had gone somewhere and left her shaky and hollow. Underneath the hollow was something warm and unbearably raw, because he hadn’t argued. He hadn’t been reasonable at her. He’d heard the reason behind her anger, the in-laws and the terror of being held worthless because of someone else’s generosity. He’d said you’re right and I’m sorry and meant both. God help her, that did something for her no gift ever could have done.