Page 107

“Impossible. I take my coffee from Zazzy’Z every morning. I’d wager my wife this is Cowboy Up.”

“Well, I’d take that wager, Bill, except you and I both know—”

A stiff silence fell as the men looked up at the new arrivals. Subtly, every expression turned from open, to surprised, to a poor attempt at unsurprised. Every expression, that is, but his father’s.

Chip dipped his head in greeting. “Hello, everyone.”

“Hello,” they returned. All, again, but his father.

Chip took a look to the two remaining seats. One next to Mr. Anderson of Anderson Builds. The other beside Pete, who was suddenly busy checking his bid-sheet numbers. Chip moved to the other side of the room and sat down beside Mr. Anderson.

His father bent to speak into Pete’s ear.

Chip knew what it meant to walk into this room. He was no longer the competition of his father and brothers in theory, but in reality. Hitherto he had worked the odd job. Bathroom renovation here, eighteen-hundred-square-foot-house flip there. Nothing over a $100,000 credit line, and certainly nothing within the $500,000 range that would put him on his family’s radar.

Until now.

“So, let’s get down to it, shall we?” Mr. Richardson said, clapping his hands together. “Mr. Baxter here has stepped up to review your prerequisites for the bid, so if you could please slide your envelopes to him now.”

Obediently each man gathered the first of two envelopes in his hands and passed it along the row to him. When Mr. Baxter collected them all, he stood and left the room.

“Now,” Mr. Richardson continued as the door quietly closed. “I’d like to move forward, assuming you each have your subs’ insurance policies and information in line. After all, we’re all chums here, aren’t we?” He smiled in an easy way. “Nobody here has snuck in the back door.” His smile turned into a light chuckle, and he removed his fedora and set it on the table.

“So, how about we get to it? Go ahead and pass me the envelopes.”

Without hesitating, Chip slid his down the line. This was not the time for thinking or hesitation. He had stayed up far too many evenings the past several weeks, pushing every cinderblock in his path out of the way for this moment. Moving every heavy stone.

He was under-resourced in every way. Manpower. Money. Time. Staff. But he’d found a way around every hurdle. Moving subs around. Finding subs who could work within the price range. Finding different subs when it became clear they weren’t licensed and insured. Juggling the sub schedules and needs to fit within the Barter’s tight deadline for renovation. Making sure the subs didn’t overlap when carpet needed to be ripped up just as walls needed to come down. Trying to find a bid number that was low enough to beat his competitors—most with the insider commercial discounts he couldn’t yet reach—yet not low enough to destroy his profit margins—and him.

It was all hard. It was all a puzzle. It had all, at times, pushed him into dead ends.

And yet here, today, he had done it.

“Line item, line item, line item,” Mr. Richardson read, his eyes scanning the sheet in his hand. “Ah. And here we are. The total estimate for Anderson Builds is running at $2,734,860.”

As Mr. Richardson set the paper on the table in front of him, Chip glanced at several faces. Of course, they were all attempting to gauge everyone’s opinion of the bid. It was high. Quite a bit higher than Chip’s, but then, Anderson Builds estimated so high on these things everyone often wondered aloud why he even ventured.

One look at each man’s expression gave Chip a few clues about what to expect from the following envelopes. Gilbane Contracting was out of the running; Chip could see it in his defeated expression. Huber was already walking out the door. ACL Construction and Hobbs held their poker faces. But his father and Pete, well, they were doing something he hadn’t seen before. Pete looked cross as he whispered to his father, and from the few hand motions, Chip guessed Pete was trying to convince him to take back the envelope.

But that didn’t make sense.

They couldn’t achieve anything by taking it back. They couldn’t write newer, lower numbers to try to secure their bid. That was why the bids were done this way, in person, announced aloud. This method ensured no shady dealings were going on behind closed doors, no undercutting, no wasted hours on complex bids.

Regardless, whatever Pete’s frustrated expression and terse whispers meant, his father remained stoic and silent, his gaze fixed ahead. Pete might as well be trying to convince a concrete statue.

“And now for ACL Construction. Let’s see.” Mr. Richardson removed his glasses and squinted at the page. “The total comes to $2,399,000.”

Raised brows went around the room as he caught the surprised expressions of the others. Two thirty-nine was good. Terribly good. So close Chip felt the ax sweep past him, the rush of wind as it took off the hairs from his forearms.

Close.

But not close enough.

The bids were read for the remaining contractors except Redpoint and McBride and Sons, and all came in too high. Finally, Chip saw Mr. Richardson pick up his envelope. He watched as Mr. Richardson opened the letter and scanned to the bottom.

A smile crept across the man’s face before he opened his mouth. “And Redpoint Construction has come in with an estimate of $2,350,679.”

That’s right. Down to the last nine dollars. He had whittled and whittled that number down to the final dollar, and when he thought he couldn’t lower it by fifty cents, he went line item by line item for a place to drop it again.