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“Stone, not that…” I sighed as the muscular kid with not a whole lot of brains started swinging from one of the framing pieces to pull it down.
A sledgehammer was far easier and smarter than ripping up his ungloved hands.
The kid was just full-blown Hulk smashing everything he could. He was damn handy for the strength factor. He was almost as big as I was but seemed to have far more upper body strength than lower.
I was fairly sure he was going to fall over eventually. Damn toothpicks for legs.
I dumped my load of super gross hay into the maximum-size dumpster Ruby had delivered yesterday morning. My thigh vibrated for the eleventh time today.
Yesterday, I would have given anything for Ruby to text me. Now I was ready to block her number. I sighed and pulled my glove off to retrieve my phone.
How’s it going?
Same as last time. All the destruction for all the rebuilding. Stop bugging me, woman.
I grinned at my screen as text bubbles formed furiously then stopped. Then formed again. I wondered how many times she’d stopped and started replying? Or maybe it was going to come through as a long rant. She was really good at those. I scanned back in our chat history to see the first one of the day and shook my head.
Yeah, I was freaking glad she wasn’t on site.
I’m around the corner.
Well, fuck.
I looked around the site. Tyler and Win were tearing apart a few of the pallets we’d found in demolition derby today. They would be a perfect kindling base for the bonfire that night. Right now? Not at all perfect.
Especially when they were sword fighting with two of the larger slats.
“Guys!”
They both stopped mid-swing and the clack of ancient wood hitting wood echoed across the water. “I said strip the pallets, not pretend you’re ten years old.”
“Sorry, Lucky,” Tyler shouted, swinging at his buddy one more time before he tossed the wood on the pile.
“Win, go rake that beach for the chairs we have to put out.”
“You want me rake sand and rocks?”
“Works a lot like grass, bonehead.”
He ducked his head, but the
re was no hurt in his eyes. He just loped to the truck for the large metal rake I’d brought from my place. Win—Winston Charleston, Jr.—was a good kid. Long and lanky with it, he was more bones than meat, but he was willing to take direction. Better than his buddy who thought he knew everything.
Stone came out of the barn with part of a beam over his head. He had his earbuds in and was dancing to something. Still no gloves.
I shook my head. That was a fight for another hour. For now, I had to figure out how to make things look less like chaos.
While I knew things were moving along swimmingly, to my client—and future wife—this would look like bedlam.
The wife thing just made me laugh. We couldn’t be more different if we tried. But damn, her grouchy nature made me so hot.
I raced around the front of the barn where the worst of the trash lay. I tried to stack my demolition tools into semi-neat piles. Sledgehammers, crowbars, plastic glasses, and discarded gloves were scattered all over.
I tossed my Henley on the truck on the way by. The sun was high in the sky, taking the chill off the morning air. Since the client wasn’t on site and we were in the middle of nowhere, Post Malone and Ozzy blasted out of the speakers I had rigged to my truck bed.
Before I could turn off the tunes, I heard her motorcycle coming around the corner. A dust cloud followed her down the bumpy lane to her house.
“Yo!” I waved at Stone frantically, but he didn’t hear me. He just kept bopping his way back into the barn. “Tyler!”
