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“Oh, yeah. We’ve been busting ass—er, butt.” Win spoke up, then blushed hard.
She gave him a half grin and seemed less stressed now that we’d had our little argument. She stepped up on the pile of pallets in front of the dumpster and took a look inside, then jumped down and wiped her hands on her jeans.
“Do you need me to call them to haul out a load?”
“Handled.” I slid my thumbs under the straps of my tank top, pulling them to the center where I laced my fingers loosely. “Take a look inside the barn.” I nodded to the guys to scram.
“Man,” Tyler muttered. “Finally got to see the hot chick and now we gotta work again.”
“You don’t want the hundred bucks she’s paying you to work?”
Tyler clenched his jaw. “Yes, sir, I do.”
“Then go help them clean up the beach. She’s got friends coming tonight.”
Tyler gave a deep sigh then strolled down the patchy grass to the beach.
I wasn’t sure when I’d turned into the old man who gave out instructions. I wasn’t certain I liked it either.
Quickly, I followed her into the barn.
She glanced back at me. “Everything good?”
“Yeah, just being idiots.” I shrugged. “I’ve been working them all aft
ernoon.”
“Shouldn’t they be in school?”
“Seniors. They have like half days of class at best.”
“I know how that is. I was in shop class more than economics and all that crap.”
“Better than me.”
“School skipper?”
I laughed. “Dropout.” I shrugged. “I wasn’t cut out for school. I eventually got my GED so I could get better paying jobs.”
Being on my own before I was even a teen had made school less than desirable. Homeless most of the time, I’d worried more about making cash than grades. It helped that I’d never really looked my age. Made it easy to slide in on work crews. I had a strong back, learned fast, and I had a knack for numbers.
“The stuff we know isn’t exactly in the curriculum.”
I didn’t realize I’d tensed up until I caught her half smile and my shoulders relaxed. “Damn straight. So, what do you think?”
“It’s massive.”
Without all the crap that had been stored in there, it was a perfect blank canvas. She did that little twirl thing while she took everything in. I stuffed my hands into my pockets to loosen the sudden tightness of my work pants.
Hell of a thing was my chest was almost as tight. Ruby affected me in a way no one else ever had.
Good thing she didn’t know the power she had over me. I’d probably have to go into witness protection.
I swallowed hard. “Yeah, we have some structural work to do, but it’s really showing her bones now.” I went to the large support beam in the center of the room. “I was going to try to do a different setup in here and get rid of this, but changing the structure like that would require too much time and money to change.”
“No, that’s okay. I like it. Maybe build around it and make it a feature? Dart board?”
I pulled out my phone and made a few notes. “I’ll see if I can make it work. Or maybe build the bar around it with some large TVs making up a 3D setup. Put the game on or whatever on one side while someone’s playing pool.” I walked to the middle where I’d put a quick chalk outline for where I thought the pool table would go. “Could move the pool table a little.”
