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Valerie’s gut lurched at his admission.
She’d tried to get them to meet on neutral turf, but he’d managed to beat her at her game without even knowing he was playing it.
“I’m always going to try to have home court advantage,” he said, as though she’d telegraphed her thoughts to him.
Perhaps her look of surprise had done that.
She fixed her face and tried to affect a serene mien. She suspected, based on the tightness of her jaw and the slight twitch of her left eye, that she was failing.
“You should have told me,” she said sourly. “Should I just assume you know everyone in the damned state and that you have allies wherever you go?”
He put his elbows on the tabletop and twined his fingers, staring at her over them.
“Fine. Don’t answer.” She turned her attention to the minestrone and picked up her spoon. She needed to be doing something with her hands. “I should tell you about your house. I have to admit that this is hard for me. I don’t like to criticize my peers, but I have to be honest.”
“The plans I paid for are garbage, is what you’re leading up to.”
Leave it to him to cut right to the meat of the matter.
“In summary, yes. Obviously, I took umbrage with the way he’d enlarged the rooms without rearranging the floor plan in his proposal, but when I stepped into your kitchen, I had a hunch that his measurements were way off. The kitchen is far narrower than what’s on paper. Those bad measurements carried through to the rest of the structure. I believe he guesstimated and thought you wouldn’t know the difference.”
After a few seconds of staring vacantly at her, Tim’s shoulders rose then fell.
He grunted.
He seemed entirely too unsurprised by the circumstances.
Valerie furrowed her brow.
“He knew I couldn’t check his work, even if I wanted to. I was too busy. Further, the information the County Records office had on file for the house was incomplete. The original blueprint filed for the structure was destroyed in a fire decades ago. I paid him to do the work. I didn’t want to think I needed to redo the measurements myself to see if they were bullshit.”
His voice was still so neutral. Neutral was usually good—it meant a person’s energy was at even keel and that she shouldn’t expect any surprises. But she didn’t know Tim well and didn’t know what that flat tone meant for him.
She needed more time to figure it out—to learn his nuances and cues, and to see how far his range of emotions went.
And time meant attachment. She couldn’t afford either of those things.
She looked up to find him leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed, staring at the mural on the ceiling. She couldn’t handle a long look—not unless she wanted to get trapped in that dominating gaze again—so she wasted just a couple of seconds admiring the curves of his lips before returning her attention to her soup. Of course he’d have sinful lips on a mouth that dirty.
“If it’s not out of my place to ask, can you tell me how you found the guy?” She couldn’t even taste the soup. It went from spoon to mouth to throat without her taste buds weighing in. Her mind was too scattered.
“I got a referral from someone at the country club. I think they overstated his qualifications. He was a young guy. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and help him build his portfolio, though. I paid him and sent him on his way.”
“It was kind of you to want to help him. But, silly measurements aside, you didn’t like the plans?”
“They weren’t what I asked for. I’d hoped that what he did was competent, at the very least. I’d hoped he knew what he was doing.”
“Sorry.” She had one mind to ask for the guy’s card so she could call him for a chat—so that he knew thatsheknew what a hack he was—but it wasn’t her place. And perhaps the guy had gotten better in the years since then. Besides, Tim could certainly fight his own battles and didn’t need her as his champion. She just hated people getting taken advantage of, especially people like Tim who seemed to go out of his way to give his associates a fair shake.
“I know you’re busy,” Tim said, “but if you think you can come up with something more suitable, I’ll make it worth your time.”
“I might be able to squeeze it in. The way my days are structured now in this phase of the Shora project gives me pockets of free time. My employer doesn’t need to know what I’m doing when I’m not poking around job sites, so do me a favor and don’t tell them.”
“I’m good at keeping secrets.”
“So I’ve heard,” she said softly. She spooned some more soup into her mouth to keep herself from running it.
“What have you heard about me?”
