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“I didn’t know you were coming, Dad,” Royce said.
“Sorry. It was a last minute thing and I didn’t want to bother you last night. I knew you’d be here anyway.”
“I am,” he said.
Grant pulled his phone out. “They are here. They just texted as I asked them to do and we’ll go down and get them if you want to meet us on the fifth floor. Chloe, why don’t you go up with Royce and Richard.”
“Sure,” she said. She turned. “We haven’t met formally yet.”
“Oh dear,” Garrett said, slapping his brother’s arm. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“I thought they did meet,” Grant said. “Chloe has been doing work for Kennedy’s since she’d been hired.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “We’ve talked but never met in person. I normally only deal with Royce.”
“It’s nice to put a face with a name,” Richard said. Richard turned to the Fierce brothers. “You two have the touch when it comes to putting people in the right roles.”
She held back her snort on that comment.
Son of a bitch. It seemed Richard might be in on this too, but she’d reserve judgment for another time.
Royce was frowning over the comment so he didn’t seem to know what was going on.
“Why don’t we go upstairs,” Royce said.
“It looks great here,” she said. “I can see it in my mind coming together. How many things have changed with their finishings?”
“More than I care to count,” he said. “I’m sure you heard me telling one of my men to fix that light. I don’t want any excuses to have to go back and redo or fix anything. This space should be ready by February first.”
“Wow,” she said. “That is fast.”
It was only about eight weeks away or so. Plus the holiday in there. There was a ton of work to be done yet.
“Not as fast as I would like. We can get it done faster, but I pushed the timeline out since they can’t make up their mind. And if we’ve got someone else coming on the floor above them, it might work out to get the work done the same time to prevent as much noise as possible.”
“Which is what we are hoping for,” Richard said.
They got in the elevator and she was next to Royce and tried not to inhale the earthy scent of him mixed in with the sawdust. She was pretty sure if they were animals, he might be able to smell she was in heat because her body was on fire.
On the fifth floor, she looked at the wide-open space. The elevators were in the front and back of the building, placed in the middle. There was also a set on each end in the middle width wise. Lots of ways to get to the floors, as they would be broken up around the elevators with hallways to enter all the spaces.
“It’s different when it’s open like this, isn’t it?” she asked Royce. “All these possibilities. That is what I see.”
“You two have that in common,” Richard said. “Royce loves open spaces. Even as a kid I’d put you in an open room and he was ready to start building.”
She grinned at the look on his face. “You didn’t want to go into engineering?”
“No,” he said. “I’m better with my hands. I want to put the work in and say I did that. Not just put it on paper.”
“I can see both sides. I’m not very good with my hands. I mean not with tools,” she said. “I’m good with them for other things though.”
Royce smirked at her and she started to blush and realized that came out the wrong way. Thankfully Richard had stayed by the elevators, but she and Royce had started to walk away.
“It’s nice to be multi-talented,” he said.
She turned to look at him. “You’ve got sawdust on your jeans.”
He looked down at the sawdust on his thigh and wiped it off. “Hazard of the job. You’ve got some in your hair now though.”
