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Kendall shook his hand. “I had a good feeling when you walked in the door, Mr. Doyle.”
“You can call me Will. Kendall, was it?”
She nodded. “Kendall Proctor. You can call me your guardian angel.”
Will laughed. “With all that pretty angel hair, I can’t call you anything else, now, can I?”
She grinned up at Shane. His calm green eyes were steady, and a new strain pulled at the corners. She slid her hand into his and gripped. “We’ll see you after lunch.” She tugged Shane after her. “This is a good thing. Stop looking like I kicked your puppy.”
Shane gave her a tight smile. “Depends how deep those cow pies are, Sunshine.”
They sat down, and Maude dropped off their food. “Handy little story there, missy.”
Kendall looked up at their waitress. “There’s no story. We are traveling to New York, and we are short on cash.”
“Will Doyle is good people. I don’t want to hear that you screwed him over, you hear?”
Kendall picked up a potato chip from the center of her plate. “Shane’s the best thing that will ever happen to William Doyle.” She popped the chip into her mouth. She was sure of it.
ELEVEN
“What do you think?”
“Where are the men now?”
“Lunch break at the mess hall down the road. Meals will be included as well as a room for you and your traveling companion up at the house.”
Shane slapped sawdust off his jeans and looked around. Six thousand square feet of stables. Well, what would be stables after he was done. Doyle hadn’t been exaggerating when he said it was almost complete. That was a good thing. Most men in his situation would have lied through their teeth to get a new foreman to finish the job. The stable had a mix of new- and old-world flavors with the exposed beams and steel-framed girders that were prepped for drywall. Insulation had been done already, and it was just a matter of finalizing the project.
The tips of his fingers tingled with the need to do and create. He knew the building side of things. Code violations and masonry practices varied from state to state, but that was easy enough to verify. He had a sixth sense about space. He knew exactly what a job needed and how much time to devote to it. It was this side of him that his old man relied on to get a job done.
Lawrence Justice was a big-picture guy. He’d known how to sell, how to buy, and how to place the right people into the right jobs. But he never understood the magic of a space. He knew a building would bring in revenue, but he didn’t care about the end product. Only the happy customer and a check in the bank mattered to his father.
Which was why they worked so well together. Shane didn’t give two shits about glad-handing clients. He couldn’t stand dealing with the schmoozing and the dinners and the parties. And as much as Larry had dealt with that portion of Justice Construction, Shane had still had to make an appearance every once in a while.
Where he was truly happy was finding the magic in a hunk of wood. Whether it was a bookcase, a chair, a table, or a built-in unit—that was where he shone. Most of the time a client didn’t know what they really wanted. And he was tired of pouring all his energy into the soul-sucking business side.
That was only one of a million reasons why he’d gravitated to carpentry. Renovations and the feel of wood under his hands made sense. It was where he belonged.
But he’d put his foreman’s hat on one last time to get them to New York. To find a way to take care of Kendall.
“Do you think this is something you can take on?”
Shane turned to Doyle. “How many men do I have at my disposal?”
“Forty.”
“Christ, and they’re not further along?”
Doyle smiled. “I had a feeling about you.”
Shane leveled his eyes at the older man. “You fell under Kendall’s spell. Most men do.”
“Well, there is that. She’s a dangerous one, son.”
Shane blew out a tired breath. “You don’t know the half of it.”
Doyle hooked his thumb behind his buckle. “I’m sorry to hear about your father, but that’s the reason I’m hiring you. Justice has a good reputation, even out here. Your Kendall is the pushy sort who gets things moving, but I have a feeling you’re the one who actually gets them done.”
