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His eyes locked on to mine, and they still held that touch of wariness.
“Hey, Charlotte,” William said. “Your partner already has me hard at work.”
I cleared my throat. “I see that.”
Burke’s chest expanded on a deep breath. “Thought maybe that lock should be fixed.”
There was meaning in that sentence. A distinct tone. I paused before answering.
“Privacy is important,” I said.
He nodded. “It is. I’d hate to”—he tilted his head—“overreact if something happened because we didn’t have a working lock.”
I bit down on my blossoming smile. “I’d hate that too.”
If William had caught any subtext, God bless him, he didn’t let on. He finished putting the last screw in place. “There we go. Just needed to tighten a few things that got loose.”
Burke’s eyes held mine for a moment longer, and I gave him a tiny smile. His answering grin was a little crooked and a lot attractive.
William stood, breaking the moment between us. “You guys ready to get started?” he asked.
The fixed lock was a good turning point in our first week of work—now that we had a builder and crew tearing down all the old and weak and ugly things.
William, for as young and amiable as he was, took charge of the project with so much assurance that Burke and I both seemed to let out huge sighs of relief when he sat us down for our first meeting as a team.
“You’re right about the west bedroom wing,” he said. He slid a paper toward us. “I have a friend who does foundation work, and this is his recommendation. Now that we’ve taken down the plaster walls that can’t be saved and know what’s waiting for us in terms of electric and plumbing, this is the first thing we need to take care of.”
Burke and I leaned in, studying the quote for a moment. He tapped a finger on the total at the bottom, and I winced when I saw the amount of numbers before the decimal point.
“Do you need to call the lawyer?”
Without so much as a disgruntled sigh or an annoyed look, Burke shook his head. “We’re fine to move ahead with whatever we need.”
My eyebrows popped up. “Really?”
He grunted, tucking the quote into the folder where I kept all paperwork.
William nodded. “Great. We’ll start there. What I need from you two isn’t help with the grunt work, though we did appreciate the extra sets of hands with the demo the last few days.”
“From both of us?” Burke asked.
William nodded, handing us a second sheet of paper. “This is our rough timeline for the next sixish months—what will be done when and, more importantly, when I need to have finishes picked. That’s whatI need from you two, first and foremost. I know we’re months off from install, but because we’re dealing with a tight turnaround and a historic property, we may hit our biggest delays on things like lights or tiles or plumbing fixtures.”
Burke glanced at me. “What did you and Amie have decided for finishes?”
“Nothing,” I answered honestly. “I have a general idea of the direction in which she wanted to go, but we didn’t settle on anything.”
“Were you working with an interior designer?” William asked.
I shook my head. “Just me. Amie trusted me on what was era appropriate, on how we could update without losing all the character from the time period.”
William nodded. “Good. That’s why the grant fell through on my last project.”
“Happens a lot,” I said.
“What does?” Burke asked.
I turned slightly in my chair. “People want the historic designation because it’s a huge tax benefit to the property. But you have to make design decisions that are in keeping with the era the house was from. They go too modern. Too updated.”
