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“Burke with the mouth and the shoulders is a man who wants nothing to do with before-and-afters. He wants this house off his plate.” She punched her fist in the air. “You need to show him passion and dedication, not a PowerPoint presentation.”
“The presentationisshowing him my passion. With smooth transitions and clear, readable font.”
She mumbled something under her breath, and I was pretty sure I caught the wordsdry spellandno wonder she hasn’t gotten laid in forever. I ignored both.
“I have an idea,” she said.
“Twenty bucks says I won’t like it.”
Daphne stood. “Come with me.”
Begrudgingly, I followed, tiptoeing down the sides of the stair treads on the massive staircase in the middle of the house. When we reached the last step, I ran my thumb over the newel post at the bottom. It would be so beautiful once it was restored.
Daphne waved her hands, gesturing to the staircase. “This is your battleground.”
“My what?”
Then—quite inexplicably—she pulled a pair of handcuffs from her purse.
My eyebrows shot up my forehead. “Why do you have those with you?”
“A sit-in.” She tugged one of my wrists toward her. “We used to do this all the time. Chain ourselves to trees they were going to bulldoze in the name of progress, or the front of buildings they wanted to demolish. This is how we got shit done back in my day.”
I sighed. “This isn’t even logical.”
“Logic has nothing to do with it. You want to show him just how much this place matters to you, right?”
“Not with handcuffs!” I tugged on my arm. She loosened her grip. “He’ll think I’ve lost my mind, because I definitely think you’ve lost yours.”
“No way. He’ll find your passion contagious, and he’ll be blown away by how far you’re willing to go to save this glorious piece of Michigan’s history so that future generations can understand where we came from and how that past shapes our future.”
I paused. “That’s good.”
“Just one little sit-in.”
“He’s not rolling up with a bulldozer and a wrecking ball, Daphne.” The sound of a vehicle punctuated the silence after I said her name. “There’s a reasonno onedoes these anymore,” I continued.
“It’s a lost art, if you ask me.”
“I really, really didn’t ask you.”
Fear coiled dangerously through my stomach. I wasn’t ready for this. I didn’t have time to prepare. All the time I’d spent thinking about this exact moment—what I’d say, what I’d do—and every helpful thought fled my jumbled brain.
And it was jumbled with all the things she’d told me. Not that it helped me much to remember them. Tall and dark and handsome, big hands and nice shoulders, someone who wanted nothing to do withthis place I loved so much. This rotting, falling-over house that I adored with every fiber of my being.
It was so much more than a job. It always had been.
It was the place I dreamed about when I spent six months to a year living and breathing other properties.
The hard truth was that if there was one building I’d be willing to handcuff myself to, it was this one.
“Oh shit, shit, shitshitshit,” I muttered.
She pinned me with a look. “Trust me.”
“That would be so much easier if you weren’t trying to handcuff me to the house,” I hissed.
Daphne took that moment of pause, and the clear indecision on my face, to snap a handcuff around one wrist. “Sit on the step.”
