She nodded, and stepped around a pile of broken concrete. “Yes, Ted Wallace told me how excited he was about the grand opening. Thought it was…admirable how quickly you were able to convince Crook County to give your project a tax exemption.”
He pulled up short, but Connie kept walking, and he had no choice but to catch up with her. “You talked with Wallace?”
“Just this morning.”
Well, that could explain part of her hostility. After one of their deals had fallen through last year, city councilman Wallace would have nothing good to say about him. But none of that was David’s fault. He’d laid out a perfectly good plan to acquire some prime real estate and develop multi-use commercial and residential properties. If Wallace’s bid to rezone the land had fallen through, that was on the city councilman, not David. And since David’s financing of Wallace’s bid for state senator had been contingent on that deal, well, those plans had fallen through, as well.
He ran a hand through his hair. A lot of his projects depended on changing the existing zoning plan of a city. The shelter was just the latest in a long string. That couldn’t be unusual for a successful contractor. Greasing palms was part of the cost of doing business. But he had to admit he was getting tired of the constant quid pro quo. Just once, he’d like to do a project where someone wasn’t looking for a handout.
David stopped her at the front doors to the theater. “The county knew this project was in the best interests of not only its residents, but also their coffers. Even though we’re getting a deal on the property taxes, the sales taxes that will come in from the mall’s operations will more than make up for it.”
“It’s all just one big circle of money, isn’t it? Between you and the politicians.” A delicate blue vein pulsed under the pale skin of her forehead. “You fund their campaigns, and they set things up so you get the contracts you want, so you make money and can buy them off again.”
“I build a good product,” he said stiffly. “People get their money’s worth out of me.”
“It’s not the quality of your work I’m questioning.” Connie pulled open the glass door and strode inside. The door jerked back into place, needing a hydraulics adjustment.
He stared at her back through the glass door, trying to swallow past the knot in his throat. He felt like she’d slugged him again, except this time it hurt. She thought that he was scum. He watched as she shook hands with one of his workmen, nodded at something the man said. She was on David’s territory, just a couple of yards away, and she’d never been farther out of reach than she was right now.
Something inside him squeezed out of existence, and he almost had to bend at the waist at the pain. She would never be his.
The workman inside glanced at him curiously. In a fog, David pushed through the door and stopped next to Connie. “That door needs to be fixed so it eases shut,” he told his employee. He couldn’t look at her. “Shall we go inside a theater? Some of my employees have set up the sound system inside one to demonstrate the sound-proofing.”
In his peripheral vision, he saw her incline her head. He turned and led her down the hall to the first theater. A half hour ago, this building had been his pride and joy. Now it looked tawdry. Connie thought it was made with graft money. How could he ever look at it the same?
Lee met them inside the room. He shook hands with Connie. “I saw you at the park yesterday,” she said. “With your son?”
“That was me all right.” Lee shook his head, a smile flirting with his lips. “I have great hopes for my boy someday, but playing ball is not in his future.”
“He wasn’t that bad,” David said. The kid had been the only high point in a pretty craptastic week. And that, he thought, was pretty damn sad. “Billy just needs to work on his ball control.”
Lee’s lips pressed into a white slash between his copper mustache and beard. “Bobby. And I’ll be sure to tell him that.”
Christ, could he get anything right today? Exhaustion slammed into David like a tidal wave. Pressing the heel of his hand into an eye socket, he sighed. His nephew was in prison showing no sign of wanting to turn over a new leaf. His sister blamed him for everything. He was embroiled in yet another lawsuit. His stupid-ass bid to win Citizen of the Year didn’t look any more likely to happen, and he couldn’t imagine Jed Washington giving him a chance without that validation.
And Connie… Lowering his hand, he looked into her eyes. Her brows were drawn together beneath her hard hat. Her usually lush lips looked firm and unyielding. Connie couldn’t stand the man he was.
“Can you just show her the insulation?” he asked Lee dully. It was time to end this farce with Connie. They were opponents in a lawsuit, nothing more. He needed to limit his time with her to what was required in the courtroom. Maybe after she left, he’d take off early, get in an extra swim before coming back to give the tour to the city council and Washington. Christ, he didn’t want to come back here. His work, what had defined his life for the past decade, was turning his stomach inside out. He needed to get away.
He watched as Lee showed Connie samples of the material they’d used in constructing the walls and lectured her on the sound protections. He followed as Lee cranked the sound system to high and led them out of the theater and into the one next door to demonstrate that no music bled through.
“Seen enough?” David asked.
She nodded. “Thank you for your time,” she told Lee.
David stalked back out the way they’d come in, leaving her no choice but to follow. His legs ate up the path, and she was slightly out of breath when she caught up with him. “What’s the rush? You invited me here, remember?”
“I don’t want to waste any more of your time.”
“This didn’t prove anything,” she said. “Even if the walls are completely soundproof, that still leaves the outside area. You can’t—”
“Soundproof the outside. Yes, I remember you saying that the first time.” He lengthened his stride. Damn, this mall was big. Why did it take so long to walk from one side to the other?
“And you didn’t show me anything about your air filtration system.” Her long legs kept pace with his. “I don’t know how—”
A shout from behind made them both spin. A construction worker was sprinting up the path toward them, one hand holding his hat firmly in place, the other at his tool belt. He yelled again. “Man down! There’s been an accident.”
“Who? What happened?”
The man bent at the waist and rested his hands on his knees. “Catwalk came loose. It fell—on Lee.”
Adrenaline flooded David’s system, and his mind became hyper-focused even as his body screamed to move. He pointed at the worker. “You, go to the parking lot and wait for the ambulance. Show them the way back to the accident. Someone has called 911, right?” The man nodded. David jerked a thumb at Connie. “Take her back with you. Make sure she gets out of here safely.”
Without another word, David sprinted for the catwalk. Shit. Fuck. Damn. Lee had to be all right. He pounded around an unfinished corner of the building and ran through the plastic sheet hanging down as a temporary door. And it had to be that goddamn catwalk where they’d used the bolts Lee had complained about. If Lee was seriously hurt because David hadn’t wanted to listen to him…
A group of men were crowded around the shorn edge of the catwalk. Only one end of the bridge had failed, the other end still attached to the second story. David shoved through the men to reach the inner circle.
Lee lay on his stomach, his hard hat on the ground five feet away. Two men kneeled next to him. One of them held a rag pressed to Lee’s shoulder, blood on his hands and saturating the cloth. The other was leaning close to Lee’s face, speaking quietly to him.
“Is he conscious?” David dropped down next to Lee.
The man speaking to him nodded. “We lifted the end of the catwalk off of him, but we don’t want to move him.” He shook his head and whispered, “He says he c
an’t feel his legs.”
David’s lungs squeezed tight. He swallowed, and then swallowed again. Bending low, he told Lee, “You’re going to be fine. Everything’s going to be all right.”
Lee grunted, his eyes fluttering.
A pair of sensible heels edged into view. David looked up into Connie’s horrified face. “I thought I told you to leave.”
“I’ll stay out of the way.” She dug around in her bag and pulled out a square of cloth that wasn’t large enough to bandage a toe. She waved it in the direction of the man at Lee’s shoulder. “Here.”
David huffed out a breath. He grabbed the collar at the back of his shirt and pulled it over his head, a few buttons popping off. “Use this.” The worker grabbed it and pressed it on top of the soaked handkerchief.
A red circle immediately spread across the white fabric. “Where the hell is that ambulance?”
“Emergency’s here!”
The crowd parted. Two men and a woman in blue uniforms pushed a stretcher into the building, one of them holding an orange toolkit.
David stood and stepped back, giving them room. His heart hammered against his breastbone, but he crossed his arms over his chest and watched quietly.
Connie placed a hand on his arm. “Do you think he’s going to be okay?”
He could only shrug and give a quick shake of his head. He didn’t know. And there was fuck all he could do about it. Feeling useless, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and called his assistant. “I need you to look up the contact information on Lee Kolacki. Call his wife. Tell her there’s been an accident and Lee is being taken to…” He lifted an eyebrow at one of the paramedics.
“Pineville General.”
“Pineville General,” he told Braden.
After securing a brace around Lee’s neck, the paramedics rolled him over and hefted him onto the lowered stretcher. They popped it up to its full height, and hurried toward the exit. David strode after them, still talking to his assistant “Tell the wife I’ll meet her at the hospital.”
“What about your five o’clock?” Braden asked. “Michael Washington said he’d be here. You can’t miss that.”
“I don’t give a fuck about my five o’clock. Just do what I asked you.” He ended the call, his mind spinning in ten different directions. OSHA was going to be on his ass. There was no helping that. And for once, David knew he deserved their scrutiny.
But none of that bullshit mattered now. Lee had a son he liked to play baseball with, and he had to be all right. For Bobby.
“If there’s room in the back, I’m going with him,” David told the paramedics.
One of the men nodded. “You guys friends?”
“No.” David climbed in after the stretcher and sat on the bench along the wall of the ambulance. Connie stood feet from the doors, rubbing her upper arms. David ran a hand through his hair. Nothing about this day had gone as planned. “No, we’re not friends. But he’s my responsibility.”
Before the back doors closed, Connie gave him a shaky smile. “Good luck,” she said. And then she was blocked from view. Sirens blaring, the ambulance sped away, with David praying to a God he wasn’t sure he believed in the whole way.
Lee didn’t open his eyes once the entire ride to the hospital.
Chapter Ten
Connie hammered the end of a four-foot post. If it sank into the hard dirt in her backyard even half an inch, she couldn’t tell. Wiping her forehead with the back of her gloved hand, she blew out a long breath. How the heck did people build fences? She’d bought the posts with the pointy ends that the hardware store guy had recommended. She’d dug a little hole with her garden trowel. But she still couldn’t get the buggers deep enough into the ground to be stable.
She looked at the one post she had managed to erect. Sort of. It leaned a little to the side, but once wire was wrapped around it and attached to the other posts, she was sure it would be all right. She hoped the goat would appreciate all her work. Since she couldn’t call animal control and let him be destroyed, and she couldn’t let him keep roaming wild and destroying all her plants, the only option left was to build him a pen. She massaged her temples. She couldn’t believe she was building a home for a goat. She really was Crazy Connie.
The animal in question kicked a hoof through the goat pellets she’d put out for him. He didn’t seem as interested in chewing on things when destruction wasn’t involved, but he’d have to get used to eating the food she provided. It had to be healthier than the old sneaker she’d found him gnawing on like a dog toy this morning.
The low sound of a motor and crunching gravel drifted from around the house. Tossing her mallet to the ground and letting the post fall, she told Milo to stay, and walked around the side of her home to see who’d come to visit. A groomed head of golden hair appeared out of the door of a BMW, and, like a fool, her heart stuttered before kicking into overdrive. It had been a week since she’d last seen him, speeding away in an ambulance, but she’d thought of him every day.
Of Lee. She’d thought about the foreman often, of how he was doing. Thoughts of David merely came along for the ride.
He slammed the car door and marched up to her, waving a manila envelope in his hand. “What the hell is this?”
Connie rested a foot on the bottom step of her front porch. “Your attorney forwarded my proposal, I see.”
“This isn’t a proposal. It’s blackmail.” Pushing his sunglasses to the top of his head, David rubbed his eyes. “I’d hoped after your tour, you’d see reason.”
“How’s Lee?”
“Better.” He leaned his shoulder against her porch rail. “The doctors had him on his feet for a couple of minutes this morning. After the swelling around his spine went down, he got back full feeling. His broken shoulder blade will put him out of commission for a while, though.”
“It could have been a lot worse.” Pausing, she tapped her fist against her mouth, the canvas of her gloves scratching her lips. “You were at the hospital this morning? I thought you’d have your assistant take care of any details.”
“You thought I’d be a bastard who didn’t care when one of his men got hurt.”
She opened her mouth to deny it, but couldn’t. That was exactly who she expected him to be. Except, these past couple weeks, David hadn’t fallen into her pigeonhole as easily as he used to.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, about your proposal—”
“Tell your concerns to your attorney. Craig can relay them to me.” She took off her gloves. “That’s the way this is supposed to work.”
“I don’t like wasting time for form’s sake. You know Evers will do whatever Sue and I tell him to.” He slid his hands into his pant pockets, the action causing his blazer to gap across his chest and flat stomach. “I think we can work this out as long as we’re both reasonable.”
She pushed off her porch. “Asking you to fully enclose the shelter, with no outside component that will be a nuisance to the neighborhood, is reasonable. And in lieu of that, making you fund a trust account payable in case of damages is just smart. It provides security against your promise. After all, you’ve guaranteed there will be no noise or odor pollution. So what’s the problem?”
He followed her around the house. “You know there are no absolute guarantees in life. If you’d just—”
He broke off and walked to her one upright post. “What is this?” Wiggling the post, he lifted it from the ground with one hand. “You having a fence built? Whoever installed this did a shit job.”
Stalking over, she grabbed the post from his hand and shoved it back into its hole. “It was fine until you pulled it out.” She pushed on the top with all her strength. Put all her weight on it until she was practically hanging.
He plucked her off, and removed his coat. “Hold this,” he said, handing it to her. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. “Your father install this?” He looked around. “Where is he anyway? I thought
he was staying with you.”
She pressed her lips together. Did everyone in Pineville have to know everything about her? “He’s visiting friends for the week. And I’ll have you know I installed that.” She pointed to the stack of unfinished wood posts and rolls of wire stacked next to her porch. “I’m building a pen.”
He snorted and looked around. “Where are your tools?” She pointed. Bending at the waist, he picked up her garden trowel. “This is what you used to dig the hole?” He curled his lip in disgust, and squatted by the pit. “You didn’t dig deep enough. For a post this size you need to go down about two feet.”
She rolled her shoulders. Just digging that ten inches had made her sore.
David dug into the hole, the small shovel scraping against loose stones. He scooped dirt out into a pile.
“What are you doing?”
He kept digging. “I thought lawyers were trained not to ask obvious questions.”
She stepped forward, and her shadow fell over him. “That’s questions we don’t know the answer to. But fine. Why are you digging my fence hole?”
“I don’t like seeing such shoddy construction.” Grunting, he pulled out the trowel, the handle bent backward. “Christ, I don’t know how you can use these tools.”
She folded his coat and held it to her stomach. “Not everyone can afford the high-end toys.”
“Well, you get what you pay for.”
She pursed her lips. “Do you even know how to build a fence?”
“I’m a general contractor, for Christ’s sake! Of course I can build a fence.”
“Okay.” She raised a hand, palm out. “I didn’t mean to insult you. I just picture you more as the behind-the-desk guy.”
Stabbing the spade into the ground, he grunted. “I paid for college working construction. And when I started up my own business, I did a lot of the work myself. Just because I’m smart enough to pay other people to do the dirty work now, doesn’t mean I don’t know how.”
Why Did It Have to Be You? Page 10