by Anya Nowlan
The last bit was mumbled under her breath as she whirled around, heading into another room in the house.
“What was that?” Finn asked.
She could hear the chuckle in his voice.
“Just follow me,” she said with an exasperated sigh.
The rest of the day was spent haggling in much the same manner, arguing over this and that and fighting over details that were entirely unimportant to builders, but of paramount importance for an architect, and a person building their dream house. By the time it was getting so dark that the last of the men were packing up to leave, Christine still had a list ten items long.
“And now we can go over the window awnings,” she said crisply, as Finn made his goodbyes with the last of his crew.
“See you, Finn,” a tall man named Jayce called out, raising his hand in a wave as he stepped out of the front door. “And you too, Miss.”
The expression he wore on his face told Christine that Jayce had something on his mind that he wasn’t about to share with the rest of the group. Something that obviously wasn’t fit to be repeated in good company. She frowned slightly, casting a glance at Finn.
It was hard to admit it, but he had shown himself as a knowledgeable, capable foreman, as well as a man who could put in his share of the work when needed. Several times, their arguments had been cut short because he’d nipped off in the middle of it, practically sensing that he was needed somewhere, rather than hearing or seeing it. It was sort of uncanny, and impressive in a way.
Watching someone who was good at their job do what they loved was always a thing of beauty.
“Bye, Jayce,” Finn called, taking his hardhat off and running a palm down his face.
He was dusty and bits of sawdust stuck to his five o’clock shadow, but it made him all the more ruggedly handsome for it. All day, Christine had been dealing with trying to not notice him too much. To not notice how tall he was, or how easily he could pick up something that looked like it weighed a ton and move it somewhere else.
Or to not notice how he casually leaned against the supporting structures and looked at her expectantly, a combination of James Dean-cool and lumberjack-ready.
None of those were things that a soon-to-be married woman should be noticing. Especially not in regard to an employee.
Christine was very busy not noticing how brown his eyes were or how thick his hair was when he shook her out of her completely unwelcome train of thought by catching her looking at him.
“Christine, look, it’s been a long day. How about we call it a night, huh? Or at least an evening. We can pick this up early tomorrow and you can tell me all the things I’ve been doing wrong all over again.”
His delivery of that notion was entirely deadpan.
“I haven’t been telling you that,” Christine grumbled, but Finn was already moving, turning his back on her. “Don’t you walk away when I’m talking to you!” she gasped.
“I’m not walking away. Consider this a tactical retreat,” he said with a yawn.
She tracked after him regardless, coming to the back porch.
“I’ve just been offering my view, as the client, on matters that could be improved! Most of them with small, almost incremental changes.”
“You call taking one of the foundation walls out to let more light in a small, incremental change?” Finn scoffed, glancing at her over his shoulder as they walked across the porch and into the dark evening.
“I call it an option that should be considered.”
“And I call it a bunch of bullshit, pardon my French.”
“That’s not French,” Christine commented.
“It is in my neck of the woods,” Finn said, stepping into the fresh snow and trudging towards his little trailer.
Christine was about to follow him, but she got distracted by the view before her. She hadn’t been out there last night and this was the first time she saw the view in the dark.
“Wow,” she muttered, eyes going wide.
For a moment, her cat stirred, a thread of gold reaching her eyes, and disappearing soon after. Finn stopped, but Christine didn’t notice him staring at her until long later.
She was looking at the mountains, which rolled out as far as the eye could see. The sky was so clear that night that she could see millions of stars twinkling above. With the thick coat of snow over the forest that started a couple dozen feet from the house, and the white-capped mountains, there was enough light that it felt brighter than some of the days she’d spent in Los Angeles.
Though in a completely different way.
When she gathered herself enough to notice that she wasn’t exactly alone, she could feel a flush of heat rise to her cheeks. Finn was watching her much the same way she must have been looking at the view.
It made the gold come back to her eyes with a vengeance and she could spot the moment his own eyes went almost obsidian black, so dark brown that they were barely brown at all anymore.
“What?” she asked, taken aback.
It was as much a reaction to the sudden flash of heat that scorched through her when she saw the way he was looking at her, as it was her feeling self-conscious.
“Nothing,” Finn muttered, turning away with a frown. “You have a good night, Christine.”
“Night,” she said, glancing at the mountains one last time, and at Finn’s retreating back for a much longer moment, before going back inside.
Her little excursion into Shifter Grove was getting weirder by the minute, and Christine wasn’t sure if it wasn’t all her own doing.
5
Finn
It was two days later when Finn was just settling in to kick back with a nightcap and a big dinner, when he heard the sound of a car being tortured outside.
“For spirits’ sake,” he sighed, looking at his steaming hot dinner, and then begrudgingly standing up.
His feet felt like a quarter-ton of lead had been poured into them, because over the course of the last three days, he’d been running around on Christine’s orders, rearranging this, and rebuilding that, until all his working time felt like one long revision. He hated to admit it, but she had some good ideas.
It didn’t make it any easier on him, though.
Not bothering with a jacket, Finn shoved his hands into his pockets as he shouldered his way out of his trailer, dressed just in his jeans, a plaid shirt and his trusty work boots. It was too damn late in the night to be dealing with anything other than a good book and a stiff drink, but if there was one thing he couldn’t tolerate, it was the death of a perfectly fine piece of machinery.
As he’d predicted, it was Christine that was doing the sacrificial bloodletting of the poor little hatchback. Finn waved his hands and she killed the engine, popping her head out the window.
“What is it?” she asked, and he could see the flush of annoyance on her cheeks.
It was either at the lack of cooperation shown by her car, or that Finn had caught her in failing to rein it in.
“Would you stop that? That car ain’t done nothing to you.”
“Well, if it would just f-… I mean, if it would run like it was supposed to, there would be no problem.”
Finn grinned at that bit of sass that she bit down on. You could tell that Christine was a big city girl. Any local woman would have let those curses rip with a vengeance.
“Look, you’re going out for food, right?” he asked, absently glancing at the road.
His guys had told him that getting up to the small hilltop that the ranch house rested on had been a bit of trouble that morning, because the roads were so icy. And they all had trucks that were geared for stuff like this.
He wasn’t so sure about Christine’s rental.
“I am,” she said, frowning. “Why? Want me to get you something?”
“Thanks for the offer, but I think you need to get your butt out of that car and come with me instead.”
“You’re assuming an awful lot, Finn,” Christine said with a tiny smirk.
He rolled his eyes. Something which he’d found himself doing a whole lot more of since Christine Landry blew into his world.
“Sure. Now come on. I don’t want to be the one towing your ass up the hill when you get stranded in a ditch. Which is exactly what will happen if you go out now. Trust me.”
He doubted that this woman had the presence of mind to trust anyone but herself, which wasn’t entirely a bad thing, so when she chose to do as she was told, he was pleasantly surprised. If not to say shocked.
“I think you underestimate my capability of getting things done,” she grumbled as she walked in his footsteps, hopping rather than stepping, as he led them back to his trailer.
He opened the door for her and ushered her inside with a sweeping bow, receiving a quirked brow from Christine for it.
“Just get in, would you,” he sighed.
She stomped her boots mostly clean and then clambered inside, undoing her jacket as she did so. The sight of her bubble butt going up those stairs was one that Finn wished he enjoyed less.
With every day, he’d found himself growing more distracted by the fireball of a woman. She seemed to be everywhere all at once, coaching his men, commenting on his work, and generally making an adorable nuisance out of herself. It was starting to affect his judgment, which only motivated him to work faster.
“This is not too bad, Finn,” Christine said, considering the inside of the trailer.
It was a basic setup, with a seating area next to a makeshift kitchen, a ‘bedroom’ partitioned off by cabinets, and a bathroom to the other end of it, with closet space for his work clothes. Nothing special.
“I built most of it myself,” he said, ushering her to sit down, while he grabbed another plate – his only other plate – and spooned some meat and eggs, with a side of string beans for Christine.
“You did?” she asked, considering him with the same kind of surprise that she was looking at the food.
“What? Surprised that I can build, or that I can cook?”
“Maybe a little bit of both,” she replied.
Walked right into that one.
“Just eat, won’t you?” he asked with a sigh, pouring her a shot of whiskey. “I’m sure you’re a wine spritzer kind of girl, but this is all we serve in my household.”
“How very masculine of you,” Christine chuckled, poking at the food.
“I’d like to think of that as one of my better qualities, yes. The masculinity part,” Finn grumbled, taking a forkful of the food.
It tasted damn fine, if anyone were to ask him. Just like his mama used to make it.
Christine took a bite. Her expression brightened immediately and she took a couple more, before pausing to look at him with the same kind of surprise and borderline shock in her eyes as he’d seen a few times.
“What?” he asked with a frown. “Something wrong with it?”
“No, on the contrary,” she said between bites. “It’s amazing! You didn’t tell me you were a chef!”
“Between you telling me that you want the house rotated on its axis thirty degrees? Yeah, I didn’t have time,” Finn snorted.
“I never asked for that.”
Christine laughed and it might have been the first time he’d heard her do that. He wasn’t even sure why he’d asked her to join him for dinner, and even less why she’d agreed to it, but so far, he’d gotten his money’s worth.
Sharing a meal with her made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. In fact, he hadn’t been able to really get her off his mind since that second night, when he caught her looking at the wilderness with the kind of longing in her eyes that he hadn’t ever seen on anyone. He’d gotten the distinct feeling that this was a woman trapped in what she’d made of herself, and all he wanted was to help her break free of that.
Which is none of your business and none of your problem, he curtly reminded himself.
So far, the constant reminders hadn’t done much.
“Fine, I’ll give you that,” he agreed reluctantly. “But you ask for a whole lot, so you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t keep perfect track.”
Christine shrugged, averting her eyes.
“I just want things to be perfect, that’s all.”
“Oh, is that all?” he asked, cocking a brow.
He looked up in time to see her fish her phone out of her pocket and glance at it, before putting it down again. She kept doing that, though these hills were notorious for having spotty reception at the best of times, and none at all the rest of the time. The rest of the time being… well, all the time.
She didn’t say a word and he could feel a spot of tension in the air. They were getting through their food a little too fast for his liking as well. For some reason, Finn really didn’t want to call this an early evening.
“Expecting perfection from yourself or others can be a slippery slope to disappointment.”
“If you don’t try, then you’ll never know what you can do,” she responded smartly.
“Do you want to keep going with these motivational poster slogans or do you want to tell me why you’re actually doing it? Why’s it so important to have things just the way you want them?”
“I’m an architect,” she sighed with the faintest of smiles. “The devil’s always in the details with us.”
“It doesn’t seem to me like it’s just the house,” he said, nodding his head towards the phone. “I get the feeling you’re trying to control a whole lot more than just this build site.”
“My wedding’s in a little more than a week. I have to stay on top of things.”
She was protesting a little too stiffly, but Finn let it go. What he didn’t miss was the way she gnawed on her lower lip whenever she looked at that damn phone of hers.
Whenever there was a little spot of reception, most frequently appearing right in the middle of the house, Christine would immediately be on the phone. She’d either be talking to her parents, who Finn had decided did not sound like the kind of folks he’d want as his own mother and father, or her wedding planner.
He hadn’t heard her talk to her fiancé, or even really mention him or the wedding. In fact, every time she had one of those wedding planning calls, she’d be riled up and ready to knock down some walls for a good couple of hours, until she calmed down again. The crew had learned to keep out of her path when she’d come off a phone call recently.
“How’s the fiancé?” Finn asked.
He wanted to kick himself the moment the question slipped out.
Why do you even care?
The immediate answer that he had for that, was that he didn’t. Not at all, not a bit. But the honest answer was that he sort of wanted to know who this interesting, infuriating woman had chosen as her partner in life. It had to be some man. The quick internet search, using the name that Finn remembered off of some of the papers regarding the house, had revealed that he was, in fact, some man.
A billionaire weretiger, and a banker at that. A brutal man, following in the footsteps of his father, who was known as much for his ruthless way of doing business as he was for his old-school values. The Mayers were one of the few prominent weretiger families who would make it a point of public knowledge that they felt that humans were far below their station, as were most other shifters.
Now, Finn didn’t know what kind of a shifter Christine was, but she certainly didn’t strike him as a racist. Not even by a little.
She was an equal opportunity pain in the ass, for lack of a better description. Which made her choice of a life partner all the more curious.
“He’s fine, I think,” Christine said, reaching for the whiskey.
“You think?”
“I haven’t been getting through to him much over the last few days. Horrible reception. We’re going to have to do something about that when we move out here for the hockey season.”
Christine sounded far more animated about what she could do about the house and the problem with the reception than she was about her fi
ancé. Maybe it was that which compelled Finn to keep poking.
Or maybe it was the crush he was harboring that he wasn’t ready to admit to yet.
“So tell me about him a little. The man of the house. You know, so I can get a feel for him. It helps with the building process.”
“Oh, does it?” she asked with a grin, taking a deep gulp of the whiskey.
The way her pupils dilated and her hand went to her mouth told Finn in no uncertain terms that she was not a whiskey kind of girl. The way she exhaled sharply and then filled her glass again, however, told him that he could not be certain of anything.
“It might,” he commented, clinking his glass against hers. “And it gives you something to talk about other than the imperfections of your dream house.”
“It’s just supposed to be a seasonal house,” she commented. “Cisco’s into hockey.”
“Is he?” Finn asked, feeling a little like a parrot that only functions by asking questions. “Wouldn’t have pegged him for a hockey kind of guy.”
“I think it’s mostly the prestige thing. You know, the whole deal around no one knowing who the owner of the Shifter Grove Shovelers is? I think it’s eating him up inside that he isn’t included in one inner circle in the world.”
Finn breathed a sigh of relief when she skimmed right over the fact that he’d let it slip that he’d looked the guy up.
“Sounds like not much of a problem.”
“Yeah, well, when you have too much money, you start inventing problems, sometimes,” Christine said with a shrug of her shoulders.
It came with no small part of distaste readily readable on her expression.
“You don’t approve of that?”
“I don’t think what people think of you is that important. I think there are bigger things to worry about.”
“Like the tilt of the back porch awning?”
“Like that, yes!” Christine agreed with a giggle, her face lighting up.
Finn had learned that he loved when that happened and he wanted to see more of it. So no wonder he eagerly agreed when Christine moved to pour him more whiskey, even though he was a strict one drink a night kind of bear.