brows. “Is that so?”
“I guess I had my personal close encounter. I did a walk-though last night, heard somebody up here. I figured it for one of you, messing with me. She thought I called her an asshole, and let me know she didn’t care for it.”
Beckett’s grin spread wide and quick. “She’s got a temper.”
“Tell me. We made up—I think. But in case she holds a grudge . . .”
“We’re done in here, too,” Ryder told him. “And in Titania and Oberon. We’ve got to run the crown molding and baseboard in Nick and Nora, and there’s some touch-ups in Eve and Roarke, and the bathroom ceiling light in there. It came in, finally, yesterday. Jane and Rochester in the back is full of boxes. Lamps, lamps, more lamps, shelves and God knows. But it’s punched out.
“I’ve got a list, too.” Ryder tapped his head while the dog walked over to sit at his side. “I just don’t have to write down every freaking thing in ten places.”
“Robe hooks, towel racks, TP dispensers,” Owen began.
“On the slate for today.”
“Mirrors, flatscreens, switch plate and outlet covers, door bumpers.”
“On the slate, Owen.”
“You’ve got the list of what goes where?”
“Nobody likes a nag, Sally.”
“Exit signs need to go up.” Owen continued working down his list as he walked to the Dining Room. “Wall sconces in here, and some touch-ups to the paint. The boxes we built for the fire extinguishers need to be painted and installed.”
“Once you shut up, I can get started.”
“Brochures, website, advertising, finalizing room rates, packages, room folders.”
“Not my job.”
“Exactly. Count your frigging blessings. How much longer for the revised plans on the bakery project?” Owen asked Beckett.
“I’ll have them to the permit office tomorrow morning.”
“Good deal.” He took out his phone, switched it to calendar. “Let’s nail it down. I’m going to tell Hope to open reservations for January fifteenth. We can have the grand-opening deal on the thirteenth, give it a day for putting it all back together. Then we’re up.”
“That’s less than a month,” Ryder complained.
“You know and Beck knows and I know that there’s less than two weeks of work left here. You’ll be done before Christmas. If we start the load-in this week, we’ll be done by the first of the year, and there’s no reason we won’t get the Use and Occupancy right after the holidays. That gives two weeks to fiddle and fuss, work out any kinks, with Hope living here.”
“I’m with Owen here. We’re sliding downhill now, Ry.”
Stuffing his hands in his pockets, Ryder shrugged. “It’s weird, maybe, just weird thinking about actually being done.”
“Cheer up,” Owen told him. “A place like this? We’re never going to be done.”
On his nod, Ryder heard the back door open, shut, the sound of heavy boots on tile. “We’ve got crew. Get your tools.”
OWEN KEPT BUSY, and happy, running crown molding. He didn’t mind the regular interruptions to answer a call, return a text, read an email. His phone served as a tool to him as much as his nail gun. The building buzzed with activity, echoed with voices and Ryder’s job radio. It smelled of paint and fresh-cut wood, strong coffee. The combination said Montgomery Family Construction to him, and never failed to remind him of his father.
Everything he’d learned about carpentry and the building trade he’d learned from his father. Now, stepping off the ladder to study the work, he knew his father would be proud.
They’d taken the old building, with its sagging porches and broken windows, its scarred walls and broken floors, and transformed it into a jewel on the town square.
Beckett’s vision, he thought, their mother’s imagination and canny eye, Ryder’s sweat and skill, and his own focus on detail—combined with a solid crew—transformed what had been an idea batted around the kitchen table into a reality.
He set down his nail gun, rolled his shoulders as he turned around the room.
Yeah, his mother’s canny eye, he thought again. He could admit he’d balked at her scheme of pale aqua walls and chocolate brown ceiling—until he’d seen it finished. Glamour was the word of the day for Nick and Nora, and it reached its pinnacle in the bath. That same color scheme, including a wall of blue glass tiles contrasting with brown on brown, all sparkling under crystal lights. Chandelier in the john, he thought with a shake of his head. It sure as hell worked.
Nothing ordinary or hotel-like about it, he mused—not when Justine Montgomery took charge. He thought this