Her Dirty Builders (Men at Work #10) - Mika Lane Page 0,12

his chair to face me. “What’s up?”

“The retreat.”

He raised his eyebrows. “What about it?”

I leaned over the waist-high cubicle wall so he could hear my lowered voice. “It’s a pain in the ass. I can’t give everyone what they want. They’re going to hate me.”

He rolled his eyes and turned back to his laptop, where I was pretty sure he was writing about the surprise closure of the oldest bar in town. “Fuck ’em,” he said over his shoulder.

Well. He was of no help. And Adam wasn’t around, having gone out to impress the paper’s parent company that he needed a bigger budget or something like that.

And I had no doubt he was dropping names all over the place of the people he’d worked with so long ago at the New York Times.

Now that I was mad at the world, I figured it was time to leave work before I hurt someone.

I headed home to see what was going on there.

9

ESME

While I didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, I couldn’t help but wonder why Case was being so kind and polite. It was pretty clear he didn’t remember me from high school, which was probably for the best, but he’d been such a douchebag back then, making out with me and then blabbing to his stupid jock friends.

When had he become a nice human being? Was it just plain old growing up? Or had life done something to humble him?

I pulled up in front of my house to find the guys still there. And the house was still standing. So there was that.

Thank god. I needed something positive in my life.

But that brief sensation of having things under control like a normal, competent adult withered when I walked inside and saw the gaping hole in my living room wall.

With bits of plaster and wood crunching under my feet, I slowly made my way toward it as if it might swallow me up.

“What the hell?” I yelled, fingering the edges where the old plaster and wood had been pulled away.

Behind where the wall had been, there was another wall.

Completely made of brick.

I didn’t know much about home construction, especially not old houses, but I didn’t think this was normal.

Goddammit. A sledgehammer and other tools of destruction lay scattered around the floor amidst the debris. Did the guys do this? And why?

“Oh, hey, Esme. We were just getting ready to head out for the day,” Case said, smiling as he and Alden found me.

They were covered in dust. My dust. My wall dust.

“What… what is this? Why is there a hole in my wall?” I stammered.

He pointed. “Oh that? Yeah, we were looking for a source of the water damage, and look what we found.”

I looked at them, the mess on the floor, and the hole. Did they see something I didn’t? Because I was pretty sure a huge hole was a huge hole.

“What? What did you find? Because it made a big fucking mess in my house!” I shrilled.

The two guys looked at each other, puzzled.

“Well, that. Right there,” he said, continuing to point.

Oh my god.

I unclenched my teeth and took a deep breath. “What is that? What are we looking at?” I asked with all the patience I could muster.

Because all I could see was the goddamn hole and trash all over my floor.

Did I need to remind them that the goal of this project was to improve the house, not to waste time trying to discover its secrets?

“Check it out, Esme,” Alden said, putting his hand through the new opening and reaching for the brick inside.

“What is it? Why is there brick behind my wall?”

Alden smiled. “It’s not just brick. It’s an old fireplace. Someone covered up a fireplace.”

While I supposed that was interesting and even a bit mysterious, I didn’t feel better about it.

“We occasionally make interesting finds like this with old houses. It tells you about its history, and the people who inhabited it at one point,” Case added.

They were clearly pleased with themselves.

Me, not so much. I mean, I was glad they were intrigued. I was happy that their day had been made more interesting.

But mine had not.

In fact, all I could think about now was that there was a hole in my wall where there was none before. And that meant my house—and I—had another problem.

“I… I think you guys better leave now. I need some time to myself,” I said, choking back tears.

They looked at each other again. “Um. Okay.