in tomorrow as long as the rain kept to the evenings and didn’t bleed over into the days.
“Hey there, Owen.” A man dressed in a blazer and tie walked toward him from the driveway. “I just got home from work. This looks amazing.”
The man, Jerry Harris, worked as a manager at a large car dealership. His pudgy stomach and hanging chin looked like he spent more time behind an office desk than walking the lot. “You’ve been at this all day I see. Very nice, very nice. When do you think you will finish?”
“Three days.”
“Wonderful. Randy Steagall is our district manager, and he wants you to see about building him something on his back porch. I think he wants an extension and then a screened-in part. Mind if I give him your number?”
Owen nodded his go ahead but stayed quiet.
“Excellent. I appreciate the fast turnaround. The last guy I hired to work on the house took three weeks to put on a roof. Three weeks! He gave me every excuse in the book. Back strains, sprained toes, something about license plates and his car getting impounded by mistake, girlfriend and wife problems at the same time, the dog getting sick and needing emergency surgery. I get that life happens, but every other day it seemed he had something happen that kept him from finishing the work. After he finally got done, I found out he doesn’t even have a dog and his domestic problems stemmed from him trying to meet other women on one of those singles meeting sites. Nice to find someone that has some integrity.”
“Thanks.” Owen started coiling the drop lines from the power tools. It was a pain in the ass to put them away and load the truck every night by himself, but it was better than taking chances of them getting ruined by rain or stolen, or even worse, an accident from the man’s kids playing with the equipment when he wasn’t there.
Jerry shifted from foot to foot in agitation. “Um, say, Owen, the wife wants me to find out if you’d be interested in meeting her sister. She just got her final divorce papers and is planning on moving here in a month or two.”
Owen lifted his rip saw and put it in the case along with his drill and power driver. “No time to date.”
“Bertie is a lot of fun now that she’s in the land of the living again. She and Karl were pretty stagnant as a couple. She’s younger than Jodie and nice to look at and a hard worker like you. You really should meet her. At least just once. She’s gonna need friends more than anything else, and she’s a real hoot to be around.”
Owen flipped a tarp over the remaining lumber to keep it dry overnight. He’d already covered the semi-finished deck railings. “Not now.”
Jerry didn’t give up. He put on his best salesman smile. “Ah, come on, Owen. You got time to think about it. Just for one date, and it’s far enough in the future, you’ll change your mind. You can do the dinner thing or the movie thing, and that’s it. My wife will be ecstatic and stop hounding me about setting up her sister. Besides, Bertie has this big plan to open a bed-and-breakfast, and the places she is looking at need some serious renovations. You can think of the date as more of a business meeting, yeah?”
Owen opened his mouth to protest again, and nothing came out. The words just didn’t happen, and Jerry took that as a sign of acquiescence. “Great, I’ll tell Jodie tonight and get her off my ass for a change. Fantastic, man. Really ’preciate you.”
The man smiled huge and turned to leave. He whirled back with a finger in the air. “Oh, yeah. One more thing. Jodie wants you to build her a she shed kinda thing in the basement. The unfinished part. I’m not sure what a she shed is, but whatever my sweetie wants, she gets. Know what I mean?”
He laughed and sauntered in the house, leaving Owen on the half-finished deck with his mouth still open.
Chapter Six
“Mellie-Jellie, what’s up? You busy today? I’m headed to the mall with Abby and her posse. Meet me at Starbucks? Please?”
There rang a slight note of desperation in Bevvie’s voice. It had the message of please-rescue-me-from-being-alone-with-a-bunch-of-teenage-girls-in-mall-mode. “I’ve already had my real coffee quota for the day. Starbucks decaf is a real thing, right?”
“Yes, Starbucks decaf exists, and you can