True North—Excerpt
Getting dumped sucked, even when you weren’t that wild about the guy to start with.
Getting dumped two days before your sister’s wedding, being left dateless… That was an altogether different level of suck.
Sierra Lowell shut the back door of her business harder than she meant to and let out a quiet but heartfelt stream of swear words.
“Everything okay?”
She turned from the door to see Cole North, her foreman, sticking his head into the room.
“Fine,” she said, brushing off the irritation from her personal life and slipping back into business mode. It probably revealed a lot about her relationship— former relationship—that she so easily got her mind back on the subject of her meeting with Cole. “Sorry about the interruption.”
“You sure?” he asked as she approached him from across the kitchen of the cute Cape Cod house, built nearly a century ago, that served as the headquarters of Dunn & Lowell Remodeling. They’d been about to start a two-person evening meeting when Kevin, her ex, had interrupted.
“Yep,” she said, not having to fake the optimism in her tone.
“What I want to discuss is important.” She led Cole back into her office, originally one of the two cozy bedrooms of the house, and retook her place in front of her notebook, laptop, and coffee at the round table in the center of the room.
Before sitting again, he pulled his gray hooded sweatshirt over his head to reveal the black T-shirt with the small Dunn & Lowell logo on the chest and tossed the sweatshirt on the chair between them.
Both were dusty after their regular workday at the jobsite.
Sierra wouldn’t call herself clean either, but that was status quo and a sign that they’d worked hard.
“So what’s up?” he said as he sat down across from her.
She flipped back several pages in her notebook to some notes she’d jotted down late last night. “Chances are good you’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“Sounds like a normal day.” Cole wasn’t one to smile a lot, but the tips of his lips tilted up slightly now as he pulled his legal pad and carpenter pencil closer.
Sierra leaned back in her chair and pulled her cargo-pants-clad legs up to sit cross-legged, took in a deep breath as she chose her words carefully. “Are you familiar with William Eldridge?”
“I’ve heard the name. Is he the guy who owns a bunch of TV networks?”
“Networks, newspapers, magazines, websites, who knows what else,” she said, brushing back a long strand of hair that’d come out of her ponytail hours ago. “Originally from Tennessee.”
“Richer than God if I remember right.”
“You do. Also egotistical, from what I’ve heard, and loves being in the spotlight.
Anyway, I saw something on his home remodeling network last night between shows.
He recently bought a mansion in town, south of here.
An old Italianate-style house built in the early 1900s.
He got it for a steal because it’s a mess—”
“And he needs a remodeler,” Cole said.
“He needs a remodeler, but he’s not going about finding one in the usual way. He’s holding a competition and putting it on a TV series.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Cole sat back in his chair.
Sierra’s heart sank the tiniest bit at his tone, but she reminded herself it was exactly the reaction she’d expected from him. “When you own one of the top networks devoted to remodeling, what else are you going to do?”
“And you want to get into the competition, just like that? Because you saw an ad on TV?” Cole said, his eyes narrowed at her.
“Of course I do. But I wanted to get your opinion on it.”
He studied her with the look in his eyes that she’d expected—as if she hadn’t given it enough thought. Yes, it was sudden, but how could she not try? As soon as she’d gone to the website and read the details, she’d known she had to enter.
“This is your company,” he said. “You make the calls.”
“Yes and yes.” She kept her voice firm. She would do this, would go for it, because winning the competition would propel her company to new levels and give her a new platform.
The thought had excitement pulsing through her again.
But the project would be a lot smoother if Cole, her right-hand guy, was on board.
Dunn & Lowell was doing well, always had a lineup of projects, the vast majority of which were remodels of historical buildings.
They received most of their business through word of mouth because Sierra personally did everything possible to ensure her customers’ complete satisfaction and she employed an excellent crew with remarkably little turnover.
She was blessed in so many ways—to have inherited the business from her grandpa, Roger Dunn, to have learned the industry from him, one of the best in the field, and to genuinely love what she did for a living.
Beyond the basics of carpentry and construction, her grandpa had instilled in her a passion for uncovering and bringing out an old building’s soul.
Quality and authenticity were valued above shortcuts and cheap solutions, and his tenets were what she continued to build the company’s reputation on.
But lately she’d been thinking a lot about how to make the business even more.
She was at a crossroads, where she could either decide this was the pinnacle of Dunn & Lowell or she could work on taking it even higher.
Her vote was for pushing it higher. The timing of this opportunity couldn’t be more perfect.
“What would this entail?” Cole asked, tapping his flat pencil on the table.
She lowered her legs, sat up straighter, and referenced the bullet items in her notebook even though she knew them by heart.
“There are three stages, and at each stage, the field of competitors narrows. Application, interview, and the final one is a full-blown, in-depth, multimedia proposal for the mansion.”
“It’s a circus parade just to get to the proposal stage,” Cole said, tapping away.
“That’s the spirit of TV, I guess.” Truth be told, Sierra would thrive on the chance to be in the spotlight.
She wasn’t shy, and she knew her stuff. Being a woman in a man’s field had always been an uphill battle and she continually had to prove herself and then prove herself again.
Making it past any of the contest rounds and appearing on Eldridge’s network would increase her credibility as an expert and show that women could run a renovation company just as well as a man—and better.
“So the prize is the job?”
“That’s just the beginning.” She took a sip of her coffee—vanilla caramel in her mug that said GIRL BOSS—before continuing, to slow her thoughts and her speech, which were both ramping up with her enthusiasm.
“The remodel would be featured in detail on the network for a full season, and after that season, we’d get our own show for a year, where we basically go about our business as usual and they film our work, interview us, show what we’re doing and how we do it. ”
“So a typical home network show.”
“Yes, with a focus on century-old-home renovations.”
“Our bread and butter,” he said.
“I know we could compete.”
Cole sat up taller, a cocky look on his handsome face. “We could do more than compete. We could win it. But are you sure you want all the bullshit that would come with it? The show, the attention, the bureaucracy, being accountable to someone besides yourself and the client?”
She nodded, loving that he felt comfortable enough to speak his mind.
That’s what she wanted. Not some yes man.
“I thought about all of that, thought about it practically all night long, and it’s a lot.
To me, the benefits outweigh the negatives, but it will affect everyone who works here to some extent. ”
“Sure as hell will.” He said it with conviction, and Sierra’s mind spun with how to bring him around, how to get Cole’s support.
She didn’t want to hard-sell this. She wanted Cole to be in favor of it without her persuasion, because he’d become important to her business, almost like a partner in some aspects.
He was highly intelligent, had above-average skills and knowledge, and worked as hard as she did.
In the years he’d been in the industry, he’d gained immeasurable experience in solving whatever problems arose—and because they dealt with decades-old, sometimes centuries-old buildings, they’d had some real headaches.
“When’s the deadline for the application?” he asked, doodling designs along the margin of his otherwise-blank yellow legal pad.
“We’ve got a week and a half.”
“What would my role be?”
“I can do the app. I went through some of it last night, the short answers and financials. There’s a few essay-type questions, like why I want to win, what’s the most challenging historical renovation we’ve done, that kind of thing.”
“What about the other stages?” Cole asked, interrupting his doodling to look her in the eye, and it hit her that that was where his hesitation lay. While she loved the idea of being on camera, being the center of attention, being hailed as an expert, Cole wouldn’t. He would detest it.
“How about this? If we get past the application, you can stay behind the scenes. I’ll handle the interview and the proposal.”
Cole’s body language changed, telling her she was on to the key. “What if they want a second person involved?”
“Someone else can do it. Troy, maybe. Demetrius. They’re both extroverts who never shut up. Even Carlos. With a little coaching, he’d do great, and probably gain a few female fans in the process.”
“That’s the last thing he needs,” Cole said. “It all sounds okay, but what if we win? There’s no way you can guarantee I can stay behind the scenes then.”
“I’ll tell them you’re off-limits. Maybe I’ll tell them you have a speech impediment,” she said, grinning.
“Next thing we know, they’d want to do a feature on the tongue-tied foreman. Hell no.”