Chapter One #2
“Justin.”
The kid visibly sighs in relief as a deep voice rumbles what must be his name, and I whirl around, a rant on the tip of my tongue, only to come face to face with possibly the most gorgeous man I have ever seen.
Well, that’s just unfair.
Deep-set green eyes gaze over my shoulder as I falter, falling at the first hurdle. Strong jawline covered in dark stubble, strands of jet-black hair peeking out from beneath his hard hat. I have to crane my neck to look at him, and as the resident tall girl in the village, that’s saying something.
“Is there a problem?” he asks.
“There is,” I say, before Justin can respond. I hear him scampering away, but I don’t bother to check, not when the newcomer snaps his attention to me, pinning me with his stare. “I…”
I trail off as his gaze drops down, lingering on my legs. Or to be fair to the guy, I presume not so much my legs as the pajama bottoms that cover them. The pajama bottoms that feature a dozen yellow ducks in rain jackets that I now really wish I wasn’t wearing.
I clear my throat, but it takes him a moment to look back up again. His expression blank, bordering on bored, doesn’t change.
“Are you in charge?” I ask.
“No.”
“Can you tell me who is?”
His walkie-talkie crackles at his hip, but he doesn’t reach for it, just continues to stare at me like he didn’t even hear what I said.
“You know you’ve got…” He lifts a hand to his cheek, and I just about want to die when I remember I’m still wearing the overnight eye masks I bought. The ones I put on to try and help my puffy, sleep-deprived face this morning.
“I know,” I say, making a split-second decision to go with it. “They’re meant to be there.”
A pause.
“Okay.”
“Look, I would like to discuss the noise levels of your site,” I say in my most professional voice. “Are you someone I can talk to about that, or are you— excuse me!”
My mouth drops open as the man walks past me, not even listening. I follow him immediately, indignation fueling my steps as I hurry to keep up with his long strides.
“I’m talking to you! You can’t just—”
He stops so abruptly that I almost walk into him, and I can only stand there in confusion as he grabs a spare hard hat from a pile by the Portakabin and places it on my head.
“Health and safety,” he explains. The words are serious, but I’m almost certain he’s making fun of me. “Have you signed in?”
“I…no, I—”
“You need to sign in to get a visitor’s pass. You need a visitor’s pass to walk around the site. Did you talk to Leon?”
“I didn’t talk to anyone,” I say, growing frustrated. “I just walked in. It’s not my problem if your security is non-existent.”
“No,” he agrees. “It’s mine.”
The way he says it makes me hesitate, and I reach up to straighten the helmet. I’ve always had a lot of hair, frizzy brown curls that I’ve never managed to tame, and they’re already trying to push the thing off my head.
“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” I begin.
“But you’re fine with roaming around an active construction site with no protective equipment?”
“Well, I have a hat now,” I mumble, and a long silence stretches between us.
“What did you say you wanted to discuss?” he asks eventually, and I try to remember the whole point of this.
“The noise levels.”
He gives me a look. “The noise levels.”
“Yes.”
“Of a construction site.”
“ Yes , I…” I pause, not liking his tone. “Okay, look, Mr.—”
“Callum.”
“Callum,” I repeat. “I know, okay? I know what I look like right now. I know what I sound like right now. And that? This? It’s because of you.
Because you have woken me up every morning for the past three mornings several hours before I’m meant to, meaning I don’t get any sleep, meaning I am…
” I gesture down at myself, ducks and all.
“This. This is who I am now. And I’m not usually like this.
I am usually normal. Like, to an embarrassing extent normal.
But right now, I can’t be. Instead, I have become the ranting woman in her pajamas who forgets to remove her eye masks. ”
“Thought you said you meant to—”
“I lied. You’ve also made me a liar. Happy?”
His lips twitch. Real blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stuff, but, judging by how dry my eyes feel, I don’t think I’ve blinked once since yesterday, so I see it just fine.
I’m nothing but a joke to him right now.
Which, alright, fair, I guess.
I fight to maintain my newfound bravado, feeling a headache forming. “Can you just give me the number of someone I could—”
“I’m sorry about the noise,” Callum interrupts. “It sounds like hell. But there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“I disagree. There are lots of things you can do. For example, do you have to start work at seven in the morning?”
“Yes.”
“ Yes ?”
“We need to maximize daylight and good weather. It’s a tight schedule.”
“Oh, you want to talk about schedules?”
“Not particularly,” he says with a straight face.
“I don’t finish work until one a.m. ,” I say, ignoring him. “And then it’s not like I just magically fall into bed ten minutes later. I’m not even in my deep sleep stage when you guys come screaming down the road. Do you know how important deep sleep is?”
“No.”
“Well, I do,” I snap. “I know all about it. It’s when my immune system strengthens. When my bones repair themselves . My bones .”
“Sounds important.”
“It is! It’s extremely important. And I’m not getting enough of it, and you’re just…you’re…” I struggle to find the words, so exhausted I might cry, which would be the embarrassed cherry on top of this crappy morning, to be honest.
Around us, the world has started to lighten, gloomy blue giving way to dull gray, and the pounding in my head begins to beat in time with a nearby hammer as everyone else gets on with their lives, paying no heed to the lone dissenter in her pajamas.
I can’t believe I’m still wearing my freaking eye masks.
“I’m sorry about your bones,” Callum says, when I just stand there. “But I’m going to have to ask you to leave before you trip over something, and I have to fill in a lot of paperwork.”
“Wouldn’t want that,” I mutter, but he just motions back to the gate I came through and starts walking. When I fail to come up with a brilliant new plan, I have no choice but to follow.
Maybe I just won’t sleep.
I’ll be the girl who doesn’t sleep. That can be my thing.
Or I could get really into micro-napping. That’s what tech bros do, isn’t it? They record bad podcasts and they micro-nap? I could micro-nap. I could…
I lose that train of thought as what little energy is left in my brain zeroes in on a small group of people walking toward us.
Even with the hard hats adorning their heads, they immediately stand out from the rest of the workers.
These people are dressed for the boardroom in expensive corporate clothing and shiny shoes.
But it’s not the outfits that catch my attention, not the woman with the microphone, or the camera balanced on one of the men’s shoulders.
It’s the man they’re both focused on, the one leading the pack as he comes to a halt nearby and starts to talk.
Young and handsome in that bland way all rich people are, I wouldn’t have given him a second glance if not for the fact that his face has been plastered all over the leaflets that arrive through our front door every week.
Leaflets that many of my neighbors have started taping to the pub dartboards to practice their aim.
Sure, the guy looks different without his eyes crossed out and a dart sticking out of his mouth, but I recognize him instantly.
And I know he’s the one in charge.
“Mind your step,” Callum calls. “It’s muddy here.” He glances over his shoulder when I don’t respond, stopping when he realizes I’m no longer following him. “Let’s go,” he prompts, a slight warning in his voice, but I don’t pay any attention to it or to him, too distracted by the newcomers.
“Do you think he can help?” I ask, as they approach.
“No.” The word is firm, and yet I take a slow sidestep, testing my guard’s reflexes.
“Maybe I should ask him and check.”
“Maybe you should— hey !”
Callum’s shout draws the attention of several people around us, and I break into a short run as he lunges after me.
“You,” I say, as Blondie turns at the commotion. “Leaflet guy.”
“Leaflet— what?” The man steps back, as if being too close to me might give him some sort of disease. “Can I help you?”
“You can,” I say, as Callum comes to a stop behind me. “How about you start by getting out of my village?”
“Your village?” He doesn’t seem to have heard me, too busy staring at my pajama pants. “Callum?”
“I’m sorry, Jack,” Callum says, and the man’s name suddenly comes to me. Jack Doyle . A managing director of Glenmill. The one who’d bought the land for them in the first place. “She was just leaving.”
“No, she wasn’t,” I say, standing my ground despite the increasing number of people side-eyeing us as they go past. Jack notices them too, his bafflement smoothing into professionalism as he recovers like a pro.
“I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name.”
“Katie Collins. And I—”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Katie.” He grabs my hand and shakes it until I jerk away. “I’m going to guess you’re from Ennisbawn?”
“Yes. And I—”
“You know, the community here is one of the primary reasons we chose this area,” he continues, his voice rising as the cameraman angles the shot slightly, taking him in. “As well as the wealth of natural beauty, it’s really the people that make it so—”
“Are you high ?”
Callum makes a pained noise from somewhere over my shoulder, as Jack’s gaze narrows on me.
“You don’t care about the community,” I say, jabbing a finger through the air. “You don’t want anything to do with us. You don’t even talk to us.”
“I have to disagree. We’re in constant communication with—”
“Dropping letters through our doors is not communication, it’s junk mail.
” I step in front of him, vaguely aware of Callum trying to snatch me back as I move in view of the camera.
“Glenmill doesn’t answer our emails or our calls, and the only thing you’re doing is taking away land until there’ll be nothing left.
That’s all you want and that’s all you care about, and I’m not putting up with it anymore. A girl needs her sleep!”
“Her what?”
“She wants to talk to someone about the noise levels,” Callum explains. “Something about her bones.”
Jack stares at him, but my attention has shifted to the woman with the microphone, who’s watching us like a soap opera.
“I can give you an interview,” I say, focusing on her and her shiny black bob. “Lots of people can. We’ve been trying to get ahold of the press for months. If you just let me go back and get dressed, we can—”
“I’m sorry,” she interrupts, glancing back at the cameraman. “I’m not a journalist. I’m part of the Glenmill marketing department. We’re making a promotional video for the website.”
“A what?”
She grimaces, adding in a yeah, yikes for you little shrug that extinguishes a good chunk of my energy until I’m almost swaying in place.
No one says anything for a long moment, and then Jack swipes his hands in front of him as though erasing the last few minutes. “Okay,” he says. “That’s enough of that. Callum? Could you take our illegally trespassing friend here away from what is about to be an insurance nightmare?”
“On it,” Callum mutters, crowding me until I’m forced to move or let him knock me down.
“Miss Collins? Rest assured we will take your comments on board,” Jack says, as I gape at him. “And if you’d like to email in about your noise concerns, I will get back to you personally. Thanks for coming down. Please don’t do it again.”
“You—”
Callum steps fully into my space, blocking my view of the group. “Come on.”
“But—”
“This way.” His tone leaves no room for argument, and frustration chokes me as I turn, stumbling back to the entrance. Callum’s learned his lesson from last time and stays glued to my side as though to make sure I won’t make a run for it again.
“He’s not going to get back to me,” I say, as we reach the gate. “Is he?”
“No,” Callum says.
“Because I’m in my pajamas?”
“I think it was the leaflet guy comment. He’s very proud of those.”
I return the hard hat to him before taking an exaggerated step over the line that marks public from private land.
I want to end on something devastating. Something witty and clever that will make this whole disaster worthwhile, but I’ve got nothing.
Nothing but a brain that feels like it’s wading through mud and a body that would happily curl up on a pile of leaves somewhere if it meant the chance to sit down.
“I’m not usually like this,” I say again, and he nods.
“I hope you get some sleep.”
“And I hope your boss falls into a very big hole.”
“He’ll have to crawl out of his own one first.”
My eyes go wide at the joke, but Callum’s back to being serious, and he does it so well that I’m almost certain I misheard him.
Almost.
“Have a nice day,” he says, when I don’t move and I waste another five seconds trying and failing to think of something to say, only for him to head back into the site, leaving me staring after him.