3. Fussy Creatures
FUSSY CREATURES
“ E verything on track?” Mac asked. Abe was leaning over the hood of his truck looking at the plans on the McGill Estate and talking to his crew on Monday afternoon.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just double-checking things. This is a huge deal.”
“Keeping us busy for close to a month or more,” Mac said. “I don’t think your father ever had a job this big.”
Mac had been with the company since Abe was in high school. He’d leaned on the older man more than he could ever repay in those early years.
Hell, Mac had been the one doing most of the work when Abe was in Florida caring for his mother, but he knew it was his responsibility to leave the real control in a family member’s hand and that was why Easton had stepped in as the go-between to oversee work and staff.
“He didn’t,” Abe said. “But he’d be proud of what we are doing. This is going to be one hell of a showpiece when it’s done. I took a bunch of pictures prior and I’m going to get plenty during the process.”
Reese McGill chatted with him hours ago when he walked out to his barn to get to work saying where he was if they needed anything and that they could use the bathroom in the barn, and there was a fridge full of drinks.
The dude was great and Abe wished all his clients were that good, but Poppy had said no way she was allowing an outhouse on the property for weeks.
He got it, some clients hated that and normally he argued about it, but it was saving him money to not bring it out and pay for it.
The crew had been warned to be respectful and he trusted they would be.
“This could be the focus of your website. Everyone knows of the estate,” Mac said. “Word is going to travel quickly that we did the work.”
He grinned. That had been part of the plan.
The same reason he had his sign at the front of the property where he was working. Not that many could see his work way back here, but they’d drive by and know he had been hired.
Just from the planting he’d done alone back in the spring and people seeing his sign driving by, he’d gotten some more calls.
The McGills carried a lot of clout in this area.
Might have to start hiring soon. He already had three more college kids working this summer than last.
“From your lips to the magic workers’ ears.”
It was a joke his father always used to say.
Mac looked up from the plans and then laughed.
“Let’s get to it. The guys are itching to start the machines up,” Mac said.
They’d spent most of the morning marking the spots they were going to dig. “Let me get Reese to verify the path is exactly where he wants it, then we can start. He already said the work around the cabin to the back of the property was good when we are set to start in a few weeks.”
He was pretty much going to be covering most of the grounds. Ripping up the old path to the docks to have it match all the new work.
A path to what he’d been told was the nanny’s cabin, the work around that, then laying out the groundwork to put in a guest house on the property that was in the works.
It was like a fortress out here.
He could drive over to the barn, but it wasn’t that far to walk, so he took off in that direction.
The sun was shining, and he had sweat trickling down his back like he did on a daily basis, but it’d be worse if he was out there digging and hauling like his men.
He would be doing it soon enough, but most times he was walking around inspecting things. He had other jobs to deal with and check on too, and Mac was going to be in charge here while that was going on.
The barn door was open, music was blasting out of speakers, but it was doubtful anything was heard over the saws running.
When the saw shut off, Reese lifted his goggles. “Hey,” Reese said. “Need me for something?”
“If you’ve got a minute,” he said. “Just want to show you where we are digging the new paths before we break ground.”
“Sure,” Reese said, leaving his goggles on the counter.
The two of them left the barn and walked along the dirt paths that led from the barn to the house, he saw Reese’s daughter running around a fenced-in area and a woman pushing a stroller back and forth.
Must be the nanny, but from a distance he couldn’t see much more than light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and a petite body in jeans shorts and a pink T-shirt.
Five minutes later, he asked, “Everything ready to go? The guys are itching to play with the toys.”
“Shit,” Reese said. “I don’t blame them. I’d want to do it too. It all looks great.”
“Perfect,” he said. “The plan is to rip it up in stages since it’s so big. No reason to have holes and dirt everywhere, especially if it rains. We’ll get your path from the house to the barn done first.”
“I appreciate that,” he said. “Then my wife won’t yell at me for bringing dirt in.”
He snorted. “I’ve heard that enough in my life from my mother.”
“It’s only dirt,” Reese said, shaking his head. “As I’ve said, it wipes up and washes off. My grandmother and mother were the worst. Poppy, she’s pretty good about it, but at least I won’t have to hear it anymore.”
He laughed over the way Reese rolled his eyes.
Abe had known Poppy as a kid. They were in school at the same time.
He knew the Bloom sisters' history too. Though Poppy had a massive multiple-million-dollar business now, those girls didn’t come from much.
“That’s my thought on it,” he said. “But women can be fussy creatures.”
He learned that the hard way.
“Tell me about it,” Reese said, laughing.
“I’ll get out of your way and we’ll try to get this path done by the end of business tomorrow, Wednesday at the latest. We’ll get it dug up and secured today.”
“Works for me,” Reese said, going back to his barn.
He returned to the trucks where his guys were waiting.
“Fire them up, boys,” he said to a lot of hooting and laughter.
Sometimes it felt as if his job was an everyday adventure in a sandbox.
Who the hell wouldn’t love something like this?
He got into the excavator to start digging, because being the owner and all, he got to play with the big toys the most.
The rest of the crew was using a forklift to move pallets of paving stones dropped off to where they needed to be for work.
The vibratory plate was brought over, that would be used to level it all before the pavers went in.
These paths were going to be wide enough for a golf cart to be driven around the property too.
Still made him shake his head.
He’d thought for sure he wouldn’t get the job because he wasn’t big enough to have it done in a week or two and said he’d do it in stages like this.
Poppy liked that idea better. Or maybe it was because she knew him and wanted to keep the work local.
No clue and he wasn’t going to question it.
At the end of the day, the path was dug and leveled out. They’d check it again in the morning to make sure nothing shifted and the guys would start laying the stones while he checked out a few more jobs.
It was a good day's work and if he went home alone to his house like he’d been doing for years, he was going to tell himself, it was all good.
Because that was how he got through most of his time anyway.