Chapter 6 Give Everyone A Shot
GIVE EVERYONE A SHOT
“Ican’t believe you want to come with me,” Gabe said the following week.
“I heard what Mom said last week. If I want her to cut back and give me more, then she has to feel as if I can handle it.”
Gabe laughed. “We know you can handle it, but you’ve never wanted to. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you’re doing it.”
She sighed. “If you thought I should have stepped up more, why haven’t you said anything?”
Her brother put his hand up. “I didn’t say that. I’m not even insinuating it. I know better. I’m just stating a fact. I’m glad you’re doing it. It’s going to be you and me running this place. I don’t see Jayce taking an interest.”
Her twin, Jayce, loved his job doing marketing or something for the Charlotte Hornets. She didn’t blame him.
He got to walk away from the family responsibilities and he’d still reap the rewards of it at some point.
“Nope. You and me, we are the tough ones. So what is going on today? Fill me in so I don’t stand around looking like an idiot.”
“That’s never been you,” Gabe said and grabbed his phone off his desk. “Let’s go. It’s the second commercial building. We are meeting Grant and Garrett there first. We are going to put up an additional structure in the parking lot for storage units. Some tenants are asking for it.”
“Steel units,” she said.
“Yep. Something we can throw up quickly. It’s figuring out the spacing and how many. I think the city is sending over a code enforcer too so we can get it right the first time.”
“And this is the first time I’m dealing with someone like this.”
Which was even better in her eyes.
“It’s nice to get out of the office once in a while,” Gabe said. “I know you like to look at your numbers and all those spreadsheets.”
“You do the same,” she said. Blueprints for her brother though. She heaved herself into the truck and buckled in. “You have to know my job too.”
“Thankfully, we trust each other enough that we don’t have to know as much as the other person.”
“It’d never happen that we know the other’s job,” she said. “On either of our parts.”
Her brother went to college for engineering and construction. The same as her father. Her mother had a degree in accounting, just like Jocelyn.
Funny when she thought of it that way.
She’d looked up to her mother for so many years. Maybe it was when she thought she was going to lose her that she truly saw just how incredible Stacy McCarthy was and set her sights on becoming just like her.
Not to judge people.
Not look down on them.
Give everyone a shot to be who they were.
It hadn’t been easy in school, especially when others gave her a hard time for refusing to be mean or look down on people her group deemed unworthy.
Plenty of times, she walked away from her friends because she refused to act the way they did.
Now it felt as if she didn’t have that large of a social group because of it.
You’d think it’d be the other way, but it ended up isolating her because she struggled to let anyone in fully.
Even made it hard for her to date because often the men she was with didn’t like that she didn’t fall in line or share their opinions. When she tried to compromise and be someone who she didn’t feel comfortable with, they weren’t happy in the end any more than her.
Oh well. Screw them.
Got that from her mother too.
They drove the twenty minutes to the second building. Traffic was crazier than normal, but the family business was on the other side of Durham.
The parking lot was only half full. In the past nine months, this building had been filling up more, but it was taking time. The work her family did on it was complete, but now it was finding tenants and Kennedy Construction doing the work inside.
Still, in the past five years, they’d expanded to two major commercial buildings. One completely filled, the other getting there.
“Let’s go up to the fourth floor,” Gabe said. “We are meeting Royce there with Garrett and Grant first.”
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Nothing on our end in terms of work, but they’ve got a new tenant they are starting work on. Remember, we own part of the building. It’s not just about doing the work and leaving. It’s being invested in all parts of the process and interests.”
She knew that. It was something she had to work on more.
Fierce Engineering and Olson Law handled most of the paperwork and details. The two construction companies came in and did their work, billing for services to the clients once documents were signed. Not even on her end most times because what McCarthy’s did was prior to even getting clients.
They walked to the elevator and up to the fourth floor, the door opening in the hallway.
“Hi, Gabe,” Grant Fierce said. “Jocelyn. We don’t get to see you often. It’s nice of you to stop in.”
“I should get my feet wet more,” she said. “Or so I’m told.”
Gabe put his arm around her shoulder. “We’ll break her in slowly.”
“I hear congratulations are in order,” Garrett said. “We do good work, you know.”
Her brother shook hands with the two Fierce men. “Word is traveling fast,” Gabe said.
Royce would know. It was Gabe’s brother-in-law.
“How is Elise feeling?” Grant asked.
“Good so far,” Gabe said. He looked at Royce. “Unless she’s hiding it from me. Anything going on in the office?”
“Nope,” Royce said. “My father would have figured it out if she had been showing signs of anything. Guess that’s how she hid it so long.”
“Why don’t we walk around and figure out what we are doing in this space?” Grant said. “We’ve got about thirty minutes before we have to meet with the code enforcer.”
Royce unlocked the door to the space and she stood there and listened while they talked about what it’d look like when it was done.
Nothing she hadn’t heard before nor anything that interested her all that much.
Not to be mean, just that it was nothing she’d have a part in other than owning the building. Actually, her parents owned part of the building, not even her.
It was still completely in their names for now.
But she took pride in her family legacy.
When they finished there, they walked to the elevator and went outside to the other end of the parking lot where some construction trucks were parked.
“Is it going to be a problem losing this spot for parking?” she asked.
“It shouldn’t be,” Grant said. “We’re actually getting more inquiries for medical offices here. That’s the space we were just in and then someone called last week for the first floor.”
“Wonderful,” she said.
It meant a lot of space taken up, but not filled with staff, and patients would come and go.
“We are getting the details worked out,” Garrett said. “Once we know more, we’ll bring everyone in for the next step. Your parents should be back by then. Good for them going away.”
“I wish they’d go more,” she said. “But once a year is about all my father will step away for.”
“With a new grandbaby coming, you might not even get that,” Grant said. “It took me a long time to get Diane to leave once the babies started coming, but now it’s working out fine.”
Jocelyn listened when the guys got down to business, tried to take notes in her head, but Gabe would give her specifics.
“The cost of steel is higher right now,” she said. “But I’ve been looking for other vendors. I have some ideas to run by you, Gabe.”
“That’s good,” Gabe said. “We’ll get costs drawn up soon.”
She turned as an SUV pulled in that said Durham Fire Department on it.
The engine went silent, the door opened, and out climbed the last person she expected to see…the star of last night’s steamy dream.
What the heck were the chances of this happening so often?
“Hey, Chance,” Royce said. “Good to see you again.”
Royce shook hands with her old high school classmate. The bad boy of the class.
He looked it now, even in uniform.
Navy pants and shirt, hat on his head.
She’d never been into men in uniforms before, but something was sparking to life now.
Or was it the guy in the uniform more than anything?
Yep, it was that!
You’d think she was used to talking to men like him, but here she was, fighting the urge to fidget and squirm like it was her first crush.
Oh wait, he was!
Hope to hell no one noticed her fidgeting.
Chance shook hands with everyone. “This is my sister, Jocelyn,” Gabe said.
“We know each other,” Chance said, putting his hand out.
He was smirking at her. Challenging her to touch him.
Challenge accepted.
“We went to high school together,” she said, her hand landing in his. The heat again. Oh Lord, his skin was hot, his shake firm, which she appreciated he didn’t soften with her being a woman.
“We’ve seen each other a lot lately, it seems,” he said.
“Oh, really?” Grant asked. “How is that?”
She looked at the two Fierce men. She knew that look in their eyes.
If sparklers could start flaring behind their heads in a light bulb moment, that was exactly what it’d look like.
“First Jocelyn came into my pub for lunch last week. Then I’ve had two calls about her condo building.”
“You were there twice?” she asked. Was he the one staring at her a few days ago? “We’ve had three alarms in a week.”
“I wasn’t on for the other one,” he said.
She nodded her head. “Sounds like you’re a jack of all trades,” Garrett said. He was almost rubbing his hands together in glee.
“Why don’t we get started?” she asked. “I’m sure Chance has things to do like the rest of us.”
While Gabe talked about what he had planned, how big the structure would be, and the location, she tried not to stare at the complete male specimen in front of her.
The one who turned out damn well considering most didn’t think he’d graduate on time.
But she’d seen him at the ceremony, heard his name, then watched him walk down with a chip on his shoulder as if to say don’t count him out.
Turned out, he’d done pretty damn well for himself. His own business, a full-time firefighter. Not exactly the slacker everyone accused him of being.
Got her juices flowing more than any man had in over a decade too.
Oops, that thought got away from her.
“Just file the paperwork when you’re ready to go,” Chance said. “Or reach out with questions. Good to see you all again.”
He was looking at her when he said it.
“Yeah, you too,” she whispered.
“Did you see what I saw?” Grant asked Garrett the minute they were driving back to their office
“Hard not to see it,” Garrett said. “Gabe did too. Even Royce was laughing.”
“It didn’t help they were looking at Jocelyn and Chance and then back to us,” he said.
“Who cares?” Garrett said. “Everyone knows what we do. Not sure how we can have a hand in this but might as well put our heads together and see if we can give it a nudge.”
“We should be able to work something out somehow. Did you know Chance owned a pub?”
“Nope. I don’t keep up with those things,” Garrett said.
“Me neither. Doesn’t mean we can’t take our wives out to dinner one night and check it out though,” he said.
“And let the women feel as if they could have a part in this. They will want to put their seal of approval on any man we might think of.”
“There you go,” he said. “Looks like we’ve got a possibility. Diane has been having all the fun with Jax, but that seems to be going well.”
“Shhhh,” Garrett said. “No one is supposed to know how much we enjoy this.”
“If you say so,” he said. “Seems to me nothing is a secret. Even Jocelyn narrowed her eyes at us. She knew what we were thinking.”
“And we don’t care!”