Daddy's Choice. Doreen Malek Owens

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СКАЧАТЬ over a chair. She took one step and crashed full-force into a packing box on the floor. Muttering to herself, limping on her stubbed toe, she stumbled barefoot out to the living room.

      The early morning sunlight blinded her and she stopped short, belting the robe around her waist and then shuffling over the pegged pine-board floor to the front door. The cottage consisted of a large parlor dominated by a fieldstone fireplace, with a kitchen and dining area to the back and two bedrooms off to the side. It was filled with cast-off rattan furniture and rag rugs, the remnants of her father’s use and the debris of several tenants. Carol bypassed the second bedroom, putting her hands to her temples. The noise seemed to be surrounding her, as if she were inside a vibrating drum. By the time she reached the front of the house she was so angry that common sense had deserted her completely. She yanked open the door and confronted a startled workman, who stared back at her, metal tape measure in hand.

      “What is going on here?” Carol demanded.

      The workman took in her disheveled, recently-out-of-bed appearance, the bare feet, the carelessly knotted bathrobe tie. He said cautiously, “This house was supposed to be empty.”

      “Obviously it’s not,” Carol snapped, planting her hands on her hips.

      They stared at one another.

      “Would you mind telling me why you’re creating such an infernal racket at a few minutes past dawn?” Carol inquired pointedly, raising her brows.

      “We’re renovating the house,” the man said. “Putting on a new roof and aluminum siding, adding a covered deck.”

      “Oh, no, you’re not,” Carol said firmly. “I’m the new owner here, and I never authorized any improvements, so you can just run along, you and that cretin up on the roof.”

      The man held up his hand. “You’d better talk to the boss,” he said.

      “And who is that?” Carol asked, tapping her bare foot and lifting her chin pugnaciously.

      The laborer pointed to the sky. “The cretin up on the roof,” he said simply.

      Carol swept off the porch and into the yard, her injured toe throbbing, lifting the hem of her robe as she walked. She was appalled to see two trucks in her driveway and several more workers employed there, moving equipment and shouldering boxes of tools. She turned abruptly and looked up at the shingled roof where a tall, slim figure was silhouetted against the early morning sun, kneeling and hammering, facing away from her.

      Carol shaded her eyes and called loudly, “May I speak to you a moment, please?”

      The hammering continued, uninterrupted.

      Carol repeated her question. No response. Exasperated, she cupped her mouth with her hands and shouted at the top of her voice, “Hello!”

      The man wheeled around and looked down at her, then set his hammer on the tar-paper shingles and got to his feet. She watched as he stepped nimbly across the sloping roof and then climbed over its edge. Carol drew in her breath as he hung, suspended by his fingers, and then dropped the remaining distance to the ground. He landed directly in front of her and she took a step back.

      “Something I can do for you, miss?” he said mildly, folding his arms.

      His action drew her attention to his body. He was wearing a short-sleeved, navy T-shirt that clung to his broad shoulders and slim torso. It exposed his arms, which were deeply tanned and well defined with long, ropy muscles. His faded jeans clung to his narrow hips, the heavy tool belt encircling his waist dragging the denim material low enough to expose the upper part of a flat, ridged abdomen. Carol raised her eyes slowly to see him examining her quizzically, the light blue eyes in his bronzed face direct and challenging.

      She cleared her throat. “I’d like to know what you and your men are doing on my property,” she said firmly.

      “Renovating the house.”

      “I can see that. But it’s my house and I never engaged anybody to do this work.”

      He shrugged and withdrew a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. “It’s my guess that you’re not George Lansing,” he said dryly, opening the sheet and looking at it.

      “I’m his daughter.”

      “Well, your father needs to work on his communication skills. I contracted with him to do this job on May 12. I was scheduled to begin today and have the job done by August 15.” He handed Carol the paper and she saw that it was a cover letter for a contract with something called Kirkland Construction Company.

      “My father is dead,” Carol said flatly.

      “I’m sorry to hear that, but the contract stands,” the man said evenly, watching her. His thick blond hair had been bleached to the color of lemon peel from long hours in the sun and his face was so sun-browned that his eyes looked ethereally pale.

      “What are you talking about? This is my house now and I don’t want you here!” Carol said incredulously.

      “If your father is dead, then his estate is responsible for his contracts.”

      “I am his estate and I’m telling you to go!” Carol said, her outrage building with every passing second.

      The man held up his hands. “Don’t get mad at me, lady, I’m just explaining the situation. I have a contract, I’ve begun the work, I expect to complete it and get paid for it at that time.”

      Carol tried to keep her temper in check. “Look, Mr…”

      “Kirkland. Taylor Kirkland.”

      “Mr. Kirkland, I inherited this place when my father died suddenly of a heart attack at the end of May. He said nothing to me about renovating it, maybe he intended it as a surprise, but I don’t even plan to keep this house, much less put out money to improve it. I was just going to spend the summer here studying for the bar exam and then put it on the market in the fall. I’ve sublet my apartment in New York, so you see I have no place to go for the next couple of months, and you’re making far too much noise for me to be able to concentrate on anything. So if you will please clear your men out of here, I’ll make sure you get paid for the day.”

      “Nope,” he said shortly, and took the paper from her outstretched hand, stuffing it back into his jeans.

      “What do you mean?” Carol demanded as he turned his back on her and headed for the house.

      “I delayed other projects and hired extra men to do this job, and I’m going to finish it.”

      “But I don’t want you to do the work!” Carol said to his back, enunciating very clearly, as if speaking to someone with impaired hearing.

      “That’s your problem.” He climbed hand over hand up the front porch railing and then launched himself onto the roof with the grace of a puma scaling a mountain crag.

      Carol simply couldn’t believe it. “And what if I said I was calling the police?” she yelled up at him.

      “Go ahead and call them. I’ll just show Tom Delaney my contract and you’re going to look pretty foolish.” He picked up his hammer and began to pound the shingles again, effectively СКАЧАТЬ