Chapter Three
Elena
Ihadnoideawhat I was doing, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. Not when the alternative was so unthinkable.
I brought the hammer down on the first nail of…oh, five thousand or so.
And missed.
But that was okay. Someone with less determination might call this a bad omen, but not me. I’d watched two hours of YouTube videos last night. I was armed, skilled—in my mind—and ready to work. This deck was going to be my bitch.
Maybe I should have listened to the guy at the hardware store and rented a nail gun. If he’d been less of an overbearing, smug, misogynist, I might have taken his advice. There was no way in hell I was going back now.
I had less than a week to get this done before Zadie came back from Oregon, Helen emerged from her trip to the wilderness, and classes started. I could hammer five thousand nails in six days.
By noon, I wanted to die. The sun beat down on the back of my neck, and my fingers had gone numb from being hit so many times.
Who knew a bent nail would finally break me?
Tossing my head back, I let loose a scream of pure frustration. Defeat beat down on me just as heavily as the sun. I was sweaty, sore, exhausted, and had made next to no progress. The one board I’d laid and hammered into place was crooked. I’d have to pull it up and start over. The idea of starting over from scratch was so sickening, I had to swallow it down.
I flopped onto my butt, rubbing my face with my filthy, sore hands.
“You okay?”
My head shot up. Lachlan was walking across my backyard, either frowning at me or the mess surrounding me. Most likely both.
“I’m fine.” I waved my hands in front of my face so he wouldn’t see the tears welling. “You can go back inside. Nothing to see here.”
“Are you hurt?” He towered over me, blissfully blocking out the sun. “Where’s the crew?”
“Not here. Obviously.”
His hands went to his hips. “Why not?”
My pride had already taken a serious beating. I needed him to walk away. “Honestly, I’m good. I appreciate your neighborly concern, but I’ve got this.”
With that, he crouched down in front of me. Except, when Lachlan crouched, he went from mountain to boulder, still looming over me like an unmovable force of nature.
“I’ve spent the morning listening to you spit and curse between manually hammering in nails. Are you going to tell me where the hell the guys who’ve been tearing up your deck the past couple days are?”
“I fired them.”
He blinked, his brow dipping in the middle. “Okay.”
“They were assholes, all right? They dipped out with my money, so now I’m building my own deck. Everything’s fine.”
“What the hell?” he grumbled.
“You can go.”
He fell back on his butt and scanned the yard, then me, stopping on my ravaged hands.
“Why’d you fire your crew?”
“I told you, they were assholes.”
He cocked his head. “Did they play their music too loud? Make eye contact with you?”