On The Rocks

I unlock the front door, immediately recognizing that the alarm is off. It’s silent, so I make my way into the back bar area. I see Gabby standing behind two sawhorses, with a piece of wood laid between. She hears my footsteps, and her head immediately snaps up in fear.

When she sees me, she places her hand over her heart. “Geez, Hunter. You scared the shit out of me.”

“What are you doing here?” I ask, completely bewildered that she’s working at… glancing down at my watch… three AM.

“I’m working,” she says, pulling her tape measure out and marking a line on the wood with a pencil, which she slips back behind her ear when she’s done.

“It’s fucking three in the morning. Are you crazy?”

She doesn’t even look up at me. “No, I’m just hard working. What’s got you in a snit?”

I ignore that question and ask another. “Is this where you’ve been each night?”

“Yeah,” she says as she picks up the circular saw that’s lying on the floor. She flicks the switch on and starts cutting through the wood.

I’m pissed that she’s ignoring me and pissed that she’s working at three AM. I bend down to grab the extension cord that has the saw plugged into the wall and yank it out, watching her glare up at me as the saw winds down to a dead stop.

“What the hell?” she asks in exasperation.

“You cannot be sane enough to think that this is okay,” I tell her. “You work all fucking day here, and now you come back and work in the early morning hours. No wonder you fall dead asleep as soon as I’m done fucking you.”

Her eyes narrow at me, and she stomps over to the wall outlet to plug the cord back in. “You hired me to do this job, but you have no fucking say-so in how I do it, so just back off.”

She walks back to her work area and, as she reaches for the saw, I grab the cord and yank it back out again.

Her head snaps up and flames shoot out of her eyes. God, she’s fucking gorgeous when she’s mad. She opens her mouth to lay into me, but I hold my hand up. Surprisingly, her lips snap together, although her glare is no less ferocious.

In a calm voice, I say, “Just tell me why you feel the need to work these hours?”

She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes. When she opens them, the heat has died down a little. “I need to stay on schedule to meet the deadlines we set. Since we added this project for the hanging wall for your trophies, I just need to put some extra hours in to stay on track. It’s no biggie.”

My heart flops over, and my pride and respect for her increases tenfold. I walk up to her and pull her into a hug, which she halfheartedly returns. Kissing her on the head, I tell her, “We can extend the deadline, Gabs. It’s not that big of a deal. Besides… I miss you in bed at night.”

I expect her to go all gooey and melt over my proclamation, so imagine my surprise when she pushes angrily out of my embrace. “Wrong! It is a big deal. It’s my reputation.”

I laugh, trying to ease the tension. “Seriously… no one is going to know if we extend the deadline by a few days.”

“Wrong again, doofus,” she says angrily. “When I make a bid for another project, they call you for a reference, and they ask if I stayed on schedule, are you going to lie for me?”

“Yes,” I tell her simply, because I have no qualms about doing that.

“No,” she says in frustration and stomps her foot. “This is important to me. A General Contractor staying on budget and on schedule is paramount to making it in this business.”

Okay, I’m starting to have a newfound appreciation for the lengths that Gabby will go to make it in this world. My mind searches frantically for a solution, and then it comes to me.

“Let me make sure I got this right. You had a set schedule based on the original bid, right?”

“Yes,” she says in a humoring tone.

“And we decided to do the additional wall after you started the project, right?”

“Right.”

“Then we should have re-done the original contract. The fact that I added on additional work should have included an extension of the deadline.”