She was in love with Graham Gallagher, and the idea that she’d have to let him walk away when the time came hurt more than she’d thought possible, more than she could bare. She shouldn’t have risked herself, but she’d never been good at making the right decisions.
So Blake would do what she did best: protect her daughter and try to do the same for her heart.
Again.
14
Graham checked the time on his phone for the eighth time in the past thirty minutes and called himself all kinds of fool. Blake and Rowan would be at the site any moment to pick up Graham for lunch. The fact that Blake would take her daughter anywhere near the place she’d grown up in spoke volumes. But, apparently, she wanted to ensure that Rowan knew as much as she could about where she’d come from.
In light of the custody papers being filed, Graham agreed. Though nothing had come from the other family’s claims as of yet, Graham knew it was only a matter of time until the other shoe dropped and things began rolling quickly. Things like this took time to come to fruition, and while they waited and let the lawyers handle things, Blake was doing her best to keep Rowan as comfortable and happy as possible.
And since Graham wanted Blake in his life, he was doing the same and getting to know her daughter, as well. It surprised the hell out of him that he was even going to spend time with Rowan when his thoughts and emotions were going in a thousand different directions, but he couldn’t change things now. He’d told Blake he cared for her, and that meant he had to get over the past.
Easier said than done, especially when he wasn’t sure what he wanted in the first place.
However, no matter what happened, he couldn’t let Rowan get hurt because of him. He didn’t know what he’d do if anything like this had happened to Cynthia, so he’d do his best to keep this other little girl safe.
“Hey, when do you knock off for the day?” Owen asked as he walked into the room Graham worked on, tablet in hand. “Do you have time to look at a few invoices with me?”
Graham pinched the bridge of his nose. “I never have time to look at invoices with you. Isn’t that why we have you?”
Owen flipped him off, and the crew chuckled, including the new guy they’d hired to replace Gary. Thankfully, their former subcontractor would be back in the fold in a few weeks, but until then, they needed another set of hands, and this new guy, Sean, seemed to know what he was doing. Graham hated the fact that anyone had been hurt to begin with, and because of the accident itself, they had a whole lot more paperwork to deal with.
Most of that had fallen onto Owen’s lap, and as much as Graham teased his brother about it, he knew he had to help with his share. He’d been in charge of the site that day, and he took his responsibilities seriously.
“Shut it. When do your woman and her kid get here?” Owen asked, and Graham rolled his eyes.
“In a bit. What’s up? What do you need?” Graham asked.
“An assistant and a beer, but right now, I just need your signature on a few things.” Owen flipped through the papers until he landed on the right one. “We have our custom historical floor guy coming in next week, but I still don’t think it’ll be what we need.”
Graham ran his hand through his beard. “We’ve already had this argument. If you don’t like him, why did we hire him?”
“Because he’s worked with us before and won the bid, but I don’t know.”
“Owen.” Graham didn’t have time for this shit today, not with Rowan and Blake showing up at any minute.
“I think this job is going to be too big for him. We took a chance on him because he’s worked with us in the past, but he’s also on the other bids with Murphy’s site, and he fucked up there. Remember.”
Graham let out a little growl. “Yeah, he brought the wrong planks, said the other shit was on the wrong truck or some crap.” He ran a hand over his face and went through options. “Okay, he shows up next week to finalize the bid and show us what he has. If there’s something off, then he’s out. We don’t need to work with him if it’s going to fuck things up. It’s not in the contract that we have to keep up with this if he’s not meeting his end of the deal. We gave him a pass on Murphy’s site, but we can’t on this one.”
Owen scribbled things down and worked on his tablet at the same time. “I still don’t like the sound of that, not when we don’t have a backup.”
Graham snapped his fingers as he thought of something. “There’s the other guy, Samuel something. He was eager to work with us. He’s a small company but organized. You like organized. If our normal guy flakes like it’s looking he might, then we get the new guy.”