The Marriage Bargain by Stephanie Dees

Author:Stephanie Dees
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2018-11-05T20:57:43+00:00

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While Cam went to pick up Emma and Eleanor, Jules took the opportunity to check on the progress at the construction site. April and Lanna had everything running like a top at the bakery, so she felt great about that. But when she passed the construction dumpster in the alley—booths and tables and pieces of Sheetrock piled high—she had a moment of panic. She wanted to tell the construction crew she’d changed her mind, to put it all back. Which, of course, was ridiculous.

She liked everything to be perfect and she wasn’t comfortable with a mess, even if she knew logically the mess was the way through to something better. And come to think of it, that sounded like a great metaphor for her life these days, and might be the reason she’d been so unsettled about her relationship with Cameron.

It was all so complicated and messy. Very, very messy.

She pulled open the back door of the café and stepped into organized chaos. The whole place had been gutted. Dust hung in the air—a thick, choking fog. Near the front, a worker was using some kind of very loud, ear-shattering tool to remove the old vinyl tile from the concrete slab.

Colin, the contractor Latham had recommended, spotted her and walked over, shouting so he could be heard over the noise. “Mrs. Quinn. I didn’t know you were going to be stopping by today, but as you can see, we’re making progress. Once we demo the bakery, we’ll start installing the floor in the full space. The tile got delivered. You want to check it and make sure it’s the right one before we start laying it in?”

“Sure.” Her head was spinning. So much was riding on just her gut and instinct. But what if she was wrong? What if her gut feeling stank?

In the corner, Colin pulled a box cutter out of his back pocket and sliced into one carton, pulling out a tile. “Now, you’ll know this is tile when you see it on the floor, but the overall feel you’ll get when you look at the room as a whole is warmer, like wood. And it’s a lot more durable and less finicky than wood.”

“It looks good. I like it!” The machine the other worker was using abruptly stopped, leaving Jules shouting into a suddenly quiet room. She cleared her throat and lowered her voice. “Yeah, it looks good. I like the exposed brick on the back wall, too.”

“Glad to hear it. We’ve still got some structural work to do in here, like making that back door into French doors that lead out to a courtyard, like you wanted. And we’ve got to replace the windows and all that, but by Monday, we’ll be ready to start demo in the bakery. My crew is the best around. By the end of next week, you’ll be picking out paint colors.”

“Monday. Wow. Okay, I’ll tell my staff, and over the weekend, we’ll get it cleared out and ready for you to start work.

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