“Doug knows your work is right. He’ll come around.”
“He shouldn’t have to come around. He should have said something.” She pressed her fingers against her temples. “And now Vance is going to call my father about a clubhouse design that is exactly what was approved, and Dad’s going to have to pretend it’s a legitimate concern so the client liaison doesn’t feel ignored, and the whole thing is?—”
“Infuriating.”
“I was going to say exhausting, but yes.” She dropped back with a noisy exhale. “What is that guy’s problem?”
“What happened to ‘he’ll come around when he gets a bonus?’” Connor asked.
She huffed a breath. “He just ticked me off today.”
“He wanted to,” Connor said, leaning one hip against her desk. “You know what I think? You’re going to dismiss it, but I think I’m right.”
She looked up at him, curious. “What?”
“You’re too organized.”
“There is no such thing.”
“There is for a man who doesn’t want to be closely watched.”
She squinted at him. “What do you mean? If this is about Bayside Mechanical?—”
“And Hawke Brothers Framing along with Gulf Breeze Electric.” He stepped to his desk and pulled a manila folder from a drawer.
In one remarkably smooth move—for a man with one wonky hand—he opened it and spread three pages across her desk. Each one was a list of contractor recommendations from Vance, organized by date and project.
“Where are you going with this?”
He pointed to each name as it appeared, again and again, across multiple change orders and project phases. “Every subcontractor recommendation Vance has made since we opened this office has come from the same three companies. Every single one.”
Meredith scanned the pages. “He has preferred vendors. That’s not unusual.”
“It’s not unusual if they’re the best options. But I checked—like Bayside, Hawke Brothers isn’t even on the Pippin Lake approved vendor list. And Gulf Breeze Electric has a C rating with the Better Business Bureau. These aren’t preferred vendorsbecause they’re good. They’re preferred because Vance prefers them.”
She shook her head. “Maybe. And that’s Doug Fenton’s problem. But it has nothing to do with Vance cutting me off at the knees and acting like I’m here because Daddy gave me a job.”
He closed the file and nodded. “Okay. I’m just a broken-armed dental student on a hiatus, but I think that guy is intimidated by?—”
“Not by me.”
“By your attention to detail. He knows Eli is pulled in a lot of different directions with a firm to run in Atlanta. Maybe he’d prefer a more distracted person on this job.”
She considered the point—and the man making it—and felt a complicated mix of gratitude and resistance.
“Keep the file,” she said. “But don’t go looking for trouble.”
“I never look for trouble.” He tucked the folder back in his drawer. “Trouble keeps showing up in my filing cabinet.”
At five-thirty,Meredith was still at her desk, rebuilding the clubhouse presentation with additional documentation that no one had asked for and no one would read. She was cross-referencing the original design brief against the marketing materials line by line, highlighting every instance where “usable event space” appeared without the qualifier “indoor.”
It was unnecessary. It was also the only thing keeping her from calling her father and asking him to come back from Atlanta and fix everything, which she absolutely would not do.
“Meredith.” Connor was standing by her desk.
Surprised, since she hadn’t heard him move, she looked up and blinked. “Yes?”
“Stop.”