Fate Picked Me, the Alpha Passed, and I Felt Nothing novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Saratoga

The call came on Thursday morning while I was planing a door.

I picked up with sawdust on my hands and put the phone on speaker on the bench.

"Is this Rue Tolland?" a man said. "The Stone Landing woman? The one who rebuilt the whole thing without a nail?"

"With a few nails. Who is this?"

He owned a restoration firm in Saratoga Springs, forty people, Victorian houses and old hotels.

He had driven up in August to look at my landing, and he had stood on it for an hour.

He wanted me as lead carpenter.

He named a salary that made me put down the plane.

It was nearly double what the shop cleared in a good year.

He wanted me to start on the fourth of January, and he would hold the job until the first of December.

"You don't need to answer today," he said. "I just want you to know I think you're the best I've seen under forty."

I thanked him in a voice that did not sound like mine.

When I hung up, the shop smelled of cut pine and I could hear my own pulse.

I stood there for ten minutes.

Then I went and put the plane away.

I did not tell Odile until noon, and she dropped a whole tray of rolls.

"Go," she said, picking them up. "Rue. Go look at it. Go be the best carpenter under forty in a city with a coffee shop that isn't mine."

"I haven't said yes."

"Have you told him?"

"No."

"Why not?"

I did not have a good answer.

I had an answer, which was that I did not want to watch his face.

That night I texted him one line.

Come to the dock at ten. Wear the coat.

He was there before me.

The Point was black and silent, with no moon, and the lake beyond the end of the dock was a sheet of cold dark glass.

Dray stood at the edge in his navy coat with his breath smoking, and he turned when my boots hit the boards.

"You're early," he said.

"So are you."

"I'm always early. I live here."

I had brought two wool blankets from the truck.

I spread one on the planks and dropped the other beside it, and he watched me with the face of a man waiting for a verdict.

"Is something wrong?"

"Not yet. Take off the coat."

"It's thirty-eight degrees."

"I know. I'll warm you up."

He took off the coat.

He folded it over a piling and stood in his flannel in the dark with his arms bare below the rolled sleeves, and he shivered, and it wasn't the cold.

I walked up to him and put my hands on his belt.

"Rue."

"Turn around. Look at the lake."

He turned.

I stood behind him and ran my hands around his waist, and under the flannel, over the hard flat belly and the ribs.

I felt every muscle jump.

"Tell me what you feel," I said.

"Your hands are cold."

"Tell me the rest."

"I feel them everywhere."

I unbuckled him and opened his jeans and pushed my hand inside, and he gasped and put both hands on the piling.

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