Chapter 5

Working in construction meant working with a lot of big men, but the guy Ollie stood up to greet still struck Tiffany as big. He moved through the crowded cafe easily, keeping himself out of peoples" way, and embraced Ollie in what could only be called a bear hug.

Ollie wasn"t a small guy himself, but he was pretty well enveloped in the other man"s hug. When the bigger guy had put him down again, Ollie, smiling, said, "Tiffany, this is my cousin Steve. It"s his wedding this weekend. Steve, this is Tiffany Wright, she"s?—"

"Tearing up the town square this weekend." Tiffany spoke briskly and offered a hand as she stood.

Steve shook her hand with the careful strength that big men who weren"t jackasses learned to use, but his thick eyebrows crawled toward his hairline. "You"re what?"

"I"m Wright Construction," she replied. "I"ve been hired to build the new playground in the town square, and my team will be here in about ten minutes to start work. I"m sorry about the disruption it"ll cause to your wedding, but I"m on a tight timeline and honestly, someone should have told you."

There was a long rather looming silence—Tiffany figured this guy couldn"t help but loom when he went quiet—followed by, "Charlee is going to kill me."

"I"m sure we can figure something out," Ollie began with quiet determination.

Tiffany lifted a hand, stopping him. "Why exactly is she going to kill you? Because if the reason is something like "I promised I would look into whether the gazebo was available this weekend and I never got around to it," I"ll have a backhoe here in thirty minutes and I promise you on her behalf, they"ll never find your body."

The very large man blinked down at her, then gave a hollow laugh. "No, although I wouldn"t blame you. Her. Somebody. No, I did look into it and it was fine but that was before Noah"s fundraiser, and it never occurred to me that they"d move this fast with the playground."

Some of those words didn"t make much sense to Tiffany—she had no idea who Noah was, or what his fundraiser had to do with anything—but her eyes widened a little, almost hopefully. "Do you have a contract?"

Steve dropped into a chair, which, somewhat to Tiffany"s surprise, didn"t collapse immediately under his weight. "No," he said, still hollowly. "Nobody ever contracts for the gazebo. It"s a public amenity. But I talked to them last October, before the playground was even a twinkle in Noah"s eye. I"m sure the city just didn"t remember we were getting married this weekend. Charlee," he announced again, apparently to the cafe at large, "is going to kill me."

Tiffany dropped into her own chair, which creaked. She had a terrible moment where she thought it would collapse, which, given that Ollie"s cousin was easily twice her size, would have been really embarrassing. Steadily but quietly, she began to curse, first the usual sort of thing, and then with increasing creativity, until she cut herself off by drinking most of her lemonade in one go.

"Who exactly did you talk to?" she asked through cold teeth, once the lemonade was gone.

"Pamela Smith," Steve replied. "The town clerk."

Tiffany took a very deep breath and held it for a long time. "I was hired by Phil West, the town clerk."

"Oh, my God," Steve said after a horrified pause. "That"s right. Pam moved back to Montreal in January."

"This," Ollie said in a grim tone, "is why institutional memory is so important."

Tiffany blinked toward him, while Steve, despite his obvious distress, ended up chuckling. "You really are such an accountant, Ol."

"An accountant?" Tiffany asked faintly. She had never considered finding an accountant attractive, before. She hadn"t even considered it as a remote possibility. Accounting was so…

Well, it was critical, actually. Vitally important, particularly to small businesses like her own. But it wasn"t very exciting. The idea that an accountant could possibly be as staggeringly gorgeous as Oliver Campbell was outside the realm of consideration, except maybe in that one Ben Affleck movie. Although she wasn"t really clear on whether he was actually an accountant, honestly.

"Fully qualified," Ollie said to her, almost apologetically. "It"s not the most exciting profession, I know, but it keeps a lot of the world moving."

"No, yeah, no, I was just thinking that," Tiffany said with a nod. "But, aah, man. Look. I"d have to look it up to be sure but I"m pretty sure in New York a verbal contract is legally binding, so we…we gotta go talk to the town clerk. Mr. West. Crap, this is gonna mess up my whole schedule."

"I"m sure we can work something out," Ollie said for the fourth or fifth time. "These things just take some discussion. People are often willing to compromise."

Despite her frustration, Tiffany couldn"t help chuckling. "You"re kind of a peacemaker, aren"t you?"

"Oh, but you should have seen him when we were kids," Steve said brightly. "He"d pick a fight with a bar stool."

"No way!" Tiffany grinned at Ollie, who cringed and shook his head.

"Oh yeah, you did. We didn"t spend much time together," Steve admitted to Tiffany as he rose from his chair. "My aunt moved to Australia before I was born, fell in love, got married, the whole thing. We went to visit a couple times, and you guys came to visit us once, right? And yeah, Ollie would get in a fight with a butterfly. Belligerent little kid. My older brother sat on him once to calm him down."

"He broke my rib," Ollie pointed out.

"He wouldn"t have had to bounce if you"d stayed still!" Steve went to pay for their lemonades, which Tiffany only realized as he put a ten on the counter. She yelped a protest, but he waved it off. "Ollie can pay me back, but I bet he doesn"t have any American money yet."

"I have a credit card," Oliver said stiffly. He followed Steve out the door, though, and held it for Tiffany again, which she couldn"t help feeling was rather charming.

"Thanks." Tiffany had no idea where they were going, so she and Ollie just followed Steve, who veered left on the business porches" boardwalk, heading toward the far end of the square. Tiffany glanced over her shoulder quickly, orienting herself: the town"s big old stone church was behind them. The way they were going led toward an old-fashioned-looking court or city hall building, built of wood and looking its years, but in a good way. A huge clock sat on the wall at the top of the wooden building, dead even with the church"s bell and like half a mile apart from one another, thanks to the ridiculously large town square.

It seemed, Tiffany thought, very deliberate. It was as if somebody had laid out the town square with a purposeful sense of balance. She rather liked that.

But since it was at least a three minute walk to the wooden building, she searched for something to say, because the silence seemed awkward. "So, accounting, huh? How come accounting?

"It"s calm. It"s calming. Numbers come together the way they"re supposed to, and if they don"t, it"s easy to know a mistake was made somewhere. Finding it is like a zen practice." Ollie audibly hesitated. "Steve"s not wrong. I was an aggro kid."

Before he could continue, Tiffany raised both hands, palm out. ""Aggro?""

Ollie blinked. "Ah. Aggressive?"

"Oh! Okay. Right. That makes sense. We"d say "scrappy" or something."

He gave her a dubious grin and echoed, ""Scrappy,"" obediently. "So I was a scrappy kid—no, I"m sorry, that sounds all wrong, I was aggro—and I needed something that would let me focus and relax."

Tiffany laughed. "I do not find numbers calming, but I get what you mean. I get that from driving the heavy equipment, especially on a big simple project where it"s just moving a lot of dirt, packing it down, getting it ready for the pour or whatever"s coming next. I get in the zone and all I"m thinking about is the job. It"s soothing. ADHD?"

Ollie looked startled, then chuckled. "No, just a, uh. Cantankerous soul, I guess." His gaze went briefly distant, allowing Tiffany a moment to admire his amazing jawline and stellar cheekbones. The round glasses he wore weren"t really flattering at all, and she wondered why a guy who looked like that would hide his bushel behind a basket. "Yeah," he said after a moment, still smiling. "A very cantankerous soul. But it can"t stand up to making numbers line up and do their job."

"Well, if I needed an accountant, I"d hire you," Tiffany said a bit rashly.

Ollie glanced down at her, pale eyes bright behind those silly glasses. "Oh, no, I wouldn"t want you to do that."

A peculiar crushing sensation surrounded Tiffany"s heart. "Oh. Sure, I mean, no, obviously, you live in Australia, for one thing the tax laws are probably completely different…"

"No—I mean, yes, but—no, I meant?—"

"Charlee is going to kill me," Steve muttered again as he jogged down the steps at the end of the business row.

Ollie caught his breath, clearly meaning to say something else to Tiffany, but instead groaned and lifted his voice a little. "She won"t, Steve. It"s not your fault. I told you, institutional knowledge…" By then they were across the street, Steve striding into the city hall ahead of them. It was the city hall: a wood-burned carved sign planted in the small lawn in front of it said so with painted letters.

The inside, Tiffany thought, did not disappoint: it all looked and felt hand-hewn, comfortable with age, polished with long use. There was a door to one side that said Sheriff"s Office over the top, and another to the far side that indicated the courthouse was part of the same complex. A reception desk blockaded doors that led deeper into the town hall, and a woman behind it looked up from an e-reader with an expression of vague surprise. "Steve? Is something wrong?"

"Hey, Sandra. Is, uh, Phil West in? The clerk?"

Sandra, who was in her forties and plump, raised her eyebrows. "Yeah, sure, of course, head on back through the left-hand door. What"s up?"

"Really?" Tiffany said. "We don"t need an appointment?"

"I could make you one." Sandra put her e-reader aside and reached for an honest-to-God leather-bound appointment book, like it was the nineteenth century instead of the twenty-first. "Oh look," she said brightly as she opened the book, "it looks like Mr. West has an appointment available right now! Your name? I mean, I know your name," she told Steve rather dryly. "I don"t know who the rest of this riff-raff is."

"Tiffany Wright," Tiff began.

Recognition immediately flashed across Sandra"s face. "Oh, with the construction company! Great! Noah"s been in every day for the last week asking when you"d be starting."

"Who is Noah?" Tiffany asked, mystified, but the receptionist was busy writing names in the book and, with an air of formality, picked up the desk phone to call the town clerk.

"Mr. West? Yes, this is Sandra Casey at the front desk. Your…" She paused, looking at the time. "Your 2:49pm appointment is here." She paused again, then said, "You do now," in another dry tone, and hung up to smile with the same perky brightness. "Mr. West is expecting you. You can go on back."

Tiffany couldn"t help a laugh. "Is this how everything works in Virtue?"

"You have to make your own fun when you live in a town this small," Sandra told her.

"I guess so!" Tiffany and Oliver followed Steve through the door and down a surprisingly long hall to knock on another door that looked straight out of a noir detective film. It even had "Town Clerk" stenciled in arched letters across the half-panel glass. Tiffany suppressed a giggle. She"d grown up in a relatively small town in Texas, but nothing like Virtue in its informality.

A baritone called, "Come in," and all three of them trooped into the town clerk"s office to find a rather small round balding man whose resonant voice didn"t match his external appearance at all sitting warily behind the desk. His eyes widened slightly at the three of them, and Tiffany, taking a moment to imagine them from the outside, fought off another giggle.

Steve was straight-up huge. Ollie was by comparison merely large, but between the two of them, their shoulders nearly filled the room. And then there was Tiffany herself, who presumably looked rather tiny and doll-like in comparison to the two big men. The clerk, Phil West, said, "Can I help you?" in a tone both cautious and curious.

Ollie and Steve both abruptly seemed tongue-tied. Tiffany gave them a heartbeat—especially Steve, since this was his town—and when he didn"t manage to say anything, said, "There"s been a mix-up about the town square"s scheduling this weekend. I"m Tiffany Wright. My company signed a contr?—"

"You?" West"s round eyebrows rose above his glasses. "You"re Wright Construction?"

Oh. He was one of those. Tiffany controlled a sigh and offered a brief smile in its place. "Yes, I am. So we"re supposed to be starting constru?—"

"But you"re tiny."

Tiffany did not close her eyes. She did not scream. She did not sigh. It took enormous effort to not do any of those things as she continued as if he hadn"t spoken. "—construction this afternoon, but it appears the clerk"s office had a previous verbal contract with Mr?—"

"Torben," Steve supplied swiftly.

"Torben for a wedding this weekend, so?—"

"And a woman. I thought I was talking to the secreta?—"

"Mr. West," Ollie said gently, "I wouldn"t finish that sentence if I were you."

Tiffany, who was completely capable of fighting her own fights, felt a sudden surge of gratitude toward Oliver for doing so on her behalf. Men so often didn"t step in to correct other men. It was a novel and rather wonderful experience.

West turned red, then angry. "Well, I don"t have any record of a wedding for the weekend?—"

"Yes, we gathered," Tiffany said as serenely as she could. "It appears it slipped through the cracks during the transitional phase between the last clerk and yourself. However, as I"m sure you know, a verbal contract is binding in the state of New York, and we"re going to have to agree on terms for my team that will allow them to make up the lost work time without losing any compensation."

"In other words," Ollie said, still gently, "you"re going to need to authorize overtime while signing off on an agreement that indicates any costs incurred by this delay are paid for by the city, not Ms. Wright"s company."

Tiffany had thought Oliver Campbell was the sexiest man she"d ever laid eyes on to begin with. He had now moved into a category of sexiness previously unknown to humanity. He was hotter than the surface of the sun. He would still be on fire at the heat death of the universe. He was incandescent, and she wanted to burn with him.

Maybe that last one didn"t sound quite right. Tiffany decided she was sticking with the sentiment, regardless.

West transferred an increasingly outraged gaze to Ollie. "And you are?"

"I"m the money guy," Ollie said with a pleasant smile. "And my job is to make sure Ms. Wright doesn"t get shafted."