Flipping Hearts

Chapter 9

It's taken me a while to update, but, I am hoping to get back into the swing of things.

Chapter 9 Peyton's POV

I drove the hour long commute to the abandoned Victorian barely able to concentrate on anything Jack said. After a sleepless night vacillating between dirty thoughts of Jack handling more than my panties and fighting the urge to call the investors to cancel my contract with them, I was bone tired. After a short while, Jack stopped speaking and turned to look out the window. I felt bad not chit chatting with him, but I was in the throes of a meltdown. I didn't know how this project was going to go. My wings had been severely clipped and I wasn't one to enjoy being reigned in like an errant pony.

I knew I could do this project and leave the investors floored with my results, but they insisted on putting a foreman on site, which was a total whack across the cheek with a mental two by four because on any other project that foreman would be me.

When I pulled up to the once grand Queen Anne, I took in the overgrown bushes and patchy brown grass. It saddened me to see this once beautiful painted lady peeling and sagging as if she were as embarrassed by the loss of her beauty as I was about the loss of my sterling reputation. In my mind I could already see her dead lawn transformed. Green lush, new grass would sprawl across the property to meet a new red cobblestone walkway leading to her saucy red door. Flowering cherry trees would canopy her once again grand front porch, once I pulled the scrub oak trees from their century plus old home. With little remorse I would ship their ugly trunks and branches off to be made into playground mulch. Nothing was too overwhelming when I looked around, just a lot of hard, satisfying work.

What did throw me was the large green pick up parked on the cracked cement driveway and the large burly man pacing back and forth in front yard, speaking into a cell phone his arms gesturing frantically at the house as his mouth moved.

I hopped out and stealed myself for what looked to be bad news. If I wasn't mistaken, this burly guy was, Harry Kimball, the owner of Kimball Construction. His brow was furrowed and red like he was on the verge of stroking out. I sort of wanted to hop back into the truck and peel out of the driveway and take Jack for breakfast just to avoid him. I walked up to the irate looking man and waited for him to turn acknowledge me. He looked me up and down, his sneer telling me everything I needed to know about where I stood in his hierarchy of this crew. "Can I help you?"

I plastered on my friendliest smile and held out my hand for him to shake. "I'm Peyton Shumaker, the restoration manager."

He ran his hand through his military style close cropped hair before extending his hand. "I'm Harry Kimball, contractor. Looks like we are walking into a big heap of shit."

"Excuse me?" I said, confused. As of two weeks ago everything was set to go and we were waiting on permits. What could have happened since then? I looked at Jack, almost to ground myself. He looked as lost as I felt, so that didn't help a whole lot.

Harry waved for Jack and I to follow him. "Some goddamn vandals hit this place. I have no idea when, but they busted every window out of the back of the house and spray painted all over the fucking house inside and out. Pardon my French."

My stomach dropped to my toes when we rounded the back of the house and shattered glass littered the ground. Besides the damage, all I could really see was my budget vaporizing. Deja' vu overcame me and I wanted to puke. The beautiful stained glass windows that had been in the house for over a century was now a mosaic on the ground. The spray paint could be painted over, si I didn't care about that as much as I was appalled that someone would do such a disrespectful thing to such a beautiful house. I looked at Harry, my heart sinking even more to see the door had been kicked in. "Did they go in too?"