According to Terrence, women wanted good men who treated them like they were worth something. But a man had to be selective, too. He had to choose carefully, because there were some crazy ladies out there.
Lucas thought about how he’d found Emma in New York. His company had won the contract to renovate three floors of the office building she worked in. He’d seen her for a couple weeks going to her boss’s office for a meeting, and then one day he approached her. They’d dated happily for months, and then he accepted another renovation project in Key West, his mother’s hometown.
Emma had assured him dating long distance wouldn’t be a problem, as long as they were committed. She’d been all for it for the first two years, but in these last eight months, their relationship had all but evaporated like some of the local lakes.
He’d ignored the signs, and his fading love for her, hoping she’d come around and still want to move to Key West like she’d promised, so they could be together and rekindle their true feelings for each other. This weekend was the test. If she came, he’d told himself, they’d live happily ever after.
If she didn’t show up, they’d go their separate ways.
The next day, Lucas hammered nails into the roof.
Terrence was right. When a woman didn’t call you back, somebody else was probably occupying her mind and her time.
Lucas descended from the roof to check on his foreman, Mo, who was installing granite flooring in the foyer and lower bathroom. He stayed outside on the porch, his hands on the white siding as he leaned into the house. Only Mo and Rog were allowed to enter through the front door while the granite was being installed. The materials were too expensive and delicate.
Mo looked up and followed a carefully laid path of crisscrossed boards that never touched the foyer floor.
Lucas grasped his foreman’s hand and pulled him out of the house. “How’s it coming?”
They leaned in like spies. “Good,” Mo replied. “This needs to dry for four more hours, and then we’ll come back and redo any areas that show unevenness. Everything is cut to perfection, even the corners. Looks easy, doesn’t it?”
Mo was a big Mexican man who’d been born in America. He knew how to build a house better than anyone Lucas had ever met. More than that, he knew great craftsmanship.
Lucas nodded. “It does, but will it be ready in time?”
As they talked, Rog never stopped working. The Italian craftsman had been in the country for six months, working with an outfit that had suddenly gone out of business, stranding him. He’d been doing day labor when Mo had snapped him up. His work was flawless.
Lucas tipped back his baseball cap and scratched his head. “Tomorrow is the magic hour. Will this be ready?”
Mo consulted Rog. They discussed everything in Italian, one of the three languages Mo spoke. Lucas knew only about two hundred words of Spanish, so he was lost.
He looked toward heaven. He needed for everything to be perfect. His relationship with Emma had been far from it. In fact, lately they’d had no relationship at all, and he was concerned that after all this effort for her to like everything in the house, he’d be the one to call their wedding off.
Mo told him what he wanted to hear. “We’ll be ready, if I pick up his wife and two daughters from the airport.” He looked like he’d bitten into a bad apple.
Lucas extended his hand to Rog, laughing at Mo. “Excellent.”
Rog shook his hand and then kissed Lucas on both cheeks. Mo hurried down the stairs before he was the recipient of Rog’s affection.
“Ciao.” Rog rushed back to work as Lucas wiped his face off with his sleeve, Mo laughing from the sidewalk.
“He drives me crazy when he does that,” Mo told him. “I try to stay away from him. He cries a lot, too.”
“And you don’t? Every time Armella and the kids leave, you’re a waterspout.”
“Hey! Don’t say that too loud. The men won’t respect me,” Mo said, looking around to see if anyone had heard Lucas.
They checked on the progress of the workers whose job it was to clean up the property after Hurricane Ana. It had come through as a Category One a couple days ago and rumbled out to sea, but in a freak turn of events, it seemed to reverse direction and was once again taking aim on south Florida. The I-10 had been reopened this morning and traffic had resumed, but the storm would be back wreaking havoc once again in a couple days.
In fact, dark clouds already clung to the horizon.
As if he read his mind, Mo said, “This storm smells like trouble.”
“Don’t be a pessimist.” Lucas waited a few seconds. “Emma’s coming tomorrow.”
“Is that why you look like you got caught with your hand in the candy jar? The airport opened up?”
“I did something, but not that bad, and yes, the airport is open. All those people need to be recycled.” Lucas tried to laugh. He felt anxious knowing Emma was coming, yet she still hadn’t called. Doreen hadn’t called back, either. He guessed she’d given up and gone home. He would have, and let him and Emma deal with their own problems.
The workers tossed onto the ground plywood that had been used during the last storms. Much of it had disintegrated from too much water.
“Lucas, how honest can I be with you?” Mo said, his Spanish accent sounding musical. He was about to share some wisdom.
Lucas eyed his friend. “You want to get paid today?”
“Okay,” Mo said, “straight up. You haven’t seen her in a long time. Eight months. The house isn’t finished and you’re not a raving lunatic. You would think you’d want everything to be perfect. Do you care?”
Caught off guard, Lucas considered his question. “Yeah. You saw me pressing Rog.”
“Our talk was a little more extensive. I promised him a few things for the family. It’ll cost you about a hundred dollars. You have to pick them up while I run to the airport. I’ll make a list.”
Lucas snorted good-naturedly. “The bastard.”
Both men chuckled.
“All I’m saying is when you first got here from New York, I had to institute a ‘no cell phone’ rule on the job.”
Lucas smiled.
“You stepped off the roof eave backwards, fell half a story and separated your shoulder. You fell through the floor at the Wilcox mall refurbishment, requiring an ambulance and fifteen stitches. I don’t know how a nail was shot through your index finger, but that was a lot of paperwork and a hospital visit.”
“That shouldn’t count,” Lucas argued halfheartedly. “That extern from the technical school shot me from across the room.”
“But if you hadn’t been on the phone with Emma you’d have seen him playing with the nail gun. Since
