CHAPTER EIGHT
SARAH MCALLISTER’S EYES fluttered open and her gaze landed on the first items in her line of sight: several exposed wires crawling out of the socket in the ceiling above her bed like a spider’s creepy legs.
She hated spiders almost as much as she hated contractors.
Her brand-new ceiling fan and light fixture combination belonged where those wires were, but instead it sat in the as-yet-unopened home improvement store box. She had Gus “should be murdered in his sleep” Hinckle, her hired contractor, to thank for that.
Sarah sighed and rolled over on her side. She startled at the sight of Shackles, her shaggy rescue mutt, sitting on the floor near her bed staring up at her. Unblinking.
A month after adopting Shackles, Sarah and her rescue were still getting used to each other. He’d been through a great deal, she got it, but was it her fault he’d been flown to California by Paws and Pilots only to have his forever family change their mind? In the end, she’d agreed to adopt Shackles and had given him a name worthy of their mutual situation. He was unwittingly tied to her and she was tied to her father’s old house and the small town of Fortune, California, for reasons that didn’t seem to make sense any longer.
“Time to get up.”
Sarah fought with the white cotton sheets wound twice around her legs since she’d tossed and turned throughout the night. In other words, the usual.
First order of business today was to put in a call to Gus and ask him for the tenth time this week when he planned on getting his ass over here to finish the job she’d hired him to do. Paid him to do, in fact, with a nice little deposit for his troubles. She stumbled over the unfinished flooring in the hallway where the hardwood slats were propped against the wall, waiting.
The last time Gus had been here a week ago, he’d given her high hopes he might actually finish the job. What he’d done looked promising because, when she could get the man to work, he knew his stuff. Eventually her father’s old house, a relic of the sixties, would be updated to the twenty-first century. Then she’d be able to flip the house for a tidy profit and get out of dodge. Back to Fort Collins, Colorado, since there was nothing left for her here in Fortune.
She grabbed her cell phone from the kitchen counter and hit her speed dial for Satan. As had occurred every day for the past week, the call went immediately to Gus’s voice mail.
Blah
